NEXT:  IRS offices; Harvey Karray, Dan Dapp and Molly Pistol are on.

MOLLY PISTOL
So how we going to get this guy?

HARVEY KARRAY
Guy? No guy. Case. How're we going to resolve this case? We're a government bureaucracy, we're out to apply the law equally to millions of different individuals -- and there's no fair way to do that, individually. So, no guys, no gals, no persons individual with a whole, real life in the real world -- cases, please, with consideration limited to matters the law specifically specifies are relevant.

MOLLY PISTOL
Hey, this guy's a deadbeat evader, we got a duty to get him.

DAN DAPP
So, if we know he's a bad guy, we'd be right to plant the evidence on him, so as to do our higher duty to get him. Right?

MOLLY PISTOL
Pretend on. There's a lot wrong with you, Danny boy, but not that. That plant the evidence and purjure the testimony just isn't you. Thank God.

DAN DAPP
Anyhow, have we got time to get this guy? Don't we got enough put a case together, send to Justice?

HARVEY KARRAY
Crimdiv doesn't even want to see it til it's sure they're guilty -- then they can start working on maybe getting a conviction.

MOLLY PISTOL
Get a conviction... We can't get him to answer his phone.

HARVEY KARRAY
For all we can tell there's no him to answer. All the shells and legal fictions he's got holding his bags, he might as well not personally exist.

MOLLY PISTOL
Hey, at some point somebody always owns it.

DAN DAPP
Not necessarily... Corporations -- in all their thousand kinds and sizes, and country of incorporation and nationality of ownership...

MOLLY PISTOL
Come on, how long you been doing investigations? If it's in the private sector -- legal or illegal -- somebody always owns it. Hey, every time, every time after you get past all the onshores and offshores, the whole ten yards of legal paper and Chinese boxes, there's someone, or someones -- somebody always owns it. And whether they want anybody to know it or not, that's not my point.

HARVEY KARRAY
Exception. How 'bout in some inheritance cases.

MOLLY PISTOL
Well then somebody wants to own it. Believe it -- there's always someone -- it's persons, always persons that got that thing, that pride and patheticness of possess, of extending the self to things like on its own your self could never win respect -- it's mine, see!? And in inheritance fights they just want to legally own after they maybe stole it -- that guilt for having took with no right and nagging wish to get it straight with all the papers for all the world to see it's theirs and clean -- hah! Like paperwork with seals from courts could put to rest the toss and turn of guilty secrets eroding on your conscience.

DAN DAPP
Hey, people forget and then convince themselves.

MOLLY PISTOL
No they don't; they remember and convince everybody else. Ask any respectable, successful money-launderer.

HARVEY KARRAY
Yeah, and we help them.

MOLLY PISTOL
No we don't.

DAN DAPP
Yeah we do. They pay their taxes; they're home free. There's no way we can go after all -- even most -- that try and get away with it, and they all know it.

HARVEY KARRAY
Which always -- the wonder of this job -- brings me back to what makes them want so bad to get away with it when nine times out of ten they already got so much they couldn't possibly need to get some more?

MOLLY PISTOL
Cause, I'm telling you, they're people, and it's only persons got that need -- need to dream themselves different, dream that if they just owned that, bought that -- make those acquisitions -- they'd be seen as more, more..more! by those around. You know, it's not cause people want to keep up with the Joneses, it's cause they dream all day of getting the envy and admiration only the Joneses got to give. I go dream shopping all day too -- and I see them all watching me, me! driving it, living in it, wearing it, enjoying it -- where'd it all be without the projected mimicry of envy?

DAN DAPP
I didn't buy that vehicle thinking so..so guys'u'd get green 'n' girls'u'd want me. I bought it 'cause it was clearly a work of superior automotive engineering. And I appreciate that.

HARVEY KARRAY
Yeah. For sure. That's the only reason I go to those websites -- to read the articles.

MOLLY PISTOL
Right. And once they've got it they start dreaming of getting some more. Ever seen a dog or a company feel that need? Things and animals don't care about property and money. They can't. That's just the way it is -- no matter what the law'll lead you to believe is possible. If it's not a person, it can't, physically can't, care about ownership -- ever steal anything from a dog? an organization? how upset do those its get? -- but their owners? When it's possessors, hah! If it's a man, woman or child, watch out what it makes them feel. I'm telling you, it's got to be a someone to meaningfully take part in economic relations with others.

HARVEY KARRAY
But things can still pay taxes.

DAN DAPP
And enjoy it too. Ask any corporation. Right? They own, they care, and they pay taxes. And they have economic relations like bunnies in a bag -- heck, that's all they do -- seven by twenty-four by three sixty five and one quarter -- like all day long every day and twice on Sundays.

MOLLY PISTOL
I knew it'u'd make you think about sex. I just knew it, I mean, the slightest...

DAN DAPP
Yeah? So that's what I think about -- all the time, every day, all day long -- just like any normal guy. Fact is, that's the real reason I work so hard and love my work is that it gives my mind a rest from thinking about sex.

HARVEY KARRAY
But it doesn't work, right?

MOLLY PISTOL
Pathetic. Okay so you're not a porno porker about it, but... It's just so predictable, that's all.

DAN DAPP
Molly, I'm a real, regular guy; with real, regular responses -- and desires. That's all. And that's something.

MOLLY PISTOL
And the way that world works, on what we get paid, you don't make enough to rate with me, so forget it.

HARVEY KARRAY
Hoo-girl! All the armor of self-confidence, huh boy -- a man could as well dress naked below the belt the way a sharp woman's words can cut.

MOLLY PISTOL
Had to send something back, that's all. ... That one track, dumb track, all the time track -- it's so predictable. It gets to me that's all. Guys always this same..same -- totally stuck in being that way. Like the tax code..so stuck -- like only men, who are lawyers, could've created anything so stuck in being..like men who are lawyers -- intensely complicated, nearly incomprehensible, full of big, abstract good intentions and concrete, little special favors -- and so totally unreal when it comes to relating to the economic life people actually live. Sometimes I try to imagine how different they would be if the tax laws were the work of women -- who aren't lawyers.

DAN DAPP
Why not women lawyers? You're a lawyer.

MOLLY PISTOL
Cause when women become lawyers -- good lawyers -- their use of language, and all that power that goes with it, becomes intimidating, like that of men. Like me, right?

DAN DAPP
For example. When she happens to have to leave the room, remind me to tell you a joke: How can you tell the difference between a woman lawyer and a woman who's a lawyer?

MOLLY PISTOL
A distinction it takes a lawyer who's a man to make. I'm sorry I'll miss it, Dan. I'm sure it's real funny, in a real unpredictable way.

HARVEY KARRAY
Hey, whatever happened to principles of collegiality?

MOLLY PISTOL
Went out with the good ol' boy network, cause that's all they were -- that basic male bonding sublimated into something tonier -- principles of professional collegiality.

HARVEY KARRAY
C'mon, we are all lawyers here and share

DAN DAPP
Right, we're all lawyers...and this is America. So who else is there to be in charge? So, tell us, what's it going to be like, your tax code run on the ideas of women who work? Like they could even dream of recasting this thing

MOLLY PISTOL
To fit with earning and ownership like we live that now.

DAN DAPP
What I was going to say was according to any wild ideas they might have of equity and inteligibility.

MOLLY PISTOL
Of course. I apologize. What got into me to interrupt like putting my way ahead? Cause lawyerly, womanly common sense has always got to take the back seat, and lawyerly, manly high abstraction's always got dibs on the driver's seat. Just like it's its ideas that drive the tax code.

DAN DAPP
You're writing a law, and anybody with any different ideas 'bout the mindset you need to do that right can just dream on.

MOLLY PISTOL
Yeah, okay. So you're right. With all the -- just like you -- macho-man, lawyer-boy lobbyist-politicians that run the world of Washington, it's a no-hoper... ... At least until they get out of that technocrat-legalism mode...but buying in to that whole legalistic take on life, that's part of getting in to be a player for real...and no bonding, no status, no clout... So yeah, it's a no hoper.

HARVEY KARRAY
Hey, he's no macho-man, player from Washington way, he's a regular guy, tongue whipped everytime, right? Huh! And hey, she's right, every time I see CSPAN, Congress go in session, it's like they're having a dominant primate convention -- and you're not one (cause you're no dominunt; you're a bureaucunt).

DAN DAPP
Hah! Hah-ooh-ahh-ooh, hah-eee-yah! Hah-ooh-ahh-ooh, hah-eee-yah!

MOLLY PISTOL
So I'm impressed. Most chest thumping males are smart enough to sublimate. You're clearly different.

DAN DAPP
Listen, sister, I'm going to tell you something. See, I'm tired of being politically correct, tired of being sexlessly sensitive, tired of this accusatory guiltism -- I want to bust out, bust out the real real, unreconstructed, irresistable me. That every morning when I come to work's just dying to bust up over you. Yeah... Me, you, that L word... Believe it.

MOLLY PISTOL
Oh!

DAN DAPP
Molly..Molly..Molly, my love,
Love's all I think of. Every day, all day, love takes
away all thoughts but one -- the dream of taking you.
And yeah, I'm now the fool that that love makes
of men who'll dare to live a love that's true.
And through workdays' this 'n' that 'n' hassle 'n' jive
what started out as mere attraction's been transformed
into a deep'ning admiration that kicked alive
my ambition for desire and left reformed
the way I look at what I want to do in life.
And yeah, my guess is I'm more shocked than you
that to my surprise what I want's you, as my wife.
So Molly, now I got to know, can you love me too?
If not, I shut me down and forever leave it be;
If so, then for worse or better plan on taking me.

MOLLY PISTOL
You're kidding.

DAN DAPP
Orgh!

HARVEY KARRAY
Man, the things that go on in an office -- and you'd never know it.

MOLLY PISTOL
A pretty speach, counsel, real pretty -- a heavy breath of sweet, hot air -- enough to make more than a jury of hand-picked airheads sway like saplings in a steady wind, and lean all your way. But here there's doubt, reasonable doubt, you, the client you plead for's not a hypocrite.

DAN DAPP
Trust me.

MOLLY PISTOL
No. ... Not yet. ... Look, I don't trust myself. I'm a lawyer, right? And that's all accuse, accuse of whatever and nail on technicalities, and recasting reality logically even if untrue's completely good and fair. So trust is the currency of the losers who get duped.

DAN DAPP
Alright. Alright.

MOLLY PISTOL
Hey, no need to sulk. Go ahead and get the last word in -- since I have none. And then call out "sealed" like kids in schoolyards do, walking away. That way you can say you win by not staying in. Which reminds me to tell you a joke: On the sixth day, after he made His gift to women, what did God say?

HARVEY KARRAY
Got me.

DAN DAPP
I give up. I ought to give up. I can't think about anything else all day -- all night -- and every time I try get next to you, to express, it hits me: Man, what a mistake.

HARVEY KARRAY
That's what God said?

MOLLY PISTOL
No. That's what he said after he created man and woman. C'mon, at this rate we're never going to catch any crooks.

DAN DAPP
(And I ain't no bureaucrat with no balls. I got it. Just like them Washington boys. I could be there. Hold my own in that policy-maker cat fight. I'm pretty sure.)

HARVEY KARRAY
(Huh, those guys got the real version, the rejuvenating satisfactions of regularly triumphing over things and others; we get the virtual version -- when them same satisfying hormones release -- huh-uh that testone rush! -- when the home team wins the whatever, and we all go, right, ape shit -- vicariously dominant males. And you're -- we're -- nothing but rank-and-file functionary guys vicariously glomming on the institution's power, but them Washington boys, sometimes it's really them -- ape that makes all the other males in the troop avert their eyes, respect his space, and cede their women. Explains something about why they're that way, right? And you and me are not.)

DAN DAPP
(There you go again with that human primate experience stuff. Man, have some respect -- you're talking their worthies from the great nomenklatura of big Washington's power elite. They're beyond anthropology. That's why they all got so much personal credibility.)

MOLLY PISTOL
Have you read the file on this guy?

DAN DAPP
No. But I bet he made it all himself, and honest enough by the rules of the money game, so fair and square and legal -- all of it.

MOLLY PISTOL
Just he wants to pretend a lot of that income coming in ain't his -- but it is his. Hey, it's all his -- the income, what he made when he sold some, what the holdings are worth if he sold them. It's all what makes him rich. It's not all the companies and boxes and derivative pieces of all over the world that are his that're rich -- it's him -- 'cause he's the owner.

DAN DAPP
And you resent it.

MOLLY PISTOL
No...not if it's only money, not empowerment.

HARVEY KARRAY
What's the difference in a world where the only thing that counts is all what's economic?

MOLLY PISTOL
I'd fight for his right to be secure in all his property.

DAN DAPP
We work for the IRS! There's people out there out to bomb this building like we work for the Sheriff of Nottingham -- and you're some little miss Marian burbling about people's right to be secure in their property?

MOLLY PISTOL
Right. It's that important. And he's got every right to it and it's his -- so why's he got to go hiding it under a thousand legal fictions all 'round the world and even nowhere really, like why's he need to put on this big pretend like he's some kind of pathetic ashamed?

HARVEY KARRAY
He's not hiding it cause he's ashamed, he's hiding it cause he's afraid -- afraid we're going to take a big piece of it. Right Robin?

DAN DAPP
Roger, Little John. You know, I can hear you now, "Women of Sherwood..."

MOLLY PISTOL
Yeah, yeah. So I can convince them fairness is not practically doable. Cause yeah, that's the way life is, economic life or any other. And now it's so complex you'll never make the law complex enough to make it fair fairly. So forget about fairness, and just make it the same, equal for all -- cause that can be done.

DAN DAPP
Yeah? And that's what you're going to make your new tax code do?

MOLLY PISTOL
Yeah. ... Would if I could.

HARVEY KARRAY
Here we go again, that flat tax windfall gimmick for the economic big eaters disguised as three squares for the average Joe.

MOLLY PISTOL
Forget flat -- flat tax, flat head, flat earth. That's been around long enough that if most people didn't like, feel the set-up of it underneath the equal for all rhetoric, it would've been brought around long ago. Income's not all there is to it, specially now, and everybody knows it.

DAN DAPP
Okay, so how? The working woman's way of realistic tax equality.

MOLLY PISTOL
You're not ready for that. I'm sorry. But you're just not.

DAN DAPP
Try me.

MOLLY PISTOL
What for? You're a lawyer and a man -- a man lawyer? -- and mind and soul sold to that whole..whole... Yeah, that mindset, outlook, whatever -- you got it -- it'u'd make you fit in just fine with all them professional politician lawyer boys and lobbyists that do all the doing that counts for the laws that count. It's stronger than you -- than them.

HARVEY KARRAY
Go ahead, try him. Maybe he's secretly something else inside?

DAN DAPP
I'm not secretly anything.

MOLLY PISTOL
Really?

DAN DAPP
I'll try to understand. I really will. Anything. Just to get you to see me. The real real me.

MOLLY PISTOL
Okay. ... First thing, you don't start with making a legal text -- and not just because the fights over writing the law pretty soon obliterate everything else. Second thing, you start by thinking of all the people in the economic polity like biologists think about interactors in an biosystem, like marketing masters think about populations of consumers -- think realistically about all what makes people relatively richer and poorer compared to each other.

DAN DAPP
That's ridiculous. You're writing a law, a law a bureaucracy has to implement.

MOLLY PISTOL
Why am I trying?

DAN DAPP
Okay, okay. I'm trying real hard.

MOLLY PISTOL
And third thing, you choose equality over fairness.

DAN DAPP
Equality is unjust. Ask any lobbyist. Ask any spokesperson for one or another tax break group. And think about people's economic activity like marketeers and biologists, whoa! You're writing a law, a tax law. It's not about taxpayers that do self government and live political and economic life all together; it's about legal, principles of taxation that you got to have a controlling bureauocracy apply to individuals and corporations.

HARVEY KARRAY
And about principles of tax relief and tax exceptions. And yeah, you can forget about equality; nobody wants equality, not really -- except bureaucracies run by lawyers like us. We really want -- we're proud -- to treat everybody the same. And how do people like being treated just like everybody else? They can't stand it -- specially if they can afford good lawyers to prevent it. They want to be seen, understood and dealt with like they really are -- all different, leading their lives in their specific circumstances in the crazed variety of American life with no reference to any abstact principles of anything you can put in a law and grow a bureaucracy to apply equally to all. I can hear each and every one of them right now, all whining at the same time, "but in my specific instance, that's not fair". And you what, they're usually right.

MOLLY PISTOL
So what are we doing here?

HARVEY KARRAY
Waiting for retirement. But, no reason we can't do any work while we're waiting. ... All them fine upstanding corporate citizens out there, they're really going to love you if you're saying what I think you're saying?

MOLLY PISTOL
It's true. Only the people in them and that own them live, even economically. Anyway, a lot of that businesses' business'll soon be splintered all over netspace -- and try taxing that. It's got to be all more or less in the same place, a place that's your jurisdiction, or you can't.

DAN DAPP
Individuals can own and transact all over the place too.

MOLLY PISTOL
Yeah, but if it's yours, it's yours; if it's making you money, it's making you money; if you can sell it, you can sell it -- no matter where it is, or even if there is a jurisdiction.

HARVEY KARRAY
May be. But those corporate things still pay taxes just like people.

MOLLY PISTOL
Please, spare me the most egregious legal fictions. And when even little companies are going global companies, that makes less and less sense every day. If it's in the private sector, somebody owns it -- and just persons should pay -- and only once.

HARVEY KARRAY
Huh! There you go again disperging the fairness and practicality of the Internal Revenue Code and its implementing regulations. You want to be unemployed?

MOLLY PISTOL
No. You know what kind of retirement benefits you get after a lifetime of unemployment?

DAN DAPP
Man, have you read the file on this guy?

MOLLY PISTOL
See, he doesn't comply anywhere near

HARVEY KARRAY
Legal avoidance?

MOLLY PISTOL
Come on. And even if it was legal, it'u'd still be outrageous.

DAN DAPP
We got to get this guy.

HARVEY KARRAY
We're not here to get anybody. That's not how we operate. We're out to apply the law, equally to all, exactly like it's written.

DAN DAPP
Makes you wish them that passed it had thought about applying it.

HARVEY KARRAY
They don't have to think about it. The lobbyists all thought about it for them first, carefully.

DAN DAPP
And we get to apply it, exactly like it's written, the same for everybody.

HARVEY KARRAY
That's right.

DAN DAPP
So let's see this legal avoidance...

MOLLY PISTOL
For that, we got to get to him.

DAN DAPP
Where do these guys hang out? I mean where is he? I don't even think his lawyer knows. Like now, he could be virtually present anywhere -- live on a boat in the middle of the ocean and still run all his in, and dis investments.

MOLLY PISTOL
He's got a wife and apartment in New York. Here's the address and all. I've even talked to his wife a couple times -- once asked me give him the message to call her if I got him at the office.

DAN DAPP
And we all know what happens when we call the office.

HARVEY KARRAY
But maybe he's got a hideaway out in California.

MOLLY PISTOL
What do you mean?

HARVEY KARRAY
Did some research. If you can't find it anywhere, drag the internet, right? There's an address that could anyway match him exactly. How many can there be out there with the W Menaech combination in their moniker? And when you check out the registration, it's the same name and birth date. And Menaechmi? How many Menaechmis can there be out there?

DAN DAPP
California huh?

HARVEY KARRAY
From the locale of the server, classic California, right on the coast.

DAN DAPP
So send him the riot act. Maybe he'll reply? At least we'll know he got something from us.

HARVEY KARRAY
After you, doctor.

MOLLY PISTOL
And tell him he's got to be at his apartment and it's got to be him, the real real him, so we can talk to him.

DAN DAPP
Talk to him, yeah... Two weeks from today, say.

HARVEY KARRAY
Alright. And start with "Greetings!" If he's got a memory that'll start him anxiating.

MOLLY PISTOL
Yeah, but go easy on the legalistic slam stuff -- get some fear tingle his spine, but make it make sense.

DAN DAPP
No prob. Hey, it's me -- the master memo maker kneading the linguistic dough. ... Hmmm...give me something better here than "dilatory compliance".

MOLLY PISTOL
"Deadbeat ways"

HARVEY KARRAY
No, leave it, "seemingly dilatory, compliance record".

DAN DAPP
"Requires a review, including personal statement by you, of your adherence to the stipulations applicable to the calculation of your personal income tax liability pursuant to Title 22 Code of Federal Regulations" and I got the right cites right here...

MOLLY PISTOL
Go for it. That complicated's how they passed it, that must be how we want it. Still... So we should all be rich tax lawyers.

DAN DAPP
There. How's that?

HARVEY KARRAY
Too unambiguous. They'd twist it challenging you and it leaves you no alternate, fallback meaning. But...

MOLLY PISTOL
Boom! Send it. Laserlight down the glass wire. Even if he just acknowledges, we'll know he got it.

HARVEY KARRAY
Yeah. Send it.

DAN DAPP
Gone.

MOLLY PISTOL
Come on, boys, the espressos're on me. ... Dan...

DAN DAPP
Yeah?

NEXT:  Pad of Bill Menaechmi (CA Bill). Bill's dog, Roofie, is off. CAB comes on with his surfboard.

CA BILL
HAARGH! Ride, ride, ride! Ride, ride, ride! Ho sea, sea wave rider. See what you've done to me. You made me love you, and now I can't get free. Hey, Roof, I'm back. And I rode like a young man, like a young man again. Cause I love the life I live. And I live the life I love. Got that wild surf in my blood. Cause I'm a wave-rider, baby. Hear me now, Roofie, hear me now.

ROOFIE from off
Woof!

CA BILL
Huh-oh! Shout like a primate,
Cause my life's a rave.
I'm come from a hot date
with a mighty mighty, cool cool wave!
Feel the heart that stirs 'neath them ocean ribs,
like Earth herself she sigh and breathe;
then shoot me down cause I got dibs
on the song that sings in that curler's seethe.
Sea of mine,
see me so small,
on that breaking line
that takes it all.
Ho-dad, feel life herself like come in heat;
when I got that monster boomer beneath my feet!
Ho, Roofie, and someday soon these old bones'll fade out under and that'll be the last time for this middle-aged surfer and maybe I won't even know it and now will all be years ago like years ago is now. Huh, Roof? And you're an old dog too.

ROOFIE from off
Woof!

CA BILL
Let's get a shot of that old joe going here now -- nothing like that java for chasing age and melancholy away. It's the children's hands that pick it give it that rejuvenating power... You want to hear a joke, Roof? You know, could be like the material writers and advisors write for the talk show hosts and politicians on TV, like for an opening monologue or presidential debate.

ROOFIE from off
Woof!

CAB
Well I'm going to tell you anyway. On the West Coast today, say you're in a dwelling of real modest means and you don't know who lives there -- how can you tell if it's the home of somebody who's the independent, working poor or somebody who's the dependent, public assistance poor? ... The espresso maker and the computer.

ROOFIE from off
Woof!

CAB
Wouldn't hit, huh? Audience just flat-wall at you?

ROOFIE from off
Woof!

CAB
Okay, so that was a trial joke and you're my focus group. ... You know how political advisors pick focus groups? Like lawyers pick juries. No wonder them politicians think we think they're not guilty.

ROOFIE from off
Woooof...

CAB
Mmmh..it's a thrill to that sense when first struck by something smell so good. Dig it! ... Kind of the opposite of smelling you, huh Roofie? But I love you anyway. Which brings up digging the thousand stresses of making means to meet the ends to keep you in that dog food fit for humans and keep me in this nectar fit for gods. Whoa, Roof, like I like it -- crude oil thick and jet fuel potent. Huh! ... But every pleasure's haunted by the nagging spur of what work to do to stand and parry all the bills that life keeps making due -- the food, the rent, the car, the health -- til you can near die from exhaustion on your threshold keeping that wolf at bay -- too tired to still head for the beach. The stress of near poverty poisons even hard earned pleasures. ... So why not go for release from being responsible, take to that sugarweed and whiskey bottle, and have that wolf just come on in, make himself at home and run your mind and your life.

ROOFIE from off
Roof!

CAB
Yeah, you would vote against it. No more three squares a day of them supermarket yummies right on the beep of the habitual hour? ... Right, Roof. And if I had it in me I'd give you another joke..about the difference 'tween all them years with the wolf still just outside and all them years with the wolf inside, living right at home. There but for fortune, and habits of the will... Til the humiliation and debilities of old and tired take down the capability -- still care or don't care -- and both the stand on their own and fallen down become just the same -- old and poor. But so far, so good, right?

ROOFIE from off
Roof!

CAB
Good too, huh? ... Til one of these days on one of those waves I'll miss, misread despite cunning and experience, and the devil in them tons of water'll crumple me up and break my ass. And if I'm lucky the reason I don't come back to feed you's just I'm just in the hospital. ... Yeah. ... The ones that people actually have are never the accidents they expected -- no matter what their friends saw coming, after the fact.

ROOFIE from off
Roooof...

CAB
Come on, don't worry about it. Ol' Ms. Lehrer'll come over and take care of you anyway. ... Just like I go by, watching out for her. ... And somehow we got to this deal without a word...like it was old-time neighborliness by unspoken osmosis that blooms between lone humans this new urban habitat's got so many of. ... And this turbo economy's got so many that life's got no more bloom for. ... Maybe me, soon enough... My age, and permanently temping, man... And good thing that for honesty, good work habits, high literacy skills and low pay there's always a ton of work out there. Huh, Roof? Wouldn't let you down would I? So let's crank her up, check out the agencies, maybe there's e-mail, see what they're offering me. ... Roof, I'm going to tell you a story, okay?

ROOFIE from off
Roof!

CAB
Well, I'm going to tell you anyway. Once upon a time there was a man who lived in the U.S.A. with an old dog. And he lived believing in self-government and the free enterprise way of life. And what did it get him? High expectations and hard dissapointments. But the hope to it had such a hold on him, that despite the sense experience should've drove into him, he just couldn't let go the possible of it. And he figured out the good it gave him he got from how he held fast to the dream, despite the hurt and dismay of the facts of life and power around him here. How 'bout that, huh Roof?

ROOFIE from off
Roof!

CAB at computer
Wouldn't vote for that either, huh? Too much realism. Tell me about it, Roof. ... And when're we going to build ourselves a new machine? This thing's like flying a DC-3 today. Got indelible grime like oil leaks on the keyboard cowling, and blunt and slow like a lumbering gnat in CPU speed and power. ... Huh.."IRS dot gov"? Man, this network's misdelivering like the Postal Service. They sure couldn't want me. ... "Greetings." Whoa -- when they're too old to draft, draft their money instead, if they got any. ... Man... Whoa... ... What'd I do?

ROOFIE from off
Roof!

CAB
You're telling me? And they say I got to be there too..that address in New York, right then, or else. They got my name, date of birth..hu-uh, somebody rich stole my identity?..right..they got my social security number..it's got to be me. What are we going to do, Roof? Can it, like not my universe of response, or dutifully comply, like consenting to their power to call me in?

ROOFIE from off
Roof!

CAB
You're on. You asked for it then. Come on, eat that stuff; we're going for a walk and to see ol' Ms. Lehrer cause she's going to be taking care of you a time cause, like it was the time of my youth come back from, well, the past anyway, I'm driving cross country and make this gig with these government guys. Let's go, Roof.

ROOFIE from off
Roof!

CAB
Ho! Whoa! Head me cross the wide country.
Ho! Whoa! Take me home to the highway.
Roof, I'm going to crank up that wreckster -- that's right, that li'l gas-sipping noodlemobile back from the days it was cheaper to make Japanese cars in Japan -- and drive them three thousand miles all the way.. Sixty-Six backwards, man, just to see once more what's inbetween. And like the girl I left behind -- if I had one left to leave behind -- you're going to wait for me, right Roof? Wait for me Roof like you always do when I hit that hard travelling -- that in the end's where all my money goes. Listen to me now, listen to me Roof!
Yes if you ever plan to head back East,
take that highway, take that my way
that's the road that's travelled least --
ribbon of dreams that wraps a continent away.
Yes I'm, leaving that LA tangleland behind,
got grey dawn on one side, dark ocean the other,
oh my engine's purring, I am still dreaming,
past the last of the nightlife, fast fading, still eying --
down Santa Monica's boulevard ride.
Mountains and desert, still a long way away,
now it's all one endless suburb that grows more every day.
Yo San Bernadino! And on down to the flat wide
of Barstow to Ludlow -- so big and so still, so hot and so dry.
Hey adios, California (el diablo can have you),
and hi ho, yippee yay, here I am, Arizona!
Kingman to Winslow like I'm some rocket on wheels --
can't stand to stop that's how good this highway feels!
So I'm oh so small 'neath that big sky so high
But I'll hold this whole world inside till the moment I'll die.
Gas and some chow now in ol' New Mexico
and back hard on the road -- Gallup to Tucumcari.
Soon as I get there I'm raring to go -- so, oh Amarillo!
but I got miles still of Texas, so why, what me worry?
Ho, whoa, whoa, whoa, oh here's Oklahoma --
and if I don't get some sleep it'll all soon be over;
it's a restless motel with that cheap sex aroma
but Romance of the road's for dream-sweet rolling in clover.
Morning, big breakfast, some oil for the car
and I'm in Missouri 'fore the day's gone too far.
But gave a quick kiss to Kansas, that's all she'd allow.
Come on, listen to me Roof cause I'm cooking now!

ROOFIE from off
Roof! Roof! Roof!

CAB
Wheat fields to cornfields and then here starts that sprawl
I'm close to St.Louie -- could be any place urban at all.
And I'm beginning to feel that I'm tiring of this trip
til there grand and so pretty's mighty Mississip.
Roll on big muddy 'neath them six lanes below
I'd love to slow flow you down but I got too long to go.
Now land of Lincoln, inspire some hope in me
that free and brave can take power and money --
not enough vigilant for, for of and by
it'll turn out another sweet empty lie.
And I'm on to Chicago and the end of that road
just I still got half the country to get past and go.
But if you ever plan to head back East,
take that highway, take that my way
that's the road that's travelled least --
ribbon of dreams that wraps a continent away.
Now, come on Roof, let's go.

ROOFIE from off
Roof! Roof! Roof!

NEXT:  The apartment of NY Bill.  Alice, his wife, and Amanda, her identical twin sister are on.

ALICE
So?

AMANDA
So nothing. Next season's collection's bought. The campaign for this one's kicking in -- maybe it'll give it that spark that'll send our stuff to be the be-all of envy with the balloon income end of the consumer class and its aspirants. And if it hits, watch their money flow...that elusive click together -- connect that certification psychology right with the aura your marque projects and...profit margins are no problem. It's delicate, though, what makes or breaks it between boom time or blah in this kind of mechandising.

ALICE
Amanda, you're not in like merchandising; you're in real high fashion.

AMANDA
Right.

ALICE
And we're not just all proud of your success, we're also always hoping some of the glamor'll rub off.

AMANDA
Right.

ALICE
And so what else?

AMANDA
I just got back from Milan.

ALICE
It shows.

AMANDA
It better. ... Maybe I'll never get used to what it costs. You remember all that attention -- her scrimper's act and show of love -- mom used to do to keep us in sensible clothes at sensible prices?

ALICE
Yes. I remember. ... It is great of you Amanda, come see me. And you are looking terrific.

AMANDA
Yeah. ... Used to be such a thrill; now it's like wearing an occupational uniform.

ALICE
I didn't just mean that. But that is I guess what makes you so effortlessly glamorous.

AMANDA
There may be natural glamor but there's no such thing as effortless glamor. Anyhow, thanks. And what of it? I'm running ragged at the office doing I don't what thousand things sometimes. All the usual cycle of the fashion year -- always so screechingly new and now, right? ... I thought I'd come see you, that's all.

ALICE
I'm glad you did, I'm...

AMANDA
Yeah?

ALICE
I'm okay. Really. It's all the usual here. Give me a hand with this will you?

AMANDA
Alright. ... Alice, why don't you get a maid?

ALICE
Cause I don't speak any foreign languages and I don't like to be with people I can't talk to.

AMANDA
You could get a maid with a college degree in English -- with all the money your husband's got, you could get a whole multi-lingual team of maids with PhDs, for crying out loud. And you're still pushing around the vacuum cleaner and making the bed?

ALICE
And what did our mother do all her life?

AMANDA
She had kids. Anyway...anyway I always thought she liked it..the proud and able homemaker. I'm sure she liked going to the market. She'd meet people there, you know -- it was almost a whole neighborhood. It was like..it was domestic networking we'd call it now. I don't know. She'd know people, some of the merchants, the other women shopping -- we knew them as families. It was like the 'burbs with a lot of haunting, vestigial habits from the old neighborhood still...still.

ALICE
She was a real wife, is that it? And she had a real husband who had a real job -- not like a life-consuming, enrichment situation, you know what I mean?

AMANDA
What do you want to me to say? That it's not easy getting rich? Maybe it wasn't easy doing well, but just seems that way to us because we felt so secure.

ALICE
We were so secure. And how much was the lifetime marriage and how much was the lifetime job?

AMANDA
It had its price -- it had to -- that whole context of the jobs dads used to take the train to everyday in grey flannel suits.

ALICE
And?

AMANDA
And I remember those trains. Remember how vacation days she used to make us go into the city too -- and there were like nearly no women on the train -- and she would take us to see the windows and see a show. "See a show" -- and I call it that way on purpose now, like in perverse sophistication.

ALICE
And her price she paid? She was a wife and mother. Good at it, respected for it, with a place in the community.

AMANDA
That it didn't occur to her there was any thing else to want to be -- so she didn't have a choice. Didn't even know, at the time, that was the cost.

ALICE
And it's better that way. That them that pay, don't know they're paying.

AMANDA
As their unease that something's wrong that they haven't learned how to articulate undermines their happiness?

ALICE
Not better for them, better for the rest of us.

AMANDA
Alice, looking at you I'm reluctant to ask, but, how're things with your husband?

ALICE
How would I know, I never see him.

AMANDA
So maybe he's not worth seeing anymore?

ALICE
Amanda!

AMANDA
I'm sorry. Alice, I can see it -- it's not even him anymore -- it's what it's doing to you that makes me angry.

ALICE
I'll be alright. I can't be the only wife out there that suffers from unrequited dutifulness? It must be this way for so many -- and so many of them are maids, so who am I to complain?

AMANDA
So make sure you don't feel sorry for yourself -- make you that much better a victim.

ALICE
Amanda.

AMANDA
Oh I admire you for it. I do. The fortitude, the commitment to some time-immemorial way of the good wife in good standing.

ALICE
Even when there's not much community to bother being in good standing in.

AMANDA
Did I say that?

ALICE
Yeah. ... So why hang on, right?

AMANDA
Am I asking the question?

ALICE
You never liked him did you?

AMANDA
No, I never did, and I was always right.

ALICE
And you've been right all along, but time has a way of making small wrongs right. I haven't starting hating him so I guess I haven't stopped loving him -- or at least not abandoned what I had hoped for our love. It did seem so right at the time, didn't it? At the time, but we were...

AMANDA
I remember that wedding. It was the first of what was going to be so many others. Dad was alive. And yeah, we were so young. I guess it was your way of getting out of this whole twin sister thing. I wasn't against it because I resented you for that; it's that underneath the..the ingratiation then, I saw the mega-ego beneath -- and nothing, nothing to admire in him.

ALICE
There's more to pity than to admire, I guess, in what makes up what drives him. And love may need admiration to last, but marriage doesn't. And anyway I wasn't trying to get out of that twin sister thing. It's what it's been hardest for me to live without. All those..all these years.

AMANDA
I know. At least when I let myself have time to think about it. ... And it was so right. I got carried away by it too -- the excitement of a wedding. I remember how you threw the bouquet right at me -- bee-line like a relief pitcher's fastball.

ALICE
And that -- yuhgh, even in grade school she made me cringe she was so self..self everything -- and she pushed her fat mitt in front of your face and took it.

AMANDA
And she was next to get married.

ALICE
Yeah, and next twice more after the first time.

AMANDA
Four. Four in all now. I just heard she married again after number three finally settled.

ALICE
The poor guys.

AMANDA
Poor guys, nothing. Bastards she goes for -- I hope she takes all their money. At least after her gold-digging lawyers get through with them. But hey, those guys knew, or should've. At our age the're no more excuses for not knowing what you're getting into.

ALICE
But young there was? It seemed so right back then
I felt I walked in footprints marked out long before
down the aisle and blur of faces I can see again --
like being a bride, the weight of pattern past, a door
that going through to marriage'u'd take me in
to a state that question-free'u'd offer me full rest.
And so much for plans cause how it's turned out's only been
the anguish of for nothing having given it my best.
Are you right? Now you'd have me like move on and forget
like this life I've dealt me's just some hand not played?
You know, I'm banked in for years now of living to regret
the consequence of mistakes I wish I hadn't made.
So it's not in me to see my whole life's lived lied.
Mistakes admitted can be worse than kept denied.

AMANDA
And that's your price you pay?

ALICE
But I know it.

AMANDA
So what good does it do the rest of us? Who love you?

ALICE
Maybe I should leave him?

AMANDA
Don't. Unless it's only for you.

ALICE
Make up your mind why don't you?

AMANDA
You know what I'm saying.

ALICE
Oh God. Maybe I should -- a little. Like just to remind him.

AMANDA
For example.

ALICE
Ridiculous. Like I'm taking the example of some old wives saying in my life today. How's it go? How searing thirst's surprise when your well you never noticed suddenly runs dry?...when see the way you never questioned's long been answering you in blanks. ... Amanda. ... How did everybody think it was such a great idea? I got married. So long ago. So carried away. But there was a funny freedom to it, filling a role everyone wanted for me. And I peacefully sleepwalked through it. Everybody was saying he was such a nice boy, from such a nice family. And that he was sure to be going places.

AMANDA
And he did.

ALICE
And he's been so intense in going he never took the time out to grow up.

AMANDA
Hey, men don't bother growing up until growing old forces them to.

ALICE
And by then it's too late? They remind me of race cars, you know. Like you see on TV. Zoooorgh, zoooorgh, zoooom -- going 'round and 'round that business track fast as they humanly can. Just going faster and faster -- zoooooooo -- and faster and faster

AMANDA
And making more and more money.

ALICE
Til pftt! They suddenly got to go home to the pits a minute, and they make a stop: tires go off, zip the new ones go on, windshield gets wiped, gas up and they get their fluids vented -- even then their minds are still always at the office -- and ghrhm, ghrrrghm, ghrrrrrghm, zheeeeooom! back to that business track and 'round and 'round and 'round.

AMANDA
While in the grandstand, the girls, patiently waiting, wave in admiration on the verge of exhaustion from sheer bordom.

ALICE
Wave good-bye that way?

AMANDA
Just to see?

ALICE
Yeah. I think so.

AMANDA
I know it was my idea but

ALICE
It's alright Amanda. Catalysts aren't the cause of reactions. What about you? I mean, talking about me all the time... Since...you aren't involved with anybody new or anything? An elegant, romantic Italian maybe?

AMANDA
Hah! Right. And since...? You now how long ago that's now? Let's just say I'm trying hard these days -- these years -- to teach myself not to hope for someone anymore.

ALICE
Amanda, someone like you. And look at you... And when you get to know you... It's not right that's all.

AMANDA
Come on. That's how it is.

ALICE
That's my hardboiled babe. So make sure you don't feel sorry for yourself why don't you?

AMANDA
It goes with the cigarette.

ALICE
You've been spending too much time in Europe.

AMANDA
And you've been spending too much time in here.

ALICE
Yeah. ... So what do I do?

AMANDA
You go. And I'll stay here in case it doesn't work.

ALICE
What?

AMANDA
Look, if he takes you up on it...you've got to protect yourself in case it goes to worst case. Say he doesn't learn and he sends his divorce lawyers after you? They'll slam you for abandonment -- take the roof over your head, take every dime, and that'll be that.

ALICE
What? Even if he did... I mean, after all these years...

AMANDA
Forget it. The law's a technical specialty now -- just another service in a market, so they're in competition so they can't help it but technicalize you to death if they can. And there's nothing common sense and justice can do about it. Those guys are serious..winners -- everything else comes second. Who's going to hire them if they're not like going for the gold and out to max it past any limit?

ALICE
That's not what I was planning, I'm just

AMANDA
I know. But what if? So if it comes to that, I'll be here occupying in your place and then they can't just take it cause you left it.

ALICE
Come on. Why'd he want to? He's got enough money to buy who knows how many apartments like this.

AMANDA
So what? If he's going to go in for that kind of divorce, what's money got to do with it? Winning means humiliating.

ALICE
So you're going to stay here like my proxy or something?

AMANDA
He'd tell the difference

ALICE
I hope so!

AMANDA
But nobody else will. You think any doorman's going to think I'm not you?: "Oh thanks -- just a routine makeover, that's all". And if it gets mean and legal -- well, you'll have to come back, eventually anyway.

ALICE
So he's going to come home and what?

AMANDA
And I'm going to tell him you're gone. And it's his place too and he's welcome to stay -- but it's also still yours -- and he'd better do some thinking 'bout what it means you're gone.

ALICE
And what if he doesn't come home anytime soon? You've got things to do.

AMANDA
Euh... I uh... I'm bored of worrying about them. Hey, it's time to give my assistant her break to fill in -- and make me look old and tired. I've been looking to take some time okay?

ALICE
To do what?

AMANDA
Figure out how much money I have, see if I can afford to trash this rat race. We'll talk on the phone. If you're going to go, go.

ALICE
I'll get some things together. I'll be right back. Oh my God... I'll have done it.

Alice goes off.

AMANDA
Yeah. ... Yeah. ... Alice, there're any ashtrays in this house? ... Alice... Never mind -- your plants look so healthy they could use a hit of something soon to be a controlled substance, mh?

NEXT:  Civil Aviation terminal, Crewfer and FD are on disgised as limo drivers. Limo is also represented. Limo will be represented on road as scene shifts to safehouse.

FD
I know that was her, man! Did you see? Hey, you missed a celebrity score, fool.

CREWFER
Get back. You can't get exited to be here. Like the Gangman said, "Act like you belong." And you're bug eyes on a toon face just like you never been here. Okay, this is corporate country of the stars, man; but we are very cool, very cool, just like we do this everyday.

FD
Oh for sure; everyday, all day.

CREWFER
Stop waving that sign. Just hold it. He'll see it. You know, you got to act like you're..like you're..sophisticate.

FD
Yeah. Yeah. That's me. For me, home is that sophistocate world, my one is that sophistocate girl, my life is that sophistocate whirl; so if you can't find me, 's cause I left home behind me; take that sophistitake, take...

CREWFER
Chill out.

FD
What's his name?

CREWFER
Muh..Muhkaymi, I don't know. You got it wrote down right there.

FD
Yeah. But I don't remember what the Gangman said it said. ... So why don't you read it?

CREWFER
Cause I don't want to read it. ... What do you got to know how to read for anyway? I know what all them signs say cause they all got their letters in their brand way, you know. So I always know where I'm at, where I'm eating, where I'm buying, so...

FD
So... We're cool.

NYB comes on.

NYB
Hey, you're looking for me.

CREWFER
Huhoh! Yeah. Mr. Muhkaymi...yessir!

FD
Oh yeah, Muhkaymi, hey!

NYB
Menaechmi.

CREWFER
Sir! Yessir! Mister! Sir!

FD
Huh? Yessir. Mister Muhkaymi, sir.

NYB
Menaechmi.

CREWFER
Yeah. Mr. Menkaymi, he's going to help you with that bag. (Swag that bag, fool.) Right this way. Hey, his first day on the job; you know, we're still working on rubbing down the rough spots.

NYB
Oh of course; I understand -- got to strike the bugs while the iron out is hot? And I can promise you this is the last time you're going to do it on the job and working for me. Why aren't you guys the usual outfit?

CREWFER
'Cause...we're the alternate outfit. See, it's like they had to go for a replacement. You know, cause all the conventions and all this week.

NYB
Conventions? People still have time for conventions?

CREWFER
Oh yeah. People got all kinds of conventions all the time, most of all right now. Right this way Mr. Muh..Muh..sir! Did you have a nice flight, sir?

Crewfer and FD have led NYB to limo and all get in.

NYB
Yeah. Yeah, it was okay. Got a paper?

CREWFER
Paper? No..uh. No, we didn't get no papers -- but that's right 'cause we've moved to a paperless organization so we just got orders, like via electronic hand held, you know...

FD
Yeah, like they just come up on the hand-held, but the hand-held's got no fax so there's no way you can print out hard copy. So..so what do we need no papers for anyway, right?

NYB
Never mind. Let's go. Straight to the office.

CREWFER:{Yessir!}

FD:{Yessir!}

In limo on road. NYB takes out his phone to make a call.

FD
(Who's he calling?)

CREWFER
(Oh, man...) Uh..you can't use that phone.

NYB
Heh-heh, right.

CREWFER
I'm saying, you can't use that phone.

NYB
What do you mean, I can't use that phone? It's my phone! No...

CREWFER
Yeah, uh... It's regulations; they got new regulations now -- so's they can have airwave control.

NYB
Well, I'm going to use it anyway, regulations or no regulations.

CREWFER
No, you're not. You're going to throw it out the window right now!. Here.

NYB
Wait a minute... Where we going anyway? Oh, shit...

CREWFER
Don't get upset. We're not going to hurt you.

NYB
Don't get upset. What do you guys want anyway? And where we going?

CREWFER
We're going where we're going. Now toss that phone.

NYB
Now we're not! And you're stopping right here and letting me out! It's not realistic! You can't get away with this! Do you know who I am!?

CREWFER showing gun
You want to talk about realistic?

NYB
You said you weren't going to hurt me.

CREWFER
We're not. So long's you cooperate. See this? It's a long hat. Put it on past your neck.

FD
Yeah. Hey, okay, it's not your day. But, you know, be like us -- sophisticate about it.

NYB
Oh my God...

CREWFER
He can't help you. People try him all the time, but... I ain't seen it change what happens to them.

NYB
What's going to happen to me?

CREWFER
Nothing. I told you. So long's you cooperate and do everything the Gangman says.

NYB
The Gangman?

CREWFER
Yeah. Just do exactly like he tells you, and you'll be alright. And he told me to tell you exactly that. See, like you're our customer, and we want you to have confidence. That's right, right?

FD
Yeah, that's it. That's the number one habit of the seven high an effective business organization has got to have to be good to go -- trust and confidence. Yeah. And we got all six coming up behind number one. So believe it. You'll see. And here we are now.

CREWFER
And when he stops, you and me get out, walk up, walk in. Take that hat off! And what you see maybe looks like a nice neighborhood, but you try running, and we will get realistic.

FD
Okay.

CREWFER
Go.

NYB and Crewfer get out of limo and go off or go into safehouse.

*******

NEXT: Safehouse; Gangman is on; NYB and Crewfer come on.

CREWFER
Gangman! Gangman!

GANGMAN
Misterman, deuce!

CREWFER
Put your eyes on that wall and keep them there! Freeze! Raise up your hands and hold them up upside the wall! Got the customer, Gangman.

GANGMAN
And now we're going to close the sale. Pad him out and sit him down.

NYB
Can I say something?

GANGMAN
In a minute.

CREWFER
No heat, no nothing but all this on him.

GANGMAN
Sit down at that desk. Right there. Take a deep breath. Uhmmm... Rela -- no, check that; make that tense up, like you're on creative tension. Hey, like you're back in school, like you're going to take an exam -- and you're going to get an A, just like you always did, right? And you are going to graduate -- and walk away. You're not going to get hurt 'less you want to get hurt. That's what you wanted to say about, right?

NYB
I want to get out of here.

GANGMAN
We understand. Now you understand, you got to answer all the questions right first. Okay, first question.

CREWFER
Keep looking at that wall!

GANGMAN
Okay, first question: take out your checkbook; take out your checkbook and write a check.

NYB
Right. How much? That's what this is all about?

GANGMAN
Man, you're going to make the honor roll. I like that -- smart. You know, maybe there's our motto: smart business, smarter customers.

NYB
How much?

GANGMAN
I don't know. Like you're buying something, something big -- but not for you. You know, like an extra car for the maid to use.

NYB
We don't have a maid.

GANGMAN
Pretend.

NYB
How much does a car cost?

GANGMAN
Yeah, that's good. Start with that and keep going with exact numbers after, none of these all zeroes stuff. Make it like you bought a real thing; a real, expensive thing.

NYB
Who do I make it out to?

GANGMAN
Don't worry about it; we got a stamp.

NYB
Right.

GANGMAN
Next question:

CREWFER
What did I just say to you?

NYB
What?

GANGMAN
Next question: take out your plastics. One at at time. Take that pad, write your magic number down, your twenty-four hour limit, the location of the cash machines you mostly use, then pass them back -- one card, one sheet of paper at time.

CREWFER
I'm not going to tell you again. You maybe seen me, but you haven't seen him.

NYB
Sorry.

FD comes on

GANGMAN
He said he's sorry. And the customer is always right.

FD
Gangman! Gangman!

GANGMAN
Misterman, trey!

FD
Looks like we got another satisfied customer. How 'bout that?

NYB
Satisfied if I get out of here in one piece.

GANGMAN
There it is. You will.

FD
You're safe in our hands.

CREWFER
Just keep them cards and letters coming.

FD
How many times I have to tell you? Trust. Confidence. That's the first habit. And you got to give it so your customers have it. And we do, cause we got it. And all the others too. What do you think? That we're like street fever? No. We've been listening to those tapes. Everyday. We undertand what makes for success. We know what it takes now -- to build a business, have strategy, realize entrepreneurship. That's what the Gangman's done. Right? He calls it...that's his genius. He's made the application from business success to...business success, like in South America, you know what I mean?

NYB
I'm the victim of a crime for God's sake.

CREWFER
I told you. He could care less.

NYB
Let Him decide what he cares about.

CREWFER
Hey, if you don't find another card in there, we're going to make you write another check.

GANGMAN
If you're going to be a victim of crime, now who's victim do you want to be? Somebody that's got their violence clip going inside? Got to put on that uncontrolled showtime, feed some jones inside? Or like us? That we got principles, interests, you can trust? So that way you know you're not going to get hurt. So that's how lucky you are that you're dealing with us. See, we believe in win-win.

NYB
You're kidnapping me.

GANGMAN
Man, that's a federal crime. Please. Slow mo hold-up, that's all. We don't need that big time kind of attention, right? Give us some credit, okay? That's our interest, so you can count on it.

NYB
Right. Rational. Just the way people always act.

GANGMAN
Like the Treyman says, right? The name of the game is trust. Think about it. Like why'd we want to cut you up? Oh, blood all over the place, then got to pack out the body. Oh! Footprints. DNA. Please.

CREWFER
Move your eyeballs back! You don't even look at his shoes, understand?

GANGMAN
Dust a stranger, and then they'll look for real. Like the Mafia men say, kill only your own, and the police'll leave you alone. But when you file your complaint -- "I'm this limoworld man, and I been swagged down, right on the leather, right inside in my own limo" -- well, they won't laugh -- till you're gone. You know -- I mean, hey, I'm not a lawyer that's for sure -- but, there's crime..and there's crime -- and they only come looking hard, like look to put you in the timehouse, when it's that whoa, no mind, streetcrime kind. Hey, I chose this life, you know what I mean? And I want to live it like businesslike, see? Like I'm like a crime executive, you know what I mean?

NYB
Of course -- a mere choice of corporate governance... So what if you get caught?

FD
And how're we going to get caught? And convicted? No. See, cause we got the second habit. The second habit you got to have is authority and accountability. And we got it -- he's the Gangman and we're the Mistermen -- and that makes this organization tight all the way 'round. Cause just if somebody walks, don't mean somebody talks. That's right. And like the Gangman says, we got the third habit you got to have for businesslike high success

GANGMAN
Later. That's right...but, later.

FD
Yea, Gangman.

CREWFER
That's it? You're sure? Sure sure?

GANGMAN
You're doing alright, huh? Some limit, hey.

NYB
Yeah, that's it. That's it. What're you going to do now, steal my watch?

CREWFER
You know how much you get for a hot watch? And some big face, tick tock boy toy like that, who needs it?

FD
That's it?

GANGMAN
That's it.

NYB
That's it?

FD hands can to Gangman.

GANGMAN
Yeah. Take a break. You got to be thirsty, after you just got an A. You know, if these are not the right numbers, the Deuceman here -- Misterman Deuce here's going to have to come see you.

CREWFER
Not like I'm keeping this wallet for the yards inside, not like I'm keeping it cause I can't stand to forget you -- it's like in case I need an address reminder.

NYB
The numbers are right. Now what happens?

GANGMAN
Now we go back to work.

NYB
I mean to me.

FD
You'll see.

NYB
Right. Work.

GANGMAN
Hey, I told you. I chose this life. You think it's easy getting all this up? You don't think I got an investment to protect? I'm paying the rent on this place. I got payments on that limo -- got to keep current. I got expenses -- training my staff, you know what that means? Huh, you think it's easy hanging on that scanner, catching on the cell phones of them limo outfits? Then I got to figure out enough so I can call in to cancel so like they'll believe it. And then they got to be in the right place with the right sign and act so the customer'll believe it. And then maybe we got like three or four days before you wake up and they got to like hit the cash machines like not like raising suspicions -- you know how hard that is? You know how hard that is getting competent staff today? It's hard, man, that's what it is, real hard work. Huh!

FD
That's it. Hard work.

GANGMAN
I mean, I'm not complaining. Fact is, I'm blessed...have the opportunity... I'm proud to be a part of building this organization.

FD
Oooh, yeah. Beautiful! Yeah. Yeah. That's the one they're going to think of next. That's the Gangman for you, gets there first. Hard work. Alright! You watch, they'll be putting it on them tapes any time now, and they'll make it a major centerpiece with tie-ins -- hard work, the major habit for success. Yeah. Like hard work's the top franchise and all the others is subsidies. I bet that's how you did it, huh?

NYB
Huh?

GANGMAN
Yeah, how'd you get so rich?

FD
I know. You just took them habits, took them inside, and just wouldn't let them die?

NYB
Worked hard and played by the rules. That's what you want to hear?

GANGMAN
Lighten up. Customers are partners, right? Where's your trust and confidence? How'd you do it, get up there, make it all your own?

NYB
You want to know the truth? Insight and timing. I was just deploying knowledge -- inside knowedge partly -- it's knowledge makes the world work now. Work was completely secondary. Really, if I work twice as hard twice as long, I don't make twice as much money, and if I work half as hard half days, now I'd still make, I don't know, eighty, ninety percent as much. That's cause it's not work. Work is when you wish you were doing something else. Ohoh... Work is like now..where I wish..ohoh... See, when I'm working I never even think of doing anything else -- I never wish I was doing something else.

FD
Yeah. See. There it is. That's committment and concentration. That's the..that one's number..man, I forgot. Man, we got to come up with some kind hypnotic device make memory keep all these habits in line. You know, like you got the major habit for success and then you got the

CREWFER
Yeah, like hard work's Snow White and then you got the dwarfs. Hi ho, ho ho, it's off to work we go, hi ho, hi ho...

NYB
Ohohoh...

FD
Yeah. Yeah.

GANGMAN
Misterman Deuce..Misterman Deuce..if there's an attitude problem in an effective organization, we got to deal with it..we got to deal with it...

CREWFER
Gangman! No, I'm one hundred and ten percent on -- seven habits, and hard work -- yeah, totally with the program; I didn't mean..dis any of this..no...

GANGMAN
No, you didn't. I must've misunderstood. You'll have to excuse me. I mean, there are things that can be excused, right? And there are things that cannot be excused. Man, I must need one of them memory minders myself, keep my memory warmed up -- I can't remember one thing that can't be excused in an organization, can't even remember the worst thing that can't be excused...

FD
I know. That's going on your own/personal profit-taking, right?

CREWFER
Oh! Gangman! No, I wasn't taking that wallet; I just put in my pocket for safekeeping. I wasn't going to keep the money. No..uh uh. It belongs to the organization we are, not to us. You know I know that. I just had it, cause we're busy, you know, in trusteeship.

GANGMAN
Uh-huh.

NYB
Ohohohoh... Hey..hey..I don't feel so good. Nooo...

FD
Don't worry about it. That's the knock out fluid

.

NYB looking at drink container
Noooo..ohohohoh..noooo...

FD
Ohohoh yeaeaeah...

NYB
Oh shit... Ohohoh... I can't stay awake.

FD
No, you can't. That's why it's knock out fluid.

NYB
What.. What's it going to do to me? Uhuhuh...

GANGMAN
Nothing. You'll wake up -- couple days or so. Maybe it'll take a while for your memory to come back on line, but..you'll be alright. Believe it.

NYB slumps asleep
Uhohuhohuhoh...

GANGMAN
Park him in a car. Lock the doors, help him not get hurt till he wakes up.

FD
Yea, Gangman.

GANGMAN
Then we go to work. Hi ho, hi ho...

CREWFER
Oh yea, yea Gangman. Naw, naw..trusteeship..honest.

GANGMAN
Uh-huh.

NEXT:  Apartment of NYB. Amanda is on. Doorbell rings.

AMANDA
Who is it?

CAB from off
Bill Menaechmi.

AMANDA opening door as CAB comes on
Don't you have a key?

CAB
Huh? My name's Bill Menaechmi. I'm scheduled here for a review... This is the right place, right? I got the

AMANDA
Hi, Bill. You're probably wondering what I'm doing here?

CAB
Here? Well, I didn't know what to expect exactly, but I

AMANDA
You don't recognize me do you?

CAB
No.

AMANDA
That would be like you wouldn't it? Or maybe you are controlled enough to just cool through it?

CAB
Am I supposed to follow you? I got all my records with me with my stuff, I brought it all along cause this isn't going to take that long. Cause once you see

AMANDA
I'm not the one who's going to see. You are.

CAB
And I guess knowing how to talk to people that way's why IRS agents don't need to carry guns?

AMANDA
Huh? Oh, Bill... Nobody's going nuts here, okay? And there's no need for this to be a hostile process.

CAB
No, of course not. We wish.

AMANDA
Reasonableness, civility, mutual respect -- my cornerstones for doing business.

CAB
Well, great! That's what we all want. Caring, intelligent, equal treatment.

AMANDA
The way you've always treated? But, we'll never mind any of that troublesome, personal truth, right? Absolutely, this is your place too and you have your rights -- welcome to stay, but in the parameters I need for why I'm here. Alice has rights too. And as I surmise you've been able to conclude, I'm here like, virtually her, to make sure she gets them.

CAB
Alice? ... Ah, that's that new multi-billion dollar comprehensive, fully integrated mega-system you bought? Finally got it up and running I guess? Well, well, big brother's alive and well at the IRS -- and with a cuddly name like Alice.

AMANDA
You are one cool customer. And I don't remember that about you. Laid back like you're going to gobbledygook it til you get the whole lock on what's happening and then call your lawyers in. Go ahead, pull the phone out of your pocket, punch them right up. Cause you know why, know like an insistent conscience makes us know no matter how hard we distract with daily life of hecticness and ambition to keep conscience denied. But then, that resurgence takes a conscience the drugging of remorse hasn't cut off dead like a hemisphere lobotomized.

CAB
What? What is this? I've paid. At least as best as I could understand the lawyergobble you write your instructions in. And I can prove it. I been paying regular and to rule and I got my records -- at least for recent years anyway I can prove it. I brought them so let's look. I've been paying, and I've been paying all the law says I got to pay, which is a lot more than I ought to owe if everybody paid according to what they got.

AMANDA
Big deal you've been paying. Where you're in deficit and in debt's got nothing to do with money. You think that's all you owe, to feed and shelter in a guilded cage? What happened to all that goes with to have and hold?

CAB
I don't have that much. I work for a living. Barely.

AMANDA
Spare me, Bill. Spare me. Sit down, make yourself at home why don't you? Your freaked-out hippie act is making me sick. If you're not at home in what you own, you're better off without it, right? You get seen right through for all the insecurities that made you want it oh so bad. Or maybe you've reached some stratosphere where what's to envy's that you don't even care about it? Sure, you've bought her everything she wanted and then some -- so what is this these old bags hassling me about responsible commitment and emotional obligation? Right? Big deal you paid, you little... ... Seeing through you I'm reminded of the importance of acting civilized.

CAB
Yeah, let's sublimate that hostile, maybe

AMANDA
You know Bill, not long ago I saw a great window display at a jewelry house -- they had these stuffed iguanas and other reptiles all decked out in pendants and brooches -- bathed in soft shades of acid light -- glinting eyes, diamonds, rubies, earings and chronographs -- wouldn't just want to wear a watch if you're a reptile in money-brand sunglasses right? Reminded me of you that's all..even after all these..these years. Also reminded me concept art advertising never sold any jewelry or anything else. Big deal you paid. And for the whole ten yards of this lux life. I know it inside out. I sell it. And I'm not impressed.

CAB
I've met every obligation I've had as best as I've been able to -- every legal obligation cause that's all it is. Maybe onetime when self-government was real there was patriotism and emotion rightly involved, but nuhhh-uh -- not the way things are now.

AMANDA
Patriotism? Bill... Ahhoohh... Putting on a nut act is useless. "I was so distraught she left I didn't understand what was happening and..." And then who knows what you'll have your lawyers come after me for. Come on, I'm hip to you. You could start rolling around on the floor in an ecstasy of twitching and it wouldn't fool me.

CAB
These mind games you think you've got the right to lay on people -- you don't! You forget with your arrogance who the government's for and who it's supposed to make sense to. Now let's get down and look if you've got a beef with me cause like I say I got my records here and I can prove. And doing it in this place like some secret location is doubly outrageous. You're afraid what the press'll do if they find out what you've been spending to decorate the office. You're not like some kind of embassy alright, like made out for cookie pushers in striped suits to peddle pontifications about the big picture, you're supposed to be serious government -- you're entrusted with collecting the public purse. Look at this place. I'm not real sophisticated 'bout federal office buildings, but this..this is useless weapons system extravagant! You're supposed to be like working for the people in society not like leeching them to pass all the bucks and the breaks to the corporate big boys puppeteering behind their lobbyists, alright? So

AMANDA
Hey! Get back! Keep it to the laid-back, lost looney act, alright. Despite my instincts I've had to learn to bellow with the big boys since that's what it takes. So you know what? I'm not going to be intimidated by you -- specially by the likes of you. One more big boy on the business block so used to getting the last shove and making it stick you don't even have to bother that often. And all the other boys shift on their feet and show respect -- and the women you don't even notice, don't even notice as possible competition. Well, I'm a woman tired, tired of that crap that doesn't change. I'll be back before I lose my temper.

Amanda goes off.

CAB these lines can be recorded playback
Change... Change... What's your world that you're so free
with pow'r 'n' anger 'n' so easy in your beauty?
Even if you're in the roleplay of your job?
And me? I'm in the roleplay of my nowhere life?
So with this train of strange happenstance
I'll just tag along since to lose, I got..what? --
till something'll like up and wake me from this trance
of suddenly in lap of luxury and all that rot.
Where'd the money come from set a place
up like this? Somewhere I never got any.
Cause I wasn't suited? Cause I didn't dare to run that race?
Funny, how'r destiny winds up one, though'r options once were many.
How all that's here bespeaks the bustling
of lives so self-assured, full of things to do,
in their web of expectation and commitments hustling
to stay sealed up with no reminders getting through.
"Bury it. I'm too busy." Like that be all it'd take,
cancel that last appointment ev'ry one of us'll make.
What a dump, huh? Like so perfect for storing all the stuff only money can buy. ... And how'd I miss getting in on any of it?..decades now of the whole world -- wars or no wars -- making big money..like I'm satisfied..satisfied?..with getting by -- living my little version of beachcomber Romantic... glancing at photos  And this guy even looks like me, 'cept in hipless toad mode, but..it's all his..so what's the IRS doing here? Who knows..who cares..she's there.
Beauty to my eyes like music
like after a long trip through the wilderness
suffused in the balm of Nature's silence
you're suddenly back, jangling in the city
and like colors in an acid trip
there's music in your ears again.
That's how strong her karma hit me and I
ain't been hit that way since youth's illusions
expected love to be like that.
So I'm asking me no questions, so I won't have to tell me no lies, and just stick around, see how the punches roll this stone. ... And that's where all my time went I didn't spend making money? And how's it going to go in the end? Shit! I'm going to be the only motherfucker out there who's going to die wishing he had spent more time at the office. Shshs..she's coming. Oh, man...
And for all my worries, at minutes of meeting,
my mind's already raced her to naked.
I hear her steps, the whisper of her clothes,
and this tax biz at hand's the last thing I care 'bout.

Amanda comes on.

AMANDA
Any ideas you might have I'm leaving, are wrong.

CAB
You know, that suits me fine.

AMANDA
Bill, what's your angle, now? You'd have one, always.
I remember. From choosing up sides
for playground games to trading baseball cards,
no one that didn't know you'd see it --
like the barest scrim behind the eyes
that lets pass, untouched, the light behind
the sharpest merchants are the one that seem
most guileless and deserving of your trust --
till you see how you've been taken, and the next time
that skrim's a blind that blocks out the lie.
So don't bother trying to fool me with that look.

CAB
If there's deception here, it's on me.

AMANDA
There's none, at least that I know of. Unless,
of course, it's you that's playing around --
taking up behind her back with all the babes
your eminence on the money heap
pretty much must blind to your pathetic self.

CAB
I tell you, I've met every obligation.

AMANDA
And so have nothing more to answer for
than the legal and the monetary?
And both as norrowly defined as only lawyers can.
It gets to be a habit, to get away with it.
These guys start out -- I've seen it now
more times 'n I care to count -- staying in bounds,
playing by the rules and working hard, but soon success
comes engorge the fool with pride and there's "this once" --
and besides I deserve it and I won't get caught anyway.
And pretty soon it's every chance you get,
as each transgression whets the appetite for the next
though it's all the same tired thrill of ever greater brazenness.
And pretty soon they feel no rules apply to 'em.
And you know it's not the silly sex --
your aging spasms avid in possession and
illusion -- what's wrong's your base disregard
for how nobly she's kept true to you.

CAB
Lady, what are you talking about?

AMANDA
Of course, of course, lest we forget
fierce denial to the very last's a strategic must --
so the rightious who accuse the guilty then
can themselves become the guilty ones,
the vile and contemptible false accusers.
So I'm going to make you listen anyway.
Your lying faithlessnes and cruel selfishness,
that'u'd just be one of so many things --
that drop by drop for years 'n' years day by day
she took, figuring she'd stand it for her love for you
til one day the heart, heavy with angry bitterness,
bursts consumed by the silent outrage that's been stored inside.
And that's why she's gone. And that's why I'm here in her place.

CAB
Far gone...

AMANDA
Estrangements can be overcome, at least
by those who'll humble 'emselves to others' love.

CAB
Love..? And taxes? Death and taxes -- now that I've heard.

AMANDA
Too bad the avoidance or evasion of one is never as successful as that of the other.

CAB
And that's what you think I'm doing. I'm not. I can prove it.

AMANDA
Right. Selfishnesses' fearful evasion of love. Proved.

CAB
I'm sorry. I don't get it.

AMANDA
You wouldn't. Or this wouldn't have happened to you.

CAB
You know, I'll have a cigarette too. I mean I don't really smoke anymore -- but I haven't actually quit. I've like refused to quit -- you know, it's a matter of principal -- even though I've pretty much stopped. Except in like circumstances that're like exceptions. I mean like where there's a little bit of stress as to what's going on. I can't afford it really, and I don't just mean that illness without coverage can be like avoidably fatal.

AMANDA
Here.

CAB
Got a light?

AMANDA
Here.

CAB
You have such graceful hands.

AMANDA
What's with this soulful look and touching up my hand? For God's sake, Bill, that's worse than some Monte Carlo gigolo in hustle mode -- worse, like some cool guy from the ancient age of singles bars. It's impressive, your innocent, guy act. Even got the shlockster clothes to go with it.

CAB
These are my dress-up clothes.

AMANDA
You know, there're some people, when they get rich, they get cheap; and as they get older it gets worse like they just can't shake the respect, the fear they had for daddy money from the time of their family's modest, working youth.

CAB
You know, I'm not a real sophisticted guy

AMANDA
No. But you are cunning. And that