Act Two  •  Scene Three

Same as Act I Scene III. The two adjoining rooms 109 and 110 in the Hotel Florida. It is dark outside the rooms and the curtains are drawn. There is no one in room 110 and it is dark. Room 109 is lighted brightly both by the reading lamp on the table, the main light in the ceiling, and a reading lamp clamped to the head of the bed. The electric heater and the electric stove are both on.DOROTHY BRIDGES, wearing a turtle-neck sweater, a tweed skirt, wool stockings and jodhpur boots, is doing something with a long-handled stew-pan on the electric cooking ring. A distant noise of gun fire comes through the curtained windows.DOROTHYrings the bell. There is no answering sound. She rings again.

DOROTHY. Oh, damn that electrician!

[She goes to the door and opens it]

Petra! Oh, Petra!

[You hear the MAID coming down the hall. She comes in the door]

PETRA. Yes, Señorita?

DOROTHY. Where’s the electrician, Petra?

PETRA. Didn’t you know?

DOROTHY. No. What? He’s simply got to come and fix this bell!

PETRA. He can’t come, Señorita, because he’s dead.

DOROTHY. What do you say?

PETRA. He was hit last night when he went out during the bombardment.

DOROTHY. He went out during the bombardment?

PETRA. Yes, Señorita. He had been drinking a little, and he went out to go home.

DOROTHY. The poor little man!

PETRA. Yes, Señorita, it was a shame!

DOROTHY. How was he hit, Petra?

PETRA. Some one shot him from a window, they say. I don’t know. That’s what they told me.

DOROTHY. Who’d shoot him from a window?

PETRA. Oh, they always shoot from windows at night during a bombardment. The fifth column people. The people who fight us from inside the city.

DOROTHY. But why would they shoot him? He was only a poor little workman.

PETRA. They could see he was a workingman from his clothes.

DOROTHY. Of course, Petra.

PETRA. That’s why they shot him. They are our enemies. Even of me. If I was killed they would be happy. They would think it was one working person less.

DOROTHY. But it’s dreadful!

PETRA. Yes, Señorita.

DOROTHY. But it’s terrible. You mean they shoot at people that they don’t even know who they are?

PETRA. Oh, yes. They are our enemies.

DOROTHY. They’re terrible people!

PETRA. Yes, Señorita!

DOROTHY. And what will we do for an electricista?

PETRA. Tomorrow we can get another. But now they would all be closed. You should not burn so many lights perhaps, Señorita, and then perhaps the fuse will not melt out. Use only what you need to see.

[DOROTHY turns off all but the reading light on the bed]