Certainly, everyone's staring at him.
He should probably smile at mom to show he
wasn't making fun of the guest.
But on the way to mom's face, he gets
sidelined by the hairy eyeball he's
getting from the Nazi checking to see if he is making fun,
because, if he is, Vincent's going to kick his ass.
Is mom picking up on this?
Obviously, Danny's goofing on the guy.
What did the moron think they would order?
Macadamia pizza?
And why do they need to know about his loser allergy
problems?
Vincent narrows his eyes.
Whatever passes between him and Danny is silent, scary,
and over in a second, at the end of which Vincent chooses
to believe that Danny is making a joke,
but not a joke about him, and he laughs a jagged dog
bark that makes Max flinch.
Danny says, "Pepperoni," his brother's favorite.
He hates pepperoni, so there's usually a fight.
Danny says, "Mom, how generous of you.
Danny hates pepperoni," as if the guy needs to know.
She orders two large pies, one with pepperoni, one
with mushrooms and green pepper.
"15, 20 minutes," she says, first triumphant,
then defeated as she wonders what will
they do until the pizza arrives.
Max saves the day.
"Hey Danny, want to watch TV?"
"OK," says mom, "but come upstairs the minute I call.
Don't let the pizza get cold."
Usually she goes insane when he and Max get home and head
straight for the TV.
Danny grabs Max and fake-shoves him
down the stairs to dad's room.
They still call it dad's room, even though it's
been years since dad cleared out everything but the 36-inch TV
and a couple of beat-up couches.
He couldn't have found a better way to yank mom's chain.
She despises the humongous TV.
She never comes down to dad's room, but, then, she never did.
At the time, it had seemed normal.
But later, Danny wondered, "Wouldn't you
think something was wrong if your husband came home
from the office and spent every minute downstairs,
couch-potato-ed in front of the tube?"
Once again, his mom worries about everything
except the things she should've worried about,
which is what dad said once about Danny, so it
gets confusing.
Everyone fights with their parents about how long
they're allowed to watch TV.
But only Danny and Max get to fight about watching it
in their dad's old room on a television
so expensive mom can't make herself throw it out.
Brain-dead Max imagines he's getting the remote.
"What's on Chandler?" he says.
Danny grabs the changer--
"The usual bogus shit."
"Let's just see," pleads Max.
"Forget it, creep," says Danny.
It's strange how everyone watches Chandler.
It's really just a talk show.
And Chandler is an annoying, rich, black dude
who quit a million dollar corporate law job to get real,
get down with the street.
Last year, the network picked up his contract for $50 million,
so Chandler came out OK.
His show is such a big hit that it runs during the dinner hour
to compete with the news.
They advertise it that way.
The good news is on Chandler.
It's what all the mothers, except Danny's, watch
on those miniature TVs they set up in the kitchen for when
they're cooking.
What's doubly strange is how the kids in school
talk about what they see on Chandler.
And it's not just the teachers bringing it up.
Maybe it's because Chandler has shows that are actually
interesting, especially if you happen to be so stoned
his guests seem smart.
Every so often Chandler gets it right,
like that program with the high school kids talking
about global warming.
Not the usual geeks you see on those shows--
all the girls were hot and intelligent.
The guys were guys you'd be friends with.
But Danny is not in the mood for Chandler right now.
It's creepy that, when the skinhead was on Chandler,
Danny predicted that Maya and mom would
get a Nazi of their own.
Danny changes from the cartoon channel to MTV.
Then he hits the Mute button.
"Listen," he says, "do you know who that guy upstairs is?"
"Duh," Max says, "you and I watched that Chandler
together."
"Max, man, this is not some talk show guest.
Did you see the guy's arm?"
"I'm not stupid," Max says.
"We read Night last semester, asshole.
I hated it, remember?
I had to write that cut and paste poem with phrases
from the book."
"I still can't believe they made you read that.
They should have made you do Anne Frank," Max says.
"Plus, do you think I'm so retarded I
don't know where mom works?"
"Sorry," says Danny.
"I'm not saying you're retarded.
It's just weird is all."
"It is weird.
Mom's out of her fucking mind."
"Language," Danny imitates mom.
As he turns toward the big screen,
Max idly gives Danny the finger.
The two boys fall silent, attempting
to lip read what the moderately hot Asian girl is
saying through her tears.
"Put the sound on," Max says.
"Bite me," Danny replies.
The camera pulls back to show the Asian girl sitting
by the pool at night.
It's Key West.
Danny's seen this one before.
Zubeida has a drinking problem and has
been arguing with the other girls in the house.
Max says, "You think we should call dad?
Should we tell him about this guy?"
This is what Danny means about the gaps
in his brother's information-- for example, about who dad is.
Their father's a jerk who went to live in Manhattan
in a boring high-rise apartment with Lorraine,
the widow of his dead partner, Jeffrey.
Before she hooked up with Jeffrey,
Lorraine was the wife of Jeffrey's patient, who
died of a heart attack at 50.
Then Jeffrey died of a heart attack at 49.
Once, Danny overheard mom call Lorraine "the Black Widow."
Danny knew she was joking, but for a while, he was scared.
Dad is 48.
Dad is not a responsible grown-up
you can ask for advice and help.
Dragging dad into this will only make everything worse.
Danny says, "How can mom do this?
Can you explain that one thing?"
Two girls' faces fill the screen.
Danny raises the sound.
Amanda and Kirsten are agreeing that Zubeida should put herself
back in rehab.
"The guy's got no place to stay,"
Max says, "Otherwise, he wouldn't be here.
Mom's not going to leave him on the street.
That's not who mom is."
Trust genius Max to cut to the chase,
though Danny can't recall mom saying, in so many words,
the guy was homeless, but that's got to be the story.
So it's worse than Danny thought.
He could be here for months.
"Mom's just trying to be a good person,"
says Max, the middle school Dalai Lama.
No wonder their mother loves Max more.
Max is a better person than Danny
and so grown-up for his age.
"Brilliant." says Danny, "That's the most obvious thing
about mom.
Now tell me something I don't know."
"Pizza's here."
"Yes, mom."
Max runs upstairs.
Let the others go first.
Danny flips through the channels and stops,
frozen by the freaked out piglet face of Timothy McVeigh.
What a coincidence.
The guy's separated-at-birth twin
is upstairs, scarfing down pizza.
Danny trudges up to the kitchen, surprised
they've started without him.
"Danny," says mom, "get a chair."
Danny gets a chair from the living room
and pulls up next to Max.
Everyone's eating off real plates.
There are glasses, a carton of orange juice.
Mom has made a salad.
"La dee da," Danny says to the salad.
"Excuse me," says mom, "what was that?"
"Nothing," says Danny, "talking to myself."
His slice of pizza buckles, dumping
the cheese in a greasy plop at the bottom of the box.
He tears off a mouthful of soggy crust, chokes it down.
Then, just to see what will happen,
says, "They're delaying the McVeigh execution.
They found 3,000 pages of evidence
the FBI forgot to turn over."
"FBI slam ball," says Vincent.
Danny can't tell if Vincent knows that McVeigh looks just
like him.
"I think it's disgusting," mom says, "all that media frenzy.
Everyone's so bloodthirsty, wanting
to watch a human being die.
It's like the Roman Coliseum.
They should sell beer and popcorn
and kill the guy in Yankee Stadium.
I'd feel better about that than hearing
all this stuff about closure.
At least it would be honest.
I know he's a murderer.
I don't approve of what he did, but still."
Danny guesses he agrees.
But it's always so embarrassing when his mom gets fired up.
"Definitely," Vincent says, "The government loves killing.
What about those women and babies
they gassed and burned at Waco?
What about them sending in their crack SWAT team
to murder Randy Weaver's wife?"
"Yes, well, I don't know," mom's voice trails off.
"Of course, I don't believe in the death penalty
to start with."
Neither does Danny, exactly.
But hasn't mom ever seen the clips of those bloody babies
outside the Murrah Building?
Sometimes Danny worries about terrorists blowing up
the Tappan Zee Bridge when he and mom and Max are crossing.
He wishes he never thought like that.
Other kids don't seem to.
And he wishes he didn't suspect that he
has those fears because he's like mom.
"Were you watching the news?" mom says.
"At least it's the news.
I hate the boys watching TV."
"I try to stay away from TV," says
Vincent, "toxic parasite mind rot."
For all Danny knows, Vincent's one
of those guys who think the government
is beaming mind-control rays out of the TV screen.
The last thing Danny needs around
here is someone who, for whatever reason,
is on his mother's side about television.
"Actually, guys--" says Vincent.
"Vincent," says mom.
"Vincent's a reader, meaning--
unlike you two.
And guess what?
He didn't start reading until he was 25."
Danny and Max will never forgive her
for comparing them negatively to a Nazi.
[LAUGHTER]
Though it's possible that she's just
trying to reassure them that, underneath the lightning bolts,
the guy is a harmless book nerd.
He's reading Dostoevsky.
Danny says, "Who the fuck is Dostoevsky?"
Even though he knows.
"Danny," his mom says, "language!"
Max says, "So what do you guys do?
Like, beat up Black people and Jews?"
Jesus, Danny loves Max sometimes.
Right now, he's the perfect age, still trading on his little kid
right to ask inappropriate questions
but grown up enough to know what the right questions are.
When dad and mom announced they were splitting up,
Max asked if they still loved each other.
They both answered at the same moment.
Mom said, of course.
Dad said, not exactly.
And then dad said, I mean, of course.
"I never did," says Vincent, "but I knew guys who did."
"You don't know them now," Max says.
"I don't know them, and they don't know me," Vincent says.
"Good for you," says mom, "Boys, you
can't imagine the risk Vincent is taking.
He says there are guys, his former friends,
who won't like his quitting."
A familiar look comes over mom's face.
She wishes she hadn't said that.
She wishes she hadn't given in to the impulse
to share her fears with them.
Danny wishes she hadn't.
Now he's got one more thing to worry about.
They finished their pizza in silence.
Danny and Max clear the table, which they wouldn't usually do.
But they can't let mom do it, not in front of a stranger.
So maybe it's good she brought him home.
It feels like those first weeks after dad
left when everyone was practically
tiptoeing around the house.
Normal rules suspended-- like having a substitute teacher,
except you act better instead of worse.
After dinner, Danny and Max watched more TV.
Homework isn't mentioned.
Danny surfs the channels.
He keeps wondering what's happening upstairs.
The pressure is exhausting.
Danny drifts off several times before he wakes up
and finds Max asleep.
Propping his little brother up, he half
steers, half pushes him to his room, and dumps him on his bed.
In his own room, Danny lies awake,
trying to ignore the noises that always start at night, when
the world stops pretending to be its harmless, daytime self.
As a kid he'd been scared of the dark.
Way past the age when he would admit it,
he used to make mom come to his room
and stay with him until he fell asleep.
He pretended he just wanted to talk.
Once, he overheard dad tell mom that kids weren't smart enough
to know what to be scared of.
The proof, he said, was the children
were scared of the dark and not of death and airplanes.
Now Danny is old enough to be scared of all that and more.
How humiliating to be 16 and still afraid of the dark.
Maybe he should phone one of his friends
or go online and see if anyone's awake.
He'd like to talk to Chloe.
She always makes him feel better.
But what would he say?
He can't tell Chloe how nervous he is.
So there's nothing to do but lie here and listen
to the noises that spooked him as a kid.
Relax, it's only the footsteps of the Nazi moving in.
Thanks.
[LAUGHTER]
[APPLAUSE]