Cate backs up to get a distance perspective on the overstuffed bookcase flat. Looking good. She pulls on her down jacket. She goes out by the stage door, leaving only the ghost light on. The ghost light is never shut off, an old, old tradition, to give the ghosts who inhabit the theater light to put on their own shows.
She lets the metal door slam shut behind her, then looks both ways up and down the alley. She no longer moves into any new space without calculation. She checks directions on her phone and heads out to the bar. She’s been summoned by Molly. The bar is called Dean Martini. It’s not particularly close to the theater or to Cate’s hotel; there’s an Uber ride involved. Odd-hour phone calls have been part of her job description for the past couple of weeks, but until now, late-night drinks have not. Tonight Cate is in New York, and Molly needs someone to talk to. She and Lauren have batted something around too many times. They need an outside opinion; can Cate meet her?
Molly sits still as a Buddha in a red leather booth near the back of the bar, under a blowup of Dean Martin in a tuxedo with his black tie undone. He’s rakish. He’s on the sound system singing “Baby It’s Cold Outside.” She is sitting behind the remains of a straight-up martini, wearing some delicious cologne that smells like lilac and woodsmoke. Cate had kind of forgotten about cologne. She might have to revisit that. Molly does older well—stylish but with little old-fashioned touches. Her watch is a rectangle with a dark yellow face, brown leather band about to tear at the buckle. Very 1940s. Of course, just wearing a watch at all is pretty twentieth century.
She makes a swishing motion for Cate to slide in across from her, then orders for both of them by signaling the bartender with two raised fingers. Cate’s not much of a hard-liquor drinker, but the martini moment seems to be at hand. When drinks arrive, Molly takes her speared olive and drops it into Cate’s glass. A flirty gesture, but inconsequential. Cate supposes Molly has dropped olives into the martinis of many women along her way. In forward motion, she seems much younger than her seventy-plus years. She’s a dynamo. But at the end of what has been a long day directing, she is weary. Her color is slightly drained, her cheeks sag into slight pouches at the sides of her mouth. This makes her more human, definitely less iconic.
“Houston,” Molly says, “we have a problem.”
“Gladys.” It’s not a wild guess.
“In almost every respect, she’s doing a great job. She’s commanding, but also blockheaded. Her Vita is totally heartless and oblivious. But when sex comes into the picture, well, you can see she’s playing Vita like an old letch. I actually caught her wiggling or whatever her eyebrows. Like Groucho Marx. She just needs a cigar to wag. Wiggle and wag. How do I make her stop? I can’t just bully her. I think of all those tickets bought on the basis of her presence in the play. I can’t afford to have her leave in a huff.”
Cate takes a sip of her martini: it’s vaguely but not unpleasantly medicinal. She thinks for a few beats. “Gladys is straight. It might be simply that she’s not a good enough actor to imagine herself into the role and doesn’t have a model for the kind of seduction Vita was wielding. Assertive but not aggressive. Maybe you could ask her to think about removing testosterone from the equation. Also to think about sex between two people who already know what’s in the offing, who don’t have a gender wall they can hide tricks behind. They have the rabbit and the hat, not the rabbit in the hat.”
“That’s good. That’s very good. That might be a path. All this reading I’ve been doing, I’m starting to think Vita was more concerned with flowers and houses than humans. That fucking country house. Three hundred sixty-five rooms and a deer park. Why did her ancestors need all that space? Maybe they had a lot of company?”
Cate says, “They didn’t want to have to haul out the blow-up bed in the family room.”
“The house was her true obsession, but it went to her cousin Eddy. First male in the line. But really, couldn’t he have given her maybe fifty rooms and her own entrance? She could have mowed the lawn in exchange? Okay. So. Gladys. Tomorrow after rehearsal you should take Gladys out for drinks. I’ll tell her it’s going to be the three of us, then I won’t show up. I’ll text you that my thumb is sore, or my dog is puking. Then you’ll be alone with her and roll into your argument about the difference with same-sex seduction—”
“My argument is definitely brilliant, but I think you’re the one who’s going to have to make it. I’m the set designer. I can order a longer sofa because Gladys’s legs are overhanging the chaise. But you’re the director. So I’m afraid you’re the one who has to direct her out of her misery.” Cate loves that she can talk to Molly like this. “Just tell her she can lean back a little. Her Vita will still get the girls.”
Molly’s thoughts move on a little. “I’m more than a generation older than you. My coming out was made quite difficult by the general ignorance that prevailed back then. Some of it happened in dyke bars that still had peepholes in the door. You know, knock three times. A lot of dykes hid for their whole lives inside marriages of convenience to men. Or shared apartments and their lives with roommates. I came into my sexuality in shadows that were dissolving, but they were still there. Shadows of shadows. Vita was even farther back, my grandmother’s generation. She was bold, but she still had to toe the line. She was an aristocrat, she had a small title and a famous garden. She had the Queen Mother over for wine and truffles, for crying out loud. I hate that this conversation with Gladys falls to me, but Lauren’s wary of busting her chops anymore. And you, you turn out to be a total chickenshit.”
It is kind of satisfying to see that even when you are Molly, you have to deal with people who are more arrogant than you are. It’s something to keep in mind. Cate watches her drain her martini. Her eyes water a little as she does this. The gin has entered her central nervous system. But also, Cate can see, the two of them are inching toward a camaraderie.
Molly says, “By the way, how are you doing?”
“How do you mean?”
“Well, didn’t you just kill someone in Chicago?”