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years ago and made two rooms out of it and rented them out. There are people I nod to and smile at, but I don't really know a single person in this building. I used to see this girl-- Paula? But I never knew her name, and I didn't even know she'd moved out."
    One morning I went over to the Actors Equity office, where I managed to establish that Paula Hoeldtke hadn't been a member of that organization. The young man who checked the listings asked me if she'd been a member of AFTRA or SAG; when I said I didn't know, he was nice enough to call the two unions for me. Neither of them had her name on their rolls.
    "Unless she used another name," he said. "Her name's not utterly impossible, in fact it looks good in print, but it's the sort of name a great many people would mispronounce, or at least be uncertain about.
    Do you suppose she went and changed it to Paula Holden or something manageable like that?"
    "She didn't say anything about it to her parents."
    "It's not always the sort of thing you rush to report to your parents, especially if they have a strong attachment to their name. As parents often do."
    "I suppose you're right. But she used her own name in the two shows she was in."
    "May I see that?" He took the playbills from me. "Oh, now this might be helpful. Yes, here we are, Paula Hoeldtke. Am I pronouncing it correctly?"
    "Yes."
    "Good. Actually I can't think how else you would pronounce it, but one feels uncertain. She could have just spelled it differently, H-O-L-T-K-Y. But that wouldn't look right, would it? Let's see. 'Paula Hoeldtke majored in theater arts atBallStateUniversity '-- oh, the poor darling-- 'where she appeared in The Flowering Peach and Gregory's Garden.' The Flowering Peach is Odets, but what the hell do you suppose Gregory's Garden might be? Student work, that would be my guess. And that is all they're going to tell us about Paula Hoeldtke. What is this, anyway? Another Part of Town, what a curious choice for a showcase. She played Molly. I barely remember the play, but I don't think that's a principal role."
    "She told her parents she had a small part."
    "I don't think she exaggerated. Was there anyone in this? Hmmm.
    'Axel Godine appears with the permission of Actors Equity.' I don't know who he is, but I can furnish you with his phone number. He played Oliver, so he's probably well up in years, but you never know in a showcase, the casting sometimes tends to be imaginative. Does she like older men?"
    "I don't know."
    "What's this? Very Good Friends. Not a bad title, and where did they do it? At theCherry Lane ? I wonder why I never heard of it. Oh, it was a staged reading, it only had one performance. Not a bad title, Very Good Friends, a little suggestive but hardly naughty. Oh, Gerald Cameron wrote it. He's quite good. I wonder how she happened to be in this."
    "Is it unusual?"
    "Well, sort of. You wouldn't have open auditions for this sort of thing, I wouldn't think. You see, the playwright very likely wanted to get a sense of how his work would play, so he or the designated director got hold of some suitable actors and had them walk through it onstage, possibly in front of prospective backers, possibly not. Some staged readings these days are fairly elaborate, with extensive rehearsals and a fair amount of movement onstage. In others the actors just sit in chairs as if they were doing a radio
    play. And who directed this? Oh, we're in luck."
    "Someone you know?"
    "Indeed," he said. He looked up a number, picked up a phone and dialed it. He said, "David Quantrill, please. David? Aaron Stallworth.
    How are you? Oh, really? Yes, well I heard about that." He covered the mouthpiece and rolled his eyes at the ceiling. "David, guess what I've got in my hand. No, on second thought don't bother. It's a playbill for a staged reading of Very Good Friends. Did that ever get past the staged reading stage, as it were? I see. Yes, I see. I hadn't heard. Oh, that's too bad." His face clouded, and he listened