Before Midnight Page #4

Celine puts the phone away.

12.

CELINE:

God. I love your mom. You're always

so hard on her.

JESSE:

It's because you missed the f***ed

up years. You're just getting the

good era.

CELINE:

The "f***ed up years." That reminds

me, talking about f***ed up... did I

ever tell you the story of my little

Cleopatra kitty? No? Okay, I think

you would remember if I did. When I

was a little girl I had this cat

named Cleopatra and every spring she

would jump the fence and get pregnant

and always end up with a litter of

exactly two kittens.

JESSE:

Two kitties?

CELINE:

Two kitties. Every time, every year,

two cats. I mean it was just...

amazing. Then one day, I was around

30 and I was having lunch with my

Dad, I was remembering, mentioning

little Cleopatra and he was like '

the hardest thing I ever had to do

was to kill those cute little kittens'and

I was like WHAT? It turns out-listen

to this--there were sometimes

up to 7 kittens in that litter--

JESSE:

Oh, no.

CELINE:

But he would take five of them-

JESSE:

Oh, no.

CELINE:

--Put them into a plastic bag with a

bunch of ether.

JESSE:

(laughs)

That's terrible.

13.

CELINE:

He had forgotten the lie he and my

mom had told me as a kid.

JESSE:

How did he decide which ones he wanted

to kill?

CELINE:

Well, I actually asked him that.

Did you take the fluffiest, cutest?

He just started to cry.

JESSE:

Oh.

CELINE:

Poor Daddy.

They realize they're driving by some ancient ruins.

CELINE (CONT'D)

Oh, we said we were going to stop.

They wanted to see the ruins.

JESSE:

Yeah, but should we?

CELINE:

Well, Ella really wanted to.

JESSE:

Yeah, but should we wake them up?

CELINE:

I don't know.

JESSE:

You know what, let's do this. On

our way back to the airport we can

catch them.

CELINE:

You know we won't.

JESSE:

Yeah, probably not.

CELINE:

Okay.

JESSE:

We'll be like, so long, ancient ruins!

What's so great about you anyway?

14.

CELINE:

Psh! Seen one, seen them all! Oh

my god, we are shitty parents. We

should have stopped.

JESSE:

Aw, it's okay.

CELINE:

It's culture. Come on, go back.

JESSE:

Ah, we gotta put some character in

these kids somehow, you know what I

mean?

CELINE:

Yeah, yeah.

JESSE:

We're teaching them a valuable lesson,

you know. You snooze, you lose in

this world.

CELINE:

And when the girls are in rehab,

recovering from ten years of addiction

to coke and speed, they'll say, "oh,

we just never felt comfortable going

to sleep because our daddy always

used to tell us, "you snooze, you

lose." And that'll be your fault

again.

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