when was it? how long? it seems a lifetime ago. lloyd always said that in the theater a lifetime was a season, and a season a lifetime. it's june now. that was - early october.  only last october. it was a drizzly night, i remember i asked the taxi to wait.
where was she? strange.  i had become so accustomed to seeing her there night after night - i found myself looking for a girl i'd never spoken to, wondering where she was.
- and i'll never forget you, eve. where were we going that night, lloyd and i? funny the things you remember - and the things you don't.
i saw eve quite often after our first meeting, but we never really talked again - until the party margo gave for bill when he returned from hollywood.
it's always convenient at a party to know the hostess well enough to use her bedroom rather than go where all the others have to go.
on the day of the audition, my biggest worry was to keep a banana looking part of an eggplant.  then lloyd came home. it was right after his brawl with margo.
newton - they say, thought of gravity by getting hit on the head by an apple. and the man who invented the steam engine, he was watching a tea-kettle.  but not me. my big idea came to me just sitting on a couch.
that boot in the rear to margo. heaven knows she had one coming. from me, from lloyd, from eve, bill, max, and so on - we'd all felt those size fives of hers often enough.  but how? the answer was buzzing around me like a fly.
i had it. but i let it go. screaming and calling names is one thing - but this could mean.
why not? why, i said to myself, not? it would all seem perfectly legitimate. and there were only two people in the world who would know. also, the boot would land where it would do the most good for all concerned-
and after all, it was not more than a perfectly harmless joke which margo, herself, would be the first to enjoy.
 and no reason why she shouldn't be told about it - in time.
it was a cold weekend - outside and in. bill didn't come at all. margo didn't know where he was and didn't care - she kept saying. somehow we staggered through sunday - and by the time we drive margo to the station late monday afternoon, she and lloyd had thawed out to the extent of being civil to each other.
some of the morning papers carried a little squib about eve's performance. not much, but full praise.  i couldn't imagine how they found out about it - but lloyd said max's publicity man probably sent out the story.
 at any rate, i feel terribly guilty and ashamed of myself - and wanted nothing so much as to forget the whole thing. margo and i were having lunch at "21" - just like girlfriends - with hats on.
lloyd never got around, somehow - to asking me whether it was all right with me for eve to play "cora".  bill, oddly enough, refused to direct the play at first - with eve in it. lloyd and max finally won him over.  margo never came to a rehearsal, too much to do around the house, she said. i'd never known bill and lloyd to fight as bitterly and as often.  and always over some business for eve, or a move or the way she read a speech.  but then i'd never known lloyd to meddle as much with bill's directing - as far as it affected eve, that is.  somehow, eve kept them going. bill stuck it out - and lloyd seemed happy - and i thought it might be best if i skipped rehearsals from then on.
it seemed to me i had known always that it would happen - and here it was. it felt helpless, that helplessness you feel when you have no talent to offer - outside of loving your husband. how could i compete? everything lloyd loved about me, he had gotten used to long ago.