“Whoa! What the fuck! You could have killed me! You can’t just shove people into the street to get hit by a car. What the fuck is the matter with you people!”

“FUCK OFF.” Carmen gives him the finger.

“Hey, hey, I didn’t start this, and—”

“YOU FUCK OFF.”

“Christ, you frigid cunt, take a fucking pill.”

Kierk, dark deeds on his mind, tries to get up, but instead, betrayed, becomes a caving scarecrow of night, tumbling back on his hands. The investment banker recedes offstage. Nervous laughter comes from Jessica until Carmen gives her a hard look.

Carmen, bending over him—“Here, Kierk, you want another hat? Take this hat.”

With a green baseball cap that reads AIG firmly secured to his head, the three of them enter a process of lifting Kierk to his swaying feet.

“Just leave me here. Just leave me here.”

“Okay, Mr. Dramatic,” Alex says, “we’re not leaving you anywhere. Let’s go. Come on.”

“This is all second-order reality anyway. The only really real thing is consciousness.”

“Kierk, I never know what you’re talking about,” Jessica says, moving to help, but Carmen gets between her and Kierk. With a hand under each arm Carmen and Alex prepare to lift.

“Kierk, we’re going to lift you up okay, and take you home. You ready?”

Kierk says upward at them—“To a materialist there’s no beginning and no end to a Rube Goldberg machine. Trace its history back to the big bang and forward to heat death. Nothing starts and nothing ever stops for them. It can’t be true. It’s too absurd.”

Carmen pauses. “Maybe I’m drunk too, but that just made a lot of sense to me,” she says.

“Alright, let’s get him up . . .”

SATURDAY

Kierk wakes up and rubs the salt of sleep from his eyes, rolling over, his horizon the pillow. Maybe he’s still drunk because the dream had been drunken, loose with imagery.