"I beg your---"
"Dying," she interrupted. "Ever think about it, Burke? What it means? I mean, really what it means?"
Faintly edgy, he answered, "I don't know. No, I don't. I don't think about it at all. I just do it.
What the hell'd you bring it up for?"
She shrugged. "I don't know," she answered softly. She plopped ice into her glass; eyed it thoughtfully. "Yeah... yeah, I do," she amended. "I sort of... well, I thought about it this morning... like a dream... waking up. I don't know. I mean, it just sort of hit me... what it means.
I mean, the end--- the end!--- like I'd never even heard of it before." She shook her head. "Oh, Jesus, did that spook me! I felt like I was falling off the goddam planet at a hundred million miles an hour."
"Oh, rubbish. Death's a comfort," Dennings sniffed.
"Not for me it isn't, Charlie."
'Well, you live through your children."
"Oh, come off it! My children aren't me."
"Yes, thank heaven. One's entirely enough."
"I mean, think about it, Burke! Not existing--- forever! It's---"
"Oh, for heaven sakes! Show your bum at the faculty tea next week and perhaps those priests can give you comfort!"
He banged down his glass. "Let's another."
"You know, I didn't know they drank?"
"Well, you're stupid."
His eyes had grown mean. Was he reaching the point of no return? Chris wondered. She had the feeling she had touched a nerve. Had she?
"Do they go to confession?" she asked him.
"How would I know!" he suddenly bellowed.
"Well, weren't you studying to be a---"
"Where's the bloody drink!"
"Want some coffee?"
"Don't be fatuous. I want another drink."
"Have some coffee."
"Come along, now. One for the road."
"The Lincoln Highway?"
"That's ugly, and I loathe an ugly drunk. Come along, dammit, fill it!" He shoved his glass across the bar and she poured more gin.
"I guess maybe I should ask a couple of them over," Chris murmured.
"Ask who?"
"Well, whoever." She shrugged. 'The big wheels; you know, priests."
"They'll never leave; there fucking plunderers," he rasped, and gulped his gin.
Yeah, he's starting to blow, thought Chris and quickly changed the subject: she explained about the script and her chance to direct.
"Oh, good," Dennings muttered.
"It scares me."
"Oh, twaddle. My baby, the difficult thing about directing is making it seem as if the damned thing were difficult. I hadn't a clue my first time out, but here I am, you see. It's child's play."
"Burke, to be honest with you, now that they've offered me my chance, I'm really not sure I could direct my grandmother across the street. I mean, all of that technical stuff."
"Come along; leave all that to the editor, the cameraman and the script girl, darling. Get good ones and theyll see you through. What's important is handling the cast, and, you'd be marvelous, just marvelous at that. You could not only tell them how to move and read a line, my baby, you could show them. Just remember Paul Newman and Rachel, Rachel and don't be so hysterical."
She still looked doubtful. "Well, about this technical stuff," she worried. Drunk or sober, Dennings was the best director in the business. She wanted his advice.
"For instance," he asked her.
For almost an hour she probed to the barricades of minutiae. The data were easily found in tests, but reading tended to fray her patience. Instead; she read people. Naturally inquisitive, she juiced them; wrung them out. But books were unwringable. Books were glib. They said
