Detective Harry Denby clues - This Old Spouse transcription

Transcript

This Old Spouse

Four months after Denby showed her the body in the dumpster, claiming it must be Don's, Diane sees Denby and a man who looks like Don but with his hair dyed red, standing across the street from a diner she's visiting in the morning, scratching lottery tickets off on each other's backs. While she is staring, Denby glances up in her direction, but before she can positively confirm it's Don, they disappear in traffic. Later that day she gets a call from Denby from out of the blue asking to meet her in a bar. She refuses, but agrees to meet him outside the station house.

Diane: What's going on Denby?

Denby: I like to think of this as our spot.

Diane: Boy. You don't let a day go by.

Denby: Referring to what? 'I don't let a day go by...?'

Diane: To you looking bagged.

Denby: Ahhh. Well...a day missed loaded is a day wasted.

Diane: Why'd you call me?

Denby: I had this sudden urge. I don't do good resisting those.

Diane: Now what?

Denby: Now? I ask you how you've been, what you've been up to.

Diane: Pass.

Denby: (Spits out mint) Okay. I ask was that you across the street this morning at Freddie's?

Diane: Yeah, I was at Freddie's. You were across the street?

Denby: Yeah. I saw you from across the street.

Diane: Is that when you got this sudden impulse?

Denby: That's what brought it on.

Diane: Denby, you know how stupid this conversation is?

Denby: I liked it when you watched me drink.

Diane: You should work on being embarrassed.

Denby: If you were drawing up a list though, wouldn't you put that pretty low?

Diane: I'm not watching you drink.

Denby: And drinking with me, I guess that's still out of the question?

Diane: You're a self-centered prick.

Denby: Before my slowness to shame, my self-centerdness? Things you'd like me to work on?

Diane: Don't do anything for me Denby. Don't even move if a car comes.

end of scene

Diane meets Denby again that evening, this time in a bar, after she learns that Don is really still alive and that Jill knew it all along. The prospect of going to this meeting shakes her up badly.

Denby: What - summarizing Diane in a nutshell - can we say about life? It becomes more tawdry. Dangerous. Filled with more stupidity. Our eyes go. Faculties in general decline. We keep an interest in sex but we begin to shoot blanks. What we cannot say Diane, is that life gets less interesting. We can't say that and look at ourselves in the face as honest men and women.

Diane: Could you stand a drug toss Denby?

Denby: Taking that as I do as some weird form of sexual overture; to hear you make that only now that I shoot blanks is sickening and tragic.

Diane: Coke, huh Denby? Got a romance going now with coke?

Denby: Offering two ways more of describing life, Diane. Am I right?

Diane: You stopped caring if the job catches you?

Denby: (trying to pull her back on his wavelength) Two more ways would be sickening and tragic.

Diane: Or maybe you think you're bullet-proof.

Denby: No, no man is bullet-proof Diane. No person of either sex. No primate can defy the well aimed shell.

Diane: (She slaps him) What are you doing? What are you doing, Denby?

Denby: (hesitates a moment, vaguely surprised by her reaction) Before you struck me I was gonna say...given tawdriness, given our tendency to fall apart - what we could call moral and personal entropy - but acknowledging simultaneously that life keeps its interest...how about, as we decline, having comfort as a goal? For example; what is there to hate in some person or persons unnamed, having lots of money to drink with and to otherwise piss away in some exotic locale?

Diane: You come into money Denby?

Denby: I have had this vision of unbearable intensity that I am destined to win the lottery.

Diane: Right. That's how all those cartel boys got rich.

Denby: Say I did come into money, Diane. Would you consider the two of us scarring our livers 'til they were masses of useless fat in Sirinam or the Falkland Islands, called by the Argentineans by some different name that presently escapes me, or anywhere else of your choice which - like them - does not extradite to Uncle Sam?

Diane: I promise you Denby - hurt anyone I care about and I am going to ruin your party. I'll put a bullet in that brain you wasted.

Denby: (looking around the bar uncomfortably) For God's sake Diane, let's not lose decorum at this late juncture. Like friends we both know, let's not lose our 'heads'.

Diane: Yeah, who was that guy you showed me in the dumpster that lost his head?

Denby: (sadly) Oh Diane. There's so much doubt in life. I thought that was the one thing we were sure about.

Diane: (seething with anger) Oh, I'd like to drink. I wish I was drunk so I could shoot you right now.

Denby: It would thrill me so much to see you drink Diane. I believe I'll roll those dice. We could even leave on some cruise ship, if I was discreet about where it docked...

Diane: I'll kill you. Look in my eyes, see if I'm kidding.

Denby: (despondently) Do you really think I'd care?

end of scene