The Old Friend

The audience was moving down front, people like herself with nothing better to do on a Sunday afternoon. Nothing was better than Chekhov, though much was preferable to a panel discussion. That said, Irene was grateful to be included. The time wasn't far off when those who did the inviting would assume she was dead, deaf, or otherwise difficult, and there would be no more invitations.

Once the long table and chairs were arranged up on stage, Irene gathered her things, climbed the steps, and took a place at the far end. She draped her shawl over the back of the metal chair and arranged her long skirt about herself.

Behind Irene, the set was still up: Uncle Vanya's private room as a ranch office, with Western saddles and Mexican horse blankets writing the shorthand of atmosphere. Only moments before, Vanya had spoken, almost shouted: "I'm forty-seven; suppose I live to be sixty—that means thirteen more years! It's too much! What am I supposed to do for the next thirteen years?"

Irene recalled feeling just like Vanya. Now she was almost eighty and she knew that things could get much worse: Vanya felt entirely alone but he still had his Sonya.

Points of brilliance flashed, quick movement at the end of the second row, a woman arranging a white cardigan over her shoulders. She had the face of an actress, deep eyes and bland features that would surrender to artifice. The woman looked familiar. The phrase terribly familiar came to mind, but why terror?

The rest of the panel trudged onstage, the moderator last of all, balding, with the stooped posture of an adolescent unused to his body. He took his sweet time introducing the panel members—Irene, our retired wonder; the director of today's production; the handsome actor in town to shoot an independent film; the Chekhov scholar from the Slavic Department; himself the distinguished drama professor. He treated the audience to a plot summary of the play they'd just seen, then announced that each panelist would make a brief opening statement.

Irene was signaled to begin; she'd prepared a brief statement, including praise of the production. When she finished, the other panelists spoke in turn, extemporaneously and for far too long; the allotted time for the panel was half over when an argument broke out between the director and the film actor.

Irene listened politely as long as she could, then, for the audience's sake, she took the high road: Uncle Vanya was as generous a play as Hamlet, as she herself had learned when she directed it on her retirement from the university. Her colleague who'd played Vanya in her production would have made a better Sonya, but that was beside the point. The play had the capacity to take on any amount of tinkering, and outstanding productions came to mind, local, New York, London—

"Then there's today. Wyatt Earp meets Anton Chekhov," the movie actor interrupted, getting a nervous laugh from the audience.

Rising above the strife, Irene announced, "The play's the thing," which got her the last laugh, and was true.

At the reception afterward, wine in plastic glasses, coffee in paper cups, Irene decided that no one would notice her immediate exit.

Just as she reached the door, the woman with the sparkling sweater caught her.

"Irene," the woman said, and her voice brought everything back.

"You," Irene said.

"Yes, it's me, after all this time."

"How long has it been?" Irene asked.

She took a step back to absorb the fact of her old friend. The decades since they'd met had been kind to Carolina, the last thing Time was to most blondes.

"I can't remember, but— Oh, Irene. It's good to see you."

Carolina's clothes were expensive versions of the thrift-store rags she once favored; though the white cardigan might be mistaken for any a matron might wear, it was of the highest quality. Irene didn't recall if Carolina was literally a matron—married, divorced, widowed—if her old friend...