Slumped bodies half-filled the seats in the audience. Two men exchange lines near a park bench on stage, one named Peter, the other named Jerry. Peter is in a suit and carries a book, probably A Tale of Two Cities or something else by Dickens, while Jerry is clumsily dressed and hides a knife. The two men talk while the voyeurs watch, though they begin to lose interest. As Jerry pleads, “It's just that if you can't deal with people, you have to make a start somewhere. WITH ANIMALS! Don't you see? A person has to have some way of dealing with SOMETHING. If not with people ... SOMETHING!” a man in the third row yawns.

And perhaps the audience is too old, or they simply don’t care about Peter and Jerry, but two young people in the last row of the tiny black box theatre watch without ever looking away. The boy leans forward, taking deep breaths. The girl grips her armrest until her fingers hurt and go numb. Finally, the men raise their voices at one another, waking up a woman in the fourth row. They struggle over the knife before Peter runs off stage and Jerry bleeds to death on the park bench. As the grandmas and the grandpas stand to applaud, the boy doesn’t move and the girl wipes her eyes with her sleeves.

The car speeds down neighborhood streets, taking wide turns, while they rapidly talk about the two men, one with the book and one with the knife. They try to quote them, recounting the story of the dog, the poisoned hamburger, the parakeets making dinner, and the cats setting the table. When they get home they go to their room to kiss and turn off the lights and take their clothes off and to get underneath the covers. After they stare off into the darkness of the room, neither saying anything. Eventually she turns away and when he tries to put his arm around her she says “Please don’t touch me.”