Free Etiquette and Vitriol by Nicky Silver

She was very beautiful, you know. And tall and thin. She looked like Audrey Hepburn. I hated her. Her death was my liberation.
    SERGE: You hated Audrey Hepburn?!
    AMANDA: God no. I hated my mother. After she died I flourished for the first time. I lost all my weight and took control of my future.
    SERGE: The two of you should start a club! He drones on all the time about his mother.
    OTTO: She’s a nightmare!
    SERGE: What’s wrong with you people?
    AMANDA: Do you like your mother?
    SERGE: Of course!
    OTTO and AMANDA: Why?
    SERGE: She’s my mother. I love her. She’s charming and witty and she believes in me. She instilled in me the confidence that lets me do anything I put my mind to.
    OTTO and AMANDA: Oh.
    SERGE: My father, on the other hand, is a turd.
    OTTO: Listen to that! He’s so pithy. It would take me paragraphs to say what he says with a word! That’s the man I love! I hope you don’t mind if I have a nibble while we catch up, Betty. I’m starving! I haven’t eaten in minutes!
    (He pulls a bag of bagels from his bag and eats as he talks) Help yourself to a bagel if you want, BUT DON’T TOUCH THE CINNAMON-RAISIN, they’re my favorite—I will never forget the first time I saw him! Talk about your some-enchanted-evenings! Do you remember how popular I was in school? I was the best-liked Jewish person in our class. I had more friends than I knew what to do with. Well, I had friends. NO ONE LIKED ME! No one’s ever liked me! Do I smell funny? You’d tell me if I smelled funny, wouldn’t you, Betty? No, no, don’t answer that. I bathe and if I smell funny there’s nothing more I can do about it, so I’d just as soon not know it.—Where was I? Oh yes, we met at Barneys—
    AMANDA: Department stores are meat markets!
    OTTO: It’s so true. Housewares are the worst! Anyway, he took me away with him, for a weekend in Bimini—
    SERGE: I never did any such thing!
    OTTO: Ooooo, he’s got a terrible temper!
    SERGE: I’ve never even been to Bimini!
    OTTO: I think he’s capable of anything.
    AMANDA: I’VE been to Bimini.
    OTTO: I keep warning him, I keep telling him with that temper and a diet void of sugar, he’ll put himself in a grave before he hits twenty!
    SERGE: I’M THIRTY NOW!!
    OTTO: I rest my case.
    SERGE: Get out of my life!
    OTTO: Could you love me again if I got out of your life? Could you?
    SERGE: If you got out of my life? Forever? Yes. Yes, I could.
    OTTO: But then I wouldn’t—I’m confused now.
    SERGE: God!
    (Amanda takes a bagel from Otto’s bag and eats ravenously—it’s a cinnamon-raisin.)
    OTTO: We were going to redecorate his house. We went to Conran’s and picked out all new furniture—you look amazing by the way. I can’t get over it. You’ll have to share your diet tips later.—We went to ABC Carpets and found the most precious Persian rugs! We picked china and flatware. I told my mother, who’s in traction, by the by, now that you ask. My analyst says I have a neurotic fixation on my mother. But I ask you, at what point does a fixation become neurotic? You be the judge. DO I SEE RAISINS?!
    (Amanda drops the bagel, panicked.)
    The point is, we made plans. I went so far as to pick up one of those What-Shall-We-Name-the-Baby books. I voted for Shemuel. He wanted Violet. We bickered. I think it was a religious thing. What do you think?
    SERGE: STOP TALKING!!
    OTTO: He tortures me! He’s a pig! I weep to dehydration!
    AMANDA (Confronting Serge) : How can you be so cruel!?
    (Otto crawls to his grocery bag, on the floor, and eats.)
    SERGE: What?
    AMANDA: Look at what you’re doing to him!
    OTTO: Yeah, look.
    SERGE: You don’t understand the situation.
    AMANDA: How you can function under the elephantine burden of guilt you must carry is a conundrum to me!
    SERGE: A what ?
    OTTO: I love the way you talk.
    AMANDA: A riddle. It means riddle!
    SERGE: