American Buffalo Read Free

see.
    BOB : I’m sorry, Donny.
    DON : Well, we’ll see.
    TEACH (appears in the doorway and enters the store) : Good morning.
    BOB : Morning, Teach.
    TEACH (walks around the store a bit in silence): Fuckin’ Ruthie, fuckin’ Ruthie, fuckin’ Ruthie, fuckin’ Ruthie, fuckin’ Ruthie.
    DON : What?
    TEACH : Fuckin‘ Ruthie . . .
    DON : . . . yeah?
    TEACH : I come into the Riverside to get a cup of coffee, right? I sit down at the table Grace and Ruthie.
    DON : Yeah.
    TEACH : I’m gonna order just a cup of coffee.
    DON : Right.
    TEACH : So Grace and Ruthie’s having breakfast, and they’re done. Plates . . . crusts of stuff all over . . . So we’ll shoot the shit.
    DON : Yeah.
    TEACH : Talk about the game . . .
    DON : . . . yeah.
    TEACH : . . . so on. Down I sit. “Hi, hi.” I take a piece of toast off Grace’s plate . . .
    DON : . . . uh-huh . . .
    TEACH : . . . and she goes “Help yourself.”
    Help myself.
    I should help myself to half a piece of toast it’s four slices for a quarter. I should have a nickel every time we’re over at the game, I pop for coffee . . . cigarettes . . . a sweet roll, never say word.
    “Bobby, see who wants what.” Huh? A fucking roast-beef sandwich. (To BOB ) Am I right? (To DON ) Ahh, shit. We’re sitting down, how many times do I pick up the check? But (No!) because I never go and make a big thing out of it—it’s no big thing—and flaunt like “This one’s on me” like some bust-out asshole, but I naturally assume that I’m with friends, and don’t forget who’s who when someone gets behind a half a yard or needs some help with (huh?) some fucking rent, or drops enormous piles of money at the track, or someone’s sick or something . . .
    DON (to BOB) : This is what I’m talking about.
    TEACH : Only (and I tell you this, Don). Only, and I’m not, I don’t think, casting anything on anyone: from the mouth ofa Southern bulldyke asshole ingrate of a vicious nowhere cunt can this trash come. (To BOB ) And I take nothing back, and I know you’re close with them.
    BOB : With Grace and Ruthie?
    TEACH : Yes.
    BOB : (I like ‘em.)
    TEACH : I have always treated everybody more than fair, and never gone around complaining. Is this true, Don?
    DON : Yup.
    TEACH : Someone is against me, that’s their problem . . . I can look out for myself, and I don’t got to fuck around behind somebody’s back, I don’t like the way they’re treating me. (Or pray some brick safe falls and hits them on the head, they’re walking down the street.)
    But to have that shithead turn, in one breath, every fucking sweet roll that I ever ate with them into ground glass (I’m wondering were they eating it and thinking “This guy’s an idiot to blow a fucking quarter on his friends” . . .)
    . . . this hurts me, Don.
    This hurts me in a way I don’t know what the fuck to do.
    Pause.
    DON : You’re probably just upset.
    TEACH : You’re fuckin’ A I’m upset I am very upset, Don.
    DON : They got their problems, too, Teach.
    TEACH : I would like to have their problems.
    DON : All I’m saying, nothing personal . . . they were probably, uh, talking about something.
    TEACH : Then let them talk about it, then. No, I am sorry, Don, I cannot brush this off. They treat me like an asshole, they are an asshole.
    Pause.
    The only way to teach these people is to kill them.
    Pause.
    DON : You want some coffee?
    TEACH : I’m not hungry.
    DON : Come on, I’m sending Bobby to the Riverside.
    TEACH : (Fuckin’ joint . . .)
    DON : Yeah.
    TEACH : (They harbor assholes in there . . .)
    DON : Yeah. Come on, Teach, what do you want? Bob?
    BOB : Yeah?
    DON (to TEACH ): Come on, he’s going anyway. (To BOB, handing him a bill) Get me a Boston, and go for the yogurt.
    BOB : What kind?
    DON : You know, plain, and, if they don’t got it, uh, something else. And get something for yourself.
    BOB : What?
    DON : Whatever you want. But get something to eat, and whatever you want to drink, and get Teacher a