Two characters. Two pre-recorded audio tracks. Going nuts.

Hello... I'm trying to put together a simple animated "conversation" between two different characters. Both characters have their continuous dialogue pre-recorded on a different track that I edited in Audition. For example:

Track 1 (Pete): Hi Bob. How are you? Nice night for a walk, eh?

Track 2 (Bob): Hi Pete. I'm great. Actually, I think it's awful and you're a jerk.

I've imported each audio track, then placed it onto the timeline with its corresponding puppet. Following the online help I've seen here, I've begun to "split" my continuous pre-recorded audio track for each character, then lining each chunk up in order to get the audio chunks timed correctly with each other. For example:

Pete: Hi Bob.

Bob: Hi Pete.

Pete: How are you?

Bob: I'm great.

Pete: Nice night for a walk, eh?

Bob: Actually, I think it's awful and you're a jerk.

Here's the problem: Every time I "split" the audio, it creates another audio track! Huh?!? So... effectively, I now have a separate track for each line of dialogue a puppet character has. This is... not... efficient. It may even make this project nearly impossible, given the short bursts of words each character fires back and forth at each other.

What am I doing wrong? Can you merge audio layers? Relocate these audio snippets to a single layer? This CAN'T be the most effective way to compile a simple animated scene between two characters...

(arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgh!)