Act 2, Scene 8: “Car Cramming”

TRL has an article due to an editor. So he starts printing out photos of the family. Cute photos of C & E and S playing and hugging and mugging for the camera. Of C & E in the baby pool with naked cousins G (age 4) and T (aged 2.5). C by himself lounging on a mini plastic chair looking oh so cool (C is instinctively cool, proving that one is either born cool or merely posing), E reading a book intently (upside down).

TRL takes the black and white print outs and tapes some to doors, others to the hutch desk in the guest room, and goes downstairs to stick some on the fridge.

Nanny D: You must have something to do, because you’re procrastinating.

TRL is both amazed that she knows him so well and that he is so obvious, and also pleased that she has taken an interest in him.

Very observant. I have an article to write. About space. Who cares about space, it’s so far away.

D nods.

I mean the guys might like space eventually, planets on their pajamas and stuff, but black holes and dwarf stars and giant vacuums, they just leave me cold. We’ve got enough going on right here and right now to keep me from looking elsewhere for more things to do.

D nods again and scoops up E, who is about to throw a large truck at the refrigerator.

What are you doing over the weekend? TRL asks.

We’re going to the drive-in.

The drive-in, wow, I’ve never been to a drive in. There’s one around here?

Yup. Twenty minutes away. There used to be one closer but that one closed.

What do you do at a drive-in?

D giggles. See a movie.

But how? Where does the sound come from?

The radio.

How much does it cost?

Well, that’s the thing. It’s only $20 so you bring as many people as can cram into your car.

$20 per car?

Yup.

TRL envisions seven 20-year-old college girls in cut-off shorts and half shirts crammed against each other in the darkened car, a movie playing on the big screen. This is the kind of vision that can sustain him for weeks.

Time to get back to work, says TRL.