(A pause. Then:)

CHRISTOPHER

… Okay.

BELLA

Okay what.

CHRISTOPHER

I’ll help you.

BELLA

Thank you.

CHRISTOPHER

But first you have to read my manuscript.

BELLA

Did you type this with carbon paper?

CHRISTOPHER

That’s the only copy.

BELLA

Please forgive me if I start to fade or get loopy. I’ve taken a Percocet.

CHRISTOPHER

And I want your honest response. None of that bullshit, forced professorial flattery.

BELLA

(Indignant) I don’t do that.

CHRISTOPHER

You do, though. You do it to the weaker writers in class. You pity them and tell them they’re good when they should actually change majors. If I hear that guy with the Clark Kent glasses use the word “stelliform” again I’m going to throw an egg at him.

BELLA

What’s wrong with stelliform? Stelliform’s a good word.

CHRISTOPHER

It’s totally ripped off from Infinite Jest. It’s David Foster Wallace’s word. No one should touch it.

BELLA

Why isn’t that book in your big three?

CHRISTOPHER

Infinite Jest isn’t a book, it’s a fucking planet.

(Beat.)

So, give me your word about not bullshitting me.

BELLA

You have my word.

CHRISTOPHER

(To the audience) It’s written in first-person present tense, in the Yale student’s voice.

After their meal at Arturo’s, on their way to the St. Marks Hotel, Shane and Christopher stop at a nearby gift shop, where Christopher purchases a large Statue of Liberty paperweight, a souvenir for his mother, who he plans on going to visit after attending the play at the Atlantic Theater.

BELLA

(To the audience) Like his author, Narrator Christopher is from Vermont and his mother, who he tells Shane is agoraphobic, lives in a modest house in Burlington.

CHRISTOPHER

(To the audience) As Christopher and Shane get settled into their fourth-floor hotel room, whose lone window overlooks the Bowery, there is a long section of dialogue during which Shane reveals that he is the father of an infant son, whom he refers to as his Little Golden State Warrior.

While Christopher unpacks his few belongings and sets his toiletries on a small shelf in the bathroom, it starts to rain.

BELLA

From the bathroom I can hear the rain pelting our hotel room window. It sounds like soft gravel being thrown at a hated neighborhood house.

CHRISTOPHER

(To the audience) Shane confesses that he’s been having a hard time with Kimmy, his girlfriend and the mother of his child, who is back in New Haven, where they live in the basement of Kimmy’s mother’s house.

“So you weren’t actually planning on meeting a girl,” Christopher says from the bathroom.

“Nah,” Shane admits from the bed. “I just needed to get my ass out the house for a minute.”

Later, Shane is in the bathroom and Christopher is on the bed. While Shane is washing his face and reciting some Vince Staples lyrics, Christopher approaches the bathroom, clutching the Statue of Liberty paperweight. And he strikes Shane over the back of the head, and continues striking him until his brains spill out through two competing orifices.