Something I'll Tell You Tuesday and The Loveliest Afternoon of the Year.

THE STORIES: SOMETHING I'LL TELL YOU TUESDAY. About to enter the hospital for treatment of what may be a more grave condition than the others suspect, Agnes reassures her husband, Andrew, and asks that they walk to the hospital together. But their daughter and son-in-law are on the way over to drive them, so they wait and are caught in a crossfire of bickering when the younger couple arrives. When the others go out to bring the car around, Agnes and Andrew take advantage of their absence to slip off. They are alone once more, just the two of them, as they were so many years ago before life and children and illness brought them to where they are now. They walk along slowly, enjoying the fine day, stopping for coffee, reminiscing about the past. And out of their serenity comes an odd but arresting fact. They realize that, looking back, what they miss most of all is what their daughter and her husband have now-the glorious, exhausting, infuriating, but exhilarating fights and the energy to make the most of them. This is what Agnes will speak of on Tuesday-knowing that in her daughter and her husband she sees, and yearns for, the Agnes and Andrew of forty years ago. (2 men, 3 women.) THE LOVELIEST AFTERNOON OF THE YEAR. He and She first meet when She is feeding pigeons in the park, and He asks her for the plastic favor at the bottom of the Crackerjack box. He tells her that his wife takes all his money, bends the coins in her teeth, and shoots at his feet with a rifle with a blue silencer. She doesn't know what to make of him, but they begin to meet regularly, and gradually more of his story comes out. He tells her he is a seeing-eye person for blind dogs; that years ago his sister Lucy's arm was ripped off by a polar bear in the park zoo and that as a result she became covered all over with white hair; and then that he doesn't have a wife at all. He embarrasses her by singing at the top of his lungs-and She begins to wonder if he is not utterly mad. She is lonely and wants to be married, but is that the answer? The sight of a fat woman pushing two gross children in a perambulator increases her doubts, but then she notices that a blind dog walks beside her, and everything begins to make strange, awful and rather dismaying sense. The fat woman pulls out a rifle with a blue silencer and fires. He and She fall, mortally wounded. Was it all true? Does He really have a sister named Lucy? With his dying breath He proclaims that he does, and they expire contentedly, reaching out for each other as they tumble to the ground. (1 man, 1 woman.)John Guare is the author of 'Something I'll Tell You Tuesday and The Loveliest Afternoon of the Year.' with ISBN 9780822207030 and ISBN 0822207036.