Another social worker flags a taxicab after Miss Kathie smears a tiny foundling with Max Factor base pigment, ladies’ foundation number six.

Pursing her lips, she hovers over the face of one wee infant, saying, “Wunderbar…” Exhaling cigarette smoke to add, “That’s the Latin equivalent for que bueno.”

Miss Kathie brandishes each child in the foyer mirror, hefting it and cuddling its pinched little face, studying the effect as if each orphan were a new purse or a stage prop.

Meow, squawk, squeak… Janis Paige.

Another tiny urchin, she leaves smudged with lipstick.

Another, Miss Kathie leans too close, too quickly, splashing a newborn with the icy-cold Boodles gin of her martini.

Another, she frowns down upon while her long, glossy fingernails pick at a mole or flaw on its smooth, pink forehead. “As the Spanish would say…” she says, “qué será será.”

This “kinder kattle kall,” as Cholly Knickerbocker would call it, continues all afternoon. This audition. Prams and strollers form a line which runs halfway to the corner. This buffet of abandoned babies, the products of unplanned pregnancies, the progeny of heartbreak-these pink and chubby souvenirs of rape, promiscuity, incest. Impulse. Bottle-fed leftovers of divorce, spousal abuse and fatal disease. Even as the paintbrush, the pink bristles grow stiff in my hand, the babies arrive as proof of poor choices. The sleeping or giggling flotsam and jetsam, a residue of what seemed at one time to be true love.

Each innocent, Miss Kathie holds, modeling it for the foyer mirror. Doing take after take of this same scene. Giving her right profile, her left. Smiling full-face, then fluttering her eyelashes, ducking her movie-star chin, emoting in reaction shots, telling the mirror, “Yes, she is lovely. I’d like you to meet my daughter: Katherine Jr.”

Telling the mirror, “I’d like to introduce my son, Webster Carlton Westward the Fourth.” She repeats this same line of dialogue with each child before handing it back to the nurse, the nun, the waiting social worker. Comparing paint chips and fabric samples. Picking over each child for scars or defects. And for every infant Miss Kathie sends away, two more arrive to stand in line for a test.

Into the late afternoon, she’s reciting: Bark, cluck, bray… Katherine Kenton, Jr.

Oink, quack, moo… Webster Carlton Westward IV.

She performs take after take, hours of that same screen test, until the streetlights flicker and blink, flare and shine bright. From the avenue, the sound of traffic fades. Across the street, in the windows of town houses, the curtains slide closed. Eventually Miss Kathie’s front steps descend to the sidewalk, empty of orphans.

In the foyer, I stoop to retrieve the bandanna dropped on the floor. The fallen drops of pink paint, smeared and dry, form a fading pink path, a stream of pink spots tracked down the steps, down the street. A trail of the rejected.

A taxicab pulls to a stop at the curb. The driver opens his door, steps out and unlocks the trunk. He removes two suitcases and places them on the sidewalk, then opens the back door of the cab. A foot emerges, a man’s shoe, the cuff of a trouser leg. A man’s hand grips the door of the cab, a signet ring glinting gold around the little finger. A head of hair emerges from the backseat of the cab, eyes bright brown as root beer. A smile flashes, bright as July Fourth fireworks.

A specimen boasting the wide shoulders of Dan O’Herlihy, the narrow waist of Marlon Brando, the long legs of Stephen Boyd, the dashing smile of Joseph Schildkraut playing Robin Hood.

In the reverse angle, my Miss Kathie rushes to the front door, calling, “Oh, my darling…” Her outstretched arms and thrusting bosom at once a suggestion of Julie Newmar playing Penelope greeting Odysseus. Jane Russell in the role of Guinevere reunited with Lancelot. Carole Lombard rushing to embrace Gordon MacRae.

Webster Carlton Westward III calls up the steps, noble as William Frawley as Romeo Montague, “Kath, my dearest…” Calling, “Do you have three dollars to pay the cabdriver?”

The driver, standing beside the suitcases, stoic as Lewis Stone, gristled as Fess Parker. The cab itself, yellow.

Her auburn hair streaming behind her, Miss Kathie shouts, “Hazie!” She calls, “Hazie, take Mr. Westward’s luggage to my room!” The two brazen lovers embrace, their lips meeting, while the camera circles and circles them in an arch shot, dissolving to a funeral.

ACT I, SCENE TWELVE

Act one, scene twelve opens with another flashback. Once more, we dissolve to Katherine Kenton cradling a polished cremation urn in her arms. The setting: again, the dimly lit interior of the Kenton crypt, dressed with cobwebs, the ornate bronze door unlocked and swung open to welcome mourners. A stone shelf at the rear of the crypt, in deep shadow, holds various urns crafted from bronze, copper, nickel. The urn in her arms, engraved, Oliver “Red” Drake, Esq., Miss Kathie’s fifth “was-band.”

This took place the year when every other song on the radio was Frank Sinatra singing the Count Basie arrangement of “Bit’n the Dust.”

My Miss Katie hugs the urn, lifting it to meet the black lace of her veiled face. Behind the veil, her lips. She plants a puckered lipstick kiss on the engraved name, then places this new urn on the dusty shelf among the others. Amidst the bottles of brandy and Luminal. The unlit prayer candles. The only other cast members in this three-shot, myself and Terrence Terry, each of us prop Miss Kathie by one elbow. What Louella Parsons would call “pal bearers.”

The collection of crematory urns stand among dusty bottles and magnums of champagne. Vessels of the living and the dead, stacked here in the chilled, dry dark. Miss Kathie’s entire cellar, stored together. The urns stand. The bottles lie on their sides, all of them netted and veiled with cobwebs.

Bark, oink, squeal… Dom Pérignon 1925.

Bark, meow, bray… Bollinger 1917.

Terrence Terry peels the gilded lead from the cork of one bottle. He twists the loop, loosening the wire harness which holds the mushroom cork in the mouth of the bottle. Holding the bottle high, pointed toward an empty corner of the crypt, Terry pries at the cork with both his thumbs until the pop echoes, loud inside the stone room, and a froth of foam gushes from the bottle, spattering on the floor.

Roar, cluck, whinny… Perrier-Jouët.

Tweet, quack, growl… Veuve Clicquot.

That Tourette’s syndrome of brand names.

Terry lifts a champagne glass from the stone shelf, holding the bowl of the glass near his face and pursing his lips to blow dust from it. He hands the glass to Miss Kathie and pours it full of champagne. A ghost of cold vapor rises from and hovers around the open bottle.

With each of us holding a dusty glassful of champagne, Terry lifts his arm in a toast. “To Oliver,” he says.

Miss Kathie and myself, we lift our glasses, saying, “To Oliver.”

And we all drink the sweet, dirty, sparkling wine.

Buried in the dust and cobwebs, the mirror lies facedown in its silver frame. Following a moment of silence, I lift the mirror and lean it to stand against the wall. Even in the dim light of the crypt, the scratches sparkle on the glass surface, each etched line the record of a wrinkle my Miss Kathie has had stretched or lifted or burned away with acid.

Miss Kathie lifts her veil and steps to her mark, the lipstick X on the stone floor. Her face in perfect alignment with the history of her skin. The gray hairs gouged into the mirror align with her hair. She pinches the fingertips of one black glove, using her opposite hand, tugging until the glove slides free. Miss Kathie twists the diamond engagement ring and the wedding band, handing the diamond to me, and placing the gold band on the dusty shelf beside the urns. Beside the urns of past dogs. Beside past shades of lipstick and fingernail varnish too bright, deemed too young for her to wear any longer.