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some Frank Powell production directed by D. W. Griffith of a musical version of the Civil War . The lead for the Confederate Army , leaping and pirouetting, is featured dancer Terrence Terry . A heartbreakingly young Joan Leslie plays Tallulah Bankhead. H. B. Warner plays Jefferson Davis . Music scored by Max Steiner .
    From the alley outside the kitchen door, a man’s voice says, “Knock, knock.” The windows, fogged with the steam. The kitchen air feels humid and warm as the sauna of the Garden of Allah apartments. My hair hangs lank and plastered to my wet forehead, flat as a Louise Brooks spit curl.
    The shadow of a head falls against the outside of the window, the pane where my Miss Kathie cut the shape of her heart. From behind the fogged glass, the voice says, “Katherine?”His knuckles knocking the glass, a man says, “This is an emergency.”
    Unfolded, the letter reads:
My Most Dear Katherine, True love is NOT out of your reach
. I flatten the letter to the damp window glass, where it sticks, held secure as wallpaper, pasted there by the condensed steam. The sunlight streaming in from the alleyway, the light leaves the paper translucent, glowing white with the handwritten words hung framed by the heart etched in the glass. The letter still pasted to the window, I flip the dead bolt, slip the chain, turn the knob and open the door.
    In the alleyway, a man stands holding a paper tablet fluttering with pages. Each page scribbled with names and arrows, what looks like the diagram for plays in a football game. Among the names one can read Eve Arden … Marlene Dietrich … Sidney Blackmer … In his opposite hand, the man holds a white paper sack. Next to him, the trash cans spill their roses and gardenias onto the paving stones. The gladiolas and orchids tumble out to lie in the fetid puddles of mud and rainwater which run down the center of the alley. The reek of honeysuckle and spoiled meat. Pale mock orange mingles with pink camellias and bloodred peonies.
    “Hurry, quick, where’s Lady Katherine?” the man says, holding the tablet, shaking it so the pages flap. On some, the names radiate in every direction from a large rectangle which fills the center of the page. The names alternating gender: Lena Horne then William Wellman then Esther Williams . The man says, “I’m expecting twenty-four guests for dinner, and I have a placement emergency.…”
    The diagrams are seating charts. The rectangles are the dinner table. The names the guest list. “As added incentive,”the man says, “tell Her Majesty that I’ve brought her favorite candy … Jordan almonds.”
    Her Majesty won’t eat a bite, I tell him.
    This man, this same face smiles out from the frontline skirmishes on television, amid the Battle of Gettysburg— this is Terrence Terry , formerly Mr. Katherine Kenton, former dancer under contract at Lasky Studios , former paramour to Montgomery Clift , former catamite to James Whale and Don Ameche , former cosodomite to William Haines , former sexual invert, the fifth “was-band,” in crisis about whom to seat next to Celeste Holm at a dinner he’s hosting tonight.
    “This is an entertainment emergency,” the Terrence specimen says, “I need Katherine to tell me: Does Jack Buchanan hate Dame May Whitty?”
    I say that he should’ve gone to prison for wedding Miss Kathie. That it’s illegal for homosexuals to get married.
    “Only to each other,” he says, stepping into the kitchen.
    I close the alley door, lock the knob, slip the chain, flip the dead bolt.
    Whatever the case, I say, a marriage isn’t something one undertakes simply to pad one’s résumé. Saying this, I’m retrieving a sheet of blank stationery from the kitchen table, then positioning this sheet on the damp window so that it aligns with the love letter already pasted to the glass.
    “Her Majesty doesn’t have to come dine with us,” this Terrence Terry says. “Just tell me who to stick next to Jane Wyman.”
    Using a