STERLING: When I was living with Mrs. Johnson before she died I used to watch her husband. He get up every morning at six o’clock. Sunday too. Six-thirty he out the door. Now . . .  he ain’t coming back till ten o’clock at night. He going down to J&L and lift hundred-pound slabs of steel till three o’clock. Then he going over after they close the fish market and clean up over there. Now what he got? He got six kids of his own, not to mention me. He got a raggedy house with some beat-up furniture. Can’t buy no house cause he can’t get a loan. Now that sound like a hard-working man. Good. Clean. Honest. Upright. He work thirty years at the mill and ain’t even got a union card. You got to work six months straight. They lay him off for two weeks every five and a half months. He got to call the police after he clean up the fish market so they can let him out of the building. Make sure he don’t steal anything. What they got? Two pound of catfish? There got to be something else. I ain’t sure I want to do all that.

RISA: You got to do something.

STERLING: Okay. Okay. If you don’t want to get married and have babies and all that . . .  then can we be cousins? Can we be kissing cousins? How’s that?

(He has cornered her. RISA pushes him away.)

RISA: Go on, Sterling . . .  leave me alone now.

STERLING: Risa, baby . . .

RISA: What?

STERLING: I ain’t never met no woman like you.

RISA: I ain’t met no man like you either. But that don’t mean I’m gonna get tied up with you. You’ll never have me sitting and worrying what you gonna do next.

STERLING: Well, come on and go to the rally with me.

RISA: I ain’t going to no rally. You can just go on by yourself.

(RISA goes over to the jukebox and puts in a quarter. “Take a Look” by Aretha Franklin begins to play.)

STERLING: When did that get fixed?

RISA: Today.

STERLING (hesitant): You wanna dance?

RISA: Yeah.
(They begin to dance. STERLING kisses her lightly.)

STERLING: How’s that? You wanna be kissing cousins?
(He kisses her passionately.)
Goddamn, baby!

RISA: Sterling.

STERLING: I didn’t know it was gonna be like this. You can be my first cousin.

RISA (between kisses): I wanna be your only cousin.

STERLING: That too.
(STERLING kisses her as the lights go down.)

SCENE 5

(The lights come up on the restaurant. The menu board reads, “Funeral for Hambone Saturday One O’Clock.” HOLLOWAY sits in a booth. RISA is cooking. STERLING stands looking out the window.)