“Some times,” he repeated, the center of him opened, heart, soul, a knife thrust neat from septum to sternum. She knew she was shredding him and still she would do it and now for the first time in those five years he felt the heat of that engine turned against him, the peculiar force she emitted as if it did not belong to her, as if she held no responsibility for the low moan that came forth and entered into the dried heart and bitter soul of the man listening. “Some times,” he said again. Then without pause said, “So, he just going to move you in with his wife and children?”

“It’s so small-time. You think you’ve got your hand in everybodys pocket, don’t you.” She shook her head, a small contempt. “It happens he knows men, in Providence and Boston both, men in the entertainment business. And I’m not talking about music halls and such but theatre, real theatre. He knows I’ve got a talent, Jamie. All he wants is to help me. It’s not always about how much cash or how much ass. I know you don’t believe that. It’s no sure thing, I know that. But this is a chance, a risk I’ve got to take. Could be the only one I get.”

“You’re stupid. All he’s going to do is stick you away in some cold-water flat somewhere and pay your bills and give you enough money to live on. Maybe turn you out to some little work or another so you feel like the gold ring’s just around the corner. And come by to fuck you once a week. Just turn you into your mother is all he’s going to do.”

“You asshole.”

He went right on. “Maybe that’s the right thing. I mean, maybe that’s how it works. We can’t ever learn a thing. We just keep doing the same things over and over. Not even intentional. Like we can’t help ourselves. Like it’s who we really are. That’s it—we spend our lives just becoming what we already someway know we are.”

“I hate it here,” she said. “I hate the winters, all cooped up, frozen. I hate the summers too, the same people, year after year, the same little diversion I make on their summer trip. I hate saying the same things over and over, singing the same songs over and over. I hate it. I do! I can’t stand it anymore.”

“You think that’s really going to change? Say, even all the things you think you want, say those happen? You don’t think it’ll someway come down to the same thing? Pleasing people you couldn’t care less about? People who don’t give a shit about you, people you’re just a ornament to. You doubt that? It comes down to it, it don’t matter whether you’re fucking Mister Edgar Sloane on some cold winter day or trailing around in a fine gown with a glass of champagne and five hundred people all dressed up pressing your hand and kissing your cheek; in the end, the end of the day, they all go off and leave you alone with yourself. And where’s that leave you? Where do you think? Just right there alone is all. Just right there with your own self and nothing else.”