Rick, Scoogie, ButterflyWeed,Vietnam and the Machine gun Soldier.

By Dalton Narine

INT. NEW YORK CITY APARTMENT — DINING ROOM — Evening

AMANDA “SCOOGIE” THORNTON, 36, East Indian American aunt of Butterfly Weed, theater actor, deep love for family members, Rick McCarthy, 40, white, cocky author, sits at dining table.

Pack of Pall Mall, letter, unopened mail stand out on white table cloth, white dishes.

Modern art, family paintings adorn walls. Painting catches Rick’s eye. Scoogie heads to kitchen, checks on dinner. Radio plays jazz. She turns up volume.

Rick gets up, picks up Pall Malls, taps bottom, cigarette pops up.

Rick plugs cigarette into silver holder, uses lighter, walks to kitchen, strikes up conversation about artist.

RICK: That’s Papp’s work?

SCOOGIE: His latest. Like it?

Rick returns to painting, studies it.

RICK:
Yeah, like life in the theater, huh?

Scoogie fixes Rick a Manhattan, serves herself Vodka Martini, sits down, lights cigarette, rifles through mail, hands Rick a letter from her nephew in Vietnam.

Rick reads aloud

The trees are dying. All of them. Sprayed with the defoliant, Agent Orange. Chemical bullets, really. We may have denied Charlie sanctuary deep in triple canopy jungle. Still, it behooves us to…