Frank Semyon:
How’d a water stain get there?
[Camera cuts up to two brown stains on the ceiling above Frank.]
Frank Semyon:
It rained maybe twice this last year. It’s like everything’s papier-mache.
Jordan Semyon:
Stop thinking.
Frank Semyon:
I don’t like being on a ledge.
Jordan Semyon:
Nobody gets rich on their own money.
Frank Semyon:
I never really knew what to do with it. Money.
[Camera cuts to show the outside of Frank’s house.]
Frank Semyon:
I see that about myself.
Jordan Semyon:
You always said you want lots of land.
Frank Semyon:
Yes, but you need children to leave it to. It’s never really yours. You don’t take it with you.
Jordan Semyon:
You don’t take anything with you.
Frank Semyon:
Just yourself. Whatever that was.
Jordan Semyon:
I’ve worked my whole life. Same as you. And not being poor is better than the opposite.
Frank Semyon:
My old man back in Chicago, when I was a kid… [laughs] He used to lock me in the basement when he’d go on a bender. Usually last the night. Let me out the next day. Thought he was keeping me safe, I guess. This one time, I was six - he puts me down there. I wake up and it’s locked. It had happened before. Anyways, so I guess he ended up arrested, I guess.
Jordan Semyon:
God, baby.
Frank Semyon:
Well, by the second morning I was out of food. The third day the light bulb burnt out. Pitch black in there. That’s when the rats started coming out. I dozed off and I felt a thing nibbling my finger. I woke up, it was, you know, chewing my finger.
Jordan Semyon:
What did you do?
Frank Semyon:
I grabbed it in the dark with my hands, I started smashing. And I just kept smashing it until it was nothing but goo in my hands. Two more days I was in there. In the dark. 'Til my dad comes home.
Jordan Semyon:
Sometimes I wonder how many things you have like that. That I don’t know about.
Frank Semyon:
Ever since, I wondered: what if he never comes home? What if I’m still in that basement in the dark? What if I died there? That’s what that reminds me of.
Jordan Semyon:
What?
Frank Semyon:
The water stain. Something’s trying to tell me that it’s all paper-mache. Something’s telling me to wake up, like… like I’m not real. Like I’m only dreaming.
