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fawning over somebody who could very easily, with one swift chop, cleave my heart in two.
    “Is it okay you’re not at work?” I asked.
    Marshall made a pshaw noise and batted an imaginary fly.
    “I just told them I had to run an important errand. Which is true: it’s important that I get a recap and give you a cookie.”
    “Well, then, lead the way,” I said, doing an about-face toward the intersection.
    We crossed the street together and began walking up 8th Avenue, holding hands through the cold.

3. GROUNDHOG DAY
    W icked ’scasting process is kind of like rolling admissions to a university—if that university accepted only one student, and didn’t tell most applicants whether or not they got in. You “apply” on no real schedule, just whenever they happen to be casting, and hear back at any point in the future.
    Or never.
    Example: A friend of mine auditioned for Wicked many times, but it was almost a year before she finally heard that she’d landed the part of Glinda on the national tour. Another friend was offered the supporting role of Boq, the overlooked munchkin, but Wicked couldn’t yet tell him where, or when, he would be needed. That’s the university being like, “We want you at our school, we know what your major is going to be, but we don’t know your campus or the year you’ll graduate.”
    The week after my audition I practically chained myself to my phone, and not just because Marshall and I were texting about 1,000 times a day.
    I was waiting. For it. You know!
    The call.
    In the meantime, I was rehearsing for my strange and inexplicable Chanukah musical which, despite being mind-numbing, at least gave me something to keep me occupied. The days crawled by until it was Friday—weekend two of Hee-Haw performances. Another distraction from the waiting.
    The old “don’t call us, we’ll call you” Hollywood cliché is more or less true of New York theater, although I’ve never heard anybody actually say it while smoking a cigar or slamming a door in my face. But the sentiment is alive and well. As an actor, you have to be ready for everything—and nothing. After an audition, there’s no promise of hearing back, of getting feedback, or of finding closure. And this is absolutely true of Wicked —it being such a massive, multi-pronged operation, with productions running all over the world. They’re busy, and they have a lot going on. You’re spending your days pretending to be a babushka bubbe making latkes and applesauce. They’re thousands strong, with millions of fans.
    You’re one person, and you live alone.
    See the difference?
    On Friday, Marshall and I rendezvoused an hour before my Hee-Haw call time. I spotted a small café near the theater and proposed we duck in for tea and cake, mostly because this required that Marshall carry me over a huge pile of snow. As we ordered a plate of sweets, the cashier told us, in a French accent, that she saw Marshall’s snow-bank heroics and found us romantic. It reminded her, she said, of the couple seated by the window, a pair of regulars who were celebrating their fifty-year anniversary.
    “How wonderful, at once, to see the bud of love and love in full bloom.”
    It was so sweet, I almost vomited. French café? A prediction of lifelong love? The cliché gods were smiling down on us—just as they had for weeks, ever since our serendipitous (groan) meeting.
    Only now—as the weirdly prophetic French lady had reminded us—we were inching closer to that scary L-word.
    You know. The one that rhymes with “shove”—and is equally jarring.
    We seated ourselves in front of a window, across from the fifty-year couple, at which point Marshall made quick work of a massive mound of chocolate cake, while I stared at him, remembering the boxer-brief-striped-scarf-omelet incident.
    “Hey,” I said, “I like you.”
    “I like you, too,” he said, his mouth smeared with chocolate.
    “If I don’t get Wicked , it won’t be so bad,” I