I’ll get up off the canvas if I have to. They can carry me out feet first . . .  but my clause say . . .  they got to meet my price!
(The lights go down on the scene.)

ACT TWO

SCENE 1

(The lights come up on the restaurant. RISA sits on one of the stools. The flyer about the rally is taped to the wall behind the counter. STERLING enters with a handful of flowers and a five-gallon gas can. He is dressed in different clothes. He wears a cap instead of a hat.)

STERLING: Hey, Risa. Here.

RISA: What’s that?

STERLING: What they look like? Them some flowers. I got them for you.

RISA: Sterling, where you get these flowers from?

STERLING: What you worried about where I got them from? God made them. You don’t ask him where he got them from. I got them, that’s all that counts.

RISA: Sterling, where you get these flowers from?

STERLING: I got them from across the street. I wasn’t gonna buy them. I think that’s silly to buy flowers. White folks do that. If I want to buy you something I buy you earrings or something. But I got them. And I got them for you. I saw them and I said, “I’m gonna take these to Risa. She a woman. Woman supposed to like nice things. Flowers and lace and all that kind of stuff.” You better look at those flowers and see where they got your name on them. That’s all you got to know.

RISA: I don’t want no flowers you stole from a dead man.

STERLING: He don’t mind. The man got so many flowers West don’t know where to put them. West had to postpone his funeral and the flowers sitting over there dying. If I was gonna steal the man’s flowers I’d pull a truck up there at night and go on and take the whole load. I picked them four or five cause I was thinking of you and I looked and seen where they had your name on it. Now you talking about you don’t want them. Hell, a flower’s a flower. They gonna be dead in a minute if you don’t put them in some water. They gonna be dead in two or three days even if you do. Go on and put them in a glass and enjoy them. Prophet Samuel can’t smell them. He don’t even know they there. People throwing all that money away buying flowers.
(RISA puts the flowers in a glass.)

RISA: West gonna come over here and see these flowers. I’m gonna tell him where I got them from.

STERLING: I’ll tell him myself. West don’t care. He ain’t gonna do nothing but take them out there and throw them in the ground.
(HOLLOWAY enters.)
Hey, Holloway, you think Aunt Ester be well yet?