Chris-2a

THE BRIDGE OF DREAMS--CHRISTINE

ACT II--A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM

[Jack, with Henry and Shoko, at the Lake Arrowhead cabin.]

JACK
Your trip to France was important in bringing Betty and Christine together, wasn't it?

HENRY
It was a remarkable trip, Jack. Betty went to see Ionesco's La Cantatrice Chauve--The Bald Soprano--that I'd seen in '57, and we'd done in Nebraska. It was still playing, at the Huchette theatre now, after sixteen years. She wanted to do it, and perhaps The Lesson, in the original in New York, recruiting French-speaking actors, but playing Mrs. Smith herself. Jordan called it "another of Betty's crackpot ideas." When we did it, I still had to work hard on my French, which I did, with Shoko, but I didn't have to be able to see to do Mr. Smith.

SHOKO
That was mostly Betty's trip. I went along because I went everywhere with her by then, Henry because he'd introduced her to Ionesco, and knew something of Paris.

HENRY
But Christine earned her trip. She was working at the theatre one day late in the previous summer when Betty began talking to me about doing Ionesco in the French, saying she ought to begin serious work on the language, then go to France to see the plays. Christine asked her directly if she could go, too. Almost as a joke, Betty said, "If you take French at school, and make an A, I'll take you to France next summer." Christine

signed up for French, and, when Shoko and I started working with Betty on the language, began sitting in on those sessions.

SHOKO
She learned French quickly. She has such a gift for languages. And Betty responded to that, telling her how much she'd enjoyed French in school. Christine got her A easily. We promised to speak nothing but French all summer--a promise she saw to it we kept. So the four of us flew off to Europe. We spent a week in Paris, going to a play every evening. During the day, we got to know the city, walking the Champs Elysees from the Arc de Triomphe to the Bastille, exploring the Left Bank, the Jardin des Tuileries, the Latin Quarter, the Louvre.

HENRY
To listen to the French in the streets . . . and for la recherche du temps perdu. I had many good memories from my earlier trip.

SHOKO
We soon came to feel at home--knew which Metro connections to make. For places close to Paris, like Chartres and Versailles, we went by train. At Versailles, exploring those huge gardens, Betty said, "I could live here. I must be the reincarnation of Marie Antoinette." Then we rented a car for about three weeks in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and Italy. Betty and I drove, and Christine usually handled the maps, while Henry helped us decide where to go. We visited Mozart's birthplace, in Austria, spent three days each on art in Florence and history in Rome, seeing Michelangelo statues and paintings, and the Forum and Coliseum. I'd like to spend much more time in those places.

HENRY
We will, when the baby's old enough.

SHOKO
Well, we'll see. [She nods her head.] Then we returned to Paris, to the theatre. We saw two Moliere plays, Le Tartuffe and Le Medecine malgre lui, at the Comedie-Francaise. But, whenever we could, we went to the Theatre de la Huchette, to see The Bald Soprano and The Lesson.

HENRY
After we'd been there three or four times, they recognized Betty from The Countess Rostovna, which had had some success in Europe--though she'd purposely cut and dyed her hair and worn glasses for the trip. She convinced them to let her do Mrs. Martin in one performance, telling them what she was planning for New York. It proved her French was good enough--and her sense of Ionesco's comic timing delighted them. They asked Christine if she'd like to do the student in The Lesson once, but she shied off. She hadn't had any stage experience then--and only a year of French. Now I think she'd like to--after Betty did The Bald Soprano and, later, Rhinoceros, in New York.

JACK
La Lecon is done in Tokyo as a Friday-night after-piece at the Jean-Jean, a little theatre near Shibuya station, by a famous film star, Nobuo Nakamura, and his daughter--in Japanese.

HENRY
Laura should have good memories of that play, from when you and she did it at Wellington. And Betty and Christine were closest as Christine helped her mother learn her lines for Ionesco in French. I’d hear them laughing together.

SHOKO
They both enjoyed the same things in Paris--went to museums

and art galleries, and for crepe and cider at a little cafe near where we were staying. But Christine went places with us, too, and frequently we were going somewhere she suggested.

HENRY
Betty then encouraged her to try out for the Shakespeare play at school, “just to be around some Shakespeare.”

JACK
I first heard about that when I called to wish Christine a happy birthday. The first thing she told me was that she'd been cast in A Midsummer Night's Dream, "As Titania, the part I hoped I'd get!" When Laura came on she said, "She sees what her mother can do on stage." I did get back to see that play--and Betty and Jordan in Antony and Cleopatra again--and a rehearsal for one of the Chikamatsu plays! I really hated to miss Christine's Juliet, but had hoped to see it later here in Los Angeles.

HENRY
[Shakes his head.] From the time work began on Romeo and Juliet, Christine became a center of contention between Betty and Jordan. Jordan wanted to do Hamlet, with Christine as Ophelia and Betty as Gertrude, and, when Betty still refused, insisted on doing The Tempest, with Christine as Miranda to his Prospero. Betty accused him of trying to substitute Christine for her, as an actress he could manipulate, as his puppet, "as he did me when I was his flower girl and he was Professor Higgins, when he and Jack were so experienced and I was a 'naive' nineteen. I'm no longer so innocent. I sometimes think I'm older than either Jack or Jordan now. But I see a lot of that young innocent in Christine, and don't want him manipulating her." She laughed. "She's mine to manipulate." [Pause.] Can you see the boat out there now, Jack?

JACK
Yes . . . but clear over on the other side of the lake. [Watching the skier.] That skier is pretty good. [A pause.] So your trip to France did begin to bring Betty and Christine closer together. And the two weeks Jordan and I spent working on my Mishima while you were gone brought us closer together than we'd been since college. By then I had begun working on this film version of Mishima's Forbidden Colors. As Jordan had recently read that book, we talked a lot about that, too--so were heavily into Mishima. We had both first met his work in his Five Modern Noh Plays, under the influence of the countess.

SHOKO
The countess thought very highly of those Mishima plays.

JACK
Then, when we did my Dido, you recall, Jordan had gotten high on the film version of Yukoku. But Mishima's own seppuku was the magic moment for all of us. I was in Tokyo at the time, and was soon writing my own modern Noh play, Mishima. When I finished it, I sent Jordan a copy, and he said he'd do it. I'd followed Mishima in writing a modern Noh play, but reversed his method. He'd given those medieval stories a modern French staging, but I took his own story and gave it a medieval staging, using two classical Noh plays, Sotoba Komachi and Atsumori, as models. I had Mishima's ghost appear to a Japanese student at the Kinkakuji, do a kendo dance with Saigo Takamori, Mishima's "last true samurai," perform a ritual seppuku, and leave the student with the legacy of traditional Japanese values embodied in his kendo staff. Jordan said, "Let's do it while Betty's in Europe, Jack. There's no part for her anyway." Then he decided to use it as an after-piece for his Richard II, the Shakespeare he was doing that summer.

SHOKO
Betty and Christine and I saw them after we came back, and I was especially impressed by Jordan as Mishima--but I'm still repelled by Mishima's suicide.

JACK
As you can imagine, Jordan and I had very different theories on that. He said, “Mishima had the courage to make a coherent drama of his own life, Jack. In Rites of Love and Death he acted out Lieutenant Takeyama's seppuku, in your play I'm acting out his, but in real life he wrote that final scene and acted it out himself. You say he did it to mythologize himself, and I like that idea. But he was an actor! As I am. He couldn't resist a great final curtain!” But, true as that may be, I think he was mythologizing himself. The image of Mishima that exists a hundred years from now will be the one he created, not the one that Jordan and I did--in spite of Jordan's total credibility. Another view that also appeals to me is that his suicide was the ultimate PR ploy, designed to draw attention to his work, the last pages of which he'd just delivered to the publisher that same day. Just this year we've seen two biographies of Mishima in English, while we're still waiting for one of the Nobel Prize winner, Kawabata. But these motives for his suicide are not necessarily mutually exclusive, of course.

SHOKO
No. He was always a complicated writer, Jack . . . liked ambiguity. That’s obvious in Forbidden Colors.

JACK
That's true. Jordan asked, "Why are you filming that novel, Jack?" "Because it's his best," I told him. “I consider it his Symposium.” [Pause.] That boat and water skier are getting

closer, Henry. Grendel is perking up, too, as if he knows who's coming. The closer they get, the more I can imagine it's Betty I'm watching. It's not just the familiar figure and the red hair flying in the wind, but I even think I recognize the green swimming suit Betty wore the last few times I was out in the boat with her. [Pause.] And that flamboyance, sweeping from one side of the wake to the other with a seemingly lazy rhythm is the same. It pleases me to indulge that fantasy as long as I can--though I know very well who I'm watching.

HENRY
Do you, Jack? It was supposed to be a surprise.

JACK
Now I can also identify the woman managing the boat, Henry. [Boat sounds from off, as Jack and Shoko watch.] That's the way Laura always approached the shore here, swinging a wide circle to allow the skier to sweep up onto the sand of our little swimming area. You can hear Christine laughing, can't you, Henry? Grendel is right down there in the water to greet her.

LAURA
[Off, shouting, idling the boat off shore.] Well, you're already here, Jack. I'll be up as soon as I get this tow-rope stored.

CHRISTINE
[Greeting Grendel enthusiastically coming up the rock steps. she stops a few steps short, looking at Jack.] Uncle Henry said you were coming today . . . but not until later, I thought.

HENRY
He came early, Chris. You know your dad. But we've just been sitting in the sunshine telling each other stories.

JACK
You're looking good, Christine, up close and out on the water. So much like your mother you had me bewitched. They didn't tell me you and Laura were here.

CHRISTINE
That was my idea. But we were supposed to be here to surprise you. Grendel and I might have jumped out from behind a tree as you came up the trail--like we used to do.

JACK
[Standing by then, holds out his arms and she drops the water skis and gives him a healthy hug, wet swimsuit and all.] How well I remember. How old are you now? Eighteen isn't it?

CHRISTINE
[Looks at him as if he should know.] Yes, eighteen . . . and a half. I'll be nineteen in November.

JACK
And a high school graduate. Pretty grown up all right.

CHRISTINE
And thanks for your present--the kimono from Japan. Shoko has already shown me how to wear it. I'll show you later. It fits perfectly . . . and the colors are just right.

JACK
Do other people tell you how much you look like your mother?

CHRISTINE
[Petting the dog.] I don't hear anything else . . . but I don't think so. I've seen her as Cleopatra, you know.

LAURA
[Struggling up the steps with the gear from the boat.] Hello, Jack. You're early, aren't you? We wouldn't have gone out but Henry said you'd be coming later, and Christine wanted to ski. We even stopped over at that new marina for a sandwich and a coke--which we wouldn't have had to do.

JACK
I should have helped you with some of that stuff.

LAURA
Why? You never did before. [She puts what she's carrying down next to the skis, then gives him a hug and kiss.]

JACK
How much at home you seem here. Well, I guess it is your home. You could dispossess Henry and Shoko now, as you could have Betty and me back when you decided, instead, to stay in New York. I think you put up with me mostly for Christine's sake--as I wonder how I keep letting you get away.

LAURA
That’s your story. You’ll have to tell us all about Tokyo and your new film, but we'll have time for all that later, Jack. Christine and I had better take showers and get changed if we're going to help with dinner. [They go on up to the cabin.]

SHOKO
[Watching them going up the stairs, then, as the screen door closes behind Christine.] One thing that continues to bother me, Jack, is why you had the gun Jordan and Betty shot each other with here at all. That was your gun . . . wasn't it? What was it doing here?

JACK
The police asked that, too, when I was here for the funeral. I'd bought it years ago, in my youth--to shoot bears in Alaska, as I used to say--so I suppose I still had it for the memories, certainly not for protection here. My junior year in college I'd lost interest in school--again--and dropped out of UCLA. Then, that summer I'd gone to Alaska with a friend, because the summer before other friends had borrowed the money to fly to Anchorage and come back with enough to buy new cars. But that year the unions were out on strike--so no jobs. We both got civilian jobs with the Air Force. Mine was as electrical maintenance man at the Air Force hospital, about ten miles from Elmendorf AFB, out in the woods. I soon made friends with a supply sergeant, Joe Jackson, who'd been a Golden Gloves boxer and started 'training' with him. We camped out a lot--since the sun shines almost all night there in the summer.

SHOKO
[Puzzled.] That's why you bought the gun?

JACK
[Laughs.] Sort of. I used to go in to the Civilian Club, on the main base, to meet my friend, Dan, drink beer, and play my favorite song, Heartache, on the jukebox. They had a $2.00 limit poker game, and I won enough one night to buy that .38 police special from a young GI at the hospital who was broke. In the big hand, I held three kings against three tens--so guess those kings are why I own that gun. I liked to carry it in the woods, and did expect to shoot a bear--if one confronted me.

HENRY
So you're lucky one didn't.

JACK
Joe used to say, "Not if I'm along! You'd just make a bear good and mad with a .38." We both knew a patient in the hospital who'd been mauled by a bear. Not a pretty sight. Then came the Korean War, and I went into the Air Force. I always liked that gun. Just to hold it--the feel of the grip, the balance. I qualified with it, as an officer's sidearm. So I just happened to have it here--as a souvenir of the summer I was twenty-one in Alaska, I guess. I kept it in that drawer in the bedroom, but hadn't fired it for years--had forgotten about it. So it was quite a shock to discover that one old friend, that gun, had killed two others. Then they sent that lieutenant to ask about it--and other things. It was as if they suspected me--a man caught with my wife in a cabin at the lake, and both shot dead--with my gun. But, since I'd been in Tokyo for two months prior to the shooting, I had a pretty good alibi. He had questions about Betty and Jordan, too, and about you, Henry--since you were evidently holding that gun when the police got here.

HENRY
I'd told them all I knew about the gun, Jack, including your bear story. I think the police have it in their evidence file. You could probably get it back now. As you can imagine, I've had no desire to have it here. The chief detective, because of Jordan's phone call, was calling it a double suicide, but, after I told them what had happened, most saw it as a bizarre accident, though they did question people in New York about Betty and Jordan's argument.

JACK
The last time I saw Betty she seemed pretty comfortable there. Randall had expected her to come make more movies, but she said, "I like the theatre, Jack, the whole story every time.

Movies are bits and pieces, and the directing is out of your hands. Here, I'm in control." And it seemed she was--which was what bothered Jordan most, I suppose.

SHOKO
But he seemed happy as long as he was doing Shakespeare.

JACK
Yes, and last year Laura wrote they'd be doing Antony and Cleopatra again just when Christine's high school was doing A Midsummer Night's Dream, so I'd be able to see both if I could come back then. I did, and saw one of the Chikamatsu love-suicide plays I'd adapted in rehearsal, too. After the Mishima, Betty had finally convinced Jordan to do those plays. But, to present Shakespeare's early and late love-suicide plays with them, they needed to add Romeo and Juliet. Betty didn't want them playing "those young kids," just wanted to complete the set of four plays . . . which they then did . . . with Christine.

HENRY
Yes, Jordan resisted it at first, but actually enjoyed doing the Japanese plays. The Love Suicides at Amijima and The Love Suicides at Sonezaki. I was around as they were being rehearsed, but still get them mixed up.

JACK
I only saw the Amijima, in rehearsal. Betty used all the Japanese elements she knew about in setting and costume, and puppets as a kind of chorus--though in Japanese Bunraku the puppets are the characters in the plays. I made a special trip to Osaka to see that play done by a traditional puppet company. Their puppetry is very different from ours--three puppeteers to one puppet--all in the service of the text. A playwright's dream.

HENRY
I'd love to see that, Jack. The chief detective thought Betty and Jordan, in doing the plays, had been caught up in that double-suicide mystique. But the fellow who came to see you thought Jordan killed Betty because she'd set her will against his--then, realizing what he'd done, killed himself. Did he tell you that?

JACK
And I told him Jordan was no more capable of killing Betty than I was, and neither was capable of suicide. But you were here, Henry. I hope you can explain it to me.

HENRY
I'll be glad to tell you what I know, Jack, but have promised to tell Laura, too--though I didn't see any more than either of you did. So let's wait for her. I'd still like to hear about your trip to New York to see Christine in A Midsummer Night's Dream, since I wasn't there at that time.

JACK
Fair enough. Laura went with me. We sat with other pleased parents, watching our Fairy Queen make Shakespeare sound like her natural speech. We saw Betty and you a few rows in front of us, Shoko. I was watching her reactions as I thought, "There's our girl, seventeen and counting." At intermission, I was looking for you two, but saw Jordan first, over by the big front windows, looking out on the lights of the city and talking with Ben Winston, that young fellow in their company. As I came up behind them, Jordan was asking, "So how'd you like to play Romeo to her Juliet?" Ben responded, "She's good, Jordan . . . for a high-school girl." Jordan jumped as I touched his shoulder. Then I asked, "Well, what do you think, my friend? Her mother's daughter?"

JORDAN
Jack! Didn’t know you were here. She's a marvel! I've come to see her a second time, and brought our Octavius tonight.

JACK
The Student in my Mishima, too. [Shakes his hand.] How are you, Ben? But I thought you'd all be in rehearsal for the Chikamatsu. Who's minding the store?

JORDAN
Betty occasionally grants us a day off, too, Jack. And, speak of the devil, there she comes . . . with the other women . . . from the rest room. I don’t know why it always takes them longer.

BETTY
Time to get back to our seats . . . but isn't she fantastic? Since you’re here too, Jack, this calls for a celebration. Let's all take our Titania some place after the play.

JACK
[To Henry and Shoko.] When the performance was over, and we went backstage to congratulate her, Christine was just beaming. As she came out, she was having trouble fastening the clasp on her purse, and looking quite the charming young lady in her mock annoyance. Betty suggested that we go to a little bar she knew, which was nearby. "Jordan and Ben, too--in Christine's honor. If you're old enough to play Titania, you're old enough to go to a bar, aren't you? We'll order you sarsaparilla." So we went to this little bar . . . where, it was true, Betty knew everyone.

SHOKO
Yes . . . tell Henry Betty's Oklahoma story.

JACK
He's probably heard it, but I'll try. As I came back to the table from getting a check cashed, Betty had already taken charge.

BETTY
I was telling Christine about the time we were in that holdup in that little place in Oklahoma, Jack--a bar a lot like this, except for the people-- when you were such a hero and I couldn't stop laughing--almost got us shot. You remember? Why'd we ever stop there? Jordan has been disagreeing with me about that.

JORDAN
She has it all wrong, though, as usual, she's making a better story out of it than it was.

BETTY
We'd been driving all day, on our misguided summer tour from Miami to San Francisco, scheduled for Kansas City but canceled, we'd headed for Denver through Oklahoma City--my one-time experience there. You two were arguing about something, making the car seem even smaller.

JORDAN
I could challenge about three facts right there, but I won't.

BETTY
Well, it was like all these cozy beer joints, except they were wearing jeans and flannel shirts and local color things. Jack was teasing the waitress as he always does. I was watching her, when suddenly her eyes went wide. My first thought was to check where Jack's hands were, but saw a surprised look on his face, too. I turned to see that they were looking at these three guys--young fellows, two black, wearing masks, all white.

JACK
Only one was black, and they were using those red farm bandannas as masks which gave it a real Oklahoma hold-up flavor--like the James boys, or something.

BETTY
But they all had guns, and the blond, who seemed in charge, shouted, "Okay, folks, it's a holdup! Everybody over against that wall!" And I started to laugh. He was so wrong for the part, as if they had cast it as a comedy. But we all lined up along the wall. He started gathering things we'd left at the tables, while one of the black men was collecting rings, watches, and wallets down the line. When the blond got to my purse, I shouted, "You leave that alone. That's my purse!" He said, "Just shut up, Red! And quit that laughing. You think this is a joke?" He made a special point of picking up my purse--as if it were a personal challenge. Then the dog out back started howling--a problem we won't have here--and I was laughing again. These guys were trying to quiet me down, and one of the black men jabbed a gun into Jack's ribs. I took them seriously enough it was the young blond that was so funny. I asked him, "If you're taking all our money, how can we buy gas to get out of this damn state?" He said if I didn't shut up he'd take me on a ride I'd never forget. Afterward I wished he had--I could have been his gun moll--because, really, that incident is almost all I can remember now of that whole dreary summer.

JACK
Dreary summer? Doing our famous abbreviated version of Othello, and my one act parody, Keep Your Eye on the Handkerchief? Betty and I were newly married, so it was really a kind of extended honeymoon. Perhaps the most memorable summer of my life!

BETTY
Yes, darling--because you were so much younger then! But think about where we performed. And where we slept! And those long hot days in that station wagon--BAC--Before Air Conditioning! How did people actually live in Texas and Oklahoma in those days? For most of the places we played "dreary" is too complimentary! And to be strangled twice a night by your husband--urged on by "honest Iago" here. [Jack smiles at Christine, for whom he knows Betty is telling this story.] Then that play of yours blamed me for everything. Male chauvinist! I'd about decided to give you back your handkerchief and go home.

JACK
You were a delightful Desdemona, though you'd never been as innocent as you appeared to be on stage, and were still plotting to run off to New York with "honest Iago" here.

JORDAN
Let's not get personal, Jack. I dutifully sent her off with you to that little college in Nebraska. Even tried to get her to go back when she showed up here with Henry--of all people. Did they tell you that? I knew you'd both soon be fed up with those corn fields, and head for New York. I considered it inevitable.

CHRISTINE
Where was I when all of this was going on?

BETTY
Where indeed? [Smiling at her.] Barely conceived, and look at you now, commanding your own stage in New York City. I knew I was pregnant, and it was starting to show--which wasn't the best for Desdemona's reputation, given how long she and

Othello had been married. If your father and I had been more careful under the scaffold you wouldn't be worrying about shades of lipstick and hairstyles now. So you were there, my dear--but in no position to contradict my memory of the facts now. Where was I? Yes, that young blond was upset because I kept laughing at him. Maybe it was that stage of pregnancy, or that howling dog--but I think mostly being held up by a boy who wasn't sure which was the right end of the gun. You've got to be good to do that kind of thing. I thought I'd die! And I could see my laughing really embarrassed him in front of the two black men, who did seem to know what they were doing.

JORDAN
One of them was white--the one Jack hit.

BETTY
He was not! Or that silly blond wouldn't have been in charge. In Oklahoma, in those days, the white man had to be in charge. Even of a robbery. [To Christine.] When the blond came over threatening me, I grabbed my purse back and hit him with it. That one black man would've hit me, if your father hadn't hit him first--when he wasn't looking. But he was holding a gun. The other black man fired his, though I don't know at what--or what he hit. I'm sure he didn't want to kill anybody--certainly not a white man--not in Oklahoma! It was just supposed to be a robbery, the guns part of the costume. It frightened him most, I think, because he started backing for the door. The blond boy picked up the gun the man Jack hit had dropped. I know he was holding that one backwards, by the barrel.

SHOKO
[To Henry.] Betty was really laughing as she told this part of the story, mostly to Christine . . . with all the gestures.

BETTY
He stood there bewildered, a gun in each hand . . . and I started laughing again. He glared at me as if he wanted to shoot, but wasn't sure how to work which gun. That big black man was coming up off one knee like a lion or gorilla about to chew Jack up, and that ineffective little blond fellow absolutely tamed him. He said "Buddy," or "Big Boy," or "Bosco," or something, "Let's get out of here. We've got enough." That big ox stopped like he was on a leash, picked up his sack of stuff, and they left.

JORDAN
They got out of there in a hurry all right.

BETTY
I was laughing so hard it took me ten minutes to stop. It was that blond, mostly, but it was you, too, Jack. If you could've seen the look in your eyes after you realized you'd hit a man holding a gun. But I was proud of you. [Looks at Jack.] There I was, your fair lady, carrying your child, attacked by those nasty men, and you instinctively came to my rescue. [Pauses.] And they didn't get my purse, either--though they did get your wallets! We really had a party then. The locals were buying beer on account, and the people the thieves hadn't got to yet were chipping in, calling me "Red," and you "Jack, old boy." I thought it was great.

JORDAN
And played it to the hilt, sitting on the bar, telling them they should see Jack when he was in top form, that the guy he hit was lucky his trainer pulled him out of it before he really got hurt. [To the others.] Then Betty recited speeches from every play she'd ever been in--something from every one, I'm sure. [Back.] It must have been one of your best audiences ever.

JACK
[To Henry and Shoko.] As Betty had been rattling on, I'd been watching those listening to her. She had your attention, Shoko, and Laura's. Ben was sitting there with that blasé expression that was part of his mystique. But, while Christine seemed engrossed in what her mother was telling her, her reactions indicated the ambivalence of credibility she was giving it.

SHOKO
She knew her mother pretty well by then. She was still awed by her, but pleased that the woman she so admired on stage had praised her performance--and was treating her like a grown up.

JACK
I'd seen Christine so little the previous two years I was amazed by how much she had grown up. My Lolita was gone, leaving this Faery Queen. Her hair was a little darker than Betty's, but she had Betty's profile--the nose, the pout to her lips, the sparkle in the eyes--all of which had helped bring Titania to life. She was her mother's daughter. She felt me staring at her and looked over, smiling. I smiled back, then began playing with patterns my glass was making on the glass tabletop until she looked away, leaving me staring into the distance at an image of a little girl Laura and I had taken to California. Where had she gone--and this mysterious stranger come from? I looked back at Betty, who'd been the model for every heroine in everything I'd written for half my life--my Hester Prynne, my Desdemona, my countess, my Dido. And the woman who'd laughed those holdup men out of taking her purse? I really had hit a man who'd raised a hand to her with a gun in his other hand. I'd have died for her. But she'd left me . . . and the baby who was now Shakespeare's Titania . . . to run off to New York . . . with you, Henry.

SHOKO
Now Christine was being drawn into her world, as Betty, and Jordan, too, began to see her potential as an actress. Betty had hardly seemed to notice her until we'd gone to France, when first she'd been impressed by how quickly she learned French--then how much fun she was to go places with. Then she surprised us all by getting cast as Titania. Betty went to a few of the rehearsals, then all three performances. Jordan had gone opening night, then again that last night. Though she'd been working at the theatre ever since she'd come to New York--doing anything they'd let her do--it must have seemed to Christine that, as she stepped on stage, her mother was taking her seriously for the first time.

JACK
And now, suddenly, Jordan was interested in her, too. As Betty finished her Oklahoma story he said,

JORDAN
We talk about doing Romeo and Juliet, to complete your set of love-suicide plays. Well, let's do it--with Christine and Ben here. She handles Shakespeare's language beautifully. It's harder with Juliet--an extremely sophisticated thirteen-year-old. There's the speech where she rings a dozen variations on "eye/I/aye," and all the extended metaphors. I'd like to hear Christine read those speeches. But I'll bet she can. Betty, you say we're too old for Romeo and Juliet. All right. Play the nurse--a real plum. And I'll play Capulet, a nice cameo piece. For Christine it's the chance of a lifetime. We'll need to work with her, but she has the stage intelligence. And she's still young enough to be absolutely believable as Juliet. A miraculous combination. [He pauses, then smiles.] Then we can think about Hamlet.

SHOKO
Betty agreed to "think about it." But by the next day they were rescheduling rehearsals to include Romeo and Juliet. Laura wasn't enthusiastic, but all she had to do was look at the shine in Christine's eyes to know there was no use opposing the idea. I was there for many rehearsals, then saw three performances--and Christine was as amazing as the reviewers said. It gave me a new respect for Shakespeare. How the countess would have loved to see her. She was her "little girl" too.

HENRY
Jordan pulled out all the stops as Capulet, and received good notices, but it was Christine and Betty who caught the reviewers' attention--the mother and daughter. Randall came to see it, and it had been easy to interest him in doing the film version of that play first. Betty also planned to do it live here in LA by way of getting everyone acclimatized . . . so you could no doubt have seen it here, this fall, Jack. After working with Christine in their Juliet-Capulet scenes, Jordan began to badger Betty about doing Hamlet this summer. When she said, "Definitely not!" he went to the idea of The Tempest, with Christine as Miranda. Betty reminded him that Christine was still younger than she'd been as Eliza in Pygmalion. But she had turned eighteen, and Jordan said, "Not too young to discover she's a Shakespearean actress." Betty thought that what appealed to him most was that Christine was submissive. Soon everyone felt the tension--Laura, because she thought Christine’s life was being gobbled up by the theatre; Jordan, because Betty began to give priority to filming Romeo and Juliet; Betty, because she began to find Christine as hard to handle as she’d been; Shoko and me, because we were caught in the middle; and Christine herself, as she developed a crush on Jordan--following in her mother's footsteps in that, as well.

JACK
As we were leaving that little bar that evening Jordan said,

JORDAN
I hope we can do this Romeo and Juliet, Jack. But Betty's been giving me a bad time on this deal Henry's been promoting, filming some of the plays, out in your Hollywood.

BETTY
Jordan opposes filming our stage performances, but Henry will be going back to California--with Shoko--as soon as he can. It'll mean "splitting our energies," as Jordan says, but, when I was out there with you before, he worked very closely with Henry here. Now it's all my Henry! Henry thinks of Jordan--as Jordan himself does--as our greatest living actor, so is as much concerned about his interests as about mine.

JACK
But, on my way back to Tokyo two days later, I was almost relieved to realize that I wouldn't even be in California when you arrived this time. Then, while in Japan, I heard how your plans for filming the four love-suicide plays were progressing--in English from Laura and in Japanese from Shoko--and, yes, that you might even stage the Romeo and Juliet in Los Angeles first, perhaps about the time I'd be getting back. Then, just a few days later, I saw the picture of Jordan and Betty in the newspaper, which changed everything.

HENRY
You know, Jack, I was named as executor by both Jordan and Betty, so, on their deaths, fell heir to their problems, and their papers. Jordan didn't have the financial assets Betty did, spent everything he had on things like that Ferrari, but, back in New

York, I do have his library and diaries. He kept a diary clear back during his college years, and when he was in England. He began to work on a book about his theatre experience while Betty was out here with you. I was helping him on that, and might go back to work on those materials--with Shoko's help.

JACK
So you did work closely with Jordan as well.

HENRY
But, more recently, he was angry because I was supporting Betty's summer plans. Soon after Romeo and Juliet closed, I'd moved back out here, with Shoko, to negotiate the contract for a season of plays on television. Betty would usually stay at the house in Encino when she was out here, but would also spend time up here, do some painting, consult with me . . . play with Grendel . . . go out in the boat. But, even when she had Shoko doing other things, I stayed here as much as I could. Shangri-La is just too much for me. The death of Betty and Jordan has changed all our plans, of course, leaving us without an established project. I might very well go to work on a biography of Jordan. Shoko and I have talked about it. Perhaps a joint biography--Antony and Cleopatra. In any case, that will depend upon your reaction to something else we need to talk to you about. That’s the real surprise I told you about.

JACK
Yet another surprise? What can that be?

HENRY
I'd still like to wait on that. [Laughs.] Until I’m sure you're in the right mood. Actually, it’s more Christine’s surprise than it is mine—so we should let her spring it on you.