Vacation Photos

A living room.  JULIE and JOHN are just arriving home.  There’s a tension in the air.

JULIE:  Okay, I didn’t want to bring it up.

JOHN:  Just say it, because I’m probably thinking the exact same thing.

JULIE:  When we were at the Green’s—

JOHN:  Yes?

JULIE:  Were you a little put off that they—

JOHN:  --Didn’t show us their vacation photos?

JULIE:  Yes!

JOHN:  I KNOW!

JULIE:  Did we do something wrong?

JOHN:  I have no idea.

JULIE:  Why else would we be over there?

JOHN:  I know.

JULIE:  They just came back from a vacation.  They invite us over.  They casually mention how great the trip was—

JOHN:  Once.  They mention it once.

JULIE:  Oh, I’ll get to that.

JOHN:  And that was after you prompted them—

JULIE:  Imagine if I hadn’t.  They probably wouldn’t have brought up the trip at all!

JOHN:  We would have just been sitting there—

JULIE:  --Not talking about the vacation.

JOHN:  We barely talked about it anyway.  I was furious.

JULIE:  I wanted to scream.

JOHN:  Who are these people?

JULIE:  Well, they’re supposed to be our friends.

JOHN:  Friends show you photos of their vacations, Julie.

JULIE:  I know, John, you’re preaching to the choir here.

JOHN:  And they kept taking our their phones like they were going to show us photos of their vacation and then—

JULIE:  Nothing.

JOHN:  Nothing!

JULIE:  Maybe they assumed we saw the photos they put online.

JOHN:  So what?  That’s it?  No sharing vacation photos at dinner parties anymore?

JULIE:  Maybe.

JOHN:  Then why even have dinner parties?  Why don’t we all just sit home on our phones and scroll through our friends’ vacations?

JULIE:  I mean, we do that already.

JOHN:  EXACTLY!

JULIE:  And Chris kept asking about me.  Did you notice that?

JOHN:  How could you not?

JULIE:  How are you doing, Julie?  How’s work, Julie?  How are you coping with the loss of your father, Julie?

JOHN:  Jesus.

JULIE:  I don’t want to talk about me.  I live with me.  What’s to talk about?

JOHN:  It was so weird.  They’re weird.

JULIE:  For a second, I thought he was hitting on me.  I thought—Oh my goodness, is Chris hitting on me right in front of John and Abby?  Then I realized he was genuinely interested in me, and it was like—

(She indicates her mind being blow.)

--You know?

JOHN:  Yup.  At first I was like—Oh okay, he’s just hitting on her—and I was going to maybe punch him or something—

JULIE:  You were never going to punch him.

JOHN:  No, I totally wasn’t, but I thought about maybe punching him before I realized I wouldn’t, and by then, I figured out that he was just interested in what you had to say, and then I really wanted to punch him!

JULIE:  It was sick.  It was like some kind of mind game.

JOHN:  I mean, there we are, waiting to hear about vacation and see some photos—

JULIE:  I was expecting at least three hours of photos.  Maybe four.

JOHN:  --And he’s asking you about that cancer scare you had while they were gone.

JULIE:  You would think my cancer scare was more interesting than their vacation.

JOHN:  You can’t talk about a cancer scare for four hours.  Cancer maybe, but not just a scare.

JULIE:  No, a scare gives you, like, five minutes of conversation—tops.  Maybe ten.

JOHN:  Maybe ten.

JULIE:  Hey Julie, I heard you might have cancer…Nope, turns out I don’t…Oh, that’s great.  That’s it.

JOHN:  That’s it.

JULIE:  That’s the most there is to talk about.

JOHN:  It’s pretty cut and dry.

JULIE:  Boring, really.

JOHN:  But wait, didn’t the doctor say he wanted to keep an eye on it?

JULIE:  John, please, I really don’t want to talk about it.

JOHN:  Right, sorry.

JULIE:  I figured as soon as we were done talking about that, they would bust out the phone and show us their photos.

JOHN:  Do you have any idea how excited I was for tonight?

JULIE:  You were so excited.

JOHN:  (Overlapping on the word “so.”)  I was so excited.  I didn’t even eat today, I was so excited.  I skipped lunch.  Now I’m starving.

JULIE:  Why didn’t you eat at dinner?

JOHN:  Because I was so mad when I realized we weren’t going to see the vacation photos that I completely lost my appetite.  It’s just coming back now.

JULIE:  I mean, they could have showed us one photo.

JOHN:  One photo!  I’m not asking for a lot.  One—two photos, tops.

JULIE:  Just something.

JOHN:  Just something to make us feel like we matter.

JULIE:  Like we’re not garbage.

JOHN:  Sitting there looking at that wilted arugula salad.

JULIE:  The salad was actually delicious.

JOHN:  You know what—I thought to myself—it looks wilted, but I bet it’s delicious.

JULIE:  It was so well done.  The wilting was because of this steaming thing that Abby does to it—

JOHN:  Steaming?

JULIE:  Yeah, but more complicated than that, like, with special herbal steam or something—

JOHN:  I can’t believe I didn’t eat that salad.

JULIE:  I ate yours.

JOHN:  Yeah, I remember.

JULIE:  I was just trying to be polite—even though I wanted to stab the two of them with my salad fork.

JOHN:  We should have asked them for the recipe.

JULIE:  Who knows if they would have told us, John?  Who knows what they’d tell us?  It’s like being friends with MI6—maybe everything’s going to be a secret from now on.

JOHN:  Next time we’ll go over and say ‘How’s the weather, Chris?’ and he’ll say ‘Oh, the weather.  It’s the weather.’

JULIE:  How was work today, Julie?....Oh, it was work.

JOHN:  We may as well be eating with mimes.

JULIE:  You know what I’d like to do?

JOHN:  Egg their house?

JULIE:  No.

JOHN:  Okay, sorry, I thought we were on the same page.

JULIE:  I—would like—to set up another dinner date.

JOHN:  Are you—

JULIE:  Here.

JOHN:  Here?

JULIE:  Yes.  Here.

JOHN:  Why?

JULIE:  Just hear me out.  They’ll get here.  And in the living room—we will have—a projector.

                (A beat.)

JOHN:  You are…amazing.

JULIE:  We will show them every photo from every one of our vacations.

JOHN:  Julie, we go on vacations constantly.

JULIE:  I know.

JOHN:  We just went on one right before they went on their’s.

JULIE:  I know.

JOHN:  I’m not even sure I still have a job.

JULIE:  I KNOW.  By the way, how are we doing financially?  Are we—

JOHN:  It would take hours to show all those photos!

JULIE:  Hours?  Days.  It would take days.  Our trip to Dubai alone has over eight thousand photos devoted to it.

JOHN:  Remember that day I just walked around with the camera glued to my face snapping at anything that moved?

JULIE:  Oh, I remember.

JOHN:  I mean, it was actually glued to my face.  I glued it there just to make it easier to take photos.

JULIE:  I remember.  You barely paid any attention to me.  Even though you knew how nervous I was about that man who robbed me when we first got—

JOHN:  So back to this plan.  You invite them over—

JULIE:  I invite them over—

JOHN:  And project all our photos—

JULIE:  I’ll get a screen.

JOHN:  No.

JULIE:  A projection screen.

JOHN:  You will not.

JULIE:  I will.

JOHN:  You will not.

JULIE:  I WILL.

JOHN:  I AM SO EXCITED ABOUT THIS IDEA!

JULIE:  It’ll be like the 1950’s except none of us will be Communists.

JOHN:  That is so good.

JULIE:  And when it’s all over, we’ll turn the lights back on, stand in front of them, point to the projection screen, and say—‘That!—is Friendship.’

                (A beat.)

JOHN:  I couldn’t possibly love you anymore than I do right now.

JULIE:  After we get back from vacation, I’m calling them up.

JOHN:  Yes.

JULIE:   And then I’m going online and buying all that projection stuff.

JOHN:  I just lost my appetite again.

JULIE:  This is going to be rich.

JOHN:  That’ll give ‘em something to talk about.

JULIE:  Plenty.  It’ll give them plenty to talk about.  Not like tonight.

JOHN:  What did we talk about tonight?  I wasn’t even paying attention.

JULIE:  Oh, they kept bringing up politics.  And current events.  And literature.

JOHN:  Geez, how did we even stay awake?

JULIE:  I do this thing when someone’s boring where I visualize entire episodes of Law & Order in my mind.

JOHN:  I just try counting to a million.  It makes me look like I’m concentrating.

JULIE:  Hopefully we’ll have better luck at the Cantor’s tomorrow.

JOHN:  Oh, is that tomorrow?

JULIE:  Yes, I forgot all about it.

JOHN:  I can’t wait to hear about the new baby.

JULIE:  I know!  It’s so great.  We haven’t gotten to hear about a baby since the Porters had twins.

JOHN:  Have you seen anything online about the baby?

JULIE:  The new one?  The Cantor’s baby?

JOHN:  Yeah.

JULIE:  No, but I figured maybe they just hadn’t gotten around to…

                (A moment.)

JOHN:  If they don’t talk about that baby—

JULIE:  John—

JOHN:  If I even have to ASK to see a photo of that baby—

JULIE:  Johnnnnn—

JOHN:  Julie—

JULIE:  John—

JOHN:  Julie—

JULIE:  It’s a baby.  Of course they’re going to want talk about it.

JOHN:  They better.

JULIE:  It’s a new baby.

JOHN:  Yes, but—

JULIE:  What else is there to talk about?

JOHN:  I’m just a little skittish after tonight.

JULIE:  It’ll be fine.

JOHN:  It better be.

JULIE:  It’ll be fine.

JOHN:  Okay.

JULIE:  By the way, do you think tonight we should try…

JOHN:  Let’s not.  I’m tired.

JULIE:  Okay.

                (A beat.  He exhales.)

JOHN:  You know, it’s like…

JULIE:  Yes?

JOHN:  It’s like people just don’t know how to talk to each other anymore.

                (Lights.)

                End of Play