You fight like an old woman. Is this the best that your dancing master could teach you?
It won't work. Your plot won't work.
It will.
They see me, they see you. They know who I am now.
Now they do. Yes…
~* ~
"Dan, I can hardly tell them apart, it's wonderful."
Patty Munro clutched her husband's arm, her attention glued to the duel on the stage. As far as she was concerned, the whole night had been wonderful. She had never expected to see so many celebrities in one place, and here she was sitting among them. Thank God she had gone out and bought a new dress for the occasion. At first she had felt like a housewife amidst the glitterati, but that feeling had been quickly replaced by awe, as she brushed shoulders with the famous, recognized faces she had seen before only on the television screen or in the movies.
The only stage shows Patty Munro had seen, short of her high school's productions of Damn Yankees and Arsenic and Old Lace, were a local dinner theatre's truncated version of Sweeney Todd and a touring company of Cats in Philadelphia, to which Dan had taken her for their fifteenth wedding anniversary. She had loved it, but it hadn't had all the dialogue that A Private Empire had.
Patty, to give her credit, had been very uncritical of Dennis Hamilton's performance. At intermission, when Dan had mentioned that the Emperor Frederick seemed far less imperial toward the end of the act, Patty said, "It's no wonder. After what you've told me, I'm sure he had a lot on his mind. I don't know how he can remember all those lines in the first place."
Now she watched the duel with intense interest. The seats, she thought, were wonderful – second row of the loge, so that the entire stage was visible, and Patty's view was further aided by the shortness of the woman in front of her, who Patty knew she had seen in a TV movie, but couldn't remember which.
"Now this is good," she whispered to Dan. "I mean, it seems so real right now. Oh!"
This last exclamation was produced by a savage move on the part of the actor playing Kronstein's part. He pressed Frederick back with a rapid series of feints and attacks which Frederick seemed scarcely to be able to parry…
~* ~