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along the rear wall, checking exits, aisles, faces. Everyone looked rich and terribly important, or attached to such a person.
     Finally I headed toward second row center: typical Barnard. She had probably planned to arrive three seconds before opening
     curtain so that no one could miss her entrance.
    Three chairs in the second row remained empty. Left of them loomed the immense Vicky Chickering. Seeing me, she broke off
     speaking with a younger woman at her side. For just a wee moment, disbelief grayed her face. But recovery was swift. “Leslie!”
     She ooched over a few inches to make room. “I thought you left town last night!”
    Had I told her that? “I make exceptions for Schnitzler.” I wedged into the three-quarter space she had left me. “So you’re
     a fan of endangered species?”
    “As is the First Lady.” Vicky’s eyes leapt to a more strategic beast behind me. She not only stood up for this one, but pronounced
     her name in French. “Justine!”
    Egad, Duncan’s dancing partner. Looking right through me, Justine Cortot began wedging down the row as a man in bow tie and
     Fu Manchu glasses followed closely behind. Very hard to believe she was twenty years my senior. She looked more thirty than
     fifty. Cortot had packed her ninety-eight pounds into a white Lycra sheath that stretched to the max at bust and butt. Lipstick
     matched the stiletto heels and her blondish hair had been poufed into an enormous French twist. Her cubic zirconia jewelry
     glared in the yellow light. This lady was pedal-to-the-metal competing: she had expected to be seated next to Barnard. What
     a pathetic contest that would have been. It was still pathetic.
    I pretended to read the program so that Justine and Vicky could exchange public intimacies like “Did you get my memo?” and
     “We’re confirmed for next Friday.” Justine’s acquired Etonian accent grated on my nerves. Twice I caught her date looking
     down my décolletage. Justine noticed me not. She only had eyes for Vicky, and vice versa; if either of them had come to hear
     Schnitzler, I’d eat my diamonds.
    The hall quieted. I looked toward the loge at stage right, where Lincoln had been assassinated. That space would remain unlit,
     unoccupied, forever. But—rusty me—I didn’t take the fact full circle. Only when a Secret Service agent made a final pass by
     the first row did I realize that the two empty places in front of me were reserved for the Marvels.
    This ticket was hotter than hell!
    Justine suddenly acknowledged me. “How is dear Duncan?” she asked, never introducing herself. That would have been insulting—to
     Justine.
    “Fine, thank you.”
    With a smirk, she buried her face in the program. The Secret Service drifted quietly to the exits, penning us in as the U.S.
     Marine Band played a few ruffles and flourishes. All stood. Arm in arm, the Marvels entered. Bobby’s face was flushed; beneath
     Paula’s rouge I detected fury. They had been brawling again. However, politics being one of the minor performing arts, both
     bared their gums and waved to the crowd. From a distance, it would look genuine. Just before taking his seat, the president
     narrowed his gaze from the universal to the specific. Had I not been watching his eyes, I would have missed the shift from
     anger to shock to utter vacuity as he discovered not Barnard, but me, in her place. We stared for a split second as a few
     million volts passed between us. Then, smiling as if I had tickled him, Bobby turned his back and sat down.
    Ice crept through my guts as the lights dimmed. I had not been expecting such a reckless game, not even from Barnard. What
     had Marvel’s smile meant? Perhaps I had misinterpreted his glance … and perhaps the earth was flat. Without intermission,
     Schnitzler’s saucy play came and went. Trapped between giant on the left, pygmy on the right, president’s head looming like
     a cannonball two feet in front of me, I saw nothing onstage. Each