The Old Neighborhood Read Free Page A

it any time. I feel so free … If I could feel like that in my life … I swear there are people who can live like that. I know there are. Who exist. Holy men. Visionaries, scholars, I know they exist.… I know they’re cloistered.… I know that it’s real. But I can’t get it up. I’m going to die like this. A shmuck.
(Pause)
All of the stuff I’d like to do. I’ll never do it.
(Pause)
What do you make of that?
(Long pause)
    BOBBY : You really have a gun?
    JOEY : What gun?
    BOBBY : You said you have a pistol …
    JOEY : I said that I have a pistol …?
    BOBBY : You said you were going north …
    JOEY : In my dream. In my dream … in my fantasy … you know …
    BOBBY : Oh.
(Pause)
    JOEY : In my imaginings.
    BOBBY : Oh.
(Pause)
    JOEY : I actually
have
a pistol. In my store.
    BOBBY : You do?
    JOEY : Behind the counter.
    BOBBY : Mmm.
    JOEY : For burglars. You worried I would shoot myself?
    BOBBY : You said you would.
    JOEY : I actually might. I think that sometimes.
(Pause)
Don’t you?
(Pause)
Bobby …?
    BOBBY :
(Pause)
Sometimes.
(Pause)
    JOEY : I knew you did.
(Pause)
I wouldn’t take the pistol from the store, though. And I’ll tell you why, because I think that just its presence, that you know it’s therediscourages them.
(Pause)
Let them go rob someplace else. Everything, everything, everything … it’s … I’ll tell you: It’s a mystery … 
(Pause)
Everything is a mystery, Bob … everything.
(Pause)
I don’t know how things work. I can hang up a coat hook, people that I know can fix a stove.
(Pause)
Anyone can change a tire—although Lucille bought a new Pontiac, she went to change the tire, the jack wouldn’t fit it.
    BOBBY : Maybe she wasn’t putting it in right.
    JOEY : She said that she was. I think they gave her the wrong size, they custom things today and you can’t change a fucking tire with the wrong size jack. People could die of something like that. Because everything is so far from us today. And we have no connection.
    BOBBY : There are people who have a connection.
    JOEY : Who? Who are they?… and there are lives, Bobby, where people never have a thought. Where all day it is like they aren’t there. Where they are a dream of their environment. Where their lives are a joy. Where questions are answered with ritual. Where life is short. We read them in the books.
    BOBBY : … what books …?
    JOEY : I don’t know what books … that’s what I’m saying … but there are things … there are things … there … there are ways to get there that exist. They … 
(Pause)
In rituals, I’m saying that you didn’t make up, but existed … they would cause you pain.
    BOBBY : Who would?
    JOEY : … they’d take you in a hut. You’d come out, you would be a man.
(Pause)
And, by God, that is what you would be.
(Pause)
    BOBBY :
(Pause)
I think I invent ceremonies, but I never keep them up. I know I should, I say if I forget this now, I’ll never keep it up, but I don’t.
    JOEY : What? Like what?
    BOBBY : Like anything.
    JOEY : Like what?
    BOBBY : Like prayer.
    JOEY : You don’t keep up prayer?
    BOBBY : No.
    JOEY : What? Did you used to pray?
    BOBBY : I’ve prayed.
(Pause)
    JOEY : Judy and I joined a synagogue.
    BOBBY : You did?
    JOEY : Yeah.
    BOBBY : Which one?
    JOEY : It’s new.
    BOBBY : Up by you?
    JOEY : Yeah.
(Pause)
    BOBBY : What do you do, you go there …
    JOEY : … we just joined …
    BOBBY : You did.
    JOEY : Yeah.
(Pause)
    BOBBY : Hey, you know?
    JOEY : Yeah, I know.
    BOBBY : What?
    JOEY : I know.
    BOBBY :
(Sigh)
Joey … Joey … Joey.
    JOEY : Bushes are steel.
    BOBBY : Bushes are steel. What else in the world would they be?
    JOEY : That’s right.
    BOBBY : And what’s the second manhole?
    JOEY : It’s a ground rule double.
    BOBBY : Take your base.
(Pause)
D’you ever think that we would live to be this old?
    JOEY : No.
(Pause)
I never thought about it.
(Pause)
    BOBBY : You think we’re getting old?
    JOEY : Yeah.
(Pause)
I