by Kilian King

Scene 6

Nat comes in, fusses around the space a bit, is careful not to engage with Gordon. She sits down and demonstratively reads her big Bruegel book. There is a cup of tea on the coffee table in front of it. She looks at it.

GORDON: It’s tea.
NAT: I can see that.
GORDON: I made you tea.
NAT: Do you want a medal?
GORDON: Not particularly, you just looked a little confused.
Nat rolls her eyes and drinks, and spits it back again.
NAT: When did you make this?
GORDON: About four hours ago, why?
NAT: Oh Gordon. She looks at him lovingly.
GORDON still looking at his phone: If I ask you how your day was will you stop looking at me like that?
NAT: Do you actually want to know about my day?
GORDON: Depends. Did anything interesting happen?
NAT: I remembered more of my vision.
GORDON: Your vision?
NAT: You know, about the painter. Pieter the painter. And the whimsical peasants and everything.
GORDON: It’s called a dream.
NAT: See, I knew you would say that, but it can’t be a dream, because I had never heard of him before or seen his paintings. Therefore, a vision.
GORDON: You must have seen something about him.
NAT: I’ve been wracking my brains and I really don’t think I have. Or had. Until the vision.
GORDON: Hmm.
NAT: Oh, oh, and I also ran into Kirsty, and we agreed to have tea next week!
GORDON: Kirsty, now that is interesting.
NAT: What is your problem with her??
GORDON: You know she still thinks ‘pinteresque’ means ‘relating to moodboards’? NAT: And I’m sure you were very helpful and cleared up the confusion. you are honestly such a snob.
GORDON: I’m the snob? Have you forgotten the life drawing class in first year / where she refused
NAT: That was six years ago! And she’s so sweet and such a / staple of the
GORDON: Such a staple of the community.
NAT: Yes.
Beat
GORDON: I suppose I now need to share something interesting about my day?
NAT: That would be unimprovable.
GORDON: Well, did you know that in Berlin they read out phone numbers like full numbers. I was reading about it today. So if someone asked me for my number I would say four hundred forty-seven billion, five hundred fifty-three million, six hundred ten thousand, six hundred eleven. NAT: That can’t be true.
GORDON: And why not?
NAT: Come off it.
GORDON: I suppose it’s like compound nouns. You might not know this, but the Germans stick all their nouns into these very chic compounds.
NAT: I know about compound nouns, thank you very much.
GORDON: Then what is so hard to believe about compound numbers?
NAT: It just doesn’t make any sense, like, what’s the point?
GORDON: Not everything needs to have a point.
NAT: What, so it’s…?
GORDON: Cultural idiosyncracy.
NAT: What would it be in German then? Your phone number?
GORDON: I don’t know. People speak English / there anyway.
NAT: That can’t be true.
GORDON: I assure you they do, its very cosmopolitan.
NAT: No, how do you not know it when you spend all day learning your, your sentences?
GORDON: They haven’t got to the numbers yet.
NAT: Right.
Beat NAT: And you believe this article.
GORDON: I have a feeling for these things.
NAT: Because you’ve been to Berlin so many times.
GORDON: And you’ve been to a sixteenth century Flemish village so many times.
NAT: Okay, but that’s different, it really was like I was there. Not necessarily one particular real place, but like. Although, I remembered that Pieter lives in this little village called Erps Kwerps, and I looked it up and it is a real place.
GORDON: That’s nice.
NAT: And, I dunno, it just sort of got me thinking, wouldn’t it be nice to have a brewery? Like to start a brewery, here?
GORDON: A what?
NAT: A brewery. You know, for brewing.
GORDON: Brewing beer?
NAT: Yeah, I guess. Brewing beer.
GORDON: Why?
NAT: I dunno, just a thought I had. Actually that’s a lie, I do know. Because it’s a place where everyone in the co- in the village can come together, and they like harvest it and make it themselves, and its seasonal and everyone pitches in, and I dunno I just thought it would be really cute.
GORDON: Artisanal ales for the class conscious peasant?
NAT: well, sure, / something along
GORDON leaps up, pulls his shirt over his head, starts stamping up and down in the waste paper basket, and in an old crone voice: Get your Nat’s anarchist ale here, now with extra whimsy.
NAT: I think the feet thing is for wine actually.
GORDON: Anyway, why does it have to be a brewery? Not like, a tavern? Or, a church?
NAT: Do you want to go to church?
GORDON: Do you want to drink beer?
NAT: Not particularly, but, but! I have a name for a brewery! That’s how I got the idea actually. She looks expectantly at him.
GORDON: I’m listening.
NAT: Brew Hill.
Beat NAT: Get it? Brew Hill? Pieter Breughel [pronounced BREWill]?
GORDON: I’m almost certain that’s not how it’s said.
NAT: What? How else would you say it?
GORDON: Breughel [pronounced BROIgel].
NAT: No, surely not.
GORDON has started Googling and found the Wikipedia article
GORDON: Right, see here: pronounced presses the button and the voice reads BROIgel and AMERICAN
presses another button and an American voice reads BREWill.
NAT: Oh.
GORDON: Your anticapitalist brewery can’t have an American name.
NAT: That’s so weird. I guess I’ve just never heard it said.
GORDON: Did that not come up in the vision?
NAT: Well, he’s casual like that. He just said he was called Pieter.