Game 6 Page #10

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NICKY:

I do know the answer to that. Why

don't we watch the ball game later?

We'll go to Mannion's.

MICHAEL:

They're only gonna lose.

NICKY:

Of course they're gonna lose. We'll

watch them lose. What good is

heartbreak if we don't experience

it firsthand?

MICHAEL:

The Red Sox are your problem. I

never understood about you and the

Red Sox. Everybody rooted for the

Yankees.

Nicky is scrambling the eggs.

NICKY:

Remember 1949? Last two games of

the season. Against the Yankees.

The Sox lost on Saturday. Then they

lost on Sunday. First I cried for

twenty-four hours. Then I had fist-

fights the rest of the week.

MICHAEL:

It's one thing for kids. You get

older, you Nhave other things.

NICKY:

It's all connected, Pop. It's one

life. Baseball is memory. How do

fathers and sons show their love?

They go to a ball game together.

Thirty-five years later, they sit

in the kitchen and remember.

MICHAEL:

But the son is suppose to stop

crying.

NICKY:

I could have grown up happy. A

Yankee fan. A divorce lawyer.

Nicky sees his father's glasses on a shelf above the stove.

He puts them on the table.

NICKY:

You'll need these. Tonight. For the

play.

MICHAEL:

Don't make me sit through one of

your plays.

NICKY:

Hey, Pop. I know you don't like the

commotion of opening night. But I

especially want you to see this

play. It's new territory for me.

And for you too. I have to know

what you think.

MICHAEL:

Since when did that matter?

NICKY:

Let's not start that again.

MICHAEL:

My back is killing me.

NICKY:

Where's your elastic brace?

MICHAEL:

I can't find it.

NICKY:

You're suppose to wear it when your

back gives you trouble.

MICHAEL:

I lost it. I lose everything.

NICKY:

I'll go get you another one. You

have to wear it.

Nicky takes a roll off the counter, makes a sandwich for his

scrambled eggs, takes a bite and heads for the door.

NICKY:

Be right back. Take a good look at

me.

Michael puts on his glasses.

MICHAEL:

So I know who I'm letting in.

Nicky leaves the apartment.

EXT. THE STREET

The man in the cutaway dances with his doll. The tape machine

plays "In The Still of the Night.

" The street is completely empty except for the dancer.

Nicky, a small paper bag in his hand, reenters his father's

building.

INT. MICHAEL ROGAN'S LIVING ROOM

The room bears some resemblance to the living room set at

the Barrymore. Michael sits at the end of the sofa, weary.

Nicky is taking an athletic bandage -- about four feet long

and three inches wide -- out of the package.

He sits in a chair that is set perpendicular to Michael's end

of the sofa, so that Nicky is looking at his father in

profile.

MICHAEL:

`Why doesn't he come live with us?'

Because everything is here.

NICKY:

I know, Pop.

MICHAEL:

I'm lucky they don't knock down the

building. It could happen anytime.

And everything worth remembering is

right here.

NICKY:

I think the building's okay. At

least for the time being.

MICHAEL:

You didn't think it was okay when

you lived here. You wanted to get

out so fast I thought you were

running a marathon.

NICKY:

Normal boy's ambition. I like

coming back. You know that.

MICHAEL:

You tell your friends your father

used to work the docks. Callused

hands. But you had an attitude when

you were growing up that wasn't

easy for your mother and me to

understand.

Nicky is gradually unbuttoning his father's shirt so that he

can wrap the bandage around the old man's chest and back.

NICKY:

I was in a hurry to do big things,

make big mistakes. Any mistakes

were okay as long as it was big.

But I'm trying to see these things

clearly and honestly. That's the

play they're going to kill starting

tonight. There's a guy out there

getting ready to rip it apart. And

that's us. Who we were and where we

come from.

MICHAEL:

So what are you going to do about

it?

NICKY:

What do you want me to do?

MICHAEL:

Show him who we are.

Nicky takes off the shirt.

Michael struggles out of his T-shirt and we see that he is

wearing the elastic bandage he thought he had lost.

He is sitting with his head tilted up, eyes closed, and is

unaware that he is wearing the bandage.

Nicky takes the new bandage, winds it tightly and puts it

back in the box.

His father has gone to sleep.

EXT. STREET BUILDING

It is dark and cold. Nicky emerges and walks west, diagonally

across the street, to a barbershop on the other side of Ninth

Avenue.

lliot is on the stoop waiting for him.

INT. THE BARBER SHOP

Nicky sits in the barber chair. Elliot pulls up a customer's

chair and sits with his back to the mirror, more or less

facing Nicky. The barber, an elderly hawk-eyed man named

Dodgie, begins his preparations for Nicky's haircut.

NICKY:

He carries a gun.

ELLIOT:

Then you should carry a gun.

He places the sheet over Nicky's upper body and fastens it at

the neck.

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