NJGPA Practice Test 3

Closing Time at the Blue Kettle — a scene from a play by Imani Calloway

¹[The Blue Kettle, a narrow diner in a river town, 11:40 p.m. Chrome stools, a pie case with one wedge of lemon meringue left. DANIEL, in his fifties, wipes the counter in long, satisfied strokes. LENA, seventeen, refills sugar dispensers. A folded envelope sticks out of her apron pocket; she touches it whenever her father turns away. AUGUSTO, in his seventies, sits at the end of the counter with a cup of decaf he has not touched in an hour.]

²DANIEL: Forty-one customers tonight. On a Tuesday. You know what that is, Augusto?

³AUGUSTO: Tuesday.

⁴DANIEL: That's a sign. [He slaps the counter.] Lena, I talked to Fergus at the bank. We take the empty shop next door, knock through this wall—[He gestures grandly at the wall behind the pie case.]—and we double the seating. Booths. A real dining room. Your name on the window, under mine.

⁵LENA: Dad—

⁶DANIEL: "Daniel and Lena." Or "Lena and Daniel." I'm not proud. [He laughs.] You've got the hands for it. Your hash browns are better than mine, and I've been making hash browns since before you were born.

⁷LENA: [pulling the envelope halfway out] Dad, there's something I need to—

⁸DANIEL: [not hearing, already moving toward the wall] Picture it. Right here, a window into the kitchen so people can watch. People love to watch. [He knocks on the wall twice, as if testing whether it will answer.]

⁹[LENA pushes the envelope back into her pocket. AUGUSTO watches her over the rim of his cup.]

¹⁰AUGUSTO: [quietly, to LENA] He hears only the song he is already humming.

¹¹LENA: [just as quietly] He's been humming this one since I was nine.

¹²AUGUSTO: And you? What are you humming?

¹³[LENA does not answer. She screws a lid onto a sugar dispenser too tightly, then has to unscrew it.]

¹⁴DANIEL: [turning back] What are you two whispering about?

¹⁵AUGUSTO: Pie. I am thinking about the lemon.

¹⁶DANIEL: It's yours. On the house. [He slides the last wedge onto a plate.] Lena, remember when you were little and you stood on a milk crate right there and rang up Mrs. Gallo's order all by yourself? Eleven dollars and forty cents. No calculator.

¹⁷LENA: I remember. She paid with a hundred.

¹⁸DANIEL: She paid with a hundred! [He shakes his head, delighted.] I said to your mother that night, she's a natural. This place is in her blood.

¹⁹LENA: [carefully] Maybe it's in my blood because I've never been anywhere else.

²⁰[A pause. DANIEL looks at her, but the moment passes before it can become anything.]

²¹DANIEL: Well, where else would you want to be? [He laughs and picks up the trash bag.] I'll take this out. Then I'll show you the sketches. I drew booths.

²²[DANIEL exits through the back. The screen door bangs. LENA takes out the envelope and rereads the first lines, though she clearly knows them by heart.]

²³AUGUSTO: The cooking school? [as LENA looks up, startled] You have read that letter twelve times tonight. I am old, not blind.

²⁴LENA: Hollister Culinary Institute. In Chicago. They gave me a scholarship, and classes start in August. [beat] If I tell him, it's like telling him the last twenty years were for nothing.

²⁵AUGUSTO: Were they?

²⁶LENA: No. They're the reason I got in. I wrote my essay about this place.

²⁷AUGUSTO: Then perhaps he should read it.

²⁸[LENA hesitates. Then she props the envelope against the register, where no one could miss it, and hurries into the kitchen. DANIEL returns, sees the envelope, and opens it. He reads it. He reads it again. He sits down heavily on a stool. AUGUSTO eats his pie.]

²⁹DANIEL: [finally] Chicago.

³⁰AUGUSTO: It is a city with many diners. None of them has her hash browns.

³¹[LENA comes back in, drying her hands, and stops when she sees the letter in her father's hand. A long silence. DANIEL folds the letter along its creases, very precisely, and holds it out to her.]

³²DANIEL: [his voice not quite steady] The walk-in cooler needs a new gasket before August. And somebody's going to have to teach the new kid the hash browns. [beat] I'm not proud.

³³[LENA takes the letter. The lights fade on the three of them at the counter: DANIEL looking at the wall he was going to knock down, LENA looking at him, AUGUSTO finishing the last bite.]