Excerpt from White Paper

SOPHIE: What the hell are you doing here?!

MORRIS: I came to see you.

SOPHIE: You broke into my apartment!

MORRIS: I was worried about you. I called and I called and I called and nothing but the voicemail.

SOPHIE: Are you drunk?

MORRIS: I don’t like that voicemail. It taunts me.

SOPHIE: You can’t be here.

MORRIS: Why not? You writing? I’ll be quiet. Shhh. Like a church mouse.

SOPHIE: I’m mean it, Morris. You can’t just show up like this. You can’t just break into my apartment while I’m sleeping.

MORRIS: I used keys.

SOPHIE: Those are my keys!

MORRIS: You gave them to me!

SOPHIE: You broke my heart!

MORRIS: You stole my housekeeper!

(SOPHIE yanks a blanket over her half-clad body. A beat or two.)

MORRIS: Elva told me about the play. That’s amazing.

SOPHIE: It’s not amazing. If you knew what they’re going to do to it…Nevermind.

MORRIS: Tell me.

SOPHIE: I don’t tell you things anymore, Morris. We’re not a couple. We never really were.

MORRIS: I’m getting a divorce.

SOPHIE: Is this the rum and coke talking?

MORRIS: Present numero uno.

(MORRIS pulls folded papers from his coat and drops them on the bed. SOPHIE picks them up.)

SOPHIE: They’re signed papers.

MORRIS: Emancipation Proclamation, kid.

SOPHIE: What am I supposed to do?

MORRIS: How about if we get naked and crawl into the small lumpy bed of yours, fall asleep and decide in the morning.

SOPHIE: As if you’d spend the night.           

MORRIS: I’ll spend the night.

SOPHIE: Where were you six months ago, Morris?

MORRIS: Figuring it out.

SOPHIE: I figured it out for you! I told you a year ago!

MORRIS: Look, I admit it. A year ago I was hoping to have an epiphany and I was hoping you’d have an epiphany, and perhaps, together we’d have one great epiphany.

SOPHIE: Do you know what epiphany means? Because I’m thinking you don’t.

MORRIS: I wanted to figure this out a year ago. But I needed time to process everything. Sophie, my marriage ended. A relationship that had lasted ten years and that I thought was going to last forever fell apart and I needed to figure out what the hell I was doing.

SOPHIE: So what? I’m runner up? I’m your consolation prize?

MORRIS: We’re all each other’s consolation prize, Sophie.

SOPHIE: Jesus. That’s romantic.

MORRIS: You’re telling me there weren’t other men? That before our lives collided painfully into each other, you hadn’t loved someone else?

SOPHIE: Not the way I loved you.

MORRIS: This story isn’t just about you, Sophie. It’s about me, too. My life was turned upside down and my heart was broken and I thought I would never…I could never…

 SOPHIE: It’s too late.

MORRIS: I don’t believe that.

SOPHIE: It’s true. I’ve moved on. You had your chance. Hey, I guess the timing just wasn’t right.

MORRIS: Tell me that you don’t want me.

SOPHIE: Don’t start --.

(MORRIS grabs SOPHIE.)

MORRIS: Sophie, look at me and tell me that you don’t want me.

SOPHIE: I don’t want you.

MORRIS: You’re a terrible liar.

SOPHIE: You need to leave.

MORRIS: I need to give you your second present.

SOPHIE: I’m uninterested.

(MORRIS puts SOPHIE’S hand suggestively on his coat pocket.)

SOPHIE: I’m intrigued.

(MORRIS pulls a small can of olives from his coat.)

MORRIS: Medium. Pitted.

SOPHIE: Some things you managed to get right, Morris.

(MORRIS begins to walk away and then turns.)

MORRIS: If we don’t ever talk again, I don’t really want my last words to you to be ‘medium, pitted’. So can I think of something else to say?

SOPHIE: Sure.

MORRIS: I love you.