Baby Doll & Tiger Tail Read Online Free PDF Page B

pay! Now the place is swarming with flies an’ mosquitoes and—oh, I don’t know, I almost give up sometimes.
    SILVA : And did I understand you to say that you’ve got a bunch of unfurnished rooms in the house?
    BABY DOLL : Five complete sets of furniture hauled away! By the Ideal Pay As You Go Plan Furniture Company.
    SILVA : When did this misfortune—fall upon you?
    BABY DOLL : Why yestiddy! Ain’t that awful?
    SILVA : Both of us had misfortunes on the same day.
    BABY DOLL : Huh?
    SILVA : You lost your furniture. My cotton gin burned down.
    BABY DOLL [
not quite with it
]: Oh.
    SILVA : Quite a coincidence!
    BABY DOLL : Huh?
    SILVA : I said it was a coincidence of misfortune.
    BABY DOLL : Well, sure—after all what can you do with a bunch of unfurnished rooms.
    SILVA : Well, you could play hide-and-seek.
    BABY DOLL : Not me. I’m not athletic.
    SILVA : I take it you’ve not had this place long, Mrs. Meighan.
    BABY DOLL : No, we ain’t had it long.
    SILVA : When I arrived in this county to take over the management of the Syndicate Plantation. . .
    [
He chops at the grass with his crop
.]
    this place was empty. I was told it was haunted. Then you all moved in.
    BABY DOLL : Yes it was haunted, and that’s why Archie Lee bought it for almost nothing.
    [
She pauses in the sun as if dazed
.]
    Sometimes I don’t know where to go, what to do.
    SILVA : That’s not uncommon. People enter this world without instruction.
    BABY DOLL [
she’s lost him again
]: Huh?
    SILVA : I said people come into this world without instructions of where to go, what to do, so they wander a little and. . .
    [
Aunt Rose sings rather sweetly from the kitchen, wind blows an Aeolian refrain
.]
    then go away. . . .
    [
Now Baby Doll gives him a quick look, almost perceptive and then
. . .]
    BABY DOLL : Yah, well. . .
    SILVA :
Drift
—for a while and then. . .
vanish
.
    [
He stoops to pick a dandelion
.]
    And so make room for newcomers! Old goers, new comers! Back and forth, going and coming, rush, rush!!
Permanent? Nothing!
    [
Blows on the seeding dandelion
.]
    Anything living!. . . last long enough to take it serious.
    [
They are walking together. There is the beginning of some weird understanding between them
.
    [
They have stopped strolling by a poetic wheelless chassis of an old Pierce Arrow limousine in the side yard
.]
    BABY DOLL : This is the old Pierce Arrow car that belonged to the lady that used to own this place and haunts it now.
    [
Vacarro steps gravely forward and opens the back door for her
.]
    SILVA : Where to, madam?
    BABY DOLL : Oh, you’re playing
show-fer!
It’s a good place to sit when the house isn’t furnished. . . .
    [
She enters and sinks on the ruptured upholstery. He gravely puts the remnant of the dandelion in the cone-shaped cut-glass vase in a bracket by the back seat of the old limousine
.]
    BABY DOLL [
laughing with sudden, childish laughter
]: Drive me along the river as fast as you can with all the windows open to cool me off.
    SILVA : Fine, Madam!
    BABY DOLL [
suddenly aware of his body near her
]: Showfers sit in the front seat.
    SILVA : Front seat’s got no cushion.
    BABY DOLL : It’s hard to find a place to sit around here since the Ideal Pay As You Go Plan people lost patience. To sit in comfort, I mean. . . .
    SILVA : It’s hard to sit in comfort when the Ideal Pay As You Go Plan people lose their patience and your gin burns down.
    BABY DOLL : Oh! But. . .
    SILVA : Huh?
    BABY DOLL : You said that like you thought there was. . .
    SILVA : What?
    BABY DOLL : Some connection! Excuse me, I want to get out and I can’t get over your legs. . . .
    [
Her apathy is visited by a sudden inexplicable flurry of panic. He has his boots propped against the back of the front seat
.]
    SILVA : You can’t get over my legs?
    BABY DOLL : No. I’m not athletic.
    [
She tries to open the door on the other side, but it is blocked by the trunk of a pecan tree
.]
    SILVA : But it’s cool here and