Head on a string

Argo: Where is the cheese?

(Nina enters)

Argo: Where is the cheese? The cheese I put right here, just a minute ago?

Italio: Non so.

Argo: Italio, what did you do with the cheese? We have a full platter of GCSs on order, and you're hiding the cheese?

Nina: Argo, we have to get the food out before the invocation at ten. Ms Sandy is going crazy!

Argo: I know, I know! Italio! What's your problem?

Italio: Non sono buono, Argo. Ho un dolore della stomache.

Argo: Speak English, Italio! Where is the cheese? Where is the cheese, man!

Nina: This isn't working.

Italio: I know.

Argo: Oh, here it is. The cheese.

Nina: My god.

(Nina leaves)

Italio: Have you ever had the thought that people just sort of float around, like those trains that crawl up the sides of mountains, except that the body is like the train-

Argo: You mean a cable car?

Italio: That's it, a cable car.

Argo: So what's the cable, then? The brain?

Italio: Sort of. I mean, I guess I was thinking that the cable is the wanting to do things in the future that we all have. Or that we all sort of have. If you stop wanting to do things in the future, the car falls down the mountain, and that's the end of it.

Argo: Are you depressed, Italio?

Italio: Someone told me this story the other day, about a guy who breaks a really important promise, then has to kill himself. And everyone understands.

Argo: Nina! Nina!

Italio: So now, I walk around, and everyone I see is like a floating head, with legs and arms just sort of dangling underneath, and the head just drags them all around, on some invisible cable that's always extending off to the future somewhere.

(Nina enters)

Nina: What is it? Señora Plankton almost spilled her coffee when you yelled out like that!

Argo: Talk to Italio, he's talking about killing himself.

Italio: Not exactly, Argo. You see, Nina-

Argo: Biscuits.

Nina: What?

Italio: I wasn't talking about killing myself, Nina. I was just telling Argo about this idea I had.

Nina: I had a dream last night, Italio. I dreamed that you were telling me a boring story, and that you had just told it to Argo.

Argo: Ha!

Italio: That's strange.

Nina: It just went on, and on, and on. And Señora Saladmaker was screaming for coffee and carrotcake, and you just kept on talking.

Italio: What was I talking about?

Nina: It was something about how people are just like those cars that drive around in grooves in the ground, and-

Argo: The Tin Lizzies!

Nina: I don't think that's it.

Italio: You know, I was just telling Argo about something very similar. You see, I had suggested that people were just like-

(Nina leaves)

Argo: Italio, where is the butter?

Italio: Who's there?

Argo: I don't have time for this.

(Ms Sandy enters)

Ms Sandy: Boys! Where are those sandwiches? It's ten o' clock, and the invocation has started! Which of you is going to apologize to Sñr Pluto for this foul up?

Italio: Maybe that's not it at all. Maybe we're all just like balloons, but we're tied to the ground because we can't get out of our shoes. Maybe when my watch says 'Italio, it's 5 o' clock, it's time to go home', it's actually saying, 'Italio, you fool, don't go home! Go to Mexico and get in a fight with a Guatemalan! Go down the street and buy a bottle of strawberry milk and drink it and cry, and cry, and cry, because it's the last strawberry milk you'll ever have! Live, Italio! Live!'

Ms Sandy: But watches don't say such things. They rule us like the cowards we are, they don't free us to drink milk and go to Chiapas. Sandwiches, boys, sandwiches!

Argo: I don't wear a watch.