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cigarette a warning, as well as a beacon for stray sailors.
    “Ramps?” Cherry had said of James’s idea for the Lear set. “Just ramps? And painted gray? Why, I don’t know what I think of that. It would be like a fashion show, I suppose. A fashion show at…Stonehenge.”
    James had wanted to snatch Cherry’s cigarette holder away from him and snap it in two. But instead he swept his hand over his face.
    “If that’s the kind of set you want, the lighting will have to carry it,” Cherry had continued, looking past James’ shoulder. “I simply can’t imagine the number of cues… Well, Peggy can probably handle it, along with Kathy. It’s too bad there’s not a part for her in the play. She is talented. But she’s so short, and so plain. And some roles are so exacting. ”
    This observation had been accompanied by a look akin to that of a Saville Row tailor measuring an unworthy customer with his eyes. It was clear to James that Cherry thought he was not equal to the demands of the role of King Lear.
    But what would he know about which way madness lies, when he’d gone only one way, down darkened streets in search of cocks to suck? That was the infuriating thing about people like Cherry. They went straight off the deep end early in life, and they couldn’t understand or appreciate the struggles of those who were rowing against the current, trying to keep back from the edge.
    Now, as he sat struggling with himself in the attic bedroom that was his home office, trying to cast Lear, James felt that current tugging him. It was a strong current, a swelling in him that was like the ebb and flow of the black wind outside, which was making the neighbor’s garden gate bang.
    Clutching the pencil in his hand, James tried to will shut the portal that had opened in his heart. He thought of the story his wife had told, of Ordway in the philosophy department, the fool who had told a coed that he’d seen someone who looked just like her—and then pulled out a magazine clipping of a model dressed in lingerie. These people knew no shame. Weber in mathematics had actually started an affair with a coed. She’d gone to graduate school in Ohio, but Weber had kept on seeing her, flying out there every month, and billing the research and development committee for his traveling expenses.
    When James asked him how he could be running out to Ohio so often, why he bothered to keep it going, the answer—quite straight-faced—had been, “In order to touch the person I love.” And there was Bender in classics, who had tried and failed with his male students so often that when they were in his office, they always made sure they had a stack of books on their laps.
    They were pathetic, all of them, pathetic and ridiculous. I’m not like them, James told himself.
    He looked at the Fulbright application on his desk. If he played his cards right, he might be able to spend a year teaching in London. Of course Ellen and the kids would have to remain at home, because of school and all. They’d come over for Christmas, and maybe for a month over the summer, but that would be it. James was looking at a year of nearly perfect freedom.
    Staring at his list of characters and actors, James wrote Mike Lange beside Edgar. The role of Edmund, the bastard son, he assigned to a tall, bearded hippie type who hung around the theater, because, he’d said, “Any field you can never make a living out of is cool ’cause it has to be noncompetitive.” And that was it. Except for Cordelia.
    James looked at Kathy Lowenthal’s name, hard. The letters in it spun around and sizzled, like a word from the Ten Commandments being engraved before Charlton Heston’s eyes. Why shouldn’t Kathy play Cordelia? Wasn’t virtue usually homely? She ought to play Cordelia. She had every right, she was entitled to.
    James felt bathed in his own sweat, even though the attic was chilly.
    Kathy fairly shone with honesty and strength. She could dignify the part of