"Besides, that's not the point," she says. "You've been broody and miserable for I don't know how long. Skulking around the house, making me feel guilty if I'm not miserable, too. Then you start hinting around about burning your union cards, calling up Zak and throwing in the towel, and I fall for it. You really had me going this time. I'm thinking, well, maybe this is a good thing. You know, hard but good. Maybe we can start planning a life. But we can't even plan a vacation."

Contrition fails me. "You call that a vacation? Spending a week with Jack and Mina?"

Robin draws herself up into the rigidly correct posture she assumes when she is furious. "All that matters to you is that a bunch of people you don't even know like you. You're like Sally Field. It's pathetic. You get a couple of auditions and, presto, everything else vanishes. You're right back in it. I don't matter. Nothing else matters but waiting for the damn phone to ring."

"Well, shit, I'm sorry to louse up your plans. I was just under the impression we could use the money."

"Money has nothing to do with this."

"What the hell am I doing this for, then? Because I thought it was the money. So what is it? You tell me. The thrill of dressing up in a rat costume?"

"I don't know why you're doing this. But don't pretend it's for us."

Robin gets up, stalks over to the old desk in the corner, and begins yanking open drawers and rifling through the contents. She pulls out an opened pack of Marlboro Lights and continues searching the drawers. We both quit smoking three years ago, and I'm surprised to see there are still cigarettes in the house. "I can't take it much longer," she warns me.

Finally, she finds what she's looking for, a book of matches. She tamps a cigarette out of the pack and lights up, inhaling jaggedly.

"What kind of a stunt is this?"

Her eyes train on me defiantly. "Maybe it's my turn to be stupid and self-destructive."

I proceed to list every stupid thing she's done in the last eleven years. I even make some up, stretch the truth a little to make my point. "But you don't see me complaining," I crow. "Sure, I'm difficult to live with sometimes. But at least one of us knows what it means to make a commitment. At least one of us was listening when the minister said for better, for worse."

"No question, you take the prize for stubbornness, Dan. Now if you could just learn when to quit." Robin is still glaring at me, but she doesn't look so cocky now. I note with satisfaction that her hand shakes when she draws the cigarette to her mouth.

"What did you think, everything was going to be easy?" I'm skidding wildly forward now, ranting like a drunk, spewing up rage. Out of the corner of my eye, I catch the dog slinking across the floor and cowering behind Robin's legs. "Things get a little rough and first thing, you're ready to pick up and leave town. Your husband doesn't turn out to be a star like you'd counted on, well, screw him. Or better yet, screw one of his friends." This last is below the belt, a coded reference to her one serious indiscretion, a night many years ago when she got drunk at a party and ended up in a locked bathroom with Gordon Hopper. She didn't commit adultery, but it is a technicality that rests uncomfortably on the question of how much further things might have gone had there been a second bathroom in the apartment.

"Well, I don't work that way," I bellow. "Like if someone's holding a knife on me, I think of you. I try to protect you. I don't hide under the bed and leave you out there to die. You're worse than an animal."

The words spray out of my mouth before I even know I've thought them. They shock me into silence. Across the room, Robin stares dazedly at the glowing tip of her cigarette. It is as though the eye of the storm has settled over us and sucked the air out of the room. The quiet feels oppressive and threatening.

"I was…" Her face contorts painfully as she tries to form the rest of the sentence. I think I hear the word "scared," but I may be imagining this. Then she twists away from me, hiding her face. Puck crawls out from under the desk and worms his way up into Robin's embrace. I reach out and touch her, but she flinches, so I hover there, the hun, the outsider, listening to her suck at the cigarette and exhale. Now that they are actually needed, I am stupidly at a loss for words; all I can think to say is "I'm sorry" and "I didn't mean it" over and over like some idiot Miss Manners. It's too late for apologies.

Robin carefully stubs the cigarette out in the dirt of her African violets and swivels around to face me.

"I'm going up to Camden." Her voice is flat. "Think what you want, Dan. But I was there for you." And then the coup de grace. "Not that it matters. Because I'm through."

Here's what I'm hoping. We say these things and they're out, and whatever dark hole they flew out of, you can't stuff them back in. It doesn't even matter if they're not true, if you just said them in some kind of lunatic seizure. But I'm hoping that whatever it is between us, this cord that is anchored in our guts and that rips at my lungs when I've wounded her, I'm hoping that it's stronger than we are.

Another day, but from where I sit, in a molded plastic chair facing the door to the Rep's sanctum sanctorum, it looks weirdly like yesterday. On the way in, I passed Kyle McCann leaving. He had on the same pink shirt, the tie loosened to achieve exactly the same effect (rule number one for the callback: wear whatever you wore before). He was also wearing the same self-satisfied look. The one my dad used to threaten to wipe off my face for me.

The big blond Cornhusker is here again, too, still nodding and gesturing and moving his lips. I briefly made a game of trying to identify the scenes he is reviewing, like charades, but he happened to catch me watching him and has retreated to a corner where I can't see his face.

I have broken rule number one by returning here in dry and pressed clothing, but I still probably look about as haggard as I did yesterday. I woke up about four this morning feeling seriously hungover, my muscles achy, and with a bleary sense of regret. Oh, yes, I remembered. What was it you said? That she was an animal? Nice work, you putz. Robin was curled away from me, asleep. I considered waking her, getting this whole thing straightened out before she left for the day, but then thought better of it. Instead, I went out to the living room and watched CNN for an hour until I fell asleep on the couch. When I woke, the sun was glaring and she was gone.

After I get out of here, I'll give her a call. I'll offer to call Zak and weasel out of the first refusal. He won't be happy, and I can't imagine how I'm going to explain it. I forgot I had planned a vacation in Maine? The truth sounds too lame, so I'll have to come up with some plausible lie.

They call in the beefy blond; Eric Swanson is his name. He can't be reading for Terry, but he seems a little too fresh off the college football squad to play Hal. Who would take that guy seriously as a candidate for senator? On the other hand, maybe that's just what they're looking for, a Dan Quayle type.

This is just the kind of thinking that sabotages an audition before you even get in the door. Worrying about things that are out of your control. What if this, what if that? I've got plenty on my plate right now without dipping into the long view.

The door opens and Eric is ejected, looking like he just blew the game and would really like to pound something. I'm up.

When they bring me into the room, David Stover, the director, says "Ah, good to see you again, Dan," and the wax museum stirs perceptibly from out of a sluggish doze. They sit up in their chairs and turn their expectant smiles on me. "How about the scene with the reporter?" Stover suggests.