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.
