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refrigerator door. Inside, she found a green and silver foil bag of gourmet coffee that looked like a Christmas present and proceeded to pour a heap of the dark brown coffee beans into a Braun grinder sitting next to an automatic espresso machine.
    “Get any sleep last night?” she asked.
    “I would have loved getting nine hours instead of six, but I’m more or less recharged to go another round with Tabby. Yesterday was brutal.”
    Avril pressed the button on the coffee grinder, drowning out all hope of further conversation. I picked myself up from the bar stool at the kitchen island and walked into the living room as she tap-tap-tapped, grinding the beans to a perfect consistency.
    It was a small apartment, less than eight hundred square feet, but the morning sunlight filled it with the optimism of a new year. The tones were cool and brown; they reminded me of the sands of Malibu. On one wall were bookshelves filled with a brainy collection of hardcover classics, silver-framed photographs of Avril and her parents, and Chinese pottery. A small blue water globe no larger than a baseball caught my eye. I touched it with my fingers, causing the earth to bobble slightly on its stand. When it settled, I could see the United States, from New York to California, making the country look small from sea to shining sea.
    I watched Avril pour a bottle of Evian water into the coffeemaker and flip the switch to brew. She joined me in the living room, where I was sitting in a comfy brown chair facing the bookshelves and a fireplace with white painted bricks. A moment later the sound of percolating coffee filled the apartment like a relaxing fountain. The aroma of French roast soon followed, and we soaked it up like the meditational comfort of a weekend spa.
    “As soon as I heard Molly was leaving, I thought how perfect you’d be in this role,” said Avril, dovetailing one conversation into another. “Ben’s choice of Helen is obvious because she’s box-office gold on Broadway, and the character of Audrey Bradford has always been played by an older woman. But his casting choice of Molly as a younger Audrey Bradford was kind of interesting, don’t you think? Ben told me he believes there could be an even greater potential for drama if Audrey is played by a younger actress. Of course, he’d never say that around Helen. You should have seen her face the day Molly was introduced as her understudy. Well, I guess you didn’t have to—you caught some of that vibe yesterday.”
    “But wouldn’t it be weird if Helen could only do the first act, and a younger Audrey Bradford came out for the rest of the show?”
    “I wondered the same thing. But Ben is pretty confident that if Helen couldn’t perform, he’d know well in advance of her ever taking the stage. And with only forty-two performances, the odds of her becoming ill during the show are minimal. She agreed to a physical with her doctor, and I guess passed with flying colors.”
    The coffeemaker puffed its last gasp. Avril proceeded behind the island to pour us each a cup of day starter. She returned carrying two mugs to the living room with poise, and handed one to me. I blew delicately across its surface before setting it down to cool.
    “I meant to ask you,” Avril said, “does Sydney know you’re here in New York?”
    Sydney Bloom, our beloved theatrical agent, our wise and witty mother hen, had loved actors all of her fifty-plus years, Avril and me for the last seven. She was equally at home talking shop over lunch at a kosher deli on Fifty-first Street, or a wheat grass bar on Santa Monica Boulevard. I loved to picture her in the place she loved best, her beach house in Monterey.
    “I left Sydney a message,” I said. “Just told her I was flying to New York, but I didn’t say why. I didn’t want to share my news over voice mail.”
    I’d fallen in love with acting the day I stepped into a crowded theater class at Northwestern in Chicago. At first, The