The play is set in The New Yorker, a small Chinese restaurant in Albany, New York. It is early on an October evening and Colin is telling Clifford about a recent e-assignation in rural Quebec.
COLIN (already exasperated): …So I get to the hotel at the appointed time and the woman hasn’t arrived.
CLIFFORD: Well, I thought you told me she had a long drive to get there.
COLIN: Even so. And then when she does show up…an hour late…I’ve already had a bite to eat at the hotel, and she then informs me that she’s hungry and wants to go out somewhere.
CLIFFORD: So what did you do?
COLIN: I took her to a steak house ten miles away and sat watching her eat.
CLIFFORD (wistfully): I like to watch a woman eat….
COLIN (irritated): Yeh? Well I don’t.
CLIFFORD (puzzled): Why not?
COLIN (with a shudder): All that elaborate mastication, punctuated with those meaningful, pleasured looks! It’s almost indecent!
CLIFFORD (sympathetic): It’s different maybe if you do it together.
COLIN: Do what together?
CLIFFORD: Eat.
COLIN (absently): Oh…yeh. And then there’s the evening to get through. And guess what? There’s no TV in the room!
CLIFFORD: So what did you do?
COLIN: I had a book with me.
CLIFFORD: What about her?
COLIN: She had her laptop, and proceeded to email everybody she knew…probably about what a schmuck she thought I was.
CLIFFORD: Why didn’t you make love to her?
COLIN (surprised and repelled): Before dark?
(curtain)
