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the wide-eyed and flabbergasted author, standing on a corner staring at the snake-like line.”
    I laughed. “And Max, a stranger, sidled up to me and whispered, ‘This is all your fault, Madame Show Boat .’”
    Max saluted me, laughing. “And a wonderful friendship was born.”
    “And he has had to hear me whine and kvetch with each new production. He reports in, dutifully, and I go off like a mad woman.” I grunted. “Especially the first movie in 1929.”
    “The joke was that I was hired to help with the music for a silent picture, Alice. You know, piano introductions. But then talkies came with The Jazz Singer and suddenly we had to do it over—half silent, half talkie. And then we had to do a third version, all talkie now, finally with Kern’s music rights secured.”
    “A hodgepodge of nonsense.”
    “Oh, yes, a mess. Unwatchable. Laura La Plante looking frail and helpless and not certain what continent she was on.” Max got up to refill his glass. I held my hand over my empty glass. “Then the 1936 version with Paul Robeson and Irene Dunne. Beautiful.”
    “Well, Robeson, yes. And now MGM with little of the Hammerstein dialogue intact. Barbaric, infantile.”
    “Now, now, Edna.”
    “Don’t ‘Now, Edna’ me,” I said in my best Parthenia Hawks spinster’s voice, arch and shrill, delivered from the deck of the Cotton Blossom .
    “Wait and see, Edna.”
    “I’m too old to be patient…or even tolerant of fools.”
    “I bet you were always like that, Edna,” Alice said.
    “It’s a talent I developed early in life.” I sighed. “Frankly, it saves time in an imperfect world.”
    ***
    Alice served an elaborate supper. Max had decided we’d have a Show Boat feast, a meal described in my book—Queenie’s sure-fire, bang-up sensation, a ham stuffed with cloves and cinnamon and peppercorns and a host of other aromatic herbs, all jammed in with a sharp knife so that the swollen meat, baked, glazed, sliced, formed an ornate mosaic of color and design. Luscious, tasty, and gratefully savored by me. I allowed myself another glass of wine. Alice served coffee and homemade pecan pie smothered in whipped cream spiked with brandy. Succulent, rich. I groaned under the pleasure. There was little talk during supper, idle chatter, catching up with news of old friends.
    Max was especially fond of George Kaufman, who’d recently been on the West Coast, and he recounted George’s scandalous caper with some frivolous and gaudy studio starlet. “George the saturnine puritan,” I babbled. A character flaw in an otherwise exemplary man.
    While we were still at the dining room table, the doorbell chimed, and Max invited in a short, stocky man, a shock of spun-white hair curling over tiny ears, a pale ashy face, and a thin hard mouth that seemed shaped by a razor. A cigarette bobbed in the corner of his mouth, the ash long and unchecked. Barney Google eyes behind oversized eyeglasses. “This is my old friend, Sol Remnick,” Max told me. “The first friend I made when I moved here from New York. He comes from the same old Brooklyn neighborhood, but I didn’t know him there.”
    Sol nodded hello, a mumbled greeting, his eyes wary, as he pulled out a chair across from me, watching my face. Alice poured him a cup of coffee. After the greeting, he said nothing but quickly downed the coffee, almost in one hasty gulp. He sat back. “So I’m interrupting, yes?”
    “It’s all right.” Max waved a hand at him.
    “So you’re Edna Ferber.” Still no smile, but another respectful nod. “An honor. Max…values you.” A strange remark, I thought, though true. As I did Max. Still I said nothing. He started to stand. “I’ll be back tomorrow.”
    “No, sit, Sol,” Max insisted. “For God’s sake. We’re all friends here.”
    Sol leaned into him, confidentially. “The Screen Actors Guild is meeting tonight, Max. Someone told a reporter that it’s lousy with Communists. Everyone is panicking. Ronnie Reagan