At Stately Yost Manor, Cissy is taking another trip to Flavor Country courtesy of her cigarettes when Butchie slinks in and asks whether Shaun is still being held under lock and key. Who wants to know? Cissy asks. Rather than go through a whole "Well, certainly not Tina, whom I was definitely not conversing with at my hotel room just a little while back" routine, Butchie cuts straight to the chase: "She wants to meet her son." Cissy finds the pronoun-noun combination in that request odd: "Her son?" she asks sarcastically. Butchie points that Tina is looking to retire from the business, but Cissy finds the use of the word "business" even more laughable. "Smiling for the camera while six guys come in your face," she sneers. Yes, but that's just the romantic-comedy genre. Butchie becomes less deferential: "Just one visit, and she's gone," he says, with growing irritation. Nobody tells Cissy Yost what to do, and certainly nobody challenges her to a voice-raising competition. "It's not your business," she practically spits. "And if it were your business, tell me what good could possibly come out of letting him meet her?"

Butchie volunteers that he is the President for Life of the Tina-Blake-Can-Go-Fuck-Herself Club -- his words, not mine, but right is right. Besides, if she doesn't get to see Shaun, Butchie frets, "I think she might do something stupid." "Because everything up until now has been high math," Cissy retorts. What Butchie means is that Tina might kill herself; that sound you hear is Cissy playing the world's smallest violin to accompany the wocka-chicka soundtrack of Tina's next movie. "Who doesn't think about killing herself?" Cissy demands. "Who doesn't think about it every day of her fucking life?" Uh...people with grounded stable home lives? I'm just spitballing here. But enough hating on Tina -- let's direct some wrath Butchie's direction. "I thought you were an idiot before you started shooting dope," Cissy sneers. "But you were a 12-year-old genius compared to the stupid fuck you are now. As much acid as I took, I was never as stupid as you." See, this gets back to that whole stable home life crack I made earlier. And on that uplifting observation, Butchie exits stage right. Cissy calls after him that if Tina comes near Shaun, "she won't have to kill herself, I'll do it for her." As if to underscore that that's a promise, not a threat, Cissy goes to the hall closet, takes out a shoebox and pulls out the kind of snub-nosed revolver people used to use in 1940s gangster movies.