Sweet Bird of Youth: Act Two, Scene Two

There are Moorish arches between gallery and interior: over the single table, inside, is suspended the same lamp, stained glass, and ornately wrought metal, that hung in the bedroom.

There are Moorish arches between gallery and interior: over the single table, inside, is suspended the same lamp, stained glass, and ornately wrought metal, that hung in the bedroom.

The interior table is occupied by two couples that represent society in St. Cloud.They are contemporaries of Chance's.

Behind the bar is Stuff who feels the dignity of his recent advancement from drugstore soda-fountain to the Royal Palms cocktail lounge: he has on a white mess-jacket, a scarlet cummerbund, and light-blue trousers, flatteringly close-fitted. Chance Wayne was once barman here: Stuff moves with an indolent male grace that he may have unconsciously remembered admiring in Chance.

Behind the bar is Stuff who feels the dignity of his recent advancement from drugstore soda-fountain to the Royal Palms cocktail lounge: he has on a white mess-jacket, a scarlet cummerbund, and light-blue trousers, flatteringly close-fitted, Chance Wayne was once barman here; Stuff moves with an indolent male grace that he may have unconsciously remembered admiring in Chance.

Boss Finley's mistress, Miss Lucy, enters the cocktail lounge dressed in a ball gown elaborately ruffled and very bouffant like an antebellum Southern belle's.

Boss Finley's mistress, Miss Lucy, enters the cocktail lounge dressed in a ball gown elaborately ruffled and very bouffant like an antebellum Southern belle's.

He has the length and leanness and luminous pallor of a face that El Greco gave to his saints.

Suddenly his effusive manner collapses, as she stares at him gravely.

A light change has occurred which has made it a royal palm grove with a bench.

They cross to it solemnly. Stuff busies himself at the bar, which is barely lit.

Jackie, off, finishes with an arpeggio.

BUD: She said, "My God, Chance Wayne."
SCOTTY: That's recognition and profanity, too.

Usually there's an item in the paper, in Gwen Phillips's column saying "St. Cloud youth home on visit is slated to play featured role in important new picture," and me being a movie fan I'm always thrilled by it....

Every Sunday in summer I used to drive out to the municipal beach and watch him dive off the high tower.

...I have run into personally too often for me to doubt its existence or any manifestation.

Chance is speaking with an almost incoherent excitement, one knee resting on the seat of his chair, swaying the chair back and forth.

The Heckler lowers his newspaper from his face; a slow fierce smile spreads over his face as he leans forward with tensed throat muscles to catch Chance's burst of oratory.

I'd dive off municipal pier and swim straight out to Diamond Key and past it, and keep on swimming till sharks and barracuda took me for live bait, brother.

His chair topples over backward, and he sprawls to the floor.

He has removed a pink capsule from his pocket, quickly and furtively, and drunk it down with his vodka.

Scotty, there's no tailor on earth than can disguise a sedentary occupation.

They are not ominous in their attitudes.

Miss Lucy stares at Chance and the men, then again at Chance, nearsightedly, her head cocked like a puzzled terrier's. Chance is discomfited.

Her blue-sequined gown is unzipped, or partially zipped, her hair is disheveled, her eyes have a dazed, drugged brightness; she is holding up the eyeglasses with the broken lens, shakily, hanging on to her mink stole with the other hand; her movements are unsteady.

In appearance, dress, and manner he is the apotheosis of the assistant hotel manager, about Chance's age, thin, blond-haired, trim blond mustache, suave, boyish, betraying an instinct for murder only by the ruby-glass studs in his matching cuff links and tie clip.

In appearance, dress, and manner he is the apotheosis of the assistant hotel manager, about Chance's age, thin, blond-haired, trim blond mustache, suave, boyish, betraying an instinct for murder only by the ruby-glass studs in his matching cuff links and tie clip.

At this moment the arrival of Boss Finley is heralded by the sirens of several squad cars.

Hatcher, tell him I'll talk to him in the washroom on the mezzanine floor.

He gets no answer from the huddled little group which is restraining Tom Junior from perpetrating murder right there in the cocktail lounge.

Then, from left stage, comes a drum majorette, bearing a gold and purple silk banner inscribed, "Youth for Tom Finley", prancing and followed by Boss Finley, Heavenly, and Tom Junior, with a tight grip on her arm, as if he were conducting her to a death chamber.

However—I can't and will not accept, tolerate, condone this threat of a blood pollution.

I call that incident a deplorable thing.

A hideous straw-stuffed effigy of myself, Tom Finley, was hung and set fire to in the main quadrangle of the college.

A hideous straw-stuffed effigy of myself, Tom Finley, was hung and set fire to in the main quadrangle of the college.