Mary (after a pause of some few seconds) What do you do?

Joe Do? To tell you the truth, nothing.

Mary Do you always drink a great deal?

Joe (scientifically) Not always. Only when I’m awake. I sleep seven or eight hours every night, you know.

Mary How nice. I mean to drink when you’re awake.

Joe (thoughtfully) It’s a privilege.

Mary Do you really like to drink?

Joe (positively) As much as I like to breathe.

Mary (beautifully) Why?

Joe (dramatically) Why do I like to drink? (Pause.) Because I don’t like to be gypped. Because I don’t like to be dead most of the time and just a little alive every once in a long while. (Pause.) If I don’t drink, I become fascinated by unimportant things – like everybody else. I get busy. Do things. All kinds of little stupid things, for all kinds of little stupid reasons. Proud, selfish, ordinary things. I’ve done them. Now I don’t do anything. I live all the time. Then I go to sleep.

Pause.

Mary Do you sleep well?

Joe (taking it for granted) Of course.

Mary (quietly, almost with tenderness) What are your plans?

Joe (loudly, but also tenderly) Plans? I haven’t got any. I just get up.

Mary (beginning to understand everything) Oh, yes. Yes, of course.

Dudley puts a nickel in the phonograph.

Joe (thoughtfully) Why do I drink?

Pause, while he thinks about it. The thinking appears to be profound and complex, and has the effect of giving his face a very comical and naive expression.

That question calls for a pretty complicated answer. (He smiles abstractedly.)

Mary Oh, I didn’t mean –

Joe (swiftly, gallantly) No. No. I insist. I know why. It’s just a matter of finding words. Little ones.

Mary It really doesn’t matter.

Joe (seriously) Oh, yes, it does. (Clinically.) Now, why do I drink? (Scientifically.) No. Why does anybody drink? (Working it out.) Every day has twenty-four hours.

Mary (sadly, but brightly) Yes, that’s true.

Joe Twenty-four hours. Out of the twenty-four hours at least twenty-three and a half are – my God, I don’t know why – dull, dead, boring, empty and murderous. Minutes on the clock, not time of living. It doesn’t make any difference who you are or what you do, twenty-three and a half hours of the twenty-four are spent waiting.

Mary Waiting?

Joe (gesturing, loudly) And the more you wait, the less there is to wait for.

Mary (attentively, beautifully his student) Oh?

Joe (continuing) That goes on for days and days, and weeks and months and years, and years, and the first thing you know all the years are dead. All the minutes are dead. You yourself are dead. There’s nothing to wait for any more. Nothing except minutes on the clock. No time of life. Nothing but minutes, and idiocy. Beautiful, bright, intelligent idiocy. (Pause.) Does that answer your question?

Mary (earnestly) I’m afraid it does. Thank you. You shouldn’t have gone to all the trouble.