The Motherfucker with the Hat (TCG Edition). Stephen Adly Guirgis

      VERONICA: You’re acting fuckin’ retarded—

      JACKIE: Maybe I am retarded! Maybe I’m fuckin’, you know—like the guy from the bodega who sits on the milk crate and asks you if you like Batman and Ritz crackers every fuckin’ day! Maybe I’m that fuckin’ guy!

      VERONICA: You actin’ like that guy—

      JACKIE: —’Cuz I’m trying very hard not to leap to conclusions, Veronica, but I’m a bit—I don’t know—unable to figure the fuck out why this bed—my mother’s fuckin’ bed—

      VERONICA: —Again with your fuckin’ mother—

      JACKIE: —You watch your mouth about my mother—

      VERONICA: Watch my mouth about your mother? No. YOU watch my mouth about your mother! Fuck your mother! Okay? Fuck your fuckin’ bitch-ass mother, and her bitch-ass big-deal secondhand bed, and fuck her bitch-ass son, okay?! If your mother—rest in peace—was here right now, I’d strap on a fuckin’ dildo and fuck the two of youse right in your little faggot-ass, les-bionic asses, you little fuckin’ bitch—okay?! “Over, the end, don’t like you no more!” Get the fuck out!

       (Veronica goes to the table, does a line of blow.)

      JACKIE: My sponsor told me you were a little fuckin’ whore and I didn’t believe him!

      VERONICA: Fuck your sponsor!

      JACKIE: I told him, “Nah, man, we got a special thing going down between us”—

      VERONICA: Why don’t you go down on your fuckin’ sponsor, okay?

      JACKIE: He said, “You can’t live with an active user”—

      VERONICA: —Hey! I don’t hear this shit!

      JACKIE: Who was it?

      VERONICA: Go lick your sponsor’s fuckin’ balls, bitch.

      JACKIE: You know what? You wanna flip the script on me like a textbook fuckin’ cokehead alcoholic streetwalkin’ skank-ass trick, dass fine—but I strongly suggest that you don’t underestimate my capacity for violence!

       (Veronica grabs a vodka bottle and breaks off its end.)

      VERONICA: You wanna play? Try me!

      JACKIE: I’ll fuckin’ kill you. You think I won’t kill you ’cuz I’m a nice guy, but believe me, I don’t give a fuck about nothin’ right now and I will end your life like you just ended mines!

      VERONICA: You stay away from me!

      JACKIE: Or what? You gonna hit me with that?

      VERONICA: Back the fuck off, bitch! I don’t play that doormat punching-bag shit—

      JACKIE: —Who was it? Just tell me who, dass all I wanna know!

      VERONICA: Who was who?! There wasn’t no “who,” ’cuz no one did nothin’ over here, and you’re out your mind playin’ fuckin’ Sherlock Holmes ’cuz I don’t know why!

       (Beat. Jackie starts dressing.)

       Whaddya doing?

       (Silence.)

       Jackie, whaddya doing?

       (Silence. Jackie takes a liquor bottle out of the microwave.)

       Whaddya doing? Whaddya—gonna drink? A little misunderstanding happens because you’re fuckin’ stupid, and now you’re gonna pick up a drink and get your ass violated back upstate and ruin everything ’cuz you’re a jealous maniac with no leg to stand on?

      JACKIE: It was that motherfuckah downstairs, wasn’t it?! That motherfuckah with the hat! He always wearing a hat, and now, suddenly, I got an unidentified fuckin’ hat sitting on my breakfast table!

      VERONICA: Jackie, don’t get this twisted ’cuz I personally don’t care what you do, but, if you want my advice, put down the bottle, go to a fuckin’ meeting or something, meet up with that “sponsor” or whatever.

      JACKIE: You so lucky I don’t hit women.

      VERONICA: Yeah right, I’m a four-leaf clover, let’s go down to the casino and win a million bucks—

      JACKIE: —Make jokes. Jokes are funny—

      VERONICA: —Jackie—

      JACKIE: —Don’t look at me!

      VERONICA: I’m lookin’ at you—whaddya gonna do?! I’m fuckin’ sorry that you jumped to conclusions and had a conniption over nothin’, okay? And maybe I overreacted because you questioned my integrity—

      JACKIE: —Questioned your integrity?! You fucked some motherfucker in this bed, Ronnie! There’s blow and vodka and cigarette butts and you didn’t think I’d be home so soon, and the motherfuckah left his hat like motherfucking Zorro leaving his “Z” all over the scene of the crime! Dass what happened! Fucking occurred here! And all I’m asking—in a world where murder right here and now would be fucked up but understandable—all I’m asking for is the owner of that dick! I want the owner! Tell me!

       (Beat.)

      VERONICA: Okay . . . You know what? . . . Let’s go to the pie place, okay?

      JACKIE: What?!

      VERONICA: ¡Cállate! Look, let’s just go there, to the pie place, and we’ll have, like, some pie, and we’ll just, like, talk, or not even talk, we’ll just eat pie first and be. And after that, we’ll talk. You have got this wrong, Jackie. You’re so far out of line you’re like in Zimbabwe or some shit, but I think maybe cooler heads could prevail on both our parts at the pie place, so let’s just go there. I’m willing to do that. I’m willing to put the ghetto on hold and eat some fuckin’ pie with you, if you’re willing to entertain the notion that you’re a fuckin’ retard ex-con who almost blew it ’cuz you got an imagination like—I dunno—Dr. fuckin’ Seuss an’ shit. Okay?

       (Beat. He searches her eyes.)

      JACKIE: But you’re lying.

      VERONICA: Look at me: I didn’t fuck nobody. Jackie, you know how I am. You know I’m a little fuckin’ crazy just like you’re a little fuckin’ crazy, and you know I’d rather spit on a nun’s cunt than give a fuckin’ inch when I been wronged. I been wronged here. You wronged me. Really, really fuckin’ badly. But I will concede to you—and it ain’t a small concession—that I love your ass. And I’ll kick a three-legged kitten down a flight of fuckin’ stairs rather than say some shit like I love you. You know that. So let’s go get some fuckin’ pie before someone here says something that can’t be changed. Okay?

       (Beat.)

      JACKIE: Pie? . . .

      VERONICA: Dass right. Right now.

      JACKIE: Pie . . . Aaaight . . . Pie . . .