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considering a play about Eva Braun.”
    â€œOh, yes. Eva’s Honeymoon . We’re going to do it in the Mountbatten.” His mind flashed to the plump blonde who wore her hair like the 1940s Claudette Colbert. She was usually romping about that place in the mountains that Hitler built. Playing with puppies and making home movies. She was always smiling. He thought of what Brashford would say. “Shit, a white woman was married to Hitler.”
    â€œGod knows we’ve heard enough about what the men thought.” She stared hostilely at Ball when she said men . “And that little k—Jewish girl, Anne Frank, she’s almost discussed in this town as much as the Rosenbergs. So now, Eva will have a chance to tell her side. How she was victimized.” This bitch is incredible, Ball thought.
    â€œVictimized? I don’t follow, Becky. I always thought that Eva Braun was a Nazi.” She jumped to her feet. She was shaking, she was so full of rage. “Just like you men! You rehabilitate the Waffen S.S. because they’re men. But Eva! No, Eva’s a woman! She was an innocent bystander in conflict between Jewish and German men! All of those women, victims in a war of male ego.” She took out a handkerchief and blew her nose. As she did, he thought of the newsreels showing the women crying into their handkerchiefs and squealing as Hitler’s motorcade passed, their arms raised in Nazi salutes just like everybody else’s. Women throwing flowers, screaming, breaking down, wanting to wrap their legs around the Führer’s hips and party all night.
    â€œYeah. Well, I gotta be going. One thing.” He needed some air.
    â€œWhat is it?” she asked, stamping a foot impatiently.
    â€œWho’s going to direct my play now that Jim’s gone?”
    â€œTremonisha Smarts. She’s read your script and will be contacting you. She said that she’s having problems with some of your female characters.” Becky said all of this with her head buried in the papers.
    â€œWhat?” he said. His legs felt weak.
    â€œTremonisha Smarts is directing your play. Now, I have a lot of work to do. I—” He turned around and walked out of the office. She’s having problems with some of your female characters . The words, said with a mean, sarcastic smile, stayed in his mind as he stood momentarily outside her door. Soon he heard her voice behind the door. “Hello, Tremonisha. He just left.” This was followed by a triumphant laugh. Ickey looked up at him and chuckled. He looked up at the portrait of Shakespeare. Even Shakespeare seemed to be smiling, mocking him. “Nigger,” the bard seemed to be saying, “who do you think you are, trying to express yourself in English? Don’t you know that English is white peoples’ language?” He left the theater with Shakespeare’s laughter ringing in his ears. Becky, Ickey, and Shakespeare all seemed to be laughing at him, their faces in a heavy-handed montage like in an old film. He left feeling like something that sticks to the soles of your feet and smells bad.

11
    For some reason, Tremonisha wanted their meeting to take place at the Oyster Bar located in Grand Central Station on East Forty-second Street. The building’s artwork was elaborate. It reminded him of Henry James’ prose style. Excessive, equivocating. It contrasted with the modernist temple, the Pan-Am Building, that stood behind it. Tremonisha was about forty-five minutes late, which gave him an opportunity to read The New York Pillar . The Flower Phantom, as the man who assaulted Tremonisha Smarts was called, had struck again, this time tying up at gunpoint and shaving the head of a feminist writer who had suggested in a book that the typical rapist was a black man. The newspaper was calling the culprit a hair fetishist because of his practice of collecting the victim’s hair and placing it in a black plastic