reat big bolt on the inside of the dressing
room door that I throw whenever I'm all alone after the show. Next day
they buzz for me to open it.

It worried me a bit at first and I had asked Sid, "But what if I'm so
deep asleep I don't hear and you have to get in fast?" and he had
replied, "Sweetling, a word in your ear: our own Beauregard Lassiter
is the prettiest picklock unjailed since Jimmy Valentine and Jimmy
Dale. I'll not ask where he learned his trade, but 'tis sober truth,
upon my honor."

And Beau had confirmed this with a courtly bow, murmuring, "At your
service, Miss Greta."

"How do you jigger a big iron bolt through a three-inch door that fits
like Maudie's tights?" I wanted to know.

"He carries lodestones of great power and divers subtle tools," Sid
had explained for him.

I don't know how they work it so that some Traverse-Three cop or park
official doesn't find out about me and raise a stink. Maybe Sid just
throws a little more of the temperament he uses to keep most
outsiders out of the dressing-room. We sure don't get any janitors or
scrubwomen, as Martin and I know only too well. More likely he squares
someone. I do get the impression all the company's gone a little way
out on a limb letting me stay here--that the directors of our theater
wouldn't like it if they found out about me.

In fact, the actors are all so good about helping me and putting up
with my antics (though they have their own, Danu digs!) that I
sometimes think I must be related to one of them--a distant cousin or
sister-in-law (or wife, my God!), because I've checked our faces side
by side in the mirrors often enough and I can't find any striking
family resemblances. Or maybe I was even an actress in the company.
The least important one. Playing the tiniest roles like Lucius in
_Caesar_ and Bianca in _Othello_ and one of the little princes in
_Dick the Three Eyes_ and Fleance and the Gentlewoman in _Macbeth_,
though me doing even that much acting strikes me to laugh.

But whatever I am in that direction--if I'm anything--not one of the
actors has told me a word about it or dropped the least hint. Not even
when I beg them to tell me or try to trick them into it, presumably
because it might revive the shock that gave me agoraphobia and amnesia
in the first place, and maybe this time knock out my entire mind or at
least smash the new mouse-in-a-hole consciousness I've made for
myself.

* * * *