FICTION

MAN SEES WHAT HE

EXPECTS TO SEE

(Moral Lesson For TVs-In Reverse)

A Half-Act Play

Unknown

SCENE:

One room apartment, modestly but comfortably furnish- ed, hall door right, bathroom and kitchen doors beside each other left. Sofa left, easy chair right. Typewriter and study desk center rear. Against the wall right is a double-door wardrobe, both doors ajar at curtain rise, displaying inside a neatly-arranged rack of clothes rang- ing from shorty-nighties through street dresses, ending up in several formals. Two head-forms, bearing respec- tively a brunette wig and a blonde wig of well-brushed shoulder length variety, stand on the study table.

AT CURTAIN RISE:

Late afternoon semi-darkness (or semi-light) is creeping in window over study table. Discernable, but in shadow, is the figure of a man in his middle twenties, sitting on the floor toward the audience, concealed from anyone entering the door, by the easy chair. He sits there wait- ing, not-threateningly, for some thirty seconds until at last a female figure, in sweater and skirt, in ultra short hairdo, tiptoes through the door after knocking softly. The figure coughs, walks directly but unsurely in the semi-darkness toward the study table, rips off a Kleenex and blows nose. Looks musingly at blonde wig, unpins from head-form and adjusts on. Before it's adjusted and brushed out properly, young man on floor stands up, whistles in a broad wolf-whistle at figure, whose figure might well rate a whistle. What started as a scream or holler terminates fast in startled fit of coughing, then more Kleenex pressed to nose.

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