Hot Milk at Three in the Morning

HOT MILK AT THREE !N THE MORNING / Tennessee Williams THE CURTAIN rises upon a dark stage. After a few seconds there are heard from back-stage muffled impacts, as of a person stumbling in darkness against furniture. A door is opened and closed; footsteps sound; there is another impact with furniture accompanied by the sound of falling and shattering glass and a man's fierce, necessarily indistinguishable oath; a hand is laid violently upon the knob of the door to the "stage-room"; the door, thrown open, hits against and over-topples a piece of furniture; the man utters another oath under his breath. The door is slammed shut and the light is switched on. A young man, tall and heavily built, with the grimy, unshaven aspect of a laborer, stands in front of the door. He has apparently just risen from bed; his coat, breeches, and unlaced boots have been slipped on over his flannel pyjamas as a protection against the cold; he is scowling tormentedly upon the following scene of consummate disorderliness and squalor. It is the dirty, messy kitchen of a cheap "efficiency" flat, in some large Eastern city. The floor is covered with blue linoleum, worn brown in spots. Against the right wall, center, is a small gas range, covered with new but already scorched and battered pans and a kettle. To the front of the range is a door, opening upon a fire-escape. Against the back-wail, to the right of the door by which the man entered, is the sink, piled with unwashed dishes from which jut a dishmop and various pieces of "silverware"; above the sink, a shelf, littered with medicine bottles, pill-boxes, glasses containing stained droppers, baking-powder and salt boxes, a leaning tower of heavy glasses and a half-filled baby's milk-bottle. Attached to the bottom of the shelf is a rack from which a profusion of soiled dish-rags dangles dankly. Upon the back of the shut door, before which the man is standing, is tacked a large card, bearing the legend, "KEEP SMILING!" Against the left wall, to the front, is an ice-box, one door hanging ajar, and behind it the kitchen table, supporting a motley assortment of kitchen utensils, and a glittering red tin bread-box, from which pokes a huge "economy" loaf of bread, one thick not-quite-amputated slice lopping from the end of it, giving it the grotesque semblance of sticking out its tongue at the room and its abject occupant. Upon the floor under the table is a bunch of wood-pulp magazines and tabloid newspaper sheets, some of which, propped against the legs of the table, shout in black print a proclamation of the most horrid and baleful of current world-happenings. Upon the floor in front of the man, lies the kitchen chair which he upset in 196 · The Missouri Review his entrance. Automatically the man stoops to pick up the chair; then goes over to the ice-box, opens all of its doors, finally locating and drawing forth a quart bottle of milk, about half of which has already been consumed. He goes over to the stove, pours some of the milk into one of the pans, lights beneath it one of the gas jets; then he seats himself in the chair, groaning and scowling. From the front of the flat proceed sounds of another person arising from bed and stumbling across a dark room and then down the hall, to the door of the kitchen. The door opens upon a woman. She is short and of a figure almost emaciated. She clutches about herself, shivering slightly from the cold, a dirty yellow crepe kimono. She is young, but of the charm which once belonged to her youth, there is left only the pathos of frailty. Her dark hair straggles messiiy about her shoulders. Her face, yellow and pinched, speaks plainly of ill health and wretched living; it bears a look of peevish stupidity. Without turning to give her a glance, the man continues to stare fiercely and gloomily before him. —Paul! What're you doing back here? (He ignores her) 1 never heard such a...