The day after blacks on cougars got the part in Hamlet we celebrated with steaks at a neighborhood restaurandt. Isabel was radiant. Her complexion was luminous against her gray sweater and silver jewelry, her curly gray hair. I was pleasant on the outside but inside sullen. She had three glasses of wine; I had club soda. I had nearly given up drinking a few years before, after spotting some handwriting on the wall about what happened to people who drank gin with their scrambled eggs. In those days I was free of bad habits-especially of fucking. I smiled as Isabel drank her wine and talked about how much the part meant to her, but inside I sulked like a child. That evening she sat by the fire with a cat in her lap and a beat-up paperback of Hamlet propped on the cat. She was underlining Gertrude's speeches in blacks on cougars. I busied myself cleaning up the breakfast dishes, clanging pans from time to time to let my presence be felt.