Henry enters the dark room. Though clothed, he feels naked. Jane lies sprawled across the floor, one breast exposed.
Henry: What is the Cinema?
Jane: Pass me my cigarettes.
Henry grabs a weather-beaten pack of Marboro 100s off the kitchen table and hands them to her.
(Pause)
Jane: A light?
Henry takes a cursory look around the room before reaching for the box of matches they keep by the stove to light the gas. He hands them to Jane who takes a solitary match from the box and lights her cigarette. She puts the match out with an effortless flick in the dead, suffocating air of their apartment and lets it drop to the floor.
(Pause)
Jane moves towards the window and looks out it. She absent-mindedly begins to rub her breast.
Jane: I want ice cream.
Henry stares at her with a churning mixture of repulsion and desire. The room fills with a piercing silence.
Henry: What is the Cinema?
Both emit silent screams. The stagnant and vapid atmosphere of their fourth floor walk-up reminds us of the nihilism of post-industrial society.
(Pause)
Jane: I haven’t bathed in days.
He motions towards an old white oxford bunched up in the corner, implying that she should put it on. Her sex disgusts him.
Jane: My nakedness is.
As he begins to quietly sob, Henry’s eyes glaze over and he remembers Michigan.
Henry: The Cinema is.
He walks somberly across the room, though we could say that he has already exited. Jane gazes out the window longingly. The city is a raped whore.
Jane: Vanilla.
Henry opens a drawer and removes his father’s revolver. Though the pistol is old, its condition clearly evinces that Henry has maintained it tenderly in the seven years since the bastard’s death. He lusts for the finality of its cold steel.
Jane scoffs.
Henry takes the barrel of the gun into his mouth and without pausing confidently pulls the trigger. Only in the last instant of his life does he feel a man.
Jane puts her cigarette out on the windowsill and takes a carton of ice cream from the freezer. She eats it with a spoon.
Jane: Dégueulasse.
End
