Baxter Picks Up Mrs. MacDougall, Explained：might as well

What's really going on

The scene is the film's idea of a pickup, and it plays like a comedy routine because neither person is really available. Baxter is still heartbroken over a woman, which he admits sideways: "She may be a girl but she is no friend of mine." Mrs. MacDougall is married to a man in a Havana jail and carries his photograph like a talisman. So the flirtation is mostly talk — two people performing desire they do not feel for each other. Baxter's patter is all self-mockery: he calls himself a notorious sexpot and jokes that he has promised his body to the Columbia Medical Center. The joke is that a man this lonely has learned to make loneliness sound like charm, and the woman across from him is willing to play along because the alternative is going home alone.

Theme

このチャプターで学べること

• Baxter's joke about his apartment hides real loneliness.
• Margie plays along because she is lonely too.
• The body-donation gag keeps the scene from turning sad.
• Closing time frames the whole encounter as a last resort.

発音のポイント

• Where'll we go — Where'll collapses into a light wher-ull.
• Might as well — Might as links into a my-ta-z sound.
• got a — The t in got a can flap into a soft d sound.