A Lovely Sunday for Creve Coeur by Tennessee Williams Page A

regard me as an athletic event, the high jump or pole vault? Please, please, Bodey, convince him his shape does not concern me at all.
    BODEY: Buddy don’t discuss his work with me often, but lately he said his boss at Anheuser-Busch has got an eye on him.
    DOROTHEA: How could his boss ignore such a sizeable object?—Bodey , what are you up to in that cute little kitchenette?
    BODEY: Honey, I stopped by Piggly-Wiggly’s yesterday noonwhen I got off the streetcar on the way home from the office, and I picked up three beautiful fryers, you know, nice and plump fryers.
    DOROTHEA: I’d better remain out here till Ralph calls back, so I can catch it myself. [
She lies on the purple carpet and begins another series of formalized exercises
.]
    BODEY: The fryers are sizzling so loud I didn’t catch that, Dotty. You know, now that the office lets out at noon Saturday, it’s easier to lay in supplies for Sunday. I think that Roosevelt did something for the country when he got us half Saturdays off because it used to be that by the time I got off the streetcar from International Shoe, Piggly-Wiggly’s on the corner would be closed, but now it’s still wide open. So I went in Piggly-Wiggly’s , I went to the meat department and I said to the nice old man, Mr. Butts, the butcher, “Mr. Butts, have you got any real nice fryers?”—“You bet your life!” he said, “I must of been expectin’ you to drop in. Feel these nice plump fryers.” Mr. Butts always lets me feel his meat. The feel of a piece of meat is the way to test it, but there’s very few modern butchers will allow you to feel it. It’s the German in me. I got to feel the meat to know it’s good. A piece of meat can look good over the counter but to know for sure I always want to feel it. Mr. Butts, being German, he understands that, always says to me, “Feel it, go on, feel it.” So I felt the fryers. “Don’t they feel good and fresh?” I said, “Yes, Mr. Butts, but will they keep till tomorrow?” “Haven’t you got any ice in your icebox?” he asked me. I said to him, “I hope so, but ice goes fast in hot weather. I told the girl that shares my apartment with me to put up the card for a twenty-five pound lump of ice but sometimes she forgets to.” Well, thank goodness, this time you didn’t forget to. You always got so much on your mind in the morning, civics and—other things at the high school. —What are you laughin’ at, Dotty? [
She turns around to glance at Dorothea who is covering her mouth to stifle breathless sounds of laughter
.]
    DOROTHEA: Honestly, Bodey, I think you missed your calling. You should be in Congress to deliver a filibuster. I never knew it was possible to talk at such length about ice and a butcher.
    BODEY: Well, Dotty, you know we agreed when you moved in here with me that I would take care of the shopping. We’ve kept good books on expenses. Haven’t we kept good books? We’ve never had any argument over expense or disagreements between us over what I should shop for. —OW!
    DOROTHEA: Now what?
    BODEY: The skillet spit at me. Some hot grease flew in my face. I’ll put bakin’ soda on it.
    DOROTHEA: So you are really and truly frying chickens in this terrible heat?
    BODEY: And boiling eggs, I’m going to make deviled eggs, too. Dotty, what is it? You sound hysterical, Dotty!
    DOROTHEA [
half strangled with laughter
]: Which came first, fried chicken or deviled eggs?—I swear to goodness, you do the funniest things. Honestly, Bodey, you are a source of continual astonishment and amusement to me. Now, Bodey, please suspend this culinary frenzy until the phone rings again so you can hear it this time before it stops ringing for me.
    BODEY: Dotty, I was right here and that phone was not ringin’. I give you my word that phone was not makin’ a sound. It was quiet as a mouse.
    DOROTHEA: Why, it was ringing its head off!
    BODEY: Dotty, about some things everyone is mistaken, and this is something you are mistaken