NateI, uh, think Mr. Suarez kinda shit himself. Is that normal?
You stopped to eat? Do you have any respect for human life at all?
Nate
I have a huge respect for human life! I just didn't know that they can take a dump when they're dead!
Well, they can. Make a note of it!
Boys, I don't like this bickering.
Yeah, and I don't like you sleeping with hairdressers. [Ruth slaps David. David walks away, followed by Nate]
Nate
Look, don't take this out on Mom. What is it that you want to say to me?
Well, there's a body that's spent over two hours in a van. Unrefrigerated. Decomposing at a rate much faster than you could ever imagine. Thanks for making my life just that much more difficult. Thanks for undermining my authority with our employees. And thanks for making so clear to me that my choice to dedicate myself to this business and to this family was really stupid, because apparently I would have be rewarded just the same for wasting my life.
Nate
Oh, my life is a waste? Well, fuck you. At least I enjoy it.
Nate
Dave, at least let me help.
[Nate and David have lunch at a diner with Matt Gilardi from Kroehner Services International and talk about their decision to not sell Fisher & Sons.]
MGMatt Gilardi
Okay, I'll make it simple; you either accept my offer by the end of the day or I'll make it my personal mission to bury you by the end of the month. David, you in on this suicide mission?
You just threatened my family.
MGMatt Gilardi
Let's not be melodramatic.
What do you expect us to do? Run and hide, sell and be grateful, pack up and move?
MGMatt Gilardi
If you're smart.
You have the entire Kroehner organization behind you, and what do we have? You. Because one day when your mind isn't on Fisher & Sons, I will find you or someone you love. [Gilardi laughs.] I'm not saying anyone's going to die. There are tragedies far worse things than death: things you couldn't even dream of, you spineless, candy-ass, corporate fuck. Just give me a reason. It's your decision. Are we worth the trouble, Mr. Gilardi? [Gilardi looks nervously at David.] Lunch is over, get lost.
Nate
[to Matt Gilardi] Are you deaf? [Gilardi leaves.]
You don't really believe in God, do you?
Nate
Well yeah. I mean, I don't believe in a bearded little old man up in a cloud but I believe in something. Some sort of undefinable creative force.
I think it's all just totally random.
Nate
Really?
Yeah. We live, we die. Ultimately, nothing means anything.
Nate
How can you live like that?
I don't know. Sometimes I wake up so fucking empty that I wish I'd never been born, but what choice do I have?
So I'm walking along one day, and this asshole stops me and asks me if I'm all right. He says I got a look. He'd seen a man with that same look once and had ignored it, and that man had jumped out a nine-story window. You know the reconstruction involved in a death like that? This business gets under your skin, it's like a fucking virus. They can even see it on your face, smell it on you.
Nate
What the hell is this place, this music? Since when did you listen to the Classics IV? What the hell did you do here? Who the hell are you?
So many questions. Why couldn't you ask 'em when I was still alive? It's okay, I couldn't answer most of them anyway, unlike now. Now I'm a fucking prophet.
Nate
All right.
Think I'm kiddin,' buddy boy? That's one of the perks of being dead: you know what happens after you die – and you know the meaning of life.
Nate
That seems fairly useless.
Yeah, I know – life is wasted on the living.
Nate
Could've told me you were proud of me.
Never around for me to tell, which is exactly what I was proud of you for. Therein lies your Catch-22.
Nate
So what's the meaning of life?
Nate
I don't know. Will it fuck me up if I do?
You know, it's polite for the first person downstairs to make the coffee even if that person has a penis!
Nate
Well, you know, it's also polite for the first person who uses the bathroom to spend less than 45 minutes in there even if that person has a vulva.
[entering] Oh goodness, everyone's here.
With all their genitalia.
Nate
What about you saying that things happen that leave marks … in people, in space, in time?
Yeah, that's physics. Energy affecting matter. Talking to dead people is delusional.
Nate
So you definitely don't believe in any kind of a life after death?
I think people live on through the people they love and the things they do with their lives … if they manage to do things with their lives.
Nate
But that's it, that's it? That's all there is, there's nothing more, there's nothing like bigger?
Nate
But there's no plan, no—
No, there's definitely no plan. Just survival. Should I have ordered the salmon?
Nate
Uh, I don't know. How can you live like that? I mean, what if you found out you were gonna die tomorrow?
I've been prepared to die tomorrow since I was six years old.
Nate
Really?
Yeah, pretty much. We never got butter.
Nate
Well, why, since you were six?
Because I read a report on the effect nuclear war would have on the world, and it was pretty clear to me at that point that this was definitely gonna happen.
Nate
When you were six?
And I wake up every day pretty much surprised that, um … everything is still here.
Nate
Well, I don't understand how you can live like that.
Well, I thought we all did.
Maybe Emily Previn was autistic. I read an article once about a high-functioning autistic person who didn't need people. She just had a job designing these big cattle slaughterhouses. At night, she came home and sat in a machine that made her feel like she was being hugged. And that was all the intimacy she needed.
Nate
That's really upsetting.
I don't see why this person has to be mentally ill just because she had a life that doesn't conform to some familiar image that we have in our heads. Maybe she was living the life she wanted. The life without the hassle of other people.
What kind of a life is that?
[Nate and Brenda are talking about the book she is writing.]
Nate
Well, who's Christina? Is that your fictional alter ego? Your Holden Caulfield?
She's more like my Humbert Humbert. [Nate stares blankly] You know, my Constance Chatterley. [Nate looks slightly confused] She's like Hermione in the Harry Potter books.
Nate
What would you rather have: some overly-educated gasbag like Trevor … or a semi-literate fuck machine like me? Come on.
That's a no-brainer, no pun intended.
Nate
Oh, you know what? You don't want to be with me, then don't, alright?
Nate, I'm kidding, come on... Of course I want to be with you, I love you!
Nate
Yeah? Well then why do you treat me like shit all the time?
Because I had a really fucked up life and I use sarcasm to hide how ridiculously vulnerable I really am... Hey, come on, Jesus, you know that.
Six Feet Under · 225 quotes
