Chapter 10 of 19 · 4'38"
Joe flees Norma's mansion for a New Year's Eve party at Artie Green's apartment, where the guests are broke writers and hopeful actresses. He asks to crash on the couch, then runs into Betty Schaefer, the reader who once hurt his pride. Their talk about his old story, "Dark Windows", turns barbed before turning warm.
❝ Monologue · 6 lines Joe's escape
Six voice-over lines move from suffocation to noise, painting a whole room of hopeful failures.
Joe Asks Artie for the Couch
Betty Meets Joe Again
Life Can Be Beautiful
Unable to stand Norma's house any longer, Joe drives to Artie Green's apartment on Las Palmas, where a New Year's party is in full swing. He asks Artie to put him up for a couple of weeks and takes the spare couch. Then he meets Betty Schaefer, who says she has been rereading his old stories.
Joe tells himself he just needs to hear people laugh again, but the party is also an escape from a life that is swallowing him. The guests are all chasing the same dream that has passed him by, and he fits right in: "A bunch of kids who didn't give a hoot just so long as they had a yuk to share." Moving in with Artie is his attempt to get back to his own world, and Betty is the door. Their exchange starts as a grudge — Joe asks if she came "to recover that knife you stuck in my back" — and turns into the first honest conversation he has had in a long time, about a flashback she finds "worthy of notice." For once, someone is talking to Joe about his work, not about Norma.
A1–C2 is the CEFR scale. Cards above the level you pick fade, and playback will not auto-pause on them.
“A bunch of kids who didn't give a hoot just so long as they had a yuk to share.”
One sentence catches a generation of broke kids who cared only for a shared laugh.
Informal
“It just so happens we have a vacancy on the couch.”
The mock-formal wording makes an offer of a couch sound like a rental listing.
Informal
“- Thanks. - I've been hoping to run into you.”
It dresses a deliberate search as a casual coincidence.
Neutral
“Wait a minute. This is the woman I love. What's going on? Who was loaded?”
A pun on the film title Bases Loaded turns a jealous moment into a running gag.
Informal
“- Now why don't you use that character... - Who wants true? Who wants moving?”
Two blunt questions voice the cynicism of a man who has sold out.
Informal
“Suddenly I find myself terribly afraid of losing you.”
The movie-within-a-movie lets the line stay both playful and sincere.
literary
I didn't know where I was going. I just had to get out of there. I had to be with people my own age. I had to hear somebody laugh again. I thought of Artie Green. There was bound to be a New Year's shindig going on in his apartment down on Las Palmas. Writers without a job, composers without a publisher, actresses so young they still believe the guys in the casting offices. A bunch of kids who didn't give a hoot just so long as they had a yuk to share.
Up next · 11sell on somethingThe scene: Norma Sends Her Script to DeMilleHe has been isolated with her for months and wants to be around people his own age. He says he just had to get out and hear somebody laugh again.
He asks Artie if he can put him up for a couple of weeks, and Artie jokes that there is a vacancy on the couch. Joe takes it on the spot.
It means someone is nearly right but not quite. Artie guesses wrong about where Joe got his coat, and Joe delivers the phrase as a friendly put-down.
She works in Sheldrake's office and is the reader who once criticized Joe's story. At the party she tells him she has been rereading his old work, and they begin talking about a scene she liked.
