“It’s possible that I didn’t think this through,” she said.

Coming from Mrs. Amberson, this was the equivalent of a grand confession of blame.

“They have to do the show tomorrow,” she said. “Some of those people I got to come are very hard to pin down. It’s in their best interest to do this show. But I don’t think they feel like listening to me right now, do you?”

Mrs. Amberson smiled, but it wasn’t a toothpaste commercial smile. It was a wry, soft one.

“What do I know?” she said, almost to herself. “I seem to have really done it this time.”

“Maybe she was lying,” Scarlett said.

“Oh, I don’t think she was. I think she was being deadly serious. No, I think this is really Waterloo, O’Hara. And it’s my fault.”

Scarlett wasn’t about to say, “No, it isn’t.” Because it was her fault. Sort of. Maybe not about the zoning issue, but bringing Donna into it.

“What do we do?” Scarlett asked.

“Well, I think I’ve done enough, don’t you?” Mrs. Amberson opened and shut her cigarette case a few times. “I think the best thing would be for me to go back to the hotel and get my things together.”

“You’re leaving?” Scarlett couldn’t keep her voice under control. “You’re leaving now?”

“Every actress should know when to make a good exit. And I think you’ll be better off.”

She thought this over for just a moment, gave Scarlett one last smile, and walked off, down the ramp, away from the broken remains of the show.

ACT IV

In 1931, at the height of Prohibition, Lily “Honey” Vauxhall and Murray “Jinx” Rule produced a homemade gin so high in quality that it was even deemed fit to serve in the prestigious 21 Club.

Honey and Jinx produced their wares out of two adjoining rooms in the elegant Hopewell Hotel on the Upper East Side. Guests were scarce during the Great Depression, and high-quality gin even more so. The hotel’s owner, Charlie Martin, never openly professed any knowledge of the goings-on. He did, however, install a “laundry chute” leading from a room called the Diamond Suite down to the basement. Laundry chutes are not typically installed in guest rooms—or, even more strangely, only one guest room, with no openings on any other floor. Nor can it be explained why the chute was outfitted with a pulley mechanism, much like the kind you would use to lower bottles of gin down to waiting hands many floors below.

Martin could hardly be blamed for going along with the scheme. It was a simple move of survival, and, some would say, a public service.

Operations came to an end in 1933, putting Honey and Jinx out of business and returning the Hopewell Hotel to law-abiding status. The quiet little hotel has never again been host to any “Jinx,” high or otherwise…

—“A ROOM WITH A BREW” FROM ILLEGAL NEW YORK

DESPERATE TIMES

“Well,” Spencer said later that day, having returned from schlepping all of Mrs. Amberson’s bags to The St. Regis in a cab, “what now? You have no job. I have no job. Wanna play Jenga?”