“Was? Was? ‘Is,’ I say. Plotting, conniving. With those innocent brown eyes. They’re nested above a little snub of a nose that wouldn’t dip itself in tapioca. But dip it does, dip, dip, dip, into hearts where it doesn’t belong.”
“You pose a question, my dear, that made Marlowe turn to Shakespeare and beg the good sir to prithee put a sock well in it.”
“I been lugging your girdles for as long as you been lugging that… rear-view mirror of yours.”
“You wait right here. Don’t run away.”
“Do you love it?”
“Love what?”
“That top hat. The crooked coat stand. The dressmakers dummy with a gown fit for a Southern belle. The door that’s set a little a-tilt and is exactly 14 and a half feet from a stage where people will speak words that may live for 50 years or 200 or simply burn for a night.”
“The theater.”
“Yes.”
(Throatily) “I love it.”
“What every woman longs for, needs: the hands to hold her, the shoulders for her to grip. The crush of fine tweed beneath her fingers as she breathes in the man he is.”
“How much time have we got?”
“How strange that summer was, and how my mind always goes back to the same watchful, slender figure.”
“I don’t think it’s such a good idea.”
“You ask what no man can give, and I seek what no woman should have to be told. And if that makes you throw your hands up, then go ahead and throw them. Throw them like confetti and let’s see where they land. Where everything lands.”
“And what profit, my dear, if you win the world but close in New Haven?”
Answer: They’re all fake except for numbers 4, 7 and 9.
—Follow C.T. May on Twitter: @CTMay3