THE LAST CARBURETOR Leon Chase Dramatic Karen, in her late twenties, is a former physics student who recently dropped out of graduate school. Now she works full-time as 4 waitress in a truck stop near her hometown in southeast Michigan. Keith, her former lover who left nearly a decade earlier for California, has unex- pectedly shown up at the truck stop. At this point, the two have sat down and begun to get reacquainted, and Karen is attempting to explain why she quit school. KAREN: (Snickering.) You wanna talk about the big picture? One night, a couple winters ago. It was snowing. I was out getting coffee with a bunch of people from my department. Serious quantum mechanics geeks. And let’s be honest, Keith, none of these people grew up on our side of town. You know what I mean. Expensive lattes and shit. So we're there, and we're all sitting by the window, going off about what we thought about this presentation on theoretical black mat- ter. Everybody's going out of their way to be real important, you know, all talking over each other. And I look outside, and right in front of us, on the other side of the big window, is this woman. Could be thirty, could be sixty. Obviously homeless. She's got on this pink coat, all dirty, and some kind of scarf on her head. Bags by her feet. She’s just standing there in the snow. And she’s screaming. I don’t mean just like begging. | mean she’s screaming, out loud. I realize that the people with me, inside, notice her too, but they're trying hard not to look. They're going along with this conversation, you know, staying really involved in this argument. Because nobody knows how to deal with a nontheoretical, live screaming human. I tried to look away. I mean, I really tried to focus and make myself forget about it. But all I could think was how stupid we sounded. After that, I just couldn't buy it anymore. I can’t explain it. I just couldn't . . . I couldn't be- lieve in it. + ste ;