Lost and Found

On a recent evening in February, If Winter Comes, the Pulitzer Prize drama by Sidney Wise, was revived at the Morosco Theater, New York. That morning the playwright rose early, as always, and took his wife, Marcia, her breakfast in bed. While he was taking his shower, his son Howard arrived with a batch of congratulatory telegrams sent over by Nate Folger, Sidney Wise's producer, and (continued on page 90)Lost and Found(continued from page 83) when Sidney Wise came in from the bathroom, his wife was reading them aloud, in a pinched, postnasal voice, to the ceiling.

"'Age cannot wither your infinite variety. If winter comes still my favorite. George.' George who?" demanded Marcia Wise, reaching for a tissue.

"George Hartshorne," said Sidney Wise, with his customary patience. "He does interviews for the Times. I'm having lunch with him today."

"I see. So that's why you're rushing off when I need you--to be interviewed." She blew her nose violently. "Crow keeps well in the freezer. I plan to eat some tonight. Stanley Dulles.'"

"He panned If Winter Comes in 1948," Sidney Wise explained. "We became friends later."

"How would I know?" said Marcia Wise. "Since I don't know any of your friends, 'If winter comes, can spring be far behind?'"

"Depends which way you're facing," said the playwright.

"'Spring Westerman,'" read Marcia Wise. "Isn't that that awful actress, from Five'll Get You Ten, who's always trying to get you to write her another play? The one they all said you were sleeping with?"

"And you believed it," said Sidney Wise, parting a few uncombed locks of gray from his wife's forehead. The morning sun fell across her pale, handsome features, deepening the fine wrinkles, lighting the dry pools of fatigue beneath her eyes. "Did you take your temperature?" he said.

"No. And don't tell me I shouldn't go to Washington." She looked him briefly up and down. "Is that what you're wearing tonight? Your green blazer? I thought it was red you wore to the"--her lip curled fastidiously--"to the tragedies."

"No." The phone by the bed gave half a ring; he heard his son Howard answer in the study. "I guess you've forgotten. I wore this the night If Winter Comes first opened. Then to Let's Talk About the Money I wore a blue suit. Then Border Disputes opened and by chance I wore green again, and Leonard Lyons started saying I wore green to my serious plays and blue to my comedies, so when Come Up for Air opened----"

"You wore blue. So people would know to laugh. Spare me, Sidney, the biannual recitation of your oeuvre. I take it, then, you plan to go directly to the theater? I can't count on you to drive us to the airport?"

"I wish you'd reconsider this trip," said Sidney Wise. "Washington seems somehow like such a long way to go."

"Precisely," said Marcia Wise. "While your face is all over the New York papers, we'll be seeing the sights. Surely I don't have to remind you, Sidney, how hard these openings are on Howard."

"I think you exaggerate that."

"Exaggerate? God, when I think what a relief, all those people not coming up to us backstage asking if we're related to the playwright--did I ever tell you, Sidney," she said cheerfully, "that at the last opening someone wanted to know how it felt to be your mother?"

"You didn't go to the last opening'" said Sidney Wise, transferring his wallet from the pocket of his corduroy jacket. He buttoned his ceremonial green blazer, bending to kiss his wife, who interposed a wad of tissue. Turning sadly, the playwright went out of the bedroom and down the hall to his study, where his son Howard was just hanging up the phone. At Howard's feet sat an airline bag, a rolled playscript projecting from one end.

"That was Nate Folger," said Howard Wise. "He'll meet you and George Hartshorne at Frankie & Johnnie's in half an hour. Turns out the Times is giving you a whole page Sunday. Save me that section, will you, Dad, since I'll be in Washington? Hey, that jacket still fits."

"Do you want to come to lunch, Howard?"

"With you? And the Times? You must be joking." Howard Wise rolled his eyes at his father's manuscript shelf, the Playbills framed on the study wall. "I'd feel like an idiot. Besides, I've got plane tickets to pick up. I'll ride as far as Fiftieth, though, and you can tell me what's wrong with Reflected Glory." He held up the airline bag, with the playscript, following his father into the vestibule. Outside the brownstone, a cab was waiting.

"Morosco Theater," said Sidney Wise to the driver, moving over to make room for Howard.

"You didn't have to tell me," said the driver. "If Winter Comes. It's a privilege, Mr. Wise."

"You're very kind," said the playwright. The cab swung down Fifth Avenue.

"My wife sees all your plays," the driver said. "I can tell you this, too, yours are the only plays she ever sees. These other plays today, she says, are too damned confusing, and if she wants to be confused, my wife says, she can always talk to me."

Howard Wise leaned forward. "That, my good man, is why Sidney Wise is the only playwright in America whose name still sells tickets."

"I can believe it," said the driver.

"Drama you can sink your teeth into," said Howard Wise. "Comedy that makes you laugh, not scratch your head. The theater's greatest two-way threat since 1616."

"Are you his press agent?" asked the driver. "Not that my wife wouldn't agree."

"I'm his son." Howard leaned back, beaming at his father. "Son Howard. L'il Howie. The One Who Walks in Shadow. So what did you think, Dad?"

"Of that eulogy?"

"Of Reflected Glory." He jerked the playscript out of the airline bag. "Wait. Don't say it. It happened again. Six P.O.W.s come back from Vietnam. Timely? Sure-fire? Believe me, Dad, I don't set out to rip you off. This time I got halfway through before it hit me, before I remembered those six GIs returning from Japan. OK. Say what you always say. I should have taken a different tack. All right, but I was so goddamn depressed. Who, I said to myself, is really going to remember If Winter Comes? So the day I finish the longhand draft, Nate Folger announces the revival. I almost killed myself."

"Bad poets imitate," Sidney Wise said helpfully, "good poets steal."

"Reflected Glory, I'm afraid, isn't what T. S. Eliot had in mind." Howard Wise leafed through the script. "The lieutenant's speech in act one? The comic relief? I don't have to tell you: practically word for word from Come Up for Air. Even when I think I'm inventing stuff, it turns out I'm copying you."

"You can rewrite," Sidney Wise suggested. "It's still a valid subject, it's only a first draft----"

"No! Thanks, Dad, but no. Don't you get it? It's always been this way, and it's getting worse. Can't you grasp what I'm up against? How you should never expect anything from me, because I'll never be any good on my own? How I'm doomed to be the poor man's Sidney Wise? On my deathbed I'll probably recite your deathbed words! Let me off here," said Howard to the driver, "and then drive extra carefully. This is precious cargo you're carrying: Broadway's pride, every playwright's yardstick, the man who's said it all, who makes you laugh one night and cry the next, a great man and a really conscientious father and the greatest model any son could want!"

The cab door slammed. Sliding over, Sidney Wise watched his son sprint tearfully across the avenue, against the light: The playwright held his breath as for a moment Howard was lost to view, then blinked as he saw him again, safe on the sidewalk in front of the airline office, blowing his nose. I should do endorsements, thought Sidney Wise, I should pick up a bundle from Kleenex, give up writing plays and make everybody (continued on page 176)Lost and Found(continued from page 90) happy. He saw himself in his study, addressing the cameras. You think I make audiences cry? Look what I do to my loved ones. He passed a hand across his eyes. With each opening, things got a little worse. And was it his fault? It was not. Could a man be blamed if his success hurt others. It did not hurt others. Others hurt others. That was the truth. When had he ever believed it? I should have taken her temperature, he thought, drumming his fist suddenly on his knee. Flying off to Washington: Even hysterical sniffles could lead to the flu.

"Family first," said the driver.

"Pardon me?" Sidney Wise glanced up; they were in the theater district.

"My wife says she can tell you're devoted to your family, and not just because she read it in some magazine. She says it shows in your plays."

"It's true," said the playwright, with sudden vehemence.

"She could tell it was."

"Nothing," insisted Sidney Wise, reaching for his wallet as the cab slowed, "not even a man's work, is worth the sacrifice of his family."

"I couldn't agree more. Is it true, Mr. Wise, that you've made more people laugh than any person in history?"

"What? No. You're thinking of Lucille Ball," said Sidney Wise. Where was his wallet? He slapped his pockets.

"Lucille Ball! Hey, that's terrific. My wife'll crack up when she hears that."

"Listen, I'm awfully sorry. I seem to have come away without my wallet. Although I distinctly remember transferring it from my corduroy jacket. If you'll give me your name and address, I'll mail you the fare."

"Forget it, Mr. Wise--this has been payment enough. Well, look, you can see for yourself what you did: You transferred the wallet, but then you put on the corduroy jacket anyway. I do that all the time. Here we are, Mr. Wise, Booth Theater!"

"But I said the Morosco----"

"The Morosco? No way. Check your tickets. What, is there a special matinee today? Must be fun for you, seeing somebody else's play for a change. Like I say, my wife sees every play that comes along, good, bad or indifferent. Watch the door, now. It's been a pleasure, Mr. Wise!"

The cab sped away; he stepped onto the curb. He was on the north side of 45th Street; revolving, he started across at the Morosco. The lobby was dark, no cashier in the box office, no lettering on the billboard, no posters or show cards anywhere: not a sign that If Winter Comes was opening that night. He walked up to the theater, yanked on the doors; they were locked. He rattled them again and heard giggles; turning, he saw his producer, Nate Folger, with Spring Westerman, the actress. "What's happened to my play?" he said.

Spring Westerman checked another giggle; she looked at Nate Folger. "Actually, I don't get it. Do you get it, Nate?"

"I think I get it," said Nate Folger. "Arthur Miller's play closed here. But you're right, Spring, it isn't funny." The producer rested a hand on Sidney Wise's shoulder. "Hob rachmones, Sidney. The man had no business writing a comedy. Any more," he added, pointing him toward Frankie & Johnnie's, "than you'd have writing Death of a Salesman."

Sidney Wise examined his jacket sleeves. "Nate----"

"What is it, Sidney? Problems with the new play?"

"Nate, I'm talking about If Winter Comes."

"If Winter Comes?" That's a title for a comedy?"

"My Pulitzer Prize!"

"Sidney." A door opened; Folger guided them up the stairs to the restaurant. "It's a discredited award. I'll show you the article: Ninety-nine percent of all so-called tragedy is based on trivial misunderstandings between the sexes and between the generations. In another twenty-five years those'll all be gone, resolved forever, and you know what'll be left? Comedy, Sidney. Your comedies. Let's Talk About the Money, Come Up for Air, Who Needs It?, Leaps and Bounds, Five'll Get You Ten--the all-time comedy grosser, lest we forget--plus whatever you come up with next."

"Don't you want to write me another show?" said Spring Westerman, as they all sat down--in vain Sidney Wise looked around the restaurant for Hartshorne, the man from the Times. "Don't you want to work with me again?"

"Of course he does. That's what we're here to discuss. Ten'll Get You Twenty--there's a comedic title. We're four," said Nate Folger to the waiter. "Oh, Marcia! Here we are, baby!"

At the sound of his wife's name, Sidney Wise, who had been peering at his calendar watch, jerked upright.

"Hello, dears." Marcia Wise, in a gray body shirt and black palazzo pants, kissed Nate Folger, kissed Spring Westerman and sat down. "You both look fantastic. Sidney, why are you staring at me like that?"

"I wasn't. I'm not," said Sidney Wise, gazing at his wife's hair, a perfect, bushy, salt-and-pepper arch.

"He still can't get used to it," said Marcia Wise to Spring Westerman. "To Sidney, a natural is an ad for public hair. If Sidney had his way, I'd never go out of the house except in a babushka."

"Takes more than jealousy to hold this broad," said Nate Folger. "When are you coming to read for me, gorgeous?"

"When my husband keels over. Why? Do you think in a million years Sidney would let me work for my living?"

"Yes!" said Sidney Wise, watching his wife's hand dive beneath the tablecloth.

"If Sidney had his way, I'd be one of those jealous, carping semi-invalids you see married to writers, up to my nostrils in Lady Scott, poor Howard would be some kind of thankless freak and Mr. Jokes here would be locked in his study writing heart-renders." She goosed him.

"Wrong!" said Sidney Wise.

"Wrong. I know, Sidney. You wouldn't know how to begin." She moved her fingers in a circle.

"I love your hair," protested Sidney Wise, groping under the table for her hand.

"And I love you," said Marcia Wise, moving it away.

"And I'm about to throw up," said Nate Folger. "Between Sidney's tragic muse----"

"Do you want to know Sidney's idea of tragedy?" said Marcia Wise brightly. "When the Knicks lose a close one." Reaching under the table again, she covered her husband's hand with her own, pressing it lovingly between her legs. She stood up. "Will you all excuse me?"

"Marcia?" said Sidney Wise, getting up.

"Where's she going?" said Nate Folger.

"Excuse me," said Sidney Wise, crouching to hide his erection. Marcia was halfway across the restaurant.

"What's going on?" said Nate Folger.

"I thought we were going to talk about my part," said Spring Westerman, as Sidney Wise lunged away from the table. The stairway door swung to. The playwright glanced back at Folger and Spring Westerman and pushed it open. From the shadow of the landing a pair of arms flung themselves about his neck.

"You horny toad. I saw you gawking at me."

They kissed fiercely, squirming together. People went by them on the stairs.

"Get rid of those two leeches. I'll meet you home in twenty minutes. You sex machine," she said, breaking loose and running down the steps. The downstairs door opened and closed. With another glance inside the restaurant--Folger and Spring Westerman were hunched around in their seats--he straightened his tie and descended after her. Emerging, he saw a cab pulling away from the curb, toward Broadway; he quickly hailed another. In the rear window the Morosco Theater receded, dark, posterless. The cab went up Sixth Avenue and across 50th and up Madison, arriving at his street before he recalled he was without his wallet. Asking the driver to wait, and handing him his watch as collateral, the playwright raced up the stairs to his front door and inside, calling his wife's name. There was no answer. He hurried to the bedroom, picturing her naked on the bed, waiting on hands and knees. He opened the door; there was no one. The covers were on the bed, the telegrams were gone, his green blazer, with his wallet--he searched rapidly through his closet--was gone. He went to the window. The cab was gone. He heard a voice.

"Right, I can see it works better without it. Hartshorne noticed, too? I don't know why I even put it in now. The producer is always right, I'll remember that----"

Turning from the window, Sidney Wise went down the hall to his study. His son's back was to him; a bound script of Reflected Glory was open on the desk. From the wall, a single photograph, snapped after the opening of Five'll Get You Ten, looked down, Nate Folger and Spring Westerman flanking himself and Marcia, who was balancing a glass of champagne and planting a kiss on his ear.

"Right, Nate. I'll get the changes to the typist. Right. You, too." Hanging up, Howard spun around. "Hi, Sid. You startled me. Sleep well?"

"Quite well," said Sidney Wise, glancing down at his pajamas.

"Wish I could learn to sleep past noon. If I don't write in the morning, I feel guilty the rest of the day." He picked up the script from the desk. "Guess what, Sid."

"Good news."

"Nate has definitely decided to do my play."

"I heard. I overheard. Congratulations, Howard."

Howard smiled. "You don't seem terribly pleased."

"Pleased? Of course I am. I couldn't be more pleased. He's suggested some changes, I gathered."

"Well, he showed it to Hartshorne and Dulles. That old ploy of consulting the critics in advance. Nate wants me to take out a speech in the first act. He thinks it might get laughs."

"The lieutenant's speech."

"Yes, the lieutenant's speech." Howard frowned. "I wasn't aware you'd read the script, Sid."

"I took the liberty."

"I see. Well, actually, I'm glad you did. I was going to ask you to. I wanted another ... playwright's opinion." Howard glided toward the door. "Let's sit down one day and talk about it, shall we?"

Sidney Wise took a step forward. "I'll miss the lieutenant's speech," he said.

Howard pointed, pistol fashion. "It's yours."

"That's what I mean," said Sidney Wise hastily. "Any author hates to lose a tribute. An hommage, wasn't that the spirit? Especially from one's flesh and blood."

Howard eyed him peculiarly. "You've lost me, Sid."

"Well, you said it yourself just now: the fact that it resembled--what the hell, Howard--the fact that it was lifted, almost word for word, from my play."

"From Five'll Get You Ten? Are you serious? Where? How? I defy you to show me."

"I don't mean Five'll Get You Ten."

"Then what in God's name do you mean? Come on, Sid. Just because you wrote one money-making comedy in your life, anything funny I attempt is an imitation? Is there a Parkinson's Law for playwrights: The less you've done, the more it counts? I guess, then, the best thing is to be a one-play playwright--is that the idea? Are the rest of us a bunch of suckers, trying for the whole shelf? Because it's all one play anyway, right? OK, Sid. OK. Have it your way. I'm forever in your debt."

The closing door muted his sniff of laughter. Pinching his eyes with finger and thumb, so that a black globule of light swam, butterfly style, across his retinas, Sidney Wise heard his son's voice, below the study window, shouting for a cab. The cab door slammed and he stood there in his slippers and pajamas, by the shelf from which his works had vanished, all but one, and that of such accidental consequence that The Reader's Encyclopedia listed it by its title only, omitting any separate entry for the author of Five'll Get You Ten. He closed the reference book and replaced it on the shelf, flooded by sudden nostalgia. The asylums--he saw it now--were filled with people who had misplaced their lives, raging paranoids, grieving catatonics; he must not lose control. Returning to the bedroom, he showered and dressed, avoiding, as he wriggled into his corduroy jacket, the mirror on his closet door, as though afraid he might be unable to locate his reflection. He must hold on. He was the same man, with the same abilities. His drafts, his carbons, his finished scripts, his Five Tragedies, his Five Comedies, had dwindled to a single pile of words, words that had brought him money but no lasting fame (without success, he tried to recall the author of Abie's Irish Rose), words that, as he gingerly opened the cover of his one, published, profitable play, seemed, hideously, about to slide off the pages into his lap; but he was still Sidney Wise. In a plaintive voice he began to read aloud, savoring the familiar repartee, swaying with eyes closed as he reeled off the speeches to the empty room.

He opened his eyes.

Carrying himself gently, like a brimming bowl, to his desk, he sat down, took a stack of blank paper from his drawer and rolled a sheet into his typewriter.

If Winter Comesa play in three actsby Sidney Wise

He typed feverishly, getting up from his desk only once, during a love scene in act two, when he mistook a clatter in the pipes for the sound of his wife walking about in the bedroom. At 60 words a minute, with occasional brief pauses to relax his writer's cramp, he was able to transfer the play from his memory to 87 pages of typescript in less than four hours. By five o'clock, a manila package under his arm, he was in midtown again, ten minutes later stepping off the 12th-floor elevator of the old MGM Building, Broadway and 45th Street. A delivery boy was emerging from Nate Folger's small suite of offices; Sidney Wise squeezed past him into the anteroom. Folger's secretary, taking him for a messenger, thrust out her hand for the package; hearing footsteps, Sidney Wise looked up to see his wife, in jeans and baggy sweater and a pair of wire-frame glasses hanging from a chain, her gray hair pulled back in a disorderly bun, standing in the doorway to one of the offices. "Sidney, what is it? We're very, very busy."

"I brought you and Nate a new play," he said.

"Howard?" called Nate Folger from the other office.

"You thought I'd never write another," said Sidney Wise to his wife.

"Sidney, of all days----"

"Howard, I thought we were meeting you at the airport." Nate Folger swung around the corner, stopping in his tracks. "Oy. Sidney."

"Yes, oy Sidney." He handed Folger the script. "I'd like you to read this."

"Sidney, we're in a terrific hurry."

"Please. Nate? Please? Humor me."

Folger looked at Marcia Wise; she nodded. "It's all right, Nate. I'll tell him." Folger turned with the manuscript, closing his door; Sidney Wise stepped past his wife into her office. It was large, one of two windows looking out onto 45th Street, the other onto Broadway and the Allied Chemical Tower, with its electric sash of news. The headline read, "27 P.O.W.S To arrive clark air base tomorrow."

"I've decided to go to Washington with Howard," said Marcia Wise.

"To Washington," Sidney Wise repeated, looking down at 45th Street. A workman was strapped to the Morosco billboard, installing a giant E at the end of Reflected Glory by Howard Wis. "Yes, of course. For the tryouts of Howard's play."

"Nate is joining us tomorrow." said Marcia Wise. "We won't be back until the New York previews. Don't say you didn't expect this."

"I expected it." said Sidney Wise, as the phone rang. He picked it up. "Miz Wise? It ain't no Miz Wise here. Mix Wise done fled the plantation." He hung up. "Hartshorne and Dulles, I hear, are set to give it raves."

"Sidney, I don't care that you've made my life miserable. It's your absolute callousness toward him."

"I know. Marcia, I had a lovely premonition today----"

"Barging in here, on the day his first play opens out of town--bringing a manuscript--haven't you ever heard of Oedipal Victor?"

"I thought his name was Howard."

"Your jokes are pathetic. Can't you see the guilt you're inflicting? Don't you realize how hard it was for him to finish this play, because you tried so many times and never succeeded once? Don't you know, finally, after all these years, what you're doing to your son?"

"He knows," said a voice from the doorway.

"Oh, Lord. Howard, please wait outside."

"He knows precisely what he's doing. The bloody sadist."

"Go downstairs and get us a cab."

"I'm not going with you," said Howard Wise, throwing himself onto the office couch.

"Howard, don't overreact----"

"I'm supposed to take a plane? A thing that Hies in the sky? After seeing him?"

Sidney Wise took a step toward the couch. "Howard, you needn't worry about that anymore."

"Don't talk to me, you flop! Don't say anything!"

"I appreciate your distress, Howard. I'm sorry my failure, up till now, has been so complete. I think I've made a move to redress the unpleasantness I've caused you, and I'm confident that in the not too distant future the Broadway stage will make room for two Wises, father and son, to the greater glory of both----"

"For God's sake, will somebody make him stop!"

"Nate?" said Sidney Wise, looking up at the doorway. "Perhaps you can tell him."

Nate Folger, entering, blinked once. "Let's go," he said to Marcia and Howard Wise.

"Nate?" said Sidney Wise.

"You two have a plane to catch. Howard? Let's go." He motioned toward the door.

"My play, Nate?"

Nate Folger turned. "What about it, Sidney?"

"Tell me what you thought. Tell them."

Folger looked uneasily at Marcia and Howard. "We're living in the Seventies. Sidney. The world has come a long way since World War Two."

"You mean you just glanced at it. Nate? Your didn't read it all the way through."

"Sidney, don't push it. I'm giving you my opinion. Do you want another opinion? I think you ought to see a doctor. And Howard: I don't want you ever showing a script of yours again without my permission. To anyone."

"I never did!" Howard Wise jumped up from the couch. "You mean to him? My father? Never! Deliberately! Why in God's name would I? Oh, for God's sake--you mean he copied it?"

"I'm not really sure. Maybe not on purpose, though what does that ever mean? The style. The structure. The subject. One or two scenes, thought not so anyone could sue."

"Oh, my Lord," said Marcia Wise.

"Don't worry, baby, it'll never get on. He didn't write it for that."

Marcia Wise nodded. "You're a very sick man, Sidney."

"Sick? He's malignant!"

"A very troubled man. Do you know how troubled?"

"I believe I do," said Sidney Wise.

"Do you? Do you really, Sidney? Do you really understand?"

The three of them were at the door. Sidney Wise sank down on the couch. "You'll miss your plane," he said.

The door closed. Elevators rose and sank. Sidney Wise stared at the ceiling. An elevator went past the floor, dropped again. The walls hummed and fell silent. In the darkening room he sat jackknifed on the couch, staring at the posters on the wall, at his shoes, his head sinking slowly toward his knees. It snapped up. With difficulty he rose, looking at the clock on his wife's shelf. The windows were black, striped with neon glare. He stood over his wife's desk, holding a pencil in one hand, slowly tearing a piece of memo paper from a pad by the phone. His fingers felt numb, thickly gloved, as he pressed the pencil to the paper. He wrote a word; the pencil dropped. Sorry. He closed his fingers around the pencil again. Crossing out his wife's printed name, he wrote his own above it, small: Sidney. He weighted the paper with the phone, pulled the clock cord out of its socket and walked over to the window. "All" He pushed the window up as far as it would go. "All Dead." The wind blew in from Times Square, the news ribbon blurred and sharpened, the sound of horns rose from Broadway, "D.C. Shuttle crashes on take-off La Guardia...."

"Mr. Wise."

He let down the window, turned around.

"Mr. Wise?"

It was Nate Folger's secretary.

"Mr. Wise, won't you miss your curtain?"

"Is it that late?" said the playwright.

"You were so quiet in here."

"Thank you for reminding me," he said, buttoning his green blazer. He moved past her through the anteroom into the corridor. An elevator was waiting. He stepped out through the lobby onto Broadway and 45th Street. At the Morosco, the last straggler was going past the ticket taker. Inside the theater, as he entered, he saw a group of people by the coat check, Nate Folger, Spring Westerman, Hartshorne, Dulles, others--Spring Westerman was crying. They saw him.

"Sidney."

"Oh, God. Oh, Sidney, it's so horrible----"

He started past them, looking toward the stage.

"Nate, he's in shock."

"Sidney, don't go in."

"Where were they going, Sidney?"

"To Washington," he said.

"But why? Why weren't they here?"

"Nate, leave him alone."

"They had their reasons," said the playwright.

"We've scrapped all the interviews; we'll take care of everything. Just go home, Sidney, we'll come with you----"

"That won't be necessary." He gazed down the aisle.

"You loved them. Sidney. You loved them so."

"Yes," said Sidney Wise, taking a Playbill from the usher. He pointed toward the stage, the empty first-act set. "If Winter Comes," he said, drying his eyes.

"Sidney."

"Stop him."

He went down the aisle.

"Sidney, you don't have to go through with this----"

"It's all right." Folger's hand was on his arm; he patted it. The commotion had prompted the audience to glance around; a wave of applause broke over the orchestra. He acknowledged it, sitting down as the lights dimmed, Folger, Hartshorne and Spring Westerman sinking stiffly beside him in unison, half-turning their heads, in uneasy disbelief, to stare at the playwright's grateful, trembling smile. The applause faded to a hush. "In fact," said Sidney Wise, very nearly depriving the first two rows of the first line of his play, "I wouldn't have missed this for the world."