DW-B-2

THE BRIDGE OF DREAMS--BETTY

ACT II--THE RAINMAKER

[Scene: the same as the opening of Act I.]

CHRISTINE
So you knew then you wanted to marry Mother . . . and were even concerned to protect her from herself. That's nice, Dad.

JACK
I was pretty high on such noble thoughts . . . for a few days. Then people came back for the fall semester, and my summer idyll was over . . . long before we started work on the big fall play, N. Richard Nash's The Rainmaker.

CHRISTINE
I've only seen the movie of that play, too . . . and was already in love with Burt Lancaster before I did. I wanted to run away with him myself, as his . . . Melissandra?

JACK
It was a good movie, wasn't it?. And it's a good play, too . . . a well-made play. I've seen it done half a dozen times. Colleges and community theatres like it . . . not just for Starbuck and Lizzie . . . the brothers . . . the father . . . some nice parts. But I thought it was a fundamental error in casting for Dr. Gillis to cast your mother as Lizzie. I told Jordan that she was obviously too good looking. "Lizzie is plain. That's what this play is about--a plain girl with the soul of a Romantic, tempted by a con man. How can anyone ever see Betty as that plain? That hair, those eyes, that figure. How can you conceal them? You'd have to hide her in a grain sack. I say, keep Betty, but get a different play." Jordan's response was, "She's the best actress on campus, Jack . . . so I'd cast her. Theatre is theatre."

CHRISTINE
And he was doing Starbuck, of course.

JACK
Yes . . . and he was right about Betty. They did it partly with costume and make-up--a dress cut wrong, someone's idea of a farm-girl's hairstyle, cosmetic high-lighting of the wrong features. But Betty did most of it herself. She settled into that farm kitchen as if she had grown up there, perfectly at home, let the broad Kansas side of her voice dominate, and pride be the key to her character--and she did it! Better than Katharine Hepburn, I thought . . . who would've had a lot the same problem, convincing people that she was a simple farm girl. But Starbuck was a natural for Jordan. Dr. Gillis had probably decided to do that play because he knew he had Jordan. And I was cast as Noah . . . the cynical brother. By the time the play opened I'd come to feel it was type-casting. It wasn't my first time on stage with Betty . . . nor my last . . . but, as it turned out, it was my last time on stage with Jordan--who may have been the greatest actor of our time.

CHRISTINE
I won't argue with that. I wanted to run off with him, too . . . as bad as Mother. And I never even saw him in that play.

JACK
He played the part of the con man who brings this farm girl to life with his wild, romantic dreams to perfection, reaffirming the quintessential power of theatre every time he waxed rhapsodic--making me want to reach out and touch him, right now, in memory, just to feel that power again. There he was, bringing the rain into her life, springtime into her imagination. For that prosaic deputy sheriff--with his feet up on his desk--to harvest.

CHRISTINE
You don't think she should have run off with Starbuck, do you?

JACK
No, I don't. And I was as happy, as always, when work began on the play. I'd been concerned about Betty and Jordan, but, when he came back, it was almost as if he didn't know either of us. For about a month we hardly saw him. Betty and I still spent an occasional evening together, but never approached the high passion of our "moment of truth" again. She was now a sophomore, and went to class and did homework assignments religiously, "to have a record to coast on when I'm working on the play," she said. And who knows what Jordan was doing--working on a program of Shakespeare pieces, learning the Starbuck part already, going to classes, all in theatre, that he tended to treat somewhat cavalierly--everybody, including the instructors, already deferring to him as the master--and reading, as he always did, very miscellaneously.

CHRISTINE
I remember that about him. He always had a book at rehearsal--and spent a lot of time reading. Once it was Haklyt's Voyages, then Catch-22, and another time Kant's Critique of Pure Reason! But I don't think he ever finished one of them.

JACK
Though he could have. Jordan had a good mind. And was in the habit of talking to people wherever he happened to be, about whatever they were interested in, and, if it sparked his interest, taking the path they were on, right then--so he spent a lot of time in the library. He read very rapidly, but would stop whenever he lost interest, too--ten pages in, halfway through, ten pages from the end, in the middle of a paragraph--and throw the book away, or take it back to the library, for which I've always envied him. Whenever his reason for picking Kant up was gone, he put him down, while I tend to finish a book just because I started it, which doesn't make much sense, does it?

CHRISTINE
No . . . but I do that, too. Have bookmarks in a dozen books, and hate to take one back to the library if I haven't finished it.

JACK
We'd had to give up our summer apartment. Jordan had moved in with our Pickering, the boy who went to Colorado with him, and I'd found another roommate, too--Dan Parker, an older graduate student who was the father in The Rainmaker. But I didn't feel that Jordan was dodging me. When we saw each other he was always affable. We'd have lunch together, or a cup of coffee, or just stop to talk on the steps of the library. He did seem to be avoiding Betty, though. She got that impression, too. She said, "but he smiles and says 'hello' when I see him in the Union, or at the library, so maybe I just imagine it. Summer's over, I guess . . . for all of us." I finally decided that it was largely a matter of his having lost current interest in us--just like those books. He'd put us down--nothing personal.

CHRISTINE
That's an interesting way to see it.

JACK
Anyway, he appeared to have conceded Betty to me, after I'd felt guilty about stealing ground on him while he was gone, and doubtful I could maintain my advantage once he got back. Still, I felt annoyed at not having his attention myself the way I had during the summer . Knowing how rare a spirit he was, I'd been flattered to think Jordan Simms took me that seriously.

CHRISTINE
I think, with Jordan, if you were working on a play with him, he took you very seriously. Otherwise, he didn't know you existed . . . though I liked to think, there at the end . . .

JACK
Anyway, when we got to working on The Rainmaker, early in October, we did begin to spend time together again--but not like we had that summer. There're only a couple of scenes where Lizzie and Starbuck are together, only a couple where Noah and Starbuck are, or Lizzie and Noah. Betty and I might go off together to unwind after rehearsal, but didn't even ask Jordan. Betty seemed as reserved toward him, off-stage, as Lizzie was on, or as determined to meet Jordan's polite distance with her own, not wanting to have her overtures rebuffed. And I accepted that . . . with my own reservations. The great irony was that, while I'd been carefully skirting the danger of competition on that side, it came from another. It was shortly before we started rehearsals for The Rainmaker, but after she'd been cast in the lead role, that Betty met Tom Hazen.

CHRISTINE
Ah, yes . . . her football player. [Laughs.]

JACK
Yes . . . her football player. Betty was becoming queen of the stage on campus, had been pledged Alpha Kappa Gamma on that basis and was being put forward as their brightest sophomore star. Tom was a senior, once-already All-American quarterback and expected to be again--the Big Man on Campus. A young coach, Gabby Hirsch, had come up from Tennessee, or Georgia, then went back down there, I think, after a year or two in pro ball on Tom's shirttail, to live out his life telling Tom Hazen war stories. He got credit for revolutionizing the game, with the concept of field position, through the quick kick and a few other tricks that worked pretty well given Hazen's remarkable physical capacities, until defenses adapted. But you remember Tom, from when he stayed with us . . . and when we used to go to his games . . . or watch him on television.

CHRISTINE
Remember how old I was when you took me to those football games! But Mother used to talk about him. And Laura about there at the lake. I know what a great star he was.

JACK
And already was when your mother met him, at one of those fraternity-sorority things. We'd been going to the home games-- Kansas played the Number 1 team in the nation three times that year--so it was great football, and, since we got in on our student-body cards, a cheap date. But, after Betty met Tom, she became fifth cheerleader, you might say--there in the stands. And I soon met Tom, too. Betty made the occasion and introduced us. The trouble was I liked him. I'd still call Tom one of the friendliest guys I've known in my life. And, without question, the most exciting football player I've ever watched--right up to the end of his career. I never missed watching when he was on television . . . as you must remember. He had the courage, or the imagination, or the gall, to do the thing you least expected--was dramatic, which is the highest compliment I can give a football player.

CHRISTINE
I don't care much for football. You two probably cured me of that back when I was only four or five years old.

JACK
[As to himself.] He even had a good season that last year . . . for a bald-headed old man of thirty-something, and I was really pulling for him. The play I remember best was in the game he lost--but should have won--in the playoffs, on a fourth-down pass he got rid of as he was going down. [Laughs.] It surprised the receiver so much that he dropped the ball! Tom told us he really got a kick out of the expression on that guy's face, and

then the one on his own, in the game films. He never took himself--or football--too seriously. Or about as seriously as I take a play--it's everything while I'm doing it, but after it's over . . . whatever milk got spilt . . . no point crying, is there? And that's the way I like to remember Tom--telling the story of watching that game film. His skill and courage as an athlete, his sympathies, his sense of humor, his humanity, were all tuned right. But all I could think of that fall was how ridiculous it would be for an actor-director-playwright to lose his girl--no, the "idea of theatre incarnate"--to an idiot football player. Jordan Simms, yes. But some guy who didn't even believe in our kind of plays? Still, I did a lot of cheering after some of his kind of plays, as performed by an All-American. Then, looking at the enthusiasm in Betty's eyes, as she bounced up and down beside me, tried to keep from breaking into tears.

CHRISTINE
I like that picture . . . [Laughs.] . . . of both of you.

JACK
Do you? Well, it was soon obvious to everyone that Betty was Tom's girl, not mine. She had the play and he had football training rules, so they weren't spending a lot of time together. But enough. And, while Betty and I still went a few places besides football games, more and more often when I asked she'd be busy. Well, she was busy. But then I'd see her in the Student Union with Tom, other girls from her sorority, and other football players . . . all laughing up a storm . . . and I'd begin to have bloody thoughts. Nor was I ever inclined to join in . . . though I think Tom would have welcomed me.

CHRISTINE
So you felt that Mother was betraying you . . . with this flashy . . . and over-confident . . . football player?

JACK
Not exactly . . . it was more as if I were being left out, I guess . . . or left behind. As if I'd been good enough, perhaps even a little romantic, as the young . . . yet somewhat older and more worldly wise . . . director of his first college play, but now she was beginning to see me in perspective . . . as just another member of the cast . . . while she was a star! I didn't have the prestige on campus of a Jordan Simms, another star, and certainly not of a Tom Hazen, the greatest star of all. [Laughs.] If that sounds like pure jealousy, it was. [Pause.] But what may have bothered me most was that it was Tom, not me, she asked to take her to her mother's funeral . . . though I'd have dropped everything to do it. He was the one who made the special arrangements with his coach to be able to drive to Dodge City with her--a day on the road each way, in his brand new Ford Mustang--and he was the one who was with her to experience her grief over her mother's death . . . to share it with her. That was hard to take.

CHRISTINE
I can understand that. And that shows how much you really did care for her. [Pause.] I certainly regret the fact that I never met a single one of my grandparents . . . I think that's unusual.

JACK
It is, isn't it? And I was certainly sorry to see your Grandmother Fredricks die. As I say, I think I'd have gotten along pretty well with her. And I knew even then I was being unfair to Betty. We'd made no commitments to one another, and she was just making the most of the campus social life that was opening up for her. It must have been exciting. Still, there were times when I definitely cursed sophomore girls and "flashy" football players, times when I put a lot of myself into those scenes in which Noah really lets Lizzie have it.

CHRISTINE
I can imagine . . . so Mother probably thought it was worth it.

JACK
You mean for the good of the play. [Laughs.] I suppose. And Tom was no help. He could read my feelings for Betty easily enough, and, when we were together, seemed almost apologetic about taking my girl away . . . without really trying. It was not exactly a new experience for him. It was what he did for recreation, I guess, to occupy himself between classes, or in classes, as one of the perquisites of being a top football player.

CHRISTINE
He was married several times, wasn't he?

JACK
Not several . . . but, yes . . . at least three. And he always wanted to marry your mother--she became special to him, too. He'd even drop in at rehearsals, creating a minor sensation, and generating a lot of gossip. I remember talking about it with Jordan one night in the green room.

[The lights go down on them, and up on Jordan pacing up and down rehearsing one of Starbuck's more flamboyant speeches.]

JORDAN
Jack! Good. We need to work on our big scene. But what about this football player? Is he going to come in here with his romantic sis-boom-bah and carry our starry-eyed Lizzie away?

JACK
I wish I knew. As caught up as she is in her acting right now, I'd think you'd be her crush . . . her real-life Starbuck. But she does seem to be under Hazen's spell . . . a damn attractive guy.

JORDAN
[Laughs.] Well, you want to make a side bet, Jack? It won't last a month past the football season. I know Betty better than you do, I think. Working as closely as we do on stage we have to tune to each other's sensibilities. Betty wants action--that's her secret. I was skeptical at first, but her spirit is fierce--like a tigress. You know the female tiger does most of the hunting, has qualities we mistakenly think of as masculine--is ruthless!

JACK
You think Betty is ruthless.

JORDAN
I know she is! When she came up full force I was fearful for poor Higgins' life. But the tension was exactly what we needed. Now, as I see her as Lizzie, I know she's not going to run off with anybody--unless it's to some place she wants to go. That girl knows what she wants, and it's not going to be just to tag along--especially to an interminable series of football games.

JACK
I would agree with most of that . . . but . . .

JORDAN
And I know football players. She does, too. She's just playing games with this guy, and with the sorority celebrity thing--for the practice. Why not? It's a role. But she'll tire of it as fast as she picked it up. I consider myself an objective observer, Jack, watching her watching you watching him. She's the real sportsman--enjoys the game. I don't know what to predict for you and Betty--though not a cottage for two--or what to advise. Go ahead and play with dynamite, if you think you can handle it, I guess. Again, why not? But it will never be the football player. You can trust me on that one.

JACK
I'm not so sure, old buddy. That passion you see in her as an actress doesn't evaporate off stage. She'll fly off with him somewhere and come back pregnant. Then what?

JORDAN
Then what, indeed? I don't deny the possibility. It's even one to conjure with. [He pauses a moment, as if conjuring with it, then laughs, a short, sarcastic laugh.] But it's semi-irrelevant. You don't have anything against fallen women, do you, Jack? If so, you've chosen the wrong profession. And you're hooked on Hester Prynne, aren't you? You don't blame her, even though you know she seduced that poor minister. Personally, I doubt this football player could teach Betty anything she doesn't already know. Now you . . . or I . . . [As Jack starts to react, he puts out a hand to calm him.] Don't get excited, Jack. I'm not accusing Betty, or Betty and you, of anything. Nor do I give a damn about the bedroom politics. Write me off as a cynic, if you like, but the way of the world is the way of the world. Most girls are virgins up to some point, but damn few have the capacity to act, and chances are, in that consummation devoutly to be wished, the two are mutually exclusive.

JACK
You are a cynic!

JORDAN
And I know it's none of my business, but just what role do you have in mind for Betty? A housewife in suburbia? To raise your progeny while you do the important things in the world? I hope I know you better than that, Jack. Marriage and sex--all very interesting--necessary for the preservation of the species--but the play's the thing, in which a man can be a king. And a woman a queen. You know that. Skip a meal, or steal one, but

the play must go on. Betty knows it, too--in her bones! She's too much tiger to allow any middle-class Puritan conception of woman to be imposed upon her. She'll never be fenced in, my friend . . . any more than I will. You'd better have the spirit to keep up, or you'll see her disappear over the spiritual horizon. [Jordan settles back, still looking at Jack intently, then looks away, with a tired, condescending laugh.] I don't know why I do that, Jack. I can see it just irritates you. And I'm on your side . . . so long as you can help me do what I want to do. That's your Aristotelian friendship, isn't it? And I feel the same about Betty. The very same! She's a jewel to work with. What do I care about your private lives? I don't give advice to the lovelorn. I'd be too Machiavellian for your taste. When the chips are down, my money is on old Machiavelli. Don't beg for her love--she'd despise that. Make her fear the loss of something she really wants, or needs--which is not a ranch-style house with a big picture window. [He pauses, then brightens up.] And stop me the next time I start in like this. What "necessary question of the play" are we here neglecting?

[Lights down on Jordan, and Jack talks to Christine as he joins Dan sitting in the back of the theatre.]

JACK
In later years, I've often reflected on what Jordan said that evening, and what it implied about his own attitudes toward Betty. And now, since their death, it keeps haunting me. I took it pretty seriously at the time, in fact. But Jordan wasn't the only one I "consulted." I found myself talking to my new roommate, Dan . . . a lot.

DAN
Your scene with Jordan went pretty well, Jack. And how are things going with you and Betty?

JACK
Oh, I don't know, Dan. [Looks at the stage, where Christine joins Jordan, as Lizzie.] She does out-maneuver him for center stage--what an actress she is! And as I watch her as Lizzie, both when I'm on stage with her, and, with a kind of obsession now, from back here . . . it's as if she were that other woman.

DAN
She's fantastically intense, isn't she. I definitely feel that when I'm on stage with her. And I like to stay and watch her, too. And it's a character that grows, Jack. As Lizzie comes to know herself, her dreams and their limitations, much better in the course of the play, Betty is totally convincing in revealing that awareness. Not many college girls can do that!

JACK
And Jordan's right. That's too good to be wasted--her rare capacity as an actress. Once he pointed it out, it's obvious. He thinks Betty is destined for the professional theatre . . . as he is. And he suggests that, for an "artist," all this "boys and girls" stuff is peripheral, happens around the edges, like eating and sleeping, is irrelevant to his, or her, real life . . . right? He says I should take my pleasure in Betty on stage, in working with her to bring out my own capacities as an artist, in fantasizing imaginative projections of her. Or perhaps catching her in miscellaneous unguarded moments--an evening here, two weeks between shows there . . . when she's off duty . . .

DAN
[Watching her.] Well . . . I'd take that, Jack. But good luck.

JACK
[Caught up in his own reflection.] . . . for whatever satisfaction of sensual appetites she might tolerate, or, better, choose for

herself, not try to carry her off to some corner of the world as mine alone. The best sense in which she can be mine is the sense in which she belongs to everyone--as a medium to an aesthetic, not a physical, experience. The higher mode . . .

DAN
That sounds pretty Platonic, Jack..

JACK
[Laughs.] I thought I was Platonic, but now think Jordan must have the profounder understanding of what Socrates was talking about. And, just as I get it figured out, back here in the dark, I watch her responding to Jordan's Melissandra speech--or doing the Mary Lou Beasley bit--and want to pulverize all leading men and football players and drag my Sabine woman off to the nearest cave by her long red hair. I have a compulsive, personal, physical desire for that particular young woman--that's her power over me, whatever it is with Jordan.

DAN
She obviously has power over him, too, Jack . . . but it does seem to be only when they're on stage. Still, who knows?

JACK
Then I watch her with Tom--taking a kind of masochistic pleasure in it, no doubt. She becomes very puzzling, perhaps calculatingly so, in her behavior toward me, increasingly fitful-- willful and petty actions that seem designed simply to annoy me. I get the impression that she's running her repertoire against my reactions for the practice it gives her as an actress.

DAN
[Laughs.] All girls do that some. But you may be right about Betty . . . still working as an actress when she's off duty. Ha!

JACK
But it's different with Tom. She just orders him around, like he's her knight and she's his fair lady. Yesterday I noticed Tom was wearing a ring I recognized as Betty's on a chain around his neck, and, when I looked, Betty is wearing a man's ring on a matching chain. I asked her, casually, "Does this mean you and Tom are engaged?" She answered, "Oh, no, nothing like that. We've just made a pact to carry each other's token into battle--for the Oklahoma game and the play. I think that's even more romantic. Everyone gets engaged." The way she looked at me I thought, "Damn your sparkling, sexy eyes, you red-headed little bitch." [Dan laughs.] But didn't say that to her, of course.

DAN
[Laughs.] You see what she's doing? Playing you and Tom off against each other. The age-old techniques of the mating game.

JACK
You may be right. Speaking of the Oklahoma game, you are going down with us, aren't you, Dan?

DAN
Wouldn't miss it, Jack. It's likely to be the best game of the year. Thanks for asking me. Oh, oh . . . our scene's coming up.

[Lights down, then up on a set of chairs suggesting a car. Two girls enter, followed by Jack and Dan. Dan sits in the back with the girls, Jack in the driver's seat. Christine comes from the other side, slipping into a KU sweater and putting the ring on over her head as she gets there, playing with it, smiling at Jack.]

BETTY
I reallly appreciate your driving us down to the game, Jack. [Looking at the group.] But I'm sorry Jordan didn't come.

JACK
I asked him, and his response was, "To a football game? You must be kidding, Jack?"

BETTY
Well, we wouldn't have had room for him anyway, would we?

DAN
It would have been a little crowded. But he sure missed a great game. Tom had the best day of his career. Gained over a hundred yards on the ground--and three hundred in the air.

BETTY
And won the game by three touchdowns. That should win him All-American again. And get Kansas the Orange Bowl bid.

JACK
Do you think it was the power of the ring?

BETTY
Maybe. [Talking to the others.] After the game, just now, Tom told me he wouldn't take my ring off for anything--not to sleep, not to shower, not for anything--until after the Orange Bowl game. I promised to wear his ring, too--not just for the play, but until after the Orange Bowl game.

JACK
And not take it off for . . . anything?

BETTY
[Looking at Jack.] Not for anything!

[Lights down. Jack and Christine walk back to their apartment set, Christine taking off the ring and KU sweater as they walk.]

JACK
She was bubbling all the way home. And it's fair to say that neither she nor Tom dishonored the rings they were wearing.

CHRISTINE
But it sounds like you'd have been too upset to really enjoy these football games . . . the way Mother evidently did.

JACK
Oh no, I still enjoyed the games. And my mood between games was just right for Noah. I was pretty good, in fact, but hardly noticed--because Betty and Jordan were fantastic. Dr. Gillis knew enough to allow Jordan to develop his own interpretation while directing Betty very closely. But Betty was tapping something even more elemental. Whenever I caught sight of the chain that ring was on, I was tempted to rip it off, or strangle the young witch with it, but caught up in the magic of her performance I could believe in its power myself. And, feeling that I was losing her to that power, felt I had to deny its existence--which was just about right for Noah.

CHRISTINE
I forget who had that part in the movie.

JACK
Lloyd Bridges . . . but see, you didn't forget Burt Lancaster, did you? The story of my life. Well, there were about three weeks between the last performance of The Rainmaker and the Orange Bowl game, most of it Christmas vacation time. And, just as I'd been convinced that Betty was my girl in those weeks at the end of summer, so now, in brooding agony, I was ready to concede that she was Tom's girl, with his ring around her neck, stolen from me in broad daylight--which might be poetic justice, but was hard on my ego . . . and cost me a lot of sleep.

CHRISTINE
You worried too much, but it shows how much you loved her.

JACK
It would have been almost impossible not to read it that way after the ridiculous scene Betty and I had at the cast party for The Rainmaker, and the impression I'd stomped out of there with was underlined in the newspapers every day, for, as the game approached, Tom was getting a lot of sports-page attention, with Betty being written up as "the girl whose ring the All-American quarterback will wear into battle." And she went down to Miami, with the whole crowd of Kansans-- students, faculty, alumni, insurance salesmen, wheat farmers--and I didn't. I'd decided not to, first as a kind of game of my own, then, after our confrontation at the cast party, on principle. But saying I needed to prepare for finals, or work on The Scarlet Letter, was just a dodge. I was having most trouble assuming the role of court jester, watching after the hero's girl while he was busy preparing for the big contest. Tom deserved better of me--whatever Betty deserved.

CHRISTINE
You think it made her mad . . . that you wouldn't go?

JACK
It might have. But I did put in a lot of time on The Scarlet Letter. And the game was on television--the first time I saw Tom play on TV, in fact. I saw your mother and her ring on the screen many times, thinking to myself, "If I were sitting there beside her I'd be on national television. And if I put my arm around her . . . I might get my own name on the sports page."

CHRISTINE
[Laughs.] That's probably what she would have liked most.

JACK
And Kansas lost . . . in spite of the ring . . . by just two points, on a last minute field goal. Tom was still the star, had the most yardage for the day. I was enough of a fan, in spite of all, to feel that Kansas should have won . . . and to actually feel sorry for Tom. I talked to him just a few days after he got back.

[Lights down as Jack walks over to where Dan is reading in the apartment they share. Dan looks up as Jack comes in.]

DAN
Did you have dinner with Tom, then?

JACK
It gets stranger and stranger. I thought Betty had just been avoiding me, but she's been avoiding him, too, ever since they got back from Florida. [Sitting down.] When I got to the Union Tom was sitting alone in the back, brooding, but not about having lost the game--about Betty. He seemed genuinely happy to see me . . . brightened up the way he does. I told him I'd watched the game on television and thought they were robbed, but he just passed that off, saying "They made a great kick, Jack, so deserved to win. But I want to ask you about Betty. What do you think I might have done to make her mad?"

DAN
He was asking you why you thought Betty was mad at him?

JACK
Right. I said, "My God, Tom, how would I know? I wasn't even in Miami, but thought you were getting along great. She's hardly talked to me at all since that cast party." She was scrupulously pleasant when I met her the other day in the library, smiled, but just said, "I'm studying for finals, Jack."

But Tom said she was refusing to talk to him, too, and, while it didn't seem to affect his appetite--I ate more than I usually do just trying to keep up--as I left the cafeteria, and looked back at that baffled athlete, playing with his milk shake, I felt a sympathetic bond with someone who seemed to have everything I ought to envy him for--except Betty. Poor guy!

DAN
But, as it happens, Jack, while you were having dinner at the Union with Tom, Jordan was having dinner with Betty at the most expensive restaurant in town. He just called to say that she'd asked him out, on this kind of special date, and now he wanted to talk to you about her. I told him you'd be back soon. [A knock at the door.] That must be him now. [Opens the door.] Jordan, come in. I told Jack what you said on the phone.

JACK
He said you had dinner with Betty--that she asked you out. I hope you can tell me what's going on with her. [Pause.] I need to know about The Scarlet Letter. She keeps saying, "ask me after finals, Jack." Well I think today was her last final.

JORDAN
That's what she said. And talk about a first-class exercise in seduction. You almost lost your Dimmesdale as well as your Hester. [Pause.] She asked me to take her to New York. Now! And I was tempted. We'd be fielding a pretty good team. You could come, too, couldn't you. The three musketeers again.

JACK
[Hesitating.] Tempting, yes, but I need this next semester here, doing The Scarlet Letter. That's what I'm ready for. I'm not ready for New York yet. And neither is she! You may be. And, if you want to take Betty, I suppose she's yours to take.

JORDAN
[Gives Jack a peculiar look.] Not mine to take, Jack. Just not yours to keep. [Then his tone changes.] But I told her almost exactly what you've just told me. I'm not ready . . . yet. Why not do the Shakespeare play here--her, too--and your play--and finish my BA--before going off to New York with the stronger credentials? We could talk about it again in May. But I thought you should know, Jack . . . and now you do.

JACK
Well, sure. I appreciate your telling me, Jordan. [Jordan leaves, leaving Jack a little stunned. Finally, to Dan.] Why didn't she ask me? I might have gone.

DAN
No, Jack, you're right. You should both stay for this semester. She can do your Hester . . . and probably the best female part in Richard III. That's why Jordan wants to stay. To do Richard.

[Lights down, as Jack crosses back to Christine.]

JACK
Then, as if in planned sequence, Betty had her evening out with Tom. He called to tell me she'd broken off with him, in very formal terms, said she was going to be a professional actress, and gave him back his ring. He didn't even challenge her. "It couldn't've been an act, Jack. She's made up her mind." So Jordan had been right--it wouldn't be the football player. Within weeks Tom had lost himself in negotiations for his future as a professional athlete. By a month later, it was clear they'd both survive their college romance unscarred. By then, they were even dating again occasionally--he took her to the cast party for Richard III--and they always remained, so long as both of them lived, as they say, the "best of friends."

CHRISTINE
She always spoke well of him . . . of her football player.

JACK
Then I guess it was my turn, when, one evening a few days later, Betty found me in the Experimental Theatre. [Continues talking to Christine as he walks on stage, where there is now a scaffold, which he examines. Christine goes off to come on from the rear of the theatre as Betty.] I'd been worrying with technical problems in staging The Scarlet Letter, and a friend and I had mocked up a rough scaffold. He'd gone home, and I was making notes to myself when I heard something behind me, turned around, and there was Betty, standing in the half light at the back of the theatre. It was like seeing a ghost. I said, 'My God, Betty, you surprised me. I thought I was seeing Hester Prynne. How long have you been there?'

BETTY
For a while. Just watching. I wanted to talk to you alone, so decided to wait until Frank left. That's the scaffold where Hester stands? [She comes to sit down in the front row.]

JACK
Just a rough mock-up. I'm still not sure I'll be doing the play. [A short silence.] I hear you're planning to go to New York?

BETTY
[Surprised.] I see Jordan's been talking to you. Well, I didn't swear him to secrecy. No, Jack, I came to tell you I've decided to stay here. To be your Hester . . . if you still want me.

JACK
I should be elated. I don't think I'd do the play without you-- not now. But you don't sound very enthusiastic. I am pleased,

of course. But I'm worried about you, Betty. What's going on? [Looking at her.] If ever there actually were a Hester Prynne, I . . . [Then, with some excitement.] Come stand here, up on the scaffold, and let me look at you in this light. [Betty comes up on stage, then climbs up onto the scaffold, and Jack moves her and looks at her from a dozen different angles. Something's just not right. [Finally.] Of course! I've got a scarlet letter there in my briefcase. [Gets it.] Here, put this on. And let me fix your hair differently. Sit here on the steps. [He sits on the scaffold directly behind her. and begins to arrange her long hair to frame the scarlet letter she is pinning to her bosom.] I've been talking to Tom, too, you know. You have us all mystified. What is going on with you?

BETTY
[Her sides begin to shake, as she is crying.] I don't know. [He puts his cheek against her hair, and lets his hands slip down to take hers. He's holding her tightly now, arms across the scarlet letter, rising and falling to the rhythm of her breathing.] Damn you, Jack. [Pulls loose, to turn and look up steadily into his eyes.] And damn your play . . . and your godly magistrates. What do any of you know about Hester Prynne? [They kiss.]

[Lights down as Jack and Christine return to their apartment.]

JACK
[Musing.] But her eyes were saying something else. I saw the look I'd seen that summer night, when, as I'd thought afterwards, not responding to the elemental female might have lost her for me. I wasn't going to let that happen again. But I shouldn't be telling you these things, should I?

CHRISTINE
Why not? You loved her, didn't you?

JACK
Always. It intrigued me to wonder afterward if Hester and Dimmesdale had conceived Pearl under the scaffold. It must have been in the forest, or somewhere in the church. But it would have been appropriate. I still think of Betty, of your mother, as Hester . . . the forbidden fruit. And she was unspeakably delicious at the base of our crude scaffold. But we didn't make the scaffold a common trysting place. [Laughs.] Though I'd have been willing. But Betty just said, "No, Jack, that's in Hester's past. Do you think that she and Dimmesdale did it more than once?" She had me there. What do you think?

CHRISTINE
If they didn't, it would probably have been Dimmesdale's fault.

JACK
I was elated. Still, it was perfectly understandable. I was the best option left, could offer a leading role in a play. I was temporarily euphoric, if a little bewildered, as if already sensing that the dream that I really had to fear was the one that had brought her back to me. But every time I was with her I forgot about that, and, even when I wasn't, I was likely to be thinking about her . . . all mixed up with Hester Prynne.

CHRISTINE
She once told me that Hester Prynne was her greatest role . . . though most people would have said that Cleopatra was.

JACK
She was right. And Tom had never given Betty's ring back. Three months later, as The Scarlet Letter was about to open, as a joke, I asked if she thought she could get that magic ring back from him, for our show. She didn't laugh.