… I believe it’s Lisa.

CHRISTOPHER

Close friend, huh?

BELLA

Names are overrated.

(Another pause. Then:)

What were you like in high school?

CHRISTOPHER

Pretty much exactly the same as I am now.

BELLA

Were you an athlete? You look like you could’ve been an athlete.

CHRISTOPHER

I made the JV cross-country team as a sophomore, but I didn’t run after that. I mostly hung out in the library. Read a bunch of books. Smoked a fair amount of the local weed. As far as sports go, I was basically your classic high school dodgeball target.

BELLA

(To the audience) I ask him if he’s made many friends at Yale.

CHRISTOPHER

Not too many.

BELLA

(To the audience) Huh … Though there is a freshman girl whom he refuses to name.

(To Christopher) Is she in class?

CHRISTOPHER

No. She’s actually an Econ major.

BELLA

(To the audience) He met her in the library. She was reading the new Jonathan Franzen novel.

CHRISTOPHER

I got her attention by making fun of her.

BELLA

How so?

(They transition to Bella’s apartment. A rug. A coffee table with a lamp on it. It’s cozy.)

CHRISTOPHER

I told her that reading Jonathan Franzen is the equivalent of eating a few servings of truck–stop–quality fruit cocktail and then going on a spirited jog down a well-appointed upper-middle-class street with giant initials on all the garages.

BELLA

Do you really believe that?

CHRISTOPHER

No, but it worked.

BELLA

(To the audience) I ask him to describe her.

CHRISTOPHER

She’s pretty.

BELLA

I don’t know what that means. Pretty in what way?

CHRISTOPHER

In the same way that horses are pretty.

BELLA

Pretty enough to ride.

CHRISTOPHER

Pretty enough to paint. But nothing too complicated. Maybe a simple watercolor study. Like she’s wearing a flattering, autumnal turtleneck and holding a wooden bowl of pinecones or something.

(Bella hands him a coffee mug filled with wine. She has one for herself.)

BELLA

Cheers.

(They clink mugs and drink.)

CHRISTOPHER

(Referring to the art on his mug) Garfield the Cat. “Diet is ‘die’ with a ‘t.’”

BELLA

(To the audience) And then Christopher tells me that after he signed up for my class he read my novel.

I ask him where he found it.

He says he ordered it from his local bookstore, in Burlington.

CHRISTOPHER

The Crow Bookshop. Great independent bookstore. Really well-curated fiction section.

BELLA

(To the audience) It probably took a decade to arrive.

CHRISTOPHER

It actually only took a few days. I also snagged your two short-story collections, but I haven’t read those yet.

(Bella takes a large gulp of wine.)

I loved your novel, Professor Baird.

BELLA

Bella.

CHRISTOPHER

I loved your novel, Bella.

(Beat.)

It’s one of the best things I’ve ever read.

BELLA

(To the audience) It feels as if a warm stone has been dislodged in my throat.

I tell him that I’m so glad to hear this.

(To Christopher) Published in hardcover in 1997 …

CHRISTOPHER

(To the audience) … by W. W. Norton and Company, Billy Baird Runs Through a Wall by Bella Lee Baird is essentially a social science-fiction novel disguised as young adult literature.