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By Root 493 0

one night in January. They’d been drinking highballs with the Gibsons, and Gerald had told funny stories all night. Vivian really hadn’t noticed the time until he had fallen asleep fully clothed across her bed at six in the morning. She hadn’t actually slept with the man, and she’d more or less worked out that he was queer, which had been an enormous relief. Two nights later at dinner, Gerald said suddenly, “Tell me a play.” Vivian asked him what he meant. “Give me an idea,” he said. “You’re clever. Tell me a play.” Thinking fast, she suggested the idea for Ticker to Gerald, who everyone knew had just had a success with a mystery spoof on Broadway. The idea came to Vivian only as she was speaking, and of course she didn’t really intend it as something anyone might want to develop, never mind with her in tow.

“Good,” he said.

“Good?” she said.

“Write it,” he said. “You’ve practically written it just talking to me.”

“I can’t write plays,” Vivian said.

“Why not?”

“I can’t even write a decent letter.”

“I’ll teach you,” he said. “We’ll go to the theater. You’ll read plays. You can do it.”

After Havana, Vivian moved to New York, mostly for the promise of the theater every night and the parties to follow, and, really, she did love the Plaza Hotel. But then, one evening in March at dinner, Gerald said he wouldn’t take her to the theater anymore unless she showed him a page. The next morning, at her desk at the Plaza, Vivian began to write.

As she surveys the beach, Vivian ponders Gerald’s advice about the first draft. She agrees with him that something dark is lurking beneath the surface of Ticker, something that threatens to drag it down, give it a whiny note. She can excise it if she tries. And of course she wants to write a comedy. Truthfully, she distrusts tragedy and often finds it stilted and false: all that wailing and gnashing of teeth! Give her a razor wit any day, dialogue that crackles, characters who don’t take themselves too seriously, and the ones who do deliciously skewered. Two pages a day, Gerald said. That’s all it would take.

She stands at the water’s edge and squints back at the cottages, wondering if any of the old crowd will reappear this summer. The Nyes certainly won’t, nor will Dorothy Trafton, and Vivian thinks she might actually miss Dorothy Trafton, if only as someone to dislike. It could be terribly lonely here without the usual crowd. Dickie is in Indianapolis now, working for the Arrow shirt company. She tried to persuade him to come east for a visit, but he said he couldn’t do that, he was new to the job and had to wait at least six months before he could take a vacation. Vivian was appalled. Neither of them mentioned the house.

As she searches each cottage for signs of life, her eyes continue on to the end of the crescent, where she sees the house of the woman who collects sea glass. She sent Honora a postcard from Havana, but of course the woman had no address to reply to. Perhaps Vivian will take the beach wagon out later this afternoon, see if it’s running all right, and stop in at Honora’s house. Maybe she’ll meet the husband — the elusive typewriter salesman who was late for Christmas Eve lunch.

Vivian digs her toes into the sand. “Sandy, come here,” she calls.

The dog trots obediently to Vivian’s feet. She picks him up and walks with him into the water until her ankles are so cold they ache.

Alice Willard

Dear Honora,

I thought I would just write you a couple of lines. Seems hardly time enough even to do that these days. Harold isn’t at all well. He has lost a great deal of weight and as you know there wasn’t much there to begin with. He said to me last week that he has not truly felt like a man since Halifax. This morning he said, “Life is a long ladder, Alice, and I’m not afraid of the top rung.”

If you should get a chance to send him a note I know that he would appreciate it very much.

Are you eating well? I worry about this most of all, because I know how tight money is for you. I don’t know what we’d have done without the produce from last year’s garden. If there