Savage Grace | 2007

Ha!

Oh!

Ha!

OK! OK, OK.

I concede, I resign.

Well, sir, I'm pretty expert.

So there's no embarrassment in losing, if that's a concern.

Do you love me?

Of course.

Will you still love me when my hair is gray and my tits are sagging?

Well, of course.

Do you remember the dog?

What dog?

Which dog?

The one we had in Italy.

Giotto.

I remember when Giotto died.

He was old.

No, he wasn't.

In dog years.

We still have his collar.

I know.

Somewhere.

I know where.

Leo was famous. Not like you're famous, of course.

Well, I'm not...

For heaven's sake. You won the Premio Nadal.

You know Picasso, you know Camus, you know Malraux, you know Dali.

Pilar knows them. I just write.

What I'm saying, Carlos, is that Leo's fame, like yours,

was a function of achievement, came from what he did.

So Leo's stroke of genius

was the notion that the formaldehyde might stabilize the phenol, give it strength.

But they never mixed. Leo thought, "Let's try putting it under pressure. "

Poof! Long chain molecules, Bakelite, plastic.

The telephone, bracelets, radios, records,

coffins, submarines, the housing for the atom bomb -

the world as we know it today.

That was your father?

No, that was my grandfather.

My father is a crapule. My grandfather decidedly was not.