Barking at Butterflies and other stories

The Beheading

The paid previews had begun on the day before Easter.

I spent Easter Sunday with my family in the country, and then packed a bag on Monday afternoon and left for an apartment on West Tenth Street in the Village, graciously loaned to me by two friends who were spending Easter week in Chicago. The apartment was small and comfortable, with one bedroom, a tiny kitchen overlooking an enclosed back yard, and a living room with a real wood-burning fireplace. In the bedroom fronting on Tenth, there was a large double bed with brass headboard and footboard, covered with an opulent red brocade bedspread. A reading lamp hung over the bed on the wall, a radio-alarm clock was on the bedstand beside it, and a note from Dotty was pinned to one of the pillows:

I read the note and settled in. Actually, there wasn’t very much settling to do since I’d packed only one bag with a half-dozen clean shirts, a sweater, socks, a pair of pajamas, a toothbrush and my own electric razor. I felt strange in an apartment in New York City. Natalie and I had moved to the country shortly before our first child was born. Peter was ten when the play went into rehearsal, which meant that we had been living in the old gray-shingled Cape Cod for close to eleven years. The house had a widow’s walk, and once — while we were still negotiating for rights to the play, and I stayed late in the city over too many martinis — Natalie stood waiting for me on the narrow platform running around the second story of the house, her hands clasped in the classic pose of the seafarer’s wife, back straight, head erect, silhouetted against the dying sun.

I missed her that first night alone in the city. The automobile sounds below seemed incessant. At three a.m., I heard a girl laughing and thought for an insane moment that Natalie was with me in the bedroom. I got out of bed and walked to the window. The girl was wearing a green dress. She was blond, and she was leaning against her escort, helpless with laughter, one hand draped languidly on his shoulder. I went back to bed, and at last I fell asleep. The radio-alarm went off at nine the next morning. Rehearsal was scheduled to start at ten.

By noon, I knew what had to be done.

I suppose I should explain that a strange sort of self-hypnosis gradually overcomes the people working on a play. The writing of a play is a solitary task, but once it has been optioned for production it becomes of necessity a group effort. I used to think that the only pure production of a play was the one the author saw on the stage of his mind while he was writing it. There was no human error then, no actor who might nullify a character through inadequacy or misinterpretation, no director who might call for an emotion never intended, no designer who might visualize a setting contrary to the one the author imagined. There was, instead, a marvelously unique creation, a newborn child who miraculously was not the result of any collaboration, who (as ugly as he may have been) seemed radiantly beautiful to his only parent. I used to think that a play was not only being written while it was in the typewriter, it was being staged and performed and cheered by capacity audiences as well.

I now know that a play is nothing but a manuscript until it is put on the boards. It is only then that it comes to life, and the life it realizes is sometimes quite different, and very often immeasurably better than the one it aspired to on paper.

We had been rehearsing my play for five weeks, and we had nine days of previews still ahead of us, with two performances on Wednesday and another two on Saturday. I had, of course, rewritten many scenes in the play even before we went into production, and I had since rewritten almost half of the second act. I had watched our cast of six explore their respective roles, come to grips with the characters they were portraying, settle into performances they were now polishing and refining before opening night. I had seen our director wrestling with difficult scenes, badgering and cajoling his actors, desperately seeking the play’s inner secret, the single factor that would transform it into a semblance of reality, an illusion of vibrant flesh and blood. I had eaten breakfast, lunch, and dinner with each of the people involved in the show, either separately or together, I had listened to complaints and petty quarrels, I had even resisted a blatant seduction attempt by the ingenue who was determined to “get close to the well-spring,” as she put it. I had been at every rehearsal but one (when I had to rush crosstown to talk with a man from the Times who was doing a piece on me) and I had been convinced completely and utterly that we were on the right track, that we were all working together toward the successful realization of my play.

And then suddenly, that Tuesday morning, the spell broke as sharply as though a hypnotist had snapped his fingers and commanded me to open my eyes. I saw the play, really saw it, for the first time since rehearsals had begun. I saw it from beginning to end, and I wanted to weep. I left the theater as soon as Danny, our director, began giving his notes to the actors. I walked up Broadway and wondered what I should do, and then I decided to call Natalie. I caught her in the middle of leaving for nursery school to pick up Sharon, our four-year old daughter.

“Nat,” I said, “we’ve got trouble.”

“What is it?”

“The play stinks.”

“The play does not stink,” Natalie said.

“Honey, I just sat through it, and it’s terrible. I don’t know what to do.”

“What do you want to do?”

“I don’t know.”

“Gene, you do know.”

“Yes, I do. I think I want to get rid of Danny.”

“Yes.”

“I think I’ve wanted it all along.”

“I know you have.”

“But, honey, I like him.”

“Is he harming your play?” Natalie asked.

“Yes.”

“Then replace him before it’s too late.”

“Honey...”

“Honey,” she said, “you spent a year writing this play. Do you want to see it die?”

“No, but...”

“Then do it. Replace him.”

We were both silent. Outside the corner phone booth, a traffic jam was starting, horns honking, a patrolman approaching a stalled Cadillac, his arms in frantic motion.

“All right,” I said at last.

“I have to get Sharon.”

“All right.”

“Gene?”

“Yes?”

“I love you. Call me later, will you?”

“Yes, sure.”

“How’s the apartment?”

“It’s nice.”

“All right, I’ll talk to you later.”

“Right, right,” I said, and hung up.

I had lunch at the Automat, and then went back to the afternoon rehearsal. I took a seat in the balcony and tried to see the play objectively, telling myself that this morning’s shock may have been due to pre-opening jitters, willing everything on that stage to come to unexpected life. But nothing happened. The actors went through scene after scene, the play unfolded listlessly; it was make-believe, it was fake, it was rotten. Unobserved, I listened to the actors when Danny called a break. Scenes that once were clear to them now seemed troublesome; they were asking far too many questions for a company that would be opening in a week. And worse, Danny had no answers to give them. If he had ever understood the play, he did not seem to grasp it now. I listened as he fumblingly tried to explain the relationship of the father to his young son in a scene I had sweated over for months, and I fairly screamed aloud from the balcony when I realized he was only confusing it beyond all comprehension. If I had had any doubts, they evaporated in that moment.

I went upstairs to the executive offices of the theater and asked Phillip, our general manager, where I could find Beth. He said he thought she was across the street in Ho Tang’s. Beth was my producer, a woman of forty-eight, twice divorced and childless. Thirty-nine years ago, she had first set foot on a New York stage as a child actress, and some of her friends still called her Baby Beth despite her flinty blue eyes and imperious mouth. She was sitting with Edward, our stage manager, at a table in the bar section of the restaurant. Ho Tang’s specialized in a Chinese-Korean cuisine and though we had never once tasted the food there, it was rumored to be excellent. We used the place as a command post, meeting there to drink and discuss the play, as Beth and Edward were presumably doing when I approached the table. Edward was my age, forty-three, but he looked a good deal older; perhaps the horn-rimmed spectacles accounted for that. He always wore a trench-coat, day or night, fair weather or foul, indoors or out. He gave the impression of someone expecting a phone call that would force him to leave immediately for another appointment.

“Here’s Gene,” he said.

Beth pulled out the chair beside her. Her eyes studied my face, and she said immediately, “Is something wrong?”

“Yes,” I said. “I think Danny’s lost control of the play and the actors, and I think he should be replaced.”

The table was silent for an instant. Beth looked across at Edward. I thought he nodded almost imperceptibly but that may have been in understanding of what I’d said, rather than in agreement with it.

“We were just talking about the same thing,” Beth said.

“Do you agree with me?”

“I’m not sure. I want to watch tonight’s performance.”

“Will you know then?”

“Yes,” she said.

I did not get a chance to talk to her after the evening performance because Danny was with us when we went over to Ho Tang’s for our customary drinks and critique. He was exhausted after a full day of rehearsal and a grueling performance during which he could not have failed to sense the enormous apathy of the audience. His weariness showed in his face. He was a tall man, fifty years old, with graying hair and a small bald patch at the back of his head. His eyes were a deep brown, darting and alert, as searching as an inquisitor’s. He had a habit of pointing with his entire head, jutting it forward sharply to ask a question. His nose was a trifle too keen for his otherwise soft features, emphasizing the head thrust each time it came. His mouth was gently rounded, curving upward at either end to give him an expression of perpetual amusement. I was waiting for him to go to the jukebox to play his favorite song, a tune called “One More Time” which had, through over-exposure during the last five weeks, practically become the show’s theme. As soon as he left the table, I said, “Well?” and Beth sharply whispered, “Later.”

“One More Time” erupted into the bamboo bar, its tempo insinuatingly tropical, its lyric hypnotically repetitious. Danny came back to the table and we began the usual post mortem, discussing the play in minute detail, lines, movement, nuance, everything but what was essentially wrong with it: Danny.

At twelve-thirty in the morning, we left Ho Tang’s and put Beth into a taxi. I still had not spoken to her. I hailed a cab for myself and arrived at the Tenth Street apartment at a quarter to one. Beth’s line was busy when I called. I tried again in five minutes and she answered the phone on the second ring.

“Gene?” she said.

“Yes.”

“I was just talking to Edward.”

“And?”

“We think you’re right,” she said. “We’ve got to replace Danny.”

“How shall we do it?”

“I don’t know yet,” she said.

“Who’ll we get?”

“I don’t know.”

“Beth, we’ve got to move...”

“Tomorrow’s a matinee day,” she said calmly. “I’ll make some excuse not to be there. Meet me outside the Plaza at two-thirty. We’ll figure it out then.”

“You do agree...”

“Yes, I think he’s lost control of it,” Beth said, and sighed. “Darling, I’m exhausted, we’ll talk about it tomorrow.”

“Yes,” I said, “goodnight.”

“Goodnight, Gene.”

I hung up, and then called Natalie to tell her what we’d decided. She listened intently and then said she thought we were doing the right thing. I turned out the light and tried to sleep. I kept listening for the blond girl in the green dress, but there was no laughter that night.

The streets of New York were thronged with college kids home on vacation. I walked up Fifth Avenue, envying each and every one of them. They all seemed to be smiling or laughing, sporting their new Easter outfits, enjoying the mild spring day, window shopping, chattering gaily.

Beth sat alone on the lip of the fountain outside the Plaza, bathed in sunlight. She was wearing a blue suit, and her hands were clasped over her bag, which she held in her lap, her head bent, the sunshine touching her short blond hair. Six months ago, when my agent had finished his negotiations with her, he had called me immediately and said, “Baby Beth, my ass, she almost chewed the rug off the floor.” She had then gone out to raise eighty thousand dollars in less than a month, assembled cast and director and crew in half again that time, booked a theater, and hired her press agents and advertising representatives — all of this accomplished effectively and tirelessly in a business that boasted its only good producers were men. She was a tough beautiful broad. I had never seen her looking as forlorn or as vulnerable as she did that day outside the Plaza, sitting in sunshine on the lip of the fountain.

I hesitated before approaching her. She seemed to be caught in one of those intensely private reveries it is almost sinful to interrupt. But I walked to her at last, and my shadow fell over her crossed hands on the bag in her lap, and I said, “It’s not the end of the world, dear.”

She looked up, gave me a fleeting smile and a brief nod, and then patted the fountain rim beside her. I sat with my hands clasped between my knees, my head turned toward Beth. I felt suddenly old, like a tired vagrant watching pigeons.

“So,” I said, “what do we do now?”

“We get another director, of course,” Beth said.

“Isn’t it too late?”

“No, I don’t think so. We’ve got a full week, we don’t open until next Wednesday night. I’ve seen shows saved in less time than that.”

“What if we don’t fire him, Beth?”

“I think we’ll be killed.” She shook her head. “The actors smell it. They’ve lost faith in him.” She shook her head again. “It’s a goddamn shame, but that’s what’s happened, and we’ve got to fire him or die for him.” Her eyes met mine, bright and blue and cold and hard in the warm sunshine. “I don’t think you want to die for Danny, do you?”

I hesitated. Then I said, “No, I don’t want to die for Danny.”

“I didn’t think so,” Beth said. She took my hand in hers. We might have been lovers sitting in the sunshine, except that we were discussing an execution. “You’ve written a good play, Gene,” she said. “I’ve done everything I can for it so far, and now I’ve got to do the rest. I’ve got to fire Danny, and I’ve got to do it fast because time is the one luxury we haven’t got.”

“Couldn’t we postpone?”

“Yes, but that costs money. We’re stretched very thin as it is.” She sighed heavily. “You don’t know how I hate doing this,” she said. “I’ve known Danny a long time. This isn’t our first show together, you know.”

“Yes, I know.”

“He’s had a rough time these last five years. I don’t want to hurt him.”

“Neither do I.” I hesitated and then said, “Look, maybe we ought to forget it, just take our chances and see what happens.”

“No,” she said.

“It’s only a play, Beth.”

“Is it only a play, Gene?” I did not answer her. She nodded wearily. “We’ll do what has to be done,” she said. “The only thing...”

“Yes?”

“I want it to come from him. I want him to realize for himself that it’s no good anymore. I want him to suggest that we bring in another director.”

“Who have you got in mind?”

“I’ve already spoken to Terry Brown. He says he’s interested.”

“When did you do that?”

“This morning. Would you agree to Terry?”

“Of course I would.”

“Fine then,” she said, and nodded.

We sat in silence for several moments. And then, because we had completed the difficult pan of our discussion, deciding unanimously that we were ready and willing to sacrifice Danny for the sake of the play, we now rushed into the easy part — how to commit our homicide. We spoke in whispers; there was the hard beat of urgency to our words.

“When will we do it?”

“Tonight,” Beth said. “After the performance.”

“Where?”

“Ho Tang’s. We’ll gradually lead up to what’s wrong, try to make Danny see he’s hurting the show.”

“Then what?”

“When he suggests getting another director, I’ll pretend Terry is a spur-of-the-moment idea.”

“Why all the duplicity?” I said. “Why can’t we just tell him straight out?”

“I told you. I don’t want to hurt him.”

“Suppose he doesn’t suggest...”

“I’ve thought of that,” Beth said.

“I mean, it may never even occur to him that we should get another director.”

“In that case, I’ll just have to tell him,” Beth said. “Straight out,” she said, and sighed.

I sighed, too.

We shook hands then, and glanced over our shoulders like the conspirators we surely were. Beth walked off up Central Park South. I went down Fifth to Forty-Sixth and then cut crosstown to the theater.

The matinee had not yet broken.

I stood on the sidewalk and looked up at the marquee.

The new title of the play had been suggested by Danny a week before we went into rehearsal. Every time I looked at it, or heard it spoken, or even thought about it, I felt a pang of guilt, as though I had honestly named my baby Max, only to have agreed later that his name should be changed to Percy. The stars’ names were above the title — their credits rigidly predetermined by contract and scrupulously respected by those professionals who design window cards, three-sheets, and newspaper ads — in the same size, style, weight, color, and color background as the title. Listed below their names was the title itself (I felt the pang of guilt) and then my name as author (25 % of the title) and then the names of the supporting players (50 % of the title) and then Danny’s name as director (100 % of the title, on the strength of the hit show he had directed for Beth five years back). I stood studying the marquee in despair, not because my name was the smallest one on it, but only because I suspected I might wish it were even smaller come opening night, illegible perhaps, known to only a few loved ones like my mother and my wife, otherwise hidden from the rest of the scornful world.

I stared at the marquee only a moment longer.

Then I walked up to Sixth Avenue and found a bar.

I did not call Natalie until just before dinner, when I told her the plan and announced that I might very well shoot myself before the night was over.

“Don’t shoot yourself,” she said matter-of-factly.

“Give me one good reason why.”

“I’ll give you four good reasons why,” she said. “Me, Sharon, Peter, and the dog.”

“Hell with the goddamn dog,” I said.

“Have you been drinking a little, dear?” she asked sweetly.

“I have been drinking a lot,” I said. “Natalie,” I said, “I have the feeling that before this day is through I will have consumed more alcohol than I have previously in my entire life included.”

“Darling,” she said, “go back to the apartment and take a shower.”

“All right, honey, I’ll take a shower.”

“Good.” She paused. “Make it a cold one.”

“Very good,” I said, “a cold one. Goodbye, darling, I’ll call you later.”

“Whatever time it is,” she said. “Good luck.”

I didn’t take a shower. I walked from Forty-sixth to Thirty-fourth instead, and then I took a cab back to Forty-fourth and Sixth and ate four hot dogs with sauerkraut at the hot dog stand on the corner there, and then walked up to Columbus Circle and sat near the statue and wondered where the pigeons went when it got dark. I was waiting in Ho Tang’s when Danny and Beth came in. Edward was a step behind them. Danny walked jauntily to the juke box, and “One More Time” pierced the Korean dusk.

“Gene,” he shouted, “where the hell were you? You missed the best performance we’ve ever had!”

“I had to meet...”

“It was tremendous,” he said, coming over to the table, “absolutely tremendous!”

“... my agent,” I mumbled. “Had to meet him.” My eyes sought Beth’s as she took off her Persian lamb and draped it over the back of the chair beside me. I could read nothing on her face.

“The audience loved it!” Danny said. He slid into the booth behind the table, so that Beth and I were facing him. Edward sat on his right and a jutting mirrored wall was on his left. It occurred to me that we had him surrounded, escape was impossible. “They laughed in all the right places,” he said, “they were quiet when they were supposed to be, they cried when... Beth, did you hear how still it got during the marbles scene?”

“Yes,” she said, “they were very attentive.” Her voice was noncommittal. I still knew nothing.

We ordered a round of drinks while Danny went on to relate to me all I had missed, going over each and every line the audience had howled at, explaining how the father-son scene had torn out their hearts, telling me he had seen an old lady openly weeping in the lobby after the second act curtain. I listened apprehensively, waiting for a cue from Beth. Were we to go through with this or not? Had she changed her mind after tonight’s performance?

“There’s still a lot wrong with it,” she said at last, and I glanced at her quickly. We were going ahead as planned. I sighed and lifted my glass.

“Oh, sure,” Danny said, “lots of little things wrong with it, but nothing we can’t fix in the next week. I tell you, I’ve never felt more confident about a show in my life. I wouldn’t have said this a few days ago, but everything suddenly seemed to come together tonight.”

He grinned charmingly, boyishly, his eyes glowing with enthusiasm. He was raising his drink to his mouth when Beth said, “Well, I’m glad you know it still needs work, Danny.”

“Oh, sure,” Danny said, and drank. “You should have been there tonight, though, Gene. You’d have been amazed.”

“Well, I saw it last night,” I said. “And I was at yesterday’s rehearsal.”

“No comparison,” Danny said, and lifted his glass again. “Am I right, Beth? Two different shows.”

“Miracles don’t happen overnight,” I said.

“Are you telling me? Nothing happens overnight,” Danny said. “A lot of hard work went into making this show what it is.”

“About yesterday’s rehearsal...” I said.

“Forget yesterday’s rehearsal. Wait’ll you see it tomorrow. Listen, what kind of an author are you, anyway? How can you possibly stay away from your own show a week before it opens? He’s jaded, that’s what,” Danny said, and laughed, and nudged Edward. Edward, sitting with his back to the wall, the collar of his trench coat raised, looked like a Mafia henchman in horn-rimmed glasses. He had not yet said a word.

“I thought you gave them the wrong slant on the father-son scene,” I said. I knew I was pressing. A warning flashed in Beth’s eyes.

“What do you mean?” Danny said.

“Yesterday. At rehearsal. I think the actors came away...” I hesitated. “Confused,” I said.

“Yeah?” Danny shrugged. He lifted his glass and drained it. “You wouldn’t have known it tonight. If anybody on that stage was confused...”

“Well, I think Gene may be right,” Beth said cautiously. “I’m still not sure that scene is coming off.”

“Oh?” Danny said. He signaled to the waiter and then leaned forward. “Where do you think it’s wrong, Beth?” he asked. His voice was interested, concerned, respectful. He kept watching Beth’s face. The waiter arrived just then, sparing her an immediate answer. We asked for another round. “One More Time” started again on the jukebox.

“Beth?” Danny said.

“I wouldn’t know where to begin,” she answered.

The Beheading

“Oh, come on,” Danny said, and laughed. “The scene can’t be that wrong.”

“It is,” Edward said suddenly. The flatness of his voice startled all of us. Danny turned toward him as if he’d been struck with a closed fist.

“The scene with the father and son?” he asked incredulously.

“Yes,” Edward said, and nodded.

“Well, gee, I’m...” Danny paused. “Tell me what’s wrong with it, will you?”

“Great many things wrong with it,” I mumbled.

“What?”

“I said...”

“He said there are a great many things wrong with it,” Beth said.

“Like what?” Danny said, and reached into his pocket for a notebook. He produced a pencil, opened the notebook on the table before him, and poised the pencil over a clean page. “Okay, let’s have it,” he said, and thrust his head forward. “Come on, come on, that’s what we’re here for.”

“The actors don’t understand it,” I said.

“I’ve explained it to them often enough,” Danny said.

“Yes, but they still don’t understand it.”

“Then I’ll just have to explain it to them again,” he said, and nodded. He looked up at me suddenly, his head darting forward again. “I understand it, don’t I? I mean, I haven’t misinterpreted it, have I? If there’s one thing I think I know, Gene, it’s your play,” he said, and gave a short laugh.

“Well, the actors don’t seem to know what they’re doing,” I said, hedging.

“We’ll take care of that scene, don’t worry,” he said. “I’ll look at it first thing tomorrow.”

“It’s not just that scene,” Beth said. “The actors don’t seem to know what they’re doing at all.”

“In the play, do you mean?” Danny said.

“Yes.”

“In the whole play?”

“Yes.”

The waiter arrived with our drinks. Danny was staring at Beth across the table. Her eyes did not waver from his face.

“I’m not sure I get your meaning,” he said.

“I mean,” Beth said, “the actors need more direction.”

“Direction?”

“Yes.”

“You mean motivation?”

“I mean direction,” Beth said.

“Look, I’ve discussed motivation with them till I’m blue in the...”

“I said direction.” She paused. Her eyes were blue and hard and cold and bright. Danny was pinned against the wall, surrounded, and she would not let him escape those penetrating eyes. “Direction,” she repeated. “From a director.”

The first sign of fear flickered on Danny’s face. Hypnotically, he kept staring into Beth’s eyes, and then forcibly turned his head away, glancing first at Edward, and then fixing his gaze on me across the table.

“You think I should get tougher with them, is that it?” he asked.

“Danny,” I said, “we feel...”

“Danny,” Edward said, “it just isn’t working, really it isn’t. Maybe you’re too close to it, maybe...”

“No closer than any of us,” Danny answered. “I thought it went fine tonight. Give me a performance like that on opening night, and...”

“It was no different tonight,” Beth said flatly.

“I thought...”

“It doesn’t matter what you thought,” Beth said. “The actors don’t know what they’re doing, and you haven’t yet told them what’s wrong.”

“Well, look, honey, if you know what’s wrong, I wish you’d let me in on the secret,” Danny said, his voice rising. “Just tell me what the hell it is, and I’ll fix it.”

“We don’t think you can,” Beth said.

She delivered the words softly, the way she might have if she were underplaying a particularly powerful scene on stage, except that she was not acting. She turned her head toward me as she spoke, avoiding Danny’s eyes, ducking her chin toward her right shoulder.

“I don’t understand,” Danny said, but I knew he had understood at last, I knew that the meaning was now absolutely clear, he had been told, and he had understood, and there was nothing left to do now but administer the coup de grâce.

I do not know where I found the courage. I think it was spawned only by Beth’s sudden weakness, the way her chin was still turned into her shoulder. “We want to replace you,” I said, and felt suddenly sick to my stomach.

“Then why the hell didn’t you say so?” Danny snapped at once.

“It’s just not working,” I said.

“Sure, sure.”

“We’ve still got a week,” Edward said, “we may be able to save it.”

“Sure.”

“Danny, please understand,” Beth said.

“Don’t ever say that again!” Danny shouted, and the table fell silent. He looked down into his drink. He seemed suddenly embarrassed, as though his inability to have understood graciously and immediately was somehow shameful, as though his having failed to make it easier for us was something that now brought him very close to tears. I found it painful to watch him, and yet I could not take my eyes from his crumbling face. “You didn’t have to give me a song and dance, you know,” he said, “I’m not a beginner. If you want another director, then get one, that’s all. I’m not a beginner.”

“Danny,” Beth started, and she reached across the table for his hand.

“Yes, we want another director,” I said sharply, terrified that she would blow it all in the final moment, touch his hand and lose all her resolve, allow sympathy and loyalty to stand in the way of what had to be done, what had almost already been done.

“Do we want another director,” Danny asked, “or is it just you, Gene?”

His eyes clashed with mine, and then he turned slowly to Beth. Her hand had stopped midway across the table, still reaching. Something passed between them, something I could not define, as delicate as air, caught in their locked glances. It hovered silently, painfully, endlessly. And then Beth pulled back her hand, clenched it in her lap and said, “I want it, too, Danny. We all want it.”

“All right,” he said, and nodded briefly, and glanced at the jukebox, as though fearful even his song would run out too soon. He nodded again. “Who?” he said.

“We thought Terry Brown.”

“Have you spoken to him?”

“No, not yet,” Beth said quickly.

“Is he in town?”

“I think so.”

“Well, go on, call him then.”

“Danny, I wish...” Beth started.

“Call him,” I said.

She sighed, and nodded, and said to Edward, “Have you got a dime?” and then she went to call the man who would save my play.

We stood together, Beth and I, at the rear of the theater on opening night. I could see Natalie sitting in the sixth row center, flanked by my parents on her left and her parents on her right. She was wearing a long green velvet gown, pearls at her throat. She looked as beautiful as she had almost twenty years ago when she’d walked over to me in the small park outside N.Y.U., wearing sweater and skirt, put her hands on her hips and said, “My friend Nancy said you wanted to know my name. Why?” As radiant as that.

We knew, of course, five minutes after the curtain went up. The first laugh line rushed past without a titter from the audience, and I felt Beth stiffen beside me, and actually crossed my fingers, something I had not done since I was a boy of seven. And then another laugh line followed, with no response from the audience, and the actors felt the apathy and began pushing, playing it more broadly, forgetting what the play was about, concentrating only on getting those laughs when they were supposed to come, estranging the audience completely. By the time they got to the serious stretch in the middle of the first act, they had alienated everyone in the house. The audience was coughing and sniffling and stirring restlessly when the first act curtain fell.

I took Natalie’s hand as she came running up the aisle. Her eyes were wide with questions. I nodded and said, “Natalie, I think we’re dead,” and she squeezed my hand and said, simply, “Yes, Gene.”

We went backstage to talk to the actors between acts, encouraging them, telling them everything was going fine, just don’t press, the audience is loving it, we’ve got a sure hit on our hands. And the actors, flushed with the excitement of the night, involved in performances they had been preparing for six long weeks, believed every word we said and went out prepared to clinch their victory in the next two acts.

I met Beth at the rear of the theater.

“Do you need a drink?” she asked.

“I think so,” I said.

She took my arm, and we went across the street to Ho Tang’s welcome dusk. The jukebox was silent. Neither of us put any money into it. We sat at the bar and ordered our drinks. Beth was in a black gown with a diamond pin just below the yoke. I was wearing a dinner jacket and a frilled shirt, and the studs and links Beth had given me as an opening night gift. We raised our glasses and touched them together, and Beth said, “Here’s to the next one, Gene.”

“To the next one,” I said.

We drank.

“It’s a goddamn rotten shame,” she said.

The reviews would come in much later that night, we would hear them read to us over the telephone from the Times and the News and later the Post, and then we would actually see the morning papers and read what we had earlier heard on the telephone, and we would commiserate into the night while the celebration party at Sardi’s dissolved and eventually disappeared around us. But we would be numb by that time, and so we sat in Ho Tang’s now and shared the death of the play together, and for the first time in a long time, we talked about other things, my children and the fact that Sharon had to have her tonsils out, the difficulty Beth was having getting a maid, the chances of the Mets this year, how lovely the weather had been this past week.

We both drank more than we should have, not going back to the theater for the second-act curtain, trying to obliterate what was happening across the street, and finally succeeding. Awash at last in boozy self-pity, I put four quarters into the juke, and we listened solemnly to the music, and nodded a lot, and stared mournfully into our glasses, and sighed, and ordered more whiskey, and began talking in an endless drunken round I will remember quite forever, despite my own drunkenness.

“Did we do the right thing?” Beth asked, and put her hand on my arm, and leaned into me.

“I hope so,” I said, and tried to light a cigarette.

“No, tell me,” she said. “Did we do the right thing, Gene?”

“I don’t know.”

“It was difficult.”

“It was very difficult, Beth.”

“Do you know how difficult it was for me that night?”

“What night?”

“The night we told him.”

“Very difficult,” I said.

“Yes, but do you know how difficult?”

“How difficult?”

“We were lovers,” she said.

I was looking full into her face, she was leaning very close to me, clinging to the bar and my arm, her eyes misting over. “Danny and I,” she said, and I nodded, and she said, “Long time ago.”

“Listen,” I said, “maybe we ought to get back.”

“Back where?” she said.

“Across the street.”

“What for? Nothing’s changed across the street.”

“Even so...”

“Nothing’s changed.” She lifted her glass, drained it, and put it down on the bartop. “I’ve never been lucky with men,” she said. “Never. Do you want another drink? Two more,” she said to the bartender. “Lasted longer with Danny than I thought it would,” she said. “I met another man, an instructor at Yale, I was up there trying out a new show. In New Haven, I mean.”

“Yes,” I said.

“And we fell in love.” She shrugged, looked to see if the bartender was fixing our drinks, and then said, “We were living on Fifty-eighth Street at the time, Danny and I. Little apartment on Fifty-eighth. I drove down from New Haven at three in the morning. On the Merritt. You know the Merritt?”

“Sure, I know the Merritt.”

“It was empty. This was three o’clock in the morning. Danny was in bed when I got back to the apartment. Everything was very quiet. I had to tell him. I figured that was best. Not to lie about it, not to pretend everything was... the same. So I sat on the edge of the bed, it was very quiet, I don’t know, it was almost, I don’t know, the building was so still. I said, ‘Danny, it’s finished.’ ”

“Martini straight up, and a scotch on the rocks,” the bartender said.

Beth picked up her glass. She sipped a little of the whiskey, and then said, without looking at me, “Danny wouldn’t believe it. He said, ‘No, Beth, it isn’t true.’ It was so goddamn quiet in that building. I told him there was another man, and he just kept saying, ‘No, no,’ and you could hear this awful silence everywhere around us, as if the world had already come to an end. ‘No, no,’ he kept saying, and I said, ‘Please understand, Danny.’ ”

“Let’s get back,” I said. “Beth, I want to see what’s happening.”

“So last week, I did the same thing to him all over again. And I asked him to understand again.” She lifted her glass and drained it. “I did it for your play,” she said.

“I know you did.”

“I don’t mean hiring him. That was for me. To square it, to make amends for having kicked him out. Give him something back, you know? A chance. But firing him was for you and your play.” She shook her head. She was very close to tears. I kept watching her. It all seemed suddenly senseless. The play across the street was a failure.

“It had to be done,” she said, fiercely, her eyes snapping up at me, blue and hard and cold. “Sure, now that we’ve got a flop, it’s easy to say we should have stuck by him, seen it through with him, sure. But tell me something, Gene. Suppose the play had been a hit? Would it have been worth it then?”

And because I was drunk, I had no answer.