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to the waiter at last, nodding briefly at their glasses, and then switching his smile back to Stanley. “So, you want some life advice,” he said.
    “Not really,” said Stanley. “I just thought you were going to do the big ‘now you’re all grown up’ thing.”
    “You want psychobabble?”
    “No.”
    “Kid, you got good blood and a fine pair of shoes.”
    “It doesn’t matter.”
    “Did I tell you about my client who set herself on fire?”
    “I heard you telling Roger.”
    “Life advice,” said Stanley’s father, holding up his glass for a toast. “Right. I’ve got something good and nasty. Stanley, to mark your rite of passage I am going to tell you a secret.”
    They touched glasses and sipped.
    “Okay,” said Stanley reluctantly.
    His father stroked his lapel with his fingertips, his glass poised and careless in his other hand. He looked rich and camp and deadly. “I am going to tell you how to make a million dollars,” he said.
    Stanley had the hot frustrated feeling again, but all he said was Okay. He even smiled.
    His father said, “Okay. I want you to think of your time at high school. Five years, right? During those five years, same as during anyone’s five years at any high school, there was one kid in your year who died. Yes?”
    “I guess so.”
    “Maybe he drove too fast, drank too much, played with guns, whatever—there is always one kid who dies. Did you know, Stanley,” he said, “that you can take out life insurance on a person without them knowing?”
    Stanley just looked at him.
    “And the premiums on school kids,” his father continued, “are really, really low. Provided they don’t have any reasons to think these kids are going to die. You can take out a million-dollar life insurance policy on a kid for something like two hundred a year.”
    “Dad,” said Stanley disbelievingly.
    “All you’d need to do is pick it. All you’d need to do is to get in there and do some research and get some information that would give you the edge.”
    “Dad,” Stanley said again.
    His father put his hands up like an innocent man, and laughed.
    “Hey, I’m giving you gold here,” he said. “Think of your kid. The one who died at your school. Could you have picked it beforehand? If you could have predicted it, then you could have got in there and made something good of it. Here’s your life advice, Stanley: that is how people get rich. That’s the only secret. They see things are going to happen before they happen, and they pounce.”
    Stanley’s father was smiling his therapy smile.
    “I couldn’t have picked it,” Stanley said at last. “The boy at my school. He was hit on his skateboard coming home from the shop. Out of all of them, I’d never have picked him.”
    “Shame,” his father said. He didn’t say anything further. He toyed with his fork and reached for his wine and watched Stanley over the frail rim of the glass as he drank.
    Stanley fingered the drama school brochure unhappily. He was hot and uncomfortable in his suit jacket, like a chicken trussed up to roast. “What about me?” he said. “Can you see what’s going to happen before it happens?”
    His father leaned forward and stabbed the tablecloth with a bony white finger.
    “I can see,” he said, “you are going to have a great year. You’re going to be great.”
    October
    “Acting is not a form of imitation,” the Head of Improvisation said briskly, after the hopefuls had assembled in a ragged cross-legged ellipsis on the rehearsal-room floor. Near the door the Head of Acting was hovering with his clipboard, watching with a studied indifference and pinching his pen in his fingers as he measured the worth and quality of each student against the next.
    The Head of Improvisation said, “Acting is not about making a copy of something that already exists. The proscenium arch is not a window. The stage is not a little three-walled room where life goes on as normal. Theater is a concentrate of