After a lifetime of such abuse the mirror bows, curved, so sectioned, so cut and etched so deep, that any new pressure could collapse the glass into a shattered, jagged pile of fragments. Another duty of my job is to never press too hard. My position included mopping up Paco’s piss from around the commode, then taking the dog to a veterinarian for gelding. Every day, I was compelled to tear a page from some history book-the saga of Hiawatha, written by Arthur Miller as a screenplay for Deborah Kerr, or the Robert Fulton story, as a vehicle for Danny Kaye-to pick up yet another steaming handful of feces.

I drag the diamond in straight lines to mimic the tears running down Miss Kathie’s face.

The diamond shrieks against the glass. The sound of an instant migraine headache.

The mirror of Dorian Gray.

Then footsteps echo from offscreen. The heartbeat of a man’s leather shoes approach from down the corridor, each step louder against the stone. Van Heflin or perhaps Laurence Olivier. Randolph Scott or maybe Sid Luft.

In the silence between one footfall and the next, between heartbeats, I place the mirror facedown on the shelf. I return the diamond ring to my Miss Kathie.

A man’s silhouette fills the doorway to the crypt, tall and slender, his shoulders straight, outlined against the light of the corridor.

Miss Kathie turns, one hand already reaching for the tarnished tube of lipstick. She peers at the man, saying, “Could that be you, Groucho?”

A bouquet of flowers emerges out of the gloom, the man’s hands offering them. Pink Nancy Reagan roses and yellow lilies, a smell bright as sunlight. The man’s voice says, “I’m so sorry about your loss…” The smooth knuckles and clear skin of a young man’s hands, the fingernails shining and polished.

What Hedda Hopper calls a “funeral flirtation.” Louella Parsons a “graveside groom.” Walter Winchell a “casket crasher.”

Webster Carlton Westward III steps forward. The young man from the dinner party. The name and phone number on the burned place card.

Those eyes bright brown as summer root beer.

I shake my head, Don’t. Don’t repeat this torture. Don’t trust another one.

But already my Miss Kathie wipes a fresh coat of red around her mouth. Then tosses the old lipstick to rattle among the tarnished urns. Among the empty wine bottles that people call “dead soldiers.” My Miss Kathie lowers the black mesh of her veil and reaches one gloved hand toward something coated with dust, something abandoned and long forgotten among her dead loves. She lifts this ancient item, her red lips whispering, “Guten essen.” Adding, “That’s French for ‘never say never.’ ” Her violet eyes milky and vague with the drugs and brandy, Miss Kathie turns to accept the flowers, in the same gesture slipping the dusty item-her diaphragm-deep into the sagging slit of her old mink coat pocket.

ACT I, SCENE FIVE

Clare Boothe Luce once said the following about Katherine Kenton-“When she’s in love, nothing can make her sad; however when she’s not in love, nothing can make her happy.”

We’re playing this next scene in the bathroom adjacent to Miss Kathie’s boudoir. As it opens, we discover my Miss Kathie seated at her dressing table, facing three mirrors angled to show her right profile, her left profile, and her full face. The bouquet of pink Nancy Reagan roses and yellow lilies delivered by Webster Carlton Westward III occupy a vase, those few flowers reflected and reflected until they could be a florist shop. An entire garden. This single bouquet, multiplied. Made infinite. Not left at the crypt to rot.

Dangling from the bouquet, a parchment card reads: Our love is only wasted when we fail to share it with another. Please allow the world to share its limitless love with you. Some gibberish plagiarized from John Milton or Mohandas Gandhi.

Reflected in the mirrors, my Miss Kathie pinches the slack skin that hangs below her chin. Pinching and pulling the skin, she says, “No more whiskey. And no more of those damned chocolates.”

Chocolate poisoning, it fits all the earmarks. Shame on Miss Kathie for neglecting an entire box on her bed, where Loverboy would be bound to sniff them out. The caffeine contained in even a single bonbon more than sufficient to bring about a heart attack in a dog of that size.

The parchment card, signed, Webb. The Westward boy, what Cholly Knickerbocker would term an “opportunistic affection.” Next to the roses on the polished top of her dressing table rests the rubber bump of Miss Kathie’s diaphragm, pink rubber flocked with dust.

Peeling off her false eyelashes, Miss Kathie looks at me standing behind her, both of us reflected in the mirror, multiplied into a mob, the whole world peopled by just us two, and she says, “Are you certain that no one else sent their condolences?”

I shake my head, No. No one.

Miss Kathie peels off her auburn wig, handing it to me. She says, “Not even the senator?”

The “was-band” before Paco. Senator Phelps Russell Warner. Again, I shake my head, No. Not Terrence Terry, the faggot dancer. Not Paco Esposito, who currently plays a hot-tempered, flamenco-dancing Latin brain surgeon on some new radio program called Guiding Light. None of the was-bands have sent a word of condolence.

Pawing the makeup from her face with cotton balls and cold cream, Miss Kathie snaps the elastic wig cap off the crown of her head. Her movie-star hands claw the long strands of gray hair loose. She twists her head side to side, fast, so the hair fans out, hanging to the pink, padded shoulders of her satin dressing gown. Fingering a few wispy gray strands, Miss Kathie says, “Do you think my hair will hold dye again?”

The first symptom of what Walter Winchell calls “infant-uation” is when Miss Kathie colors her hair the bright orange of a tabby cat.

“Optimism,” says H. L. Mencken, “is the first symptom that any disease is fatal.”

Miss Kathie cups a hand beneath each of her breasts, lifting them until the cleavage swells at her throat. Watching herself in the angled mirrors, she says, “Why can’t that brilliant Dr. Josef Mengele in Munich do something about my old-lady hands?”

At best, this young Westward specimen is what Lolly Parsons calls a “boy-ographer.” One of those smiling, dancing young gadabouts who insinuate themselves in the private lives of lonely, fading motion-picture stars. Professional listeners, these meticulously well-groomed walking men, they listen to confidences, indulge strong egos and weakening minds, forever cherry-picking the best anecdotes and quotes, with a manuscript always ready for publication upon the instant of the movie star’s demise. So many cozy evenings beside the fire, sipping brandy, those nights will pay off with scandalous confessions and declarations. Mr. Bright Brown Eyes, without a doubt, he’s one of those seducers ready to betray every secret, every wart and flatulence of Miss Kathie’s private life.

This Webster specimen is obviously a would-be author, looking to write the type of intimate tell-all that Winchell calls an unauthorized “bile-ography.” The literary equivalent of a magpie, stealing the brightest and darkest moments from every celebrity he’ll meet.

My Miss Kathie scoops a finger through a jar of Vaseline, then rubs a fat lump of the slime, smearing it across her top and bottom teeth, pushing her finger deep to coat her molars. She smiles her greasy smile and says, “Do you have a spoon?”

In the kitchen, I tell her. We haven’t kept a spoon in her bathroom since the year when every other song on the radio was Christine, Dorothy and Phyllis McGuire singing “Don’t Take Your Love from Me.”

Miss Kathie’s goal: to reduce until she becomes what Lolly Parsons calls nothing but “tan and bones.” What Hedda Hopper calls a “lipstick skeleton.” A “beautifully coiffed skull” as Elsa Maxwell calls Katharine Hepburn.