KITCHENETTE
239
Jo
(screaming, menacing):
Then what the hell are you complaining
about, you ungrateful bastard???!! !
MIKIE
(cowering, on his knees):
I'm not complaining, I'm just de–
pressed, that's all....
Jo: Shall
I
get your father's claw and scratch that depression out of
you?
MIKIE: No, Jo, please, please don't scratch me!!
Jo
(opening the commode and removing a long-nailed claw from
it):
Over my knee
I
tell you, over Mama's knee. . . .
MIKIE
scurries under the table and up over Jo's knees.
Jo,
seated
on the commode, applies the claw to
MIKIE'S
rear and thighs.
The
FILMMAKER
urges her on.
MIKIE
groans with sensual delight.
Finally, he spills over onto the floor; both are exhausted, satis–
fied. She eyes him with vixen mockery.
Jo: Now go and do your lessons and see that you behave yourself,
you bad boy.
MIKIE
crawls around the table to the upstage chair.
The other seat, stupid. . . .
MIKIE
moves to the stool, runs a pencil down a page. He sucks
his thumb and begins singing. As he sings, he slips from the
stool, squirms out from under the table and nearly reaches Jo's
shoes. Both are in the throes of poetical sensuality.
MIKIE
(singing):
Wary of worrisome worrying weariors,
Pretending progenitors and superiors,
Pretentious idiotic inferiors,
Ample hips a!nd expansive posteriors
Guard the corridor-like interiors.
Jo: How beautiful are thy poems without rhyme!
MIKIE: How beautiful are thy shoes without feet.
Jo: Mikie, Mikie, kiss my shoes without feet...
He sta'rts to obey but she switches attitude, jumps up.
No, no, don't bother, not now. We did that before. And besides,
it bores me;
I
know,
I'll
spray my shoes instead.
She sprays polish on her shoes without removing them.
MIKIE
(enthralled):
Only Cinderella had so small a foot.
Jo
(unromantically):
But my foot is not small.
As
a matter of fact
it's too large for these shoes.
