YA SHIVU V BOLSHOM DOME NA KHOLME!

After they sat at Midge’s table and realized it was Midge’s table, Kennedy sort of looked her over to see would she complain about the closeness of their seats. There’s one chair left between them, but there’s only one chair left between them, depending on how you look at it. If you look at it at all. She hardly seems to have noticed them sitting down, and why should she, it’s a public venue with many seats and Kennedy is in a suit the colour of the carpet. They were bumped from the lineup tonight and it just felt right dressing down from their stage outfit into something so modest. It’s an ugly carpet. They go a whole song looking at Midge, not looking at Midge, looking at the back of her neck where the curls barely part, and looking down in shame remembering what it’s like to be looked at by a man. But they have looked. And it would be terrible to say nothing, but it would be worse to apologize as if they have done something shameful, and make Midge feel like she has been a victim of something shameful. They ought to give her an escape route from this non-situation. Hi. How many years have I been sitting here? I was bumped from the lineup.

   “I know I’ve been sitting here all of five minutes already, but is it alright if I sit here?”

Midge has been taking notes. This is what you do when you’ve got a notepad and a pen and there’s a variety stream of acts passing by in front of your eyes, changing every eight to ten minutes. Her head’s been on a vertical swivel since she doesn’t trust herself to write legibly if she’s staring at the stage the whole time. Last time she did that she spent two hours lying awake in bed trying to work out why she’d written that a guitar-playing bearded man was “robust veal for Jonathan” and who exactly Jonathan was before she’d realised she’d just been writing about her own powerful need to use the bathroom. Her notes on this particular individual read:

    MALE COMEDIAN #12, JOSEPH(?) ALDMAN ALTMAN(?)     • Hold for laughs BUT! not too often. Seems desperate     • Have fun with the mic! The mic is your friend!     • Hard to make jokes about The Funny Things Dogs Do actually funny     • Pot roast for dinner tomorrow?     • Bored

She’s dimly aware she has company. This doesn’t bother her – tables are tables, chairs are chairs, none of these things have her name on them and if they did she’d only be too happy to offer. Besides, whoever it is has been quiet, unobtrusive, maybe a little stare-y but haven’t we all. Midge has the end of her pen thoughtfully pressed to her bottom lip when that changes, which is lucky for the both of them because Joseph(?) Altman(?) just finished and now she has nothing to write.

     “—a slug?”

This is the face of a woman who’s just not having it, and yet simultaneously, a woman who’s rooted in place by morbid curiosity. It’s something about the earnestness of the question that keeps Midge from making a dash.

     “Don’t you think it’s too shallow?” The couch. Midge is meant to be proud of the apartment, and she is, largely. The wallpaper, the carpets, the rugs, the enormous abundance of stuff. The couch, though, the couch is a real bugbear. Needless to say, it was Joel’s choice.

     “Every time I sit on this thing I feel like I’m sitting on the edge of the Grand Canyon only hours after the last murder by the notorious Grand Canyon Pusher who comes up behind people sitting on the edge of the Grand Canyon and pushes them off. I feel like I’m about to fall to my death. I have this constant impulse to declare myself of sound mind and body and write my will on the back of my hand so when they find my body they know who gets my dresses.”

Standing next to Edith isn’t exactly making Midge feel overdressed, but she definitely feels flashy and much too pink. That’s largely her dress’s fault – fuchsia is the colour of the summer, after all, and anyone who’s even heard of Edith knows her penchant for simple, neutral colours. Midge flattens out her skirt a little nervously. This is rare for her, but Edith Walls is a big name in the way Lenny Bruce is a big name, only Edith’s never bailed Midge out of prison or vice versa, so she can’t lean on that familiarity.

     “Joel?” Oh no. Oh shit. What the hell is she supposed to say. “He’s...” Esther audibly is not crying, if anything the apartment is too quiet, but for a second Midge considers pretending she is and running off to tend to her. The only thing stopping her is the amount of time it took to get her to lie down and go to sleep. It’s not that Midge doesn’t want to tell Kitty that Joel’s gone, it’s just. Well. The part of her conscience that shares her mother’s voice says Don’t!!! Tell her!!! Anything!!! in the sort of hushed tone you’d apply to a child about to start yelling about racecars in the synagogue. 

Three good reasons Susie can easily shrug off, ‘well, what should I say? You enter like Princess Grace into Monaco, after much deliberation, you make your grand entrance. Then, boy, you’re in there.’

     “I’m just saying, if you keep talking me down like that I’m gonna get a complex. And I’ll be too embarrassed to go on stage and my career will fester and die, and I’ll move to Ohio and start selling beets out of the back of a cart and you’ll have nobody else to manage and you’ll move to Ohio and start selling beets out of the back of a cart and we’ll be rival beet-sellers on opposite sides of the same street and one day during one of our beet fights you’ll throw a beet at my head and kill me and you’ll have to bury my body in your beet supplier’s farm and the runoff from my decaying corpse will poison your beets and you’ll be sent to prison after your beets kill a whole family of Ohioans and as you’re leaning against the bars of your cell and dragging a cup backwards and forwards or breaking big stones with big hammers and singing prison ditties you’ll think to yourself, oh, if only I hadn’t said that thing about Midge, this could all have been avoided.”