piece from play in progress

(BOBBIE finishes typing and takes the paper out of the typewriter. He hands it to SYLVIA who reads it silently.) SYLVIA This is what I remember from the page he handed me. “Where were you?” it said. BOBBIE (Quoting from the page) Have you been here the whole time in the corner in the shadows sipping your lager? Me, all I feel are clusters of light, the rat a tat rumble of oncoming headlights, fireworks, bonfires, incredible stabs of concentrated heat hurtling towards my eyes. “Even death can’t find me here,” I think, as your stale breath seeps deeply into my lungs. You are no beauty or at least open-handed I can count twelve or more with tauter looks whose tongues I’ve touched. And you, steeped in the corner for five minutes, seven hours, ten years, who can say how long? How long? Your angles, curves, brush of lash, stiff lip on edge of glass. When did you sneak in under the line of mine to flip the switch? Don’t know how you did it. Didn’t know it was there but it’s like an extra sense opened up or a new way of living like learning you can breathe underwater or understand binary code. All the ones and zeros suddenly crystal. It’s dim here but my irises are jagged, prickly, straining to make sense of the oncoming flood. The flood envelops me if I chance to let a glance graze you so I try to look at you only when you’re distracted and looking far away from me. It hurts less that way. SYLVIA Then he took the page from me. And from nowhere produced an empty wine bottle, and rolling the page up, slipped it, smooth as can be, into the bottle and corked it.