Vieux Carre by Tennessee Williams

out!
    NURSIE : Miss, Miss Sparks! These are Festival ladies who’ve paid admission.
    JANE : Can’t endure any more! Please, please. I’m sick!
    TYE : Fawgit it, Babe, come back in.
    JANE : It isn’t real, it couldn’t be—
    [
The writer shakes his head with a sad smile
.]
    But it was— it is . . . like a dream . . .
    TYE : What did you say, Babe?
    JANE : Close the gallery door— please?
    TYE : Sure, Babe. [
He shuts the door on the voices below
.]
    JANE : And— the hall door— bolt it. Why do you bring home nightmare stories to me?!
    TYE [
gently
]: Babe, you brought up the subject, you asked me about the Champagne Girl, I wasn’t planning to tell you. Chair?
    JANE : Bed.
    TYE : Weed?
    JANE : —Coffee.
    TYE : Cold.
    JANE : — Cold— coffee.
    [
Tye pours her a cup and puts it in her trembling hand. He holds the hand and lifts the cup to her lips, standing behind her. He lets his hand fall to her breasts; she sobs and removes the hand
.
    [
The singer-pianist is heard again
.]
    JANE : . . . Why do you want to stay on here?
    TYE : Here’s where you are, Babe.
    JANE [
shaking her head
]: No more. I . . . have to dress . . . [
She dresses awkwardly, frantically. He watches in silence
.] You have to get dressed, too, I told you I was expecting a very important visitor. Tye, the situation’s turned impossible on us, face it.
    TYE : You’re not walkin’ out on me.
    JANE : Who have I got to appeal to except God, whose phone’s disconnected, or this . . . providential . . . protector.
    TYE : From the banana republic, a greaseball. And you’d quit me for that?
    JANE : You’ve got to be mature and understanding. At least for once, now dress. The Brazilian is past due . . . I realized your defects, but you touched me like nobody else in my life had ever before or ever could again. But, Tye, I counted on you to grow up, and you refused to. I took you for someone gentle caught in violence and degradation that he’d escape from . . .
    TYE : Whatever you took me for, I took you for honest, for decent, for . . .
    JANE : Don’t be so . . . “Decent”? You ridiculous little . . . sorry, no. Let’s not go into . . . abuse . . . Tye? When we went into this it wasn’t with any long-term thing in mind. That’s him on the steps. Go in the bathroom quiet!
    TYE : You go in the bathroom quiet. I’ll explain without words.
    [
She thrusts his clothes at him. He throws them savagely about the stage
.]
    . . . Well?
    [
There is a sound on the stairs
.]
    Sounds like the footsteps of a responsible man.
    [
Tye opens the door. We see hospital interns with a stretcher. Jane stares out. The interns pass again with Nightingale’s dying body on the stretcher. The writer is with them. Jane gasps and covers her face with her arm. The writer turns to her
.]
    WRITER : It’s just— they’re removing the painter.
    JANE :
—Just!
    TYE : No Brazilian, no buyer?
    JANE : No. No sale . . .
    WRITER [
standing in the open doorway, as narrator
]: It was getting dim in the room.
    TYE : It’s almost getting dark.
    WRITER : They didn’t talk. He smoked his reefer. He looked at her steady in the room getting dark and said . . .
    TYE : I see you clear.
    WRITER : She turned her face away. He walked around that way and looked at her from that side. She turned her face the other way. She was crying without a sound, and a black manwas playing piano at the Four Deuces round the corner, an oldie, right for the atmosphere . . . something like . . .
    [
The piano fades in, “Seem like Old Times.” Tye begins to sing softly with the piano
.]
    JANE : Don’t.
    [
Tye stops the soft singing but continues to stare at Jane
.]
    DON’T
    [
Pause
.]
    TYE : Jane. You’ve gotten sort of— skinny. How much weight you lost?
    JANE : I