INSPECTION BY JEFFREY LO (DOWNLOAD PDF HERE)
JOE C and ELENA C walk inside of JOE’s restaurant.
JOE: And here it is.
ELENA: What?
JOE: This is it.
ELENA: Ano?
JOE: My restaurant!
ELENA: Ito? This is your restaurant?
JOE: Yeah!
ELENA: Where are your customers?
JOE: Ma –
ELENA: You won’t make any money in a restaurant if you have no customers, Joe.
JOE: Ma, it’s not open yet. That’s why I brought you here. To show it to you before anyone else.
ELENA: Why?
JOE: What do you mean, why? Because you’re my mom!
ELENA: I’ve always been your mom. You don’t show me everything before you show anyone else.
JOE: Well, this is my first restaurant.
ELENA: Ok…
JOE: And… Well… Come on, you know.
ELENA: I know what?
JOE: My first experiences eating food is the food you cooked.
ELENA: Actually your first experience eating is the milk from my body.
JOE: Yeah, yeah, you know what I mean mom. You know – we can just go back –
ELENA: I’m kidding. Thank you for thinking of me. This is very nice.
JOE: You like it?
ELENA: I’m not talking about the restaurant! I’m talking about being with you. It’s nice.
JOE: Oh.
ELENA: I’m kidding again! The restaurant is nice too.
JOE: You sure?
ELENA: Yes…
JOE: Promise?
ELENA: Yes! Stop being so insecure!
JOE: Because if you don’t like it… I’ll have to apologize to you about something…
ELENA is suddenly suspicious.
ELENA: What…
JOE: Nothing…
ELENA: What did you do?
JOE: Nothing!
JOE walks up to a curtain covering a space on his wall.
JOE: It’s just… this might embarrass you.
ELENA: What did you do Joe!?
JOE takes the curtain down, revealing the name of the restaurant – ELENA C’s.
Next to the name of the restaurant is a warm, and beautiful photo of ELENA C feeding food to JOE as a child.
ELENA: What is this?
JOE: Our name.
ELENA: You named –
JOE: it after you… After the woman who inspired me to cook. To create my own food…
ELENA: Joe…
JOE: And it took a long time to find a photo of you being nice to me…
ELENA (Jokingly hitting JOE): Lintik ka talaga!
JOE laughs.
JOE hugs his mom.
ELENA looks at the photo while in her son’s arms.
JOE: This is for you.
Pause.
A lovely moment for the two of them.
Beat.
ELENA: Well then you better not go out of business. This has my name on it.
Blackout.
END OF PLAY.