*

I guess they must have got by themselves a year ago and talked me over
and decided my best chance for cure or for just bumping along half
happily was staying in the dressing room rather than being sent home
(funny, could I have another?) or to a mental hospital. And then they
must have been cocky enough about their amateur psychiatry and
interested enough in me (the White Horse knows why) to go ahead with a
program almost any psychiatrist would be bound to yike at.

I got so worried about the set up once and about the risks they might
be running that, gritting down my dread of the idea, I said to Sid,
"Siddy, shouldn't I see a doctor?"

He looked at me solemnly for a couple of seconds and then said, "Sure,
why not? Go talk to Doc right now," tipping a thumb toward Doc
Pyeskov, who was just sneaking back into the bottom of his makeup box
what looked like a half pint from the flask I got. I did,
incidentally. Doc explained to me Kraepelin's classification of the
psychoses, muttering, as he absentmindedly fondled my wrist, that in a
year or two he'd be a good illustration of Korsakov's Syndrome.

They've all been pretty darn good to me in their kooky ways, the
actors have. Not one of them has tried to take advantage of my
situation to extort anything out of me, beyond asking me to sew on a
button or polish some boots or at worst clean the wash bowl. Not one
of the boys has made a pass I didn't at least seem to invite. And when
my crush on Sid was at its worst he shouldered me off by getting
polite--something he only is to strangers. On the rebound I hit Beau,
who treated me like a real Southern gentleman.

All this for a stupid little waif, whom anyone but a gang of
sentimental actors would have sent to Bellevue without a second
thought or feeling. For, to get disgustingly realistic, my most
plausible theory of me is that I'm a stage-struck girl from Iowa who
saw her twenties slipping away and her sanity too, and made the dash
to Greenwich Village, and went so ape on Shakespeare after seeing her
first performance in Central Park that she kept going back there night
after night (Christopher Street, Penn Station, Times Square, Columbus
Circle--see?) and hung around the stage door, so mousy but
open-mouthed that the actors made a pet of her.

And then something very nasty happened to her, either down at the
Village or in a dark corner of the Park. Something so nasty that it
blew the top of her head right off. And sh