Melina

September 2024

"All I'm asking," Jasper said, as they whizzed down the Jersey Turnpike, "is for you to take the meeting with an open mind."

Andre sat beside him in the front seat of Jasper's spotlessly clean Audi. From the backseat, could pinch Andre when she thought he needed to respond. Like now.

"Ow," Andre yelped, twisting in his seat. "Should we consider finding a female director?" This was the one point had drilled into him as they stood in the kitchen that morning eating Lucky Charms, before Jasper came to pick them up.

"You're right," Jasper said. "The optics would be better. But the three women I've reached out to already have other projects."

muttered, "Surely there are more than three female directors…."

Jasper's eyes met hers in the rearview mirror. "Yes. But if Tyce is going to get investors for By Any Other Name, it needs heat. Some new graduate from Pace who's directed her first black box show isn't going to convince anyone to part with their money."

"Shakespeare isn't enough name recognition?" Andre asked.

"Not when you're saying he didn't write his plays," Jasper said. "On the other hand, attaching someone like Raffe Langudoc makes the industry take note."

Raffe Langudoc had been nominated for two Tonys in the early 2000s, but he hadn't had a show on Broadway since 2010, and his current project—in 's opinion—seemed questionable. He was directing a show that traveled like a circus, playing at gun shows across America. Tucker Everlasting—The Fox Newsical starred Scott Baio. Kid Rock had composed the songs. Politics aside, just didn't think that theater concessions should include M at the stage management table with little baskets of pencils, Post-its, and Hershey's minis.

Conspicuously absent? Jasper Tolle.

"Where's Jasper?" she whispered to Andre.

"Why do you care?" he whispered back. "Isn't it less stressful when he's not here?"

Before she could answer, the stage manager said they were ready to start. Raffe stood up from the table, where he'd been in deep discussion with his own assistant. "Hello, family. I use that word intentionally, because we are family, for the next few weeks and for as long as this work of art remains at the theater."

The door opened, and Jasper and Tyce entered with a whiff of strong coffee. They slipped to the back of the rehearsal room, attempting to pretend they hadn't just interrupted the director.

"You know what?" Raffe said. "Let's all stand. Circle up." He gestured at Andre, then at Jasper and Tyce. "You, too."

Andre grabbed 's wrist. "I'm not doing this alone," he murmured, yanking her to her feet.

They made a small, uneven loop. "Let's go around the circle," Raffe said. "Tell everyone your name, your role in the show, and a fact no one knows about you. I'll start: I'm Raffe, the director…and my fact is that I was born in France and only became a U.S. citizen in 2019."

The baton passed to other actors: I'm Josh, I'm playing Willie S. One time I took the wrong train and I was too embarrassed to get off and go backward so I went all the way to Buffalo….

I'm Daya, I have the honor of playing Emilia, I have a pet hedgehog named Quillary Clinton.

That led to a round of snaps. Everyone turned to Andre. "I'm…Mel Green, the playwright," he said. "And I never in a million years thought I'd be standing here."

Everyone in the room awwwwed, except for . "I'm Andrea Washington," she said. "I'm Mel's assistant, and, um, I'm actually related to Emilia Bassano." She paused. "And also, apparently, to Ted Bundy and Rasputin, so don't be too jealous."

The last person to share was Jasper. "I'm Jasper Tolle," he said, "and I have a photographic memory. If you give me a date, I can tell you what the headline was in The New York Times that day."

"No way," said Josh. "November fourth, 1964."

"Johnson Swamps Goldwater," Jasper said immediately.

"That's like a superpower, dude," said Tyce.

He shrugged. "How do you think I convinced the paper to hire me?"

Everyone laughed, and an actress said, "I know what your day job is, obviously, but why are you at rehearsals?"

Jasper's gaze skimmed over Andre before settling on . "That's easy," he said. "I'm Mel Green's number one fan."

—

At first, was so caught up in rehearsals that she forgot to give Andre notes, astounded to hear her words morph from two dimensions into three. It felt like a magician was pulling a colorful strand of sentences and soliloquys from her mind with a flourish.

Every now and then she would shake the wonder off her shoulders and remember to kick Andre under the table. He would lean toward her, as if he were the one delivering the note, when in fact she was the one who spoke: That line shouldn't be delivered in anger…more in desperation. Or: I want to try swapping the order of those two scenes. Or: Shit, I just realized she can't interact with Southampton there because he's supposed to be on a military mission.

By the second week of rehearsals, Raffe had gotten everyone off book and on their feet. He'd also hired a lute player to cover the transitions between scenes, which— had to admit—was a nice touch. True to his promise, Jasper dropped in and out of rehearsals without interfering. Most of the time, was so focused she didn't even notice when he was there.

Okay, that was a lie. She knew. She felt it in the way goosebumps rose on her arms, as if he were an unwelcome winter wind. She had begun this swapped-identity escapade to enact revenge on him, and she still wanted his comeuppance—but there were huge swaths of time when she forgot that. He'd make an incisive comment about a scene that wandered off the rails and she would have to admit to herself he was right, it was stronger with the cut. She'd find him staring so intently at her sometimes that she wondered if he knew who she really was and was just waiting to punk her. The only other reason he could possibly be so invested in this show was that he truly believed in it—and that was orthogonal to the ogre she'd cast him as.

had taken to reading Jasper Tolle's old reviews where a particularly savage phrase had tanked a show: "The most positive thing I can say about seeing this musical is that I never have to see it again," and "The least wooden actors onstage were the puppets."

His comments on By Any Other Name could be just as brutal. He'd told the costume designer that the plague doctor looked like a goth pelican; he told the actor playing Marlowe he needed to be less RuPaul and more Oscar Wilde. But had spent a decade being flattered emptily by people who had no intention of producing her plays, and that had been more painful.

Today the cast wore bits and pieces of their costumes. Daya was in a petticoat so that she could get a sense of how to move in it across the stage. Tommy—their Southampton—was in a doublet and jeans. The bulk of the morning had been taken up by an intimacy coordinator,who was working with the two actors on a love scene in Southwark, in which they would have to gracefully attack each other with passion, maneuver to the ground, and simulate sex. It led to a lot of giggling, a broken prop, and a minor injury: stage management had been required to file an incident report when Tommy tripped over Daya's skirt and landed hard on his wrist.

At one point, Raffe had pulled Andre aside. It wouldn't have been appropriate for to hover on the fringes of the conversation, but she felt itchy every time she looked up and saw Raffe and Andre deep in discussion. You trust Andre, she reminded herself. You asked him to do this.

After twenty minutes of watching Raffe and Andre huddled together over her computer while Daya and Tommy ground against each other with a Pilates SAD ball trapped between their groins, distracted herself by scrolling through TikTok. She was watching a performance of Pride and Prejudice done by cats when they moved on to a new scene—the first business meeting between Emilia and Shakespeare.

Daya and Josh waited for stage management to set a prop table and chairs so that they could sit. So far, Daya had nailed Emilia—there was a restlessness to her delivery that felt organic. It also felt right to have a Puerto Rican actress play Emilia, who—as an Italian Jew—did not blend seamlessly into the milky white landscape of Elizabethan England. And Josh had managed to give his Shakespeare a hunger for validation that made him less of a buffoon, and more a man so self-important that he wasn't self-aware.

"All right," Raffe said. "Let's just read through this first and see what we have."

Andre was still standing near Raffe on the other side of the room as Daya slipped into character and lasered her gaze on Josh. "You want to write," she said slowly. "But you can't. I want to write…but I can't." She frowned, glancing down at the script. "Wait. So Emilia is going to give this no-talent loser her work just so it gets seen?"

" No-talent loser? " Josh said, heated. "What if he has a family he's trying to support and that's why he signs on as an actor for the troupe, and just doesn't have the time she does to write?"

"Are you suggesting," Daya shot back, "that Shakespeare's struggles as a man are anywhere near comparable to Emilia's as a woman?"

Raffe held up his hands in a time-out signal. "I'm loving this passion, but let's stay focused, hmm?"

Daya disappeared into the character of Emilia. "If you front my work, you can claim authorship."

"And what do I get out of it?" Josh scoffed.

"The praise you seek." Daya broke character again and turned to Andre. "I'm sorry, that just doesn't feel right. I think Emilia would call him out. I think she'd say Bank. "

could think of a thousand reasons why Emilia would not say Bank in response to Shakespeare's question, beginning with the fact that the term was anachronistic.

"I don't tell her how to act," said under her breath, just as she realized Jasper Tolle had arrived at rehearsal, and was standing behind her. She could smell his shaving cream—a bite of soap, with no spice and no flowers.

"If I had a dime for every actor that made a suggestion that actually made it into the final script…" Jasper murmured, "I'd be able to buy a coffee. A coffee, mind you. Not a latte. Tell Mel he's the one with veto power. He's the playwright, and nobody else."

cleared her throat. "I'll make sure he knows."

"Knows what?" Andre said, throwing himself into the seat beside her and passing her the laptop.

"I'll tell you later," murmured, trying to telepathically alert him to the fact that she didn't want to elaborate within Jasper's range of hearing.

Andre lowered his voice. "Raffe has thoughts about the ending," he said.

"What kind of thoughts?"

"Oh, also, your dad is texting you nonstop. Keeps popping up on your computer message app. Which was a whole ball of fun when Raffe wanted to know who calls me cupcake."

"From the top," Raffe said.

Daya started to recite her lines before abruptly breaking off. "I'm sorry, I'm still having a really hard time finding the motivation for Emilia to just give away her writing."

The director looked at Andre, waiting for him to give the actress an explanation.

"What other options did she have?" Andre asked.

"Well, that's part of the problem. I don't buy that Marlowe would encourage her to do it. As a writer himself, he knows better. It feels like such a breach of friendship."

Andre froze. "I'm sure he had his reasons."

"Daya," Raffe sighed. "I so appreciate your commitment to Emilia's character. But I think this really will resonate with theatergoers—seeing how far women have come since then."

nearly fell out of her chair.

Before she could open her mouth, Andre grabbed her hand in a death grip. "We're going to be late," he said pointedly, then turned to Raffe apologetically. "Eye doctor's appointment. Totally slipped my mind." He turned before the director could object, pulling with him.

She stumbled behind him until they stepped out of the rehearsal room into the hallway. "What's with the hasty exit?"

"It is time," Andre said, "for you and me to have a chat."

—

Andre took her to a bar and ordered martinis. "Why are we doing this?" he asked, as he sat down and pushed a glass toward .

"Day drinking?"

"This whole…scheme. I feel like an idiot—you're a ventriloquist and I'm your dummy." He took a long sip of his drink. "Daya was right, and I'd rather kill a puppy than admit that. A best friend would not encourage you to put someone else's name on your work."

"First, you didn't encourage me. I begged. Second, it's not someone else's name. It's my name. Sort of."

"I know you thought this was a good idea at the time, and I was stupid enough to agree with you," Andre said. "But the reality is different, isn't it?"

looked down at her cocktail napkin, which she'd begun to shred into pieces. "Okay, you're right, it's different than I thought it would be. But this all still feels worth it…for Emilia. I can't really explain it better than that."

"All the more reason you should be recognized as the playwright," Andre said.

In the darkest corners of night, when she couldn't fall asleep, had rehearsed in her own mind what it would be like to come clean. She thought about the reactions of the actors, and Raffe, and, yes, Jasper; imagined the narrowing of their eyes, the tightness of their mouths. The closing of ranks when they realized they'd been duped.

The odds of everyone treating this as a madcap lark were far less than the odds that Tyce D'Onofrio would pull funding and shut down the production.

"I can't undo what I've already done," said. "But I'm not the first author to pretend to be a man just to get traction in her career. The Bront?s did it. George Eliot. George Sand. J. K. Rowling."

"Maybe that's why she doesn't understand gender," Andre muttered. "But the point is, Mel, we all know who those writers are now. They eventually revealed themselves. You…you're erasing yourself."

"I'm in the room. I'm just…playing a role. If I was Green, I wouldn't have been chosen for that fringe festival. I wouldn't have had Jasper Tolle at the reading. He wouldn't want anything to do with this play. You heard him—it's not the subject matter of Emilia Bassano that intrigued him. It was the fact that you, a man, could write well about her experience." shook her head. "At least now I have a seat at the table. You have no idea what it's like to be a woman in the theater business," she said.

Andre's brows rose to his hairline. "Are you really saying that to a gay Black man? You want to know how many white kids fresh out of college have been promoted at my agency, when it took me three years to get a cost-of-living raise? Or how many times some white producer comes in and gives me the Starbucks order instead of assuming I'm a legit casting director? As a matter of fact, do you know how few Black casting directors there even are ?" He flattened his hands on the table. "The only reason I have an invitation to this particular party is because I'm pretending to be the person who wrote the play. It's the words that matter, Mel, and you're the one who created them. You don't see anyone clamoring for me to quit the casting agency and write."

"That's your own fault," snapped, "because you're too afraid to even try!"

Immediately, she knew she had gone too far. She clapped her hand over her mouth and Andre reared back, as if she had struck him.

"Okay, then," he said softly. "At least I know how you really feel."

"Andre—"

"I can't do this, Mel," he said, and he walked away, slamming the bar door open on its hinges.

hunched her shoulders, pressing her cheek to the cool wooden table. She was an idiot, and worse, she was a terrible friend.

She pulled out her phone, where Andre's contact was not his name but the emojis queen and bee. I'm sorry, she typed. If you want me to tell everyone the truth tomorrow, I —

Her phone buzzed with an incoming call: DAD.

"Hey, Dad," said, holding the device up to her ear. "Sorry I didn't answer your texts."

"It's fine," her father said. "I was…to…you know."

"Sorry, you're breaking up—"

"Oh, the service isn't good in the hospital."

"The what ?"

"Hang on…" She could hear him moving, and voices swelling around him. Then he was speaking again. "It was just a little procedure. Beth brought me."

Who the hell was Beth? "Dad," said, "what is going on?"

"Nothing. I just missed you, is all."

"I may have something good to report," said. "But I don't want to jinx it."

She could hear her father's smile in his reply. "Fingers crossed."

"Dad," she said, a chill skating down her spine. "You'd tell me if you weren't okay, right?"

"Cupcake," her father answered, "why would I lie to you?"

They talked for another ten minutes, then hung up after promised to call him soon. By the time headed back to the theater, she'd completely forgotten to send her text to Andre.

—

Andre was not at the theater. made up an excuse about conjunctivitis and spent the rest of the workday putting Raffe's notes into the script and getting new pages to the actors. Later, she expected him to be at their apartment, sulking. "Andre?" she called out, wandering through the small space, only to realize that he had likely never come home.

A part of her was relieved.

She scrawled a note on a Post-it— Let's talk. Wake me up whenever— and stuck it onto his bedroom door.

was about to strip out of her sweaty clothes and shower and order sushi when her phone dinged with a notification. LILLYS.

Fuck.

The Lillys had been created in 2010 by a handful of female theater makers who wanted to celebrate the work of women in the business, and to push the industry toward gender and racial parity. Named for Lillian Hellman, the outspoken playwright, they gave out awards with the most fantastic names—and often with cash prizes: the Stacey Mindich "Go Write a Play" Award, the Daryl Roth Creative Spirit Award, the Giant in Theater Award, the You've Changed the World Award.

had always wanted to go to the awards ceremony, and she had finally figured out a way in: she'd applied to be a cater waiter. She couldn't afford a ticket, but the next best thing was handing out champagne to actual women who had achieved actual success in the industry. You never knew who you'd strike up a conversation with.

The bad news was that she had completely forgotten she was due at the venue in forty-five minutes. This year the May ceremony had been rescheduled after there had been a burst pipe at Playwrights Horizons, which was why she'd lost track of the date. She washed under her arms at the sink, twisted her hair into a topknot, and pulled on black pants and a white shirt.

At the site, she was given an apron and a tray and instructions, and guests began to mill in the lobby. She spotted Theresa Rebeck and Lynn Nottage and Kristen Anderson-Lopez. It took all of 's self-control to walk up to each of them and offer a glass of champagne instead of peppering them with questions about how they'd gotten started, how they persevered, and how they stayed gracious in a business so heavily dominated by men.

There were more male producers and directors there than she'd anticipated. She circled between the kitchen and the lobby, retrieving empty glasses and receiving trays of full ones. She was just approaching a small tangle of people—O h my God, was that Suzan-Lori Parks? —when she felt a tap on her shoulder. She turned to see two men standing there. "Welcome to the Sour Grapes Awards," the first man said to his companion, and he plucked a flute off 's tray. "Care for some… whine ?"

"People in glass houses, Jack," someone behind her warned. "That was quite a tantrum you threw when the Local 802 union picketed your show for using prerecorded tracks instead of live musicians."

The man's face went crimson, and he muttered something before slinking away. turned, shocked, and confirmed that it was indeed Jasper's voice she had heard.

She wasn't sure who was more surprised: herself, when she realized that Jasper Tolle was the owner of the voice; or Jasper, seeing her in a waiter's outfit at the Lillys. "I can only assume," he said, "that being Mel Green's assistant doesn't cover groceries."

"The two-day-old bread at the bodega down the street is pretty cheap, and it only sometimes has mold on it," quipped. "What are you doing here?"

"I don't have a choice," he said, without a trace of irony. "It's part of the job."

"I took this job just to be here," countered. "It's an honor to be here with these women."

He rolled his eyes. "No one likes award ceremonies. They're all too long and dreadfully boring."

"Says the person who goes to the Tonys every year."

A chime rang, calling the audience to their seats. Jasper made no move to go into the theater. "I went to our reading room today," he said.

Our reading room. felt a little zip of electricity run down her spine.

A small smile played over his lips. "Don't you want to know what I was reading?"

The lights flashed, twice.

hurried toward the theater. She set her empty champagne tray on top of a trash can and slipped into the auditorium to stand along the rear wall. In the dark, she felt the movement of Jasper filling the spot beside her, even though he obviously had a seat.

Marsha Norman, who'd won a Pulitzer and been nominated for a Tony for 'Night, Mother, welcomed everyone. "When we started the Lillys in 2010," she said, "we wanted to shine the spotlight on women."

Jasper leaned closer. She could smell the soap on his skin. "I learned today that the Tragedy of Mariam was the first play written and published by a woman in England," he whispered. "Elizabeth Cary."

"Not true," murmured back. " Arden of Faversham was published twenty years earlier. It just didn't have Emilia Bassano's name on it."

"You can't prove she wrote Arden ."

"No, but I can show you how Cary's historical book on Edward II was published as her husband's work, and only recently attributed to her."

"No one needs permission to make theater," Marsha Norman continued from the stage. "But you do need support. And that's what the Lillys hope to do. Since we began The Count, female writers of new plays have increased from 14 percent to 39 percent. That's progress, but it's not equality."

"Just because Elizabeth Cary is the first woman whose name appears on a published play doesn't mean other women weren't writing for the theater," whispered fiercely. "Eighty percent of the plays from the 1580s were recorded without the names of their authors, so the belief that every one of those was written by a man is nothing more than an assumption."

Marsha Norman finished her speech. "The fact that stories of women told by women are still rare onstage is insupportable. When women's stories aren't told, it suggests that women's lives don't matter." She looked around the room. "You know what does matter? Women lifting up other women."

In the thunderous applause, Jasper leaned toward her again. "So it's like the way Emilia published the first country house poem in Salve Deus in 1611—but Ben Jonson gets credit for being the first, in 1616."

turned, about to respond, when she realized what he'd said. "You read Emilia's book of poetry?"

"Manuscripts and Archives, ma'am," he said, inclining his head. "I'm halfway through."

In the half-dark, she could see only the curve of Jasper's jaw and the light in his eyes. He had not just surprised her with his intellectual curiosity about Emilia Bassano. He'd upended her.

He tilted his head, studying her just as carefully as she was studying him. "I know you came here to see the ceremony," he said, "but is there any chance you would…duck out and go somewhere with me?"

—

This was, by far, the best awards ceremony Jasper had never attended.He sat across the table from Andrea in a booth at his favorite diner. They were sharing a plate of French fries and chocolate milkshakes. "Mary Wroth," she was saying, as they continued to banter about the female writers who'd been lost to history. "She wrote mostly poetry, but there was a closet drama in there somewhere. And Ben Jonson even wrote a sonnet to her, saying her writing made him a better poet. He wasn't afraid to give credit to a woman, even if the rest of society wouldn't."

Jasper found himself looking at her midnight hair and those intense silver eyes—mirrors that made him see himself more clearly. He was a guy who was too nervous to stop fidgeting; a man who was acting more like a boy, trying to impress a girl who was out of his league. Andrea Washington might be ten years younger than he was, but she was smart and passionate and didn't give quarter.

Most of all, she wasn't scared of him.

He had cultivated a persona based on his caustic reviews. People assumed he was a dick because of the acerbic columns he wrote; he didn't correct them. To be honest, the assumption kept others at a distance, which was usually the way he liked it. But Andrea didn't hesitate to debate with Jasper, to counter his arguments, to tell him he was wrong. It was…liberating. Refreshing.

Amazing.

He had the urge to reach for her hand but he was not that suave, and besides, they were business colleagues and that was a terrible idea—not to mention a form of harassment, since she was a lowly assistant and he was, well, who he was. So instead, he tried to impress her with his knowledge of female authors. "Mary Sidney," he said.

"That's cheating. You know about her from the play."

"Fair," Jasper said. "Katherine of Sutton."

Andrea's face was blank. "Who?"

Triumph! "A Benedictine nun. She wrote and directed Latin liturgical dramas in the fourteenth century that were performed at Barking Abbey."

"I call BS," Andrea said. "Barking Abbey?"

"I kid you not," Jasper said. "Even better, the nuns played men onstage. One of them was Jesus."

Andrea shook her head, laughing, and Jasper watched some loose curls unravel from her topknot. They danced along the nape of her neck and the curve of her shoulder and he could not look away.

He'd last had a girlfriend two years ago. All had been relatively smooth until Yvonne moved into his apartment. Jasper had had such anxiety from seeing her clothes in the same hamper as his and her toothbrush touching his own that he found excuses to stay away. After three weeks, she moved out and broke up with him.

"If I didn't know better, I'd think you were a professor, not a critic," Andrea said. "Did you study English in college?"

"No. Theater." He looked up from beneath the fringe of hair that was always falling in his face. "I never wanted to be a critic," he confessed. "I wanted to be a director."

"What happened?"

"Guess that got lost, along the way."

"So instead of making theater, you pick holes in the way other people make theater."

Jasper leaned back against the banquette. "That's one way to look at it. The other is that people have limited time and money, so I help guide them to what's most worthwhile."

"But that focus is only with your lens," Andrea pointed out. "If a play isn't your cup of tea, should you be allowed to crucify it? Should any critic be allowed to do that, without ever writing or directing a play himself?"

"How is what I do different from tourists talking about a show they've seen on the walk back to their hotel?"

"You have the power to close a show with your opinion, and Joe from Iowa does not," Andrea said. "And your taste is biased by your experience. Things that appeal to you might be different from subjects that appeal to someone Black or nonbinary or female, because you haven't lived their lives. There aren't many Black or nonbinary or female theater critics—they're mostly white men."

"Being a white man doesn't mean I can't recognize good work when I see it," Jasper argued.

"No, but it does mean that if you don't like something, you might not realize it wasn't meant for you to like."

Jasper felt as if someone had shot a gun next to his head. His ears were ringing, and he couldn't quite focus. Was he that blind? Had he ever dismissed a play that "didn't speak to him" not because of a flaw in the execution of the show but because it didn't resonate with his personal experience?

That couldn't be true. Off the top of his head he could name ten plays by playwrights of color and LGBTQ writers that were masterpieces. But by the same token, he could remember a show by a Black writer that he thought was "bitter." A musical about the AIDS epidemic that he called "melodramatic." A play by a woman he'd called "cloying and emotional." Had the fault lain with the material, or with his own distance from it?

"In spite of what the critics say," Jasper pointed out, "you have to admit that theater's gotten more diverse lately."

Andrea grimaced. "I don't know about that. Okay, yes, there are more Black playwrights getting produced. But are they really given the same platform? Pretty much every Black-written show since 2020 has gotten a bad slot in the Broadway season, no publicity, no attempt to find an audience."

Jasper's jaw dropped. "Is that what Mel thinks, too?"

She hesitated, then swallowed. "I think Mel would tell you," Andrea said carefully, "that there's still work to be done. And I think he'd agree that when it comes to other minority groups—like, say, women creators—they're barely getting onto the field. That's not real change. It's tokenism."

"In the past five years, three women have won the Pulitzer for theater," Jasper said.

"Of those three, not a single one got a Broadway theater for her Pulitzer-winning play," Andrea said. "But the two guys who won did. In fact, since 2002 only Lynn Nottage and Suzan-Lori Parks have won the Pulitzer and had commercial productions. But nearly every man who's won it did."

Jasper thought back through the winners: James Ijames, Michael R. Jackson, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Tom Kitt, Tracy Letts, David Lindsay-Abaire.

Shit.

She was right.

Andrea looked directly at him. "It's not your fault that you were born in that body, or that you had the upbringing you did. But all the decision makers and tastemakers are white men." She folded her hands and rested her chin on them. "You know who buys tickets to shows."

Jasper nodded. Nearly seventy percent of seats sold on Broadway were bought by women.

"Then why are there so few female critics and producers and theater owners and writers? It's not like playwrights haven't known forever that catering to a female audience is wise," she said: " I fear, / All the expected good we're like to hear / For this play at this time, is only in / The merciful construction of good women; / For such a one we show'd 'em: if they smile, / And say 'twill do, I know, within a while / All the best men are ours; for 'tis ill hap, / If they hold when their ladies bid 'em clap. "

His brows pinched together. " Henry VIII? " he guessed.

" All Is True, " Andrea corrected, giving the original title of the play Shakespeare and John Fletcher allegedly collaborated on in 1613.

"Six of one, half dozen of another," Jasper said, smiling ruefully. "Well, it makes me even more proud that By Any Other Name is transferring," he said. "And patently ashamed that I dragged you away from an awards ceremony for women."

She smiled. "You didn't abduct me, I went willingly. Although I'm pretty sure I won't get paid since I ditched before cleanup."

She glanced out the window as a carriage horse clip-clopped down Eighth Avenue. "Where do they sleep at night?" Andrea wondered absently.

"On Fifty-Second Street, near Eleventh Avenue. They have a stable."

Andrea turned, surprised. "How do you know that?"

"Because I wondered where they slept at night, too, and I followed them once."

She twisted to look out the window again as the horse moved out of view. "I had a date once, in college. The guy took me to a sushi place near Central Park. It was around eleven-thirty at night and a horse and carriage went by just as the light changed. The horse spooked, and bolted, and a taxi clipped it."

"Oh my God," Jasper said. "That's awful. "

"Yeah, it was. I watched the whole thing through the window of the restaurant."

"What happened?"

"The horse didn't make it," Andrea said. "Neither did the relationship."

She hesitated, her quicksilver eyes meeting his, as if she were gathering the courage to tell him something important, and falling short.

"Jasper," she began, just as he said, "Naturally—"

They both broke off awkwardly.

"You go," Jasper said.

"No, you."

His hand grazed hers as he reached for his water, and they both froze. "I was just going to point out that it would have been impossible to overcome a beginning that tragic," Jasper offered, smiling. "What were you going to say?"

Andrea's fingers slid away from his, and then so did her gaze. "I can't remember," she said.