EMILY: I don’t like to be used as an escort in that way, Vinnie.
VINCENT: I know that.
MARSHA: I don’t either, except I am.
VINCENT: By me? I never used you that way.
MARSHA: Never, except on Ischia.
VINCENT: That was terrific.
MARSHA: You know that story? When Vinnie used me as Suddenly Last Summer? When I was his pimp?
VINCENT: This will be very interesting for me, because I’ll finally hear her version of it.
EMILY: Can I have your version of the ashtray?
MARSHA: You want to hear the story? You know I had had this beautiful Sienese summer with Vin and Clem, my ideal of romantic love? I thought they were the perfect couple, they would never break up, they were going to come back and live in Bucks County from here to eternity? All winter we corresponded, and the following summer they invited me over again because I had been such a good guest.
EMILY: Where was this?
MARSHA: They were living in Rome, they had left Siena. So I get there, I see my ideal couple, and after about ten minutes, the news starts to filter through that they’re not so ideal anymore, they’re not even a couple. I had a complete internal breakdown. I mean their union was my whole security against the world at that time. I had never really thought of them as homosexual, you see, just as a happily married couple, because they were very private, their bedroom door was always closed and everything else. Even though their bed did have a white wedding veil over it in Siena.
VINCENT: Oh wait a minute.
MARSHA: Mosquito netting, they called it. So anyway it was a total shock to me.
EMILY: Vinnie’s so sunburned. Look at him.
MARSHA: Vince was a nervous wreck, both of them were, all they did was comb their hair. They were constantly combing their hair. I had never seen them with a comb in their hands before, now they were never without one.
VINCENT: Is that really true?
EMILY: I’d like to take a photograph of your hands, Vinnie, they are not to be believed.
MARSHA: And the phone calls were pouring in, Alberto, Paolo, Cici, all these guys calling up night and day, with liaisons and rendezvous and everything else. I was a wreck, Vince was a wreck, so we decided we should go away, take a little trip together to Ischia.
EMILY: Jonquil!
MARSHA: Oh stop it, let her sleep. Boy, you’re going to be some mother. Anyway, to make a long story short, we were there, we hated Ischia, it was very ugly.
VINCENT: She’s not listening to a word you’re saying. She’s got venom in her ears.
MARSHA: Are you listening to me?
EMILY: Ischia.
MARSHA: We were staying at separate places for some reason, and the maid in my pensione kept winking at me and saying don’t worry, he can stay over anytime he wants to. I was quite a distance from the center of town, it was an area where they were building, sort of lonely, deserted, with workmen and things. Dig we must.
EMILY: For a growing Ischia.
VINCENT: Avec Edouard. Con Ed.
MARSHA: I just realized this isn’t even the right story I’m telling.
VINCENT: I know it. What was the original one?
MARSHA: On the beach.
VINCENT: Walking you home is a horrible story, please don’t tell it.
MARSHA: Can’t I tell it?
VINCENT: Sure, tell it.
MARSHA: It’s halfway finished anyway. He was walking me home and some guy, some trick catches his eye. He’s looking at Vinnie and Vinnie’s looking at him. It’s dead of night, late, no moon, and suddenly Vince says to me, Marshie, you can get home alone, can’t you? I’ve got to follow that man, I have to go with him. I said all right, darling, if you must, you must. Dig. So he leaves me there in the middle of nowhere, I didn’t even know how to say “help” in Italian in those days.
VINCENT: That’s all right, there was no one on the street to say it to.
MARSHA: And off he went.
VINCENT: She told me to, Em. Actually I didn’t go off, I ran off.
MARSHA: Ran off, clopped off on his cloppy clodhoppers. And I just stood there, watching his white shirt disappear into the night. But all of a sudden, as I’m watching it, the shirt, instead of receding, seems to be coming towards me. It’s Vinnie, racing back, I think he was crying.
VINCENT: I was.
MARSHA: He grabbed me in his arms and said darling, how could I have done that to you? It’ll never happen again, I promise, and he escorted me home as a proper escort should. But that wasn’t the story I wanted to tell.
EMILY: It’s beautiful though.
VINCENT: It was the beast overtaking the civilized man, and then the civilized man taking over the beast.
MARSHA: Of course the guy rejected him, but he won’t go into that. The story of Suddenly Last Summer was on the same island, on the beach. We were sitting there, Vince and I, and there was this awful-looking boy with broken gold teeth.
VINCENT: But he had a fantastic torso.
MARSHA: Who was interested in me.
VINCENT: I didn’t know it though.
MARSHA: Vince kept saying lure him over, lure him over, he’s queer, he’s queer, he’s queer. So together we lure him over and he starts flirting with me, he’s in love with me and everything else, and Vince says to him let’s take a walk.
EMILY: With the gold teeth and the broken teeth?
VINCENT: Yeah, but gorgeous. A fantastic crotch and a beautiful light torso.
MARSHA: Vinnie tells him he’s my half-brother and our mother has been married eight times. Tells it to this simple Italian fisherboy who’s horrified, thinks it’s the most awful story he’s ever heard.
EMILY: And Vinnie’s trying to prime him for himself?
VINCENT: What does prime mean? Putting white gesso on?
MARSHA: Somehow we made a date with him for the next day.
VINCENT: He was going to take us on his boat, remember?
MARSHA: But he stood us up and we stood him up. Vinnie and I have had adventures through hell and high water.
VINCENT: Marsha was so good to me in the hospital. She wouldn’t do it again though, she told me.
EMILY: You’re still talking about that hospital. I never got to tell you the Strindberg-Bergman dream I once had about my father. We were riding a bicycle and I was holding on to him, my head up against the back of his shoulders. We were going down this dirt path beautifully, there was a soft wind blowing, and there were different turn-offs which I kept thinking we were going to take, but he kept going straight down the hill. The next thing I know we’re riding through high grasses in the field, and in the distance I can see my mother and my sister coming toward us. They had long white gowns, flowing gently through these tall leaves. They looked at me and I waved, but I said to my father let’s ignore them. That’s the dream, my favorite dream that I ever had.
MARSHA: My favorite dream was having a conversation with a fish in a beautiful bubbling brook.
VINCENT: My favorite dream was the first dream I had in analysis. When I was growing up, you see, I didn’t believe that I was the intelligent kid I am, and this dream showed number one that I was intelligent and number two my decision to be a homosexual. I went to Riis Park….
MARSHA: That’s where Tim Cullen goes every day to the beach.
EMILY: Tim Cullen isn’t at all queer, is he?
VINCENT: I don’t know, only Marsha can answer that. Is he sexual, Tim?
MARSHA: No.
EMILY: He’s not, he’s all closed up.
MARSHA: But he thinks he’s the most sexual person alive.
VINCENT: Marshie, do I have to get up at 8:15 to go to the laundry?