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and masculine laugh ]: About five hundred women would like to know what was said in this room.
    [ They share a soft laugh. ]
    BIFF: Remember that big Betsy something—what the hell was her name—over on Bushwick Avenue?
    HAPPY [ combing his hair ]: With the collie dog!
    BIFF: That’s the one. I got you in there, remember?
    HAPPY: Yeah, that was my first time—I think. Boy, there was a pig! [ They laugh, almost crudely. ] You taught me everything I know about women. Don’t forget that.
    BIFF: I bet you forgot how bashful you used to be. Especially with girls.
    HAPPY: Oh, I still am, Biff.
    BIFF: Oh, go on.
    HAPPY: I just control it, that’s all. I think I got less bashful and you got more so. What happened, Biff? Where’s the old humor, the old confidence? [ He shakes BIFF’S knee. BIFF gets up and moves restlessly about the room. ] What’s the matter?
    BIFF: Why does Dad mock me all the time?
    HAPPY: He’s not mocking you, he—
    BIFF: Everything I say there’s a twist of mockery on his face. I can’t get near him.
    HAPPY: He just wants you to make good, that’s all. I wanted to talk to you about Dad for a long time, Biff. Something’s—happening to him. He—talks to himself.
    BIFF: I noticed that this morning. But he always mumbled.
    HAPPY: But not so noticeable. It got so embarrassing I sent him to Florida. And you know something? Most of the time he’s talking to you.
    BIFF: What’s he say about me?
    HAPPY: I can’t make it out.
    BIFF: What’s he say about me?
    HAPPY: I think the fact that you’re not settled, that you’re still kind of up in the air . . .
    BIFF: There’s one or two other things depressing him, Happy.
    HAPPY: What do you mean?
    BIFF: Never mind. Just don’t lay it all to me.
    HAPPY: But I think if you got started—I mean—is there any future for you out there?
    BIFF: I tell ya, Hap, I don’t know what the future is. I don’t know—what I’m supposed to want.
    HAPPY: What do you mean?
    BIFF: Well, I spent six or seven years after high school trying to work myself up. Shipping clerk, salesman, business of one kind or another. And it’s a measly manner of existence. To get on that subway on the hot mornings in summer. To devote your whole life to keeping stock, or making phone calls, or selling or buying. To suffer fifty weeks of the year for the sake of a two-week vacation, when all you really desire is to be outdoors, with your shirt off. And always to have to get ahead of the next fella. And still—that’s how you build a future.
    HAPPY: Well, you really enjoy it on a farm? Are you content out there?
    BIFF [ with rising agitation ]: Hap, I’ve had twenty or thirty different kinds of job since I left home before the war, and it always turns out the same. I just realized it lately. In Nebraska when I herded cattle, and the Dakotas, and Arizona, and now in Texas. It’s why I came home now, I guess, because I realized it. This farm I work on, it’s spring there now, see? And they’ve got about fifteen new colts. There’s nothing more inspiring or—beautiful than the sight of a mare and a new colt. And it’s cool there now, see? Texas is cool now, and it’s spring. And whenever spring comes to where I am, I suddenly get the feeling, my God, I’m not gettin’ anywhere! What the hell am I doing, playing around with horses, twenty-eight dollars a week! I’m thirty-four years old, I oughta be makin’ my future. That’s when I come running home. And now, I get here, and I don’t know what to do with myself. [ After a pause ] I’ve always made a point of not wasting my life, and everytime I come back here I know that all I’ve done is to waste my life.
    HAPPY: You’re a poet, you know that, Biff? You’re a—you’re an idealist!
    BIFF: No, I’m mixed up very bad. Maybe I oughta get married. Maybe I oughta get stuck into something. Maybe that’s my trouble. I’m like a boy. I’m not married, I’m not in business, I just—I’m like a boy. Are you content, Hap?