Orpheus Descending # 2

VAL:
Listen! - When I was a kid on Witches' Bayou? After my folks all scattered away like loose chicken's feathers blown around by the wind? - I stayed there alone on the bayou, hunted and trapped out of season and hid from the law! - Listen! - All that time, all that lonely time, I felt I was - waiting for something!

LADY:
What for?

VAL:
What does anyone wait for? For something to happen, for anything to happen, to make things make more sense. ... It's hard to remember what that feeling was like because I've lost it now, but I was waiting for something like if you ask a question you wait for someone to answer, but you ask the wrong question or you ask the wrong person and the answer don't come.
Does everything stop because you don't get the answer? No, it goes right on as if the answer was given, day comes after day and night comes after night, and you're still waiting for someone to answer the question and going right on as the question was answered. And then - well - then. ...

LADY:
Then what?

VAL:
You get the make-believe answer.

LADY:
What answer is that?

VAL:
Don't pretend you don't know because you do!

LADY:
- Love?

Tennessee Williams