"Let's be new people."
"What?"
"Let's be new people, completely new people, people who don't know each other and never did. We'll have no past and no future, nothing, it'll be like we just met right now."
"That would be very difficult."
"Why?"
"Because it would mean I've broken into your apartment."
"Stop it, I'm being serious."
"Is this even possible?"
"I don't know. I never tried it with anyone before."
"Neither have I."
"Do you want to try? It'll be like a game. We'll just, just start over."
"I don't know, man. There's a lot of history. It's not like you can just forget..."
"Sure, we can forget. Maybe we could forget. You know, I know I could forget."
"You never remember anything anyway. Ever since I've known you. You can't remember where we went to dinner the last time we saw each other."
"That's not true."
"Then where?"
"Okay, I have a lot going on in my life, I can't remember exactly where or even when, but I remember. I mean, I remember, the gist..."
"The gist?"
"The spirit. The spirit of our last meeting."
"Ah yes, the spirit, that would be hard to forget, wouldn't it?"
"And that's just want I want to do. That's what we should do. Just for a little while."
"A little while? There are many, many spirits to forget, in this case. I think it might take more than a little while."
"I could. I would. You could too."
"It's too easy for someone like you. That's what I don't understand. How can it be so easy for someone like you?"
"Someone like me?"
"Someone so smart and funny...How can you choose to forget, to ignore, not just this, just, everything?"
"It just is. It just is. That's all. That's it. Like a zebra. Like a zebra having stripes. These are just my stripes. It's just the way I am. I'm smart enough not to question it. It's just how I am. How I was made, decorated."
"Look, I admire your stripes, the stripedness of them, but I don't understand them or where they come from and I certainly don't want them hanging up on my wall."
"I should hope not."
"Most people would. Most people would take one look at a girl's stripes like yours and the first thing they'd do is get out their knife and skin you up good. Skin you up so there was nothing left of you underneath, just the stripes on top. Would you like that?"
"It sounds like bliss. Momentary bliss. But bliss. But not you, right?"
"No, not me."
"Why not? Don't think you could catch me?"
"I'm afraid I would."
"You never know. That's why we play this game, right?"
"I'm tired. Must sleep. I'm leaving tomorrow. Early."
"C'mon....Please! Try. For me."
"Okay, what time is it?"
"Ten of twelve."
"Yeah, for like, I don't know, a half hour we'll be strangers, okay. Tabula Raza. And then I have to go to bed."
"It doesn't have to be like that, y'know, so practical all the time. You were always so practical."
"Well, you know me."
"Yeah, I do."
"So how do we do this? How does one, or two, begin to forget?"
"It's amazing, five minutes ago, when I first had the idea, it was perfect, I swear I could have written a dissertation on how two people can disappear completely together, but now, I really don't even know anymore."
"Hey..."
"I assumed there was complicity."
"Complicity?"
"Between you and me. An innate complicity. But there's none, is there?"
"I don't...
"I don't know what I was thinking with you...You don't even know me at all."
"I just don't...
"You dummy. You're so dumb, you know that? All I've ever wanted to do is forget, and all you've ever wanted to do is remember.
"Those are my stripes."
"Well, you can only hang out in between for so long before one or the other breaks."
"So which one of us is it going to be? Who's going to break?"
"Guess we're going to find out."
"I guess so."
"Well, it's about time."
"Would you shutup and turn out the light?"
"Yeah."
Atlanta to Los Angeles
