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as a mermaid cavorting about the stage in an electric wheelchair, complete with swaying palms and trick coconuts? Dolores calls her act The Revue Tropicale and includes in it such monoliths of mediocrity as “Crackin’ Up from Havin’ Lack of Shackin’ Up” and the inimitable “It Was Fiesta and I Had the Clap.” Drawing on the lowest form of show business imaginable, the Revue’s climax—if you can call it that— is the one-handed twirling of a set of Maori poi balls, a trick Dolores was taught by an itinerant sheep shearer from Wellington. She performs it with the utmost confidence. In this, as in all things, her belief in herself is awesome.
    Yes, Dolores is a pretty tough cookie. But then, I have a weakness for tough cookies. In fact, the other character I thought I might drag around the world with me was a pretty rugged soul herself.
    I named her “The Magic Lady,” after a wheezy old bag lady who took up residence on my stoop one sodden July. At first glance, my besotted stoopmate bore about the same relationship to the human race as leftovers do to the feast the night before. But no matter how bedraggled she looked, no matter how used up she appeared—and was—she always had a feisty spark in her eye and a ready smile. Unkempt and certainly unhinged, the way she raised her bottle to me whenever I went out or came back home was somehow reassuring. Bruised and beaten, beaten and bruised, she was still doing her part to connect. When winter came and they took her away, I found I really missed her. Making up “The Magic Lady” was the way I got her back.
    Unlike sassy, muttonheaded Dolores, who is, let’s face it, a lot like me—or someone I might have become—The Magic Lady was, and remains, something of a stranger. Whatever parts of me she came out of are not the parts with which I’m in daily touch.In many ways, she is the exact opposite of me, her response to experience totally different than mine: sensitive where I’d be glib; open where I’d be closed; forgiving where I’d be wailing for revenge. She sits there on that same old half-broken bench, in that same old battered coat, waving that silly umbrella, forgotten and ignored. Yet if you asked her, she’d be up in a minute, dancing around the maypole, telling you how wonderful it is to be alive and part of the human race.
    And that’s the part of The Magic Lady I find the most difficult to relate to: her optimism, in the face of everything. Her enthusiasm, which survives and survives and survives. Yet that I know is what makes her magic—and that’s the part I most admire.
    In any event, my masks gave me something to think about as I remained encased in my mustardy grave, my only link with life Miss Frank, who would occasionally pass Fritos and small pieces of cheese through the mouthpiece so that I might keep up my strength.
    As I saw the shadows lengthen across the floor, I thought, Is this how it’s going to end after all?
    Headlines flashed before my eyes:

DIVA DIES IN HOT DOG MISHAP
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Began Career at Continental Baths
    But I have always been a lucky girl, at least when it comes to survival, and, in time, my hairdresser returned. While Miss Frank held a flashlight inside the wiener, he snipped and cut and snipped again, until, at last, I was free.
    I would love to say that as I stepped out of the hot dog a giant cheer went up. But except for the girls and Miss Frank, everyone had gone.
    Oh, well, I thought, that’s show biz.

Dear Sis: First of all, STOP whatever you’re doing and try and concentrate for five minutes. When I spoke to you last night I got the definite feeling that in typical Midler fashion your MIND WAS WANDERING. So here it is all written down just in case you forget.
    No. 1: The turntable I ordered for Daniel should be arriving in New York in a few days. Please pick it up and send it to him right away. It’s his going-away present. Mom and Pop’s present I’m sending from here—my maid, Aretha. Aretha and