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well. (Miss M shouts raucously to some unseen person.) Miss Frank! Scrap the Jap drag! We ain’t going!
    R EPORTER : Is there any other country you are particularly interested in?
    M ISS M : I’m interested in them all. Individually and as a cohesive unit. The Old World versus the New, don’t you see? I want to compare and contrast. I want to understand what I am by seeing what others are . . . (The Divine takes a sip of Perrier.)
    R EPORTER : How interesting.
    M ISS M : . . . wearing.
    R EPORTER : Oh.
    M ISS M : It’s so hard to get it all from Vogue, you know. You have to be there. Try things on.
    R EPORTER : Oh, I thought you meant something else. May I ask how rehearsals are going?
    M ISS M : There are no problems and there will be. no problems.
    R EPORTER : Is that true?
    M ISS M : I never know how much of what I say is true. If I did, I’d bore myself to death.
    R EPORTER : Well, if anyone can bring it off, you can. Do you work hard at being the best in your field?
    M ISS M : People are not the best because they work hard. They work hard because they are the best.
    R EPORTER : Oh?
    M ISS M : It’s a matter of responsibility. To your talent, my dear. Of course, I don’t consider myself the best in anything. Except perhaps the trying on and proper selection of footwear. A pretty foot, you know, is a gift of nature. Goethe said that.
    R EPORTER : Goethe? You’re familiar with the works of Goethe?
    M ISS M : Only the parts about feet.
    R EPORTER : I see. Well, just a few more questions.
    M ISS M : Ask on, Macduff. And damn’d be him that first cries, "Hold, enough!"
    R EPORTER : Well, my question is: What, in the long run, do you expect to get out of this tour?
    M ISS M : I don’t know WHAT to expect. That’s why I’m doing it.
    R EPORTER : Well, then, just one more question: Are you confident that what you do—onstage, I mean—will be understood and appreciated by non-Americans?
    M ISS M : I’m as confident as Cleopatra’s pussy.*
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E•D•I•T•O•R•S•N•O•T•E
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    * Miss M has a way of throwing this allusion into interviews whenever questioned or challenged on some point of inner security. It has already been established beyond any reasonable doubt that Cleopatra never had a pussy; or if she did, no one ever saw it; or if anyone did see it, they were not impressed enough to remark on it in writing. It must, therefore, be assumed that Miss M’s use of this expression is nothing more than a smoke screen to hide her real feelings; a red herring of a soul, if you will. Or if you won’t, just another example of this woman’s total disregard for the simplest rules of civilized conversation.
    In any case, I can only beg you not to cancel your subscription to this paper, which pledges, here and now, that we will never print another word about this absurd woman of whom one can only say what Lady Caroline said of Byron so many years ago: "Mad, bad and dangerous to know.”

• ONE TO GET READY •
    I n Seattle, that hilly, chilly city of the North which spreads out like lumpy pancake batter along the placid shores of the octopus-ridden Puget Sound, we had our first out-of-town tryout. At least, I was certainly trying to get out of town. I couldn’t believe that we had to be ready for the public in just two days. Everything and everyone was in disarray or disrepute. My staff and crew, upon whom I so heavily rely in times of crisis, were relying heavily on me. And all I wanted to do was drive upto Vancouver. Ah, Vancouver! I played there once, and while I was singing “Superstar,” a ballad of ineffable longing and several modulations, someone hit me in the mouth with a bagel. I like to go back there every now and then to remember where things are really at.

    But being one who never flees from a battle unless she has a confirmed first-class ticket, I remained at the helm. And what a ship I had to steer! And through what murky waters!
    And all because of a new and devastating dilemma: