The play is set in the studio
of painter Nat Picker, a studio he shares with a lissome but lazy jewelry
designer, whose name is Erin Hoarse.
Every Friday evening, Nat and
Erin provide dinner for two of their poet friends: Noel Fitchfinger and Clark
Cooler. Because nobody has any
money, they cut corners, preferring felicity to sumptuousness. To that end, there care only two
napkins on the table: one shared by Nat and Erin, and the other shared by Noel
and Clark.
NAT (motioning the two poets to the table): Please—let’s begin.
ERIN (passing around a huge streaming bowl): Have some
goulash, gentlemen!
NAT (paternally):
And don’t forget to make use of your communal napkin, boys. Erin and I do!
[everybody dabs straightaway at
his—or her—lips]
NOEL AND CLARK TOGETHER: It’s delicious, Erin!
NAT(pointedly):
I was the one who made it.
NOEL (uneasy):
Ah. Well, it’s still delicious!
CLARK (hearty):
Sure is!
NAT (wiping his mouth and then handing the soiled napkin
to Erin): Wipe your mouth, Erin.
[she does so]
A week passes and the same
meal recurs, served to the same two people, Noel and Clark
NAT (to his guests): Napkins at the ready, gentlemen?
ERIN: We may
be poor, but we’re neat!
NAT: Immaculate, I think!
Month after month of Friday
nights go by. Then years. By now the four of them have consumed
enough goulash to fill nine bathtubs of the stuff. The two napkins, having been dabbled all this time at their
gravy’d mouths, have grown stiff and crusty. Eventually, there comes one final Friday—as final Fridays
must come—when, in the midst of the goulash, both Noel and Clark keel over and
die.
NAT (quietly to Erin): Take their napkin and wipe their lips, my dear.
ERIN (hopelessly):
I can’t, Rubel. The napkin is too heavy and hard. I can’t lift it from the table.
NAT: Here,
let me try.
He can’t lift it either.
ERIN (sadly):
You knew this day would come
NAT: But I
had hoped it wouldn’t come so soon.
ERIN: Do you
think we ought to have laundered the
napkins?
NAT: No,
no. The gradual encrustation of
the napkins has been like erosion in reverse. It’s
the matrix of time, embodying itself in the linen. You can’t interfere with that sort of thing, you know.
ERIN: Do you think we ought to start again—with new dinner
guests?
NAT: As long
as we use the same napkins.
Remember, Erin, these creaking, fossilized napkins are an axis, the sole
still point of a wobbly, teetering world!
(curtain)
