production was a little . . . yeah.”
Curveball pointed at the theater.
“Did I miss something,” she said, “or were they actually throwing shit at us?”
The man looked pained and amused at the same time.
“Cow pats. I think that technically makes it manure,” he said. “It’s always rough when you’re trying to out-Brecht Brecht.”
Tomorrow was her exhibition show, the last one on this leg of the tour. She’d been planning to go out with Ana as her local guide, but her friend had been called out of town on business at the last minute and wouldn’t be back until morning. Kate had decided to make it an adventure. Grab a cheap ticket from the same-day kiosk on Water Street, take herself out to dinner someplace, spend an evening on the town. She had enough money to splurge a little, and she wasn’t in Manhattan often enough anymore for it to seem normal. The titleMarat/Sade had seemed interesting, probably because of the slash. She hadn’t known anything about it, going in. Then the lights had gone up, and things got weird fast. For instance, the Sade half was actually the Marquis de Sade.
And it was a musical.
“Was there a point to that?” Kate asked, leaning against the streetlamp.
“The cow pats in particular?”
“Any of it?”
“Sure, if you look at the script,” he said. “Marat’s heading up the Terror after the French Revolution. De Sade’s . . . well, de Sade. They’re kind of the worst of political life and the worst of private life put together for comparison. I actually wrote a paper on Peter Weiss back in college.”
“And the shit flinging?”
“The deeper structural message can be lost, yes,” he said with a grin.
From down the block, a young black man in a sand-colored shirt waved.
“Tyler!”
The dark-haired man turned and held up a finger in a just-a-minute gesture. Tyler. His smile was all apology.
“I’ve got to go,” he said, and Curveball lifted a hand, half permission, half farewell. Tyler paused. She felt a moment’s tightness and the giddiness faded. She knew what came next. I’m a big fan. Can I get a picture with you? She’d say yes, because she always did because it was polite.
“Some of us are heading over to Myko’s for drinks and cheap souvlaki,” Tyler said. “If you want to come hang out, you’d be welcome.”
“Um.”
“They don’t throw manure. That I’ve noticed.”
Do you know who I am?slid to the back of her tongue and stopped there. He didn’t. Tyler’s friend called for him again.
“Sure,” she said. “Why not?”
Bugsy’s apartment smells stale. She wants to make the scent into old laundry or unwashed dishes, but it isn’t that. It’s air that has been still for too long. The kitchen is in the uncomfortable place between dirty and clean. A radio in a back room is tuned to NPR. In the main room, there are piles of books on the coffee table. Murder mysteries, crossword puzzles. The DVD of a ten-year-old romantic comedy perches on the armrest of the couch, neither box nor sleeve in sight. He starts a coffee grinder, and the high whining of hard beans being ripped apart makes speech impossible for a few seconds. The silence rushes in.
“You’re working for Aces!,” she says, even though they both already know it.
“I am. Reporting to the public at large which of their heroes are going commando to the Emmys. Keeping the world safe for amateur celebrity gynecologists.”
“Does the Committee know?”
The coffee machine burbles and steams. Bugsy grins.
“You mean the Great and Glorious Committee to Save Everyone and Fix Everything? I kind of stepped back from that.”
There is a pause. Just like you did hangs in the air like an accusation, but he doesn’t push it.
“What happened?”
She means What happened to you? but he seems to take it as What happened to your job? Maybe they’re the same question. He pours coffee into a black mug with the gold-embossed logo of a bank on the side and hands it to her. She takes it by reflex.
“Well, there was this thing. It was about six months after we took out the Radical,” he says. “Lohengrin called me and a few other guys in for this sensitive Committee operation at this little pit outside Assab.”
“I don’t know where Assab is,” she says. The coffee warms her hands.
“So you get the general idea,” he says, leaning against the counter. His fingernails are dirty. She’s known him for years, but she can’t remember if it’s normal for him. “Idea was to get some kind