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knife through a threadbare sock. She crocheted doilies for her mother, her aunts, for the neighbor lady who waved to Cassie when she took her for walks in her buggy. Snowflakes that would never melt, the delicate webs of lace spun from beneath her flying fingers as she listened to Helen Trent on the radio. Her days were filled with useful toil. Still, something was missing.
    It started like a hole in her stocking. Tiny, barely there. She didn’t even notice it at first, the void that pervaded each moment. It was there each morning when she opened her eyes to the spiny ridges of Pete’s back. It was there when she spooned back an eruption of oatmeal from Cassie’s toothless mouth. It was there when, sated from lovemaking, she rolled up like an anchovy in her husband’s arms.
    What was it? She had everything she was supposed to have. A husband. A baby. A cozy apartment full of doily-topped furniture. She used to wonder, What more could she possibly want?
    Now, after all these years, she knows the answer. She found it on TV, right in her own living room. She’s no longer alone with her dreams, for television is her mentor. It beckons, it teases, it tempts her with her future. Look, it says as she stares at the screen, see who you can be: You can be a dancer. You can be famous.
    You can be … a star.
    TAPPETY TAPPETY TAP TAP TAP. Lorena is testing tap shoes. The rejects are piled like shiny black beetles on the floor of the dance studio shop, this pair too tight, this too loose, this too clunky, this too flat. “Jeez Louise,” says Delia. “Make up your mind.”
    Lorena does an energetic shuffle-ball change in a gleaming patent pair tied with big black grosgrain bows. “What d’ya think? Would Ann Miller wear these?” she asks, twirling in the mirror to catch a rear view. Her sinewy legs look like Pinocchio’s, ascending pale and wooden-looking from the tops of the shiny licorice shoes to the hem of the red satin tap pants she’s also trying on.
    “She’d wear ‘em to bed, she’d love ‘em so much,” Delia answers irritably.
    “Hey, come on. You’re the one said, ‘Stop talking all the time about what you want to do, and just do it.’ So here I am. Doing it.”
    “I meant pursue your career, not shop for shoes.”
    “Well, this is the first step. Putting together my costume.” She poses in front of the mirror, one arm stretched over her head, the other reaching down past her cocked hip. “I need a top hat.”
    “I need a drink.” Delia slumps back on the folding chair and is enveloped in tulle and gauze from costumes jammed together on a rack above her. “I’m getting claustrophobia in here.”
    Tappety tappety tap tap tap.
“I’ll take ‘em,” Lorena decides as she performs a final test run. “These, too,” she adds, wiggling her red satin-clad hips and shimmying her faux-tuxedo-shirted breasts.
    A sudden WooWoo wail startles Della. Arms and legs flailing in near unison, Lorena has broken into a frenzied tap dance to the chugga-chugga rhythm of “Chattanooga Choo Choo” that she’s singing to her image in the mirror.
    The ancient saleswoman napping behind the register wakes up with a start. “Busby?” she asks.
    “She wants it all, shoes and costume,” Delia announces. “Pay,” she orders Lorena, and, fighting her way through tulle, stalks outside to wait.
    “C’mon. I’ll buy you a drink,” Lorena says, happily clutching her new purchases as they walk down the street. “Let’s be ladies and drink martinis.” She steers Delia into the dim and dusty lobby of the Warwick, right into the mahogany-paneled bar, empty now in mid-afternoon. “My treat,” she says as they wriggle into seats around a toy-sized table.
    Delia’s lips curl around the rim of the cone-shaped glass as she sips daintily between grimaces, explaining, “I hate the taste of gin.”
    “Me, too,” says Lorena with a wince, “but I like the olives.” They order another round. Lorena props her chin on the