Mr. Garfinkel
from Unseen Character
(The living room sofa becomes the counter from which MR. GARFINKEL speaks to LAURA. At times he leans on the back of the sofa as if it were the grocery store counter. He lowers his head and furls his brow. He purses his lips. And rubs his hand across his mouth in a contemplative fashion.)
You know it’s going to be impossible for me to put this on your mother’s account. Little Laura, I’ve told you maybe a dozen times the same old story. Your mother still owes me nearly fifty dollars! You know what I could do with fifty dollars? I know what your mother could do with fifty dollars! She could pay me back is what she could do!
You’re not telling your mother, are you? You so afraid of your own mother that you’re not telling her what I’ve been telling you? Not telling her my philosophy on the present state of credit and IOUs.
Credit is a way for the delusional to get by. For the delusional to get. More. Everyone wants more than they need, but the delusional are the ones who find an unnatural way to obtain it. If you can’t afford it, then don’t get it. What is so necessary about a family getting a pound of butter? You going to butter your bread, butter your noodles, butter your ears of corn? If that’s the case, just don’t butter them! You can go without. It’s as simple as that!
We are not intended to be consumers of such excess and extravagance that we need to put something so frivolous as butter on an account that is to be paid later at an undetermined date. If you needed hamburger meat or hen eggs or smoked bacon or a loaf of bread or a bag of apples or a sack of taters, I might be more inclined to be a little bit more sympathetic! But butter? Heck, no, I don’t have a lot of compassion for a family who wants a pound of butter!
Now I know your family doesn’t make a lot of money. I can tell by the sleeves on your coat. That’s not even your coat. That coat doesn’t fit you. You mean to tell me that you got only one coat between two women, and you want to put a pound of butter on your mother’s account?
Go put a jacket on a layaway plan, don’t be shopping here for borrowed butter. Now I admit that I myself live paycheck to paycheck, but you are doing something entirely worse.
The character of a family should not be based on wanting something that they do not have. You should not want what you haven’t got. Otherwise you just start coveting! And we all know what coveting is! Coveting’s a sin. Tell your mother that. Tell your mother that Mr. Garfinkel says, “Getting borrowed butter leads to stolen sins.” 
Unseen Character (part 2): Introduction and Menu
Review | My Friend Tom: The Poet-Playwright Tennessee Williams by William Jay Smith