Act Two - Part 3
Happy
is at the restaurant where he will be meeting Biff and Willy.
He makes small talk with Stanley, the waiter, until he sees an attractive
girl come in. He starts to flirt
with her, telling her some white lies and buys her a drink, which she accepts.
Biff enters just then and does not seem very happy.
When Happy offers him the girl, telling her that Biff is the quarterback
of the New York Giants, Biff appears to have lost his confidence, saying that he
has just come from Bill Oliver’s. Happy
tells the girl to try to find one of her friends for Biff, and then sits down
with Biff.
Biff
is agitated, saying that he did a terrible thing and that he had no luck with
Bill Oliver. Biff relays that Bill
Oliver kept him waiting for six hours and did not even remember him when he
finally met with him for just a minute. Biff
calls himself foolish to have believed that he was even a salesman for Oliver
– he had only been a shipping clerk. To
top things off, Biff even steals a fountain pen from Oliver’s office, though
he does not know exactly why he does so. He
asks Happy to help him tell Willy the truth – that he is just not the type of
man a person just lends money to – but Happy refuses to do so, and instead
encourages Biff to continue deceiving Willy to make him happy.
Just
then Willy enters, and he is eager to find out how Biff’s visit with Bill
Oliver went. Biff bravely tries to
tell Willy the truth, but Willy does not want to hear what Biff is trying to
say. Instead, Willy tries to tell
Biff that he is wrong, and when Biff interrupts, Willy snaps back and says that
he does not want to hear any “crap” about the past since he was just fired
that day and all he is looking for now is some good news.
Biff
is shocked to hear the news and wants to know more about what happened to Willy,
but all Willy cares about is Biff’s story.
Biff keeps trying to tell Willy the truth, but Willy refuses to listen,
and Happy also interrupts to feed Willy’s version of the story.
According to Willy, Bill Oliver must have given Biff a warm welcome and
he must have endorsed the Loman Line idea.
Biff gets incredibly frustrated, saying that he cannot talk to Willy.
