Requiem for a Nun

REQUIEM FOR A NUN 275

and Completely, perhaps even frantically, searched for.

When the lights go up, Pete is standing in the open closet door, holding a

final garment, a negligee, in his hands. He is about 25. He does not look

like a criminal. That is, he is not a standardised recognisable criminal or

gangster type, quite. He looks almost like the general conception of a

college man, or a successful young automobile or appliance salesman. His

clothes are ordinary, neither flashy nor sharp, simply what everybody

wears. But there is a definite 'untamed' air to him. He is handsome,

attractive to women, not at all unpredictable because you-or they-know

exactly what he will do, you just hope he wont do it this time. He has a

hard, ruthless quality, not immoral but unmoral.

He wears a light-weight summer suit, his hat is shoved onto the back of his

head so that, engaged as he is at present, he looks exactly like a youthful

city detective in a tough moving picture. He is searching the flimsy

negligee, quickly and without gentleness, drops it and turns, finds his

feet entangled in the other garments on the floor and without pausing,

kicks himself free and crosses to the desk and stands looking down at the

litter on it which he has already searched thoroughly and savagely once,

with a sort of bleak and contemptuous disgust.

Temple enters, left. She wears a dark suit for traveling beneath a

lightweight open coat, is hatless, carries the fur coat which we have seen,

and a child's robe or blanket over the same arm, and a filled milk bottle

in the other hand. She pauses long enough to glance at the littered room.

Then she comes on in and approaches the table. Pete turns his head; except

for that, be doesn't move.

PETE

Well?

TEMPLE

No. The people where she lives say they haven't seen her since she left

to come to work this morning.

PETE

I could have told you that.

(he glances at his wrist watch)

We've still got time. Where does she live?

TEMPLE

(at the table)

And then what? hold a lighted cigarette against the sole of her foot?