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While Virginia's new job as DePaul's assistant is, of course, working out splendidly, it's another story over in the Masters office, where the Friday presentation of the study's findings hangs heavy over Bill's head. From the ghostly apparitions of Virginia that haunt him, to the suspenseful vinyl-record sounds at the end of the episode, it's an altogether dreamier outing than we're used to: Bill in particular is coming apart at the seams without her, his reality as loosely edited as the episode itself. It's a successful experiment (although we're left wondering where all this directorial exuberance was during the season's middle act), and in the end no matter how many decisions are made, or advanced, it still feels like exactly the limbo it means to portray.
A road trip to a medical convention -- hamstrung by DePaul's necessarily tight budgeting -- finally convinces the good doctor that Virginia is exactly the angel everybody else thinks she is, once she turns lemons into her usual lemonade and gets several doctors' wives on board with the wonders of the pap smear. So much, in fact, that during the return trip DePaul comes clean about her own cancer, and offers Virginia the chance to be her partner and successor in a way Bill still doesn't even have words for.
Meanwhile, Ethan and the kids form a perfect unit back home, which causes ex-hubby George to lose his damned mind for a night or two before abruptly getting down with Ethan's vision of their future. George's bitchy parting shot -- a reference to the younger, wilder Virginia -- shakes some things loose in Ethan's head, and when she gets home she's presented with yet another courtship. Specifically, that Ethan will provide Virginia with any identity she likes -- SAHM, full-time student, nightclub singer, future gynecologist -- as long as they are a team.
And yet no matter who keeps trying to acquire her for their "team" -- and the shifting way they present their cases, and her choices -- all she really seems to be thinking about is Bill. Specifically the "Masters & Johnson" team that we'll come to know, a team that represents not just a unified view of her life as a scientist and a woman, but possible also a more circumspect union of the sex/love dichotomies that brought her into his orbit in the first place: For an episode that pointedly puts them in the same geographical locations, never allowing them to speak, it's pretty characteristic of this show that it's in many ways their most intimate.
Libby offers herself as a temp while Masters runs Jane ragged, just as excited about the project as anyone else he's let back behind the curtain so far. A cute doctor (the reliably weird and wonderful Michael Cassidy) shows up, catching Jane's eye, but Libby's all about the work: Particularly the anonymous adventures of one very specific female subject, about whom she can't stop asking her husband as he slowly drowns. Libby's the show's heart, as usual, but even better when she's its rudder: By the episode's end, when Ethan and the kids adoringly watch Virginia singing for the first time in years, it's Eddy Arnold's "You Don't Know Me" that she chooses: A powerful indictment of the Bill who isn't there, and a tacit warning to the Ethan that is.
For all of that dreamlike subjectivity -- especially powerful when it's Bill, of course, whose internal life can be hard to imagine -- it's still a very verbal, not to say cerebral but definitely philosophical hour, insistent on making two more points a myriad of ways: One is thematic, relating men's conflation of penis size with personal excellence (and where that leaves women), and the other a very interesting parallel of Ethan's concept identity alongside Virginia's, the ways in which their freedom (from Bill) is what's now making them feel trapped: Everyone keeps asking her (or discussing behind her back) exactly what she is -- wife, mother, student, researcher -- while Ethan keeps explaining to anyone who will listen that he is, even jobless, still very much a doctor.
These two ideas -- virility uber alles, and the way their very choices will define them forever -- meet in the jokey, trite, sad competition between hirsute George and baby-faced Ethan, of course, but set up echoes that stretch across the breadth of the episode, and the season: Masters imagines Virginia comparing his and Ethan's penises (and souls), DePaul's "penis envy" is related directly back to betrayal by her own reproductive organs... Even the size of their two programs' budgets is compared to their relative importance (sex vs. death), and reversed. It's some tricksy shit, almost too clever in places -- the ludicrous title, for one -- but brings a real feeling of momentum to the show's overall concerns.
Heading into the finale week: Virginia makes her choices, Scully scares even Margaret with how far he wants to go for a "cure," and the Friday presentation -- which as Bill presented to Libby this week, seems like a much bigger deal than he has been letting on -- finally goes down. We know eventually it works out, they do change the world, because we're all standing here in 2013 and we know what a clitoris is, but that doesn't mean this first presentation isn't going to be a shitshow. How could it not be, with the two of them so far apart?
Want more? The full recap starts right below!PREVIOUSLY
Once Bill attacked Ethan over Libby's pregnancy, Virginia understood the part she'd been overlooking, which just how attached he was getting to her. She tried to be above it, and help him get over it too, but he doesn't work like that, so before either of them knew what was happening, he'd forced her to resign from her job, the study, and pretty much his life. Now she's cozier than ever with Ethan 2.0, and taking over Lillian DePaul's life with the same vigor and foresight as she did Bill Masters... Who is, of course, utterly drowning without her.
MASTERS
He bellows for Virginia, and for a moment that's who she is: Then she resolves herself into Jane, his secretary, and he comes back to us for a moment.
Masters: "Vir-Jane! Where's the data for the nulliparous study?"
Jane: "I have no idea what you just said."
Masters: "The subjects who've never given birth! Everybody knows that."
Jane: "Right, right. Why don't I just go down the hall and ask Virginia."
Masters: "No! Dramatically!"
Jane: "Then maybe stop being an ass to me.? J/K, I know you can't."
DEPAUL
Virginia: "Dr. DePaul, how quickly can you make your case for standardizing pap smears in every gyno exam? Future women will thank the hell out of you."
DePaul: "So far it's taking about three years."
Virginia: "I mean, in minutes. I just got you into this pharm-rep conference..."
DePaul: "One of those medical boondoggles!?"
Virginia: "It's all-expenses and there's golf, so yes. There's also drinking, schmoozing, and other things you are dismal at. But they've just lost their comedian, and I got you his fifteen minutes."
DePaul: "I don't know any jokes. Or what jokes are."
Q: "How does a man save a woman from drowning?"
A: "He takes his foot off her head."
Virginia: "Wow, you were not fucking kidding. Okay, so no jokes. I feel like you're not getting what I'm saying. You can show up, try to change their minds..."
DePaul: "Men! Easier to change their diapers! Haha, that was another joke."
Virginia: "That was a lot closer to a joke but it still wasn't an actual joke. Stop trying to tell jokes, it's creepin' me out."
DePaul: "Fine. I'm not going without you, though."
Virginia: "I have children, I can't run off places with my boss."
DePaul: "Can't you just leave them unattended?"
Virginia: "They are six and eight. And it's a fuzzy eight."
DePaul: "Can't you leave them with someone? Out there in the typing pool, they're all bitches. That one has kids, right?"
Virginia: "Angela? She has cocker spaniels."
DePaul: "None of whom are, to my knowledge, dead. There you go."
Virginia: "I would ask if that was another joke but either answer would be horrifying."
I thought it was true last week, but they made sure to point it out here, about them being in a glass closet walled off from the typing pool. The show is so funny about DePaul, like, on the one hand she has a million problems and most of them are not men like she thinks, but on the other hand, she is more right than anyone on the entire show about what a fucking shitshow gender is, in 1957. Anyway, that's when Jane comes up to the window and -- because Jane can't do anything without doing it some amazing way -- summons Virginia with a complicated catcher's argot of gestures.
UNDERCOVIRGANE
Virginia: "Obviously nulliparous means women who've never given birth. Alphabetically, it's under P for 'para,' being para-0. Like, para-1 is one kid, para-2 is two..."
Jane: "You say that like it's self-evident, but sure. Okay, now I know."
Virginia: "Not that I care, but why's he looking at that?"
Jane: "Friday presentation. The intro has a part about the range of subjects..."
Virginia: "No no no, do not let him get bogged down in methodology or stats, Jane. He thinks numbers are his friends, because by comparison to human people, they are. But they are no friends of his when it's time to be in the real world. They're like a drug he takes to go be in his head, okay. With me. You have got to calm him down so he stops thinking numbers."
Jane: "He doesn't listen to me. Not like he listened to you."
Somewhere along the way we got confused about the Manic Pixie Dream Girl, forgot her antecedents, and now we blame the girl. The one who fulfills the fantasy, not the one who has it. If you think about the fairytale of the girl kissing the frog, okay, think about that from the frog's perspective: All stories, especially ones about women, especially ones about women's bodies, are told by men.
When she dropped her shirt for him, that day he respected her, more and more I'm thinking it wasn't just a natural consequence of being seen -- the greatest aphrodisiac possible -- and more of a hail-mary. To kiss the frog and turn him human; to return the gift. And it worked only well enough now that he's halfway there, and hating every second of it; in constant pain, neither one thing nor the other. Like the twelfth swan brother, who never made it back all the way.
Bill Masters is a swan-boy now, with just one wing. And it is broken. He flaps painfully, in circles. Honks and bites, if you come too close.
THE CAF
The staff gathers around Ethan in the fourth-floor cafeteria where he somehow always is, toasting him goodbye, begging for a speech. It's a good one, and I'd recommend taking it at face value. This story doesn't make much sense if you stay in Tumblr-Land, where everything is so simple and everything is about making you feel self-righteous. Ultimately it doesn't matter if you think Ethan can be redeemed, or even forgiven: That's Virginia's call, and she's made it.
"I was kinda hoping I'd slip out of here today without anyone making a fuss, but... Now I'm glad you did. Because it gives me an opportunity to say thank you. Working with you people the past two years, it's made me a better doctor. And I think it's made me a better friend. And I know it's made me a better man."
Libby appears at the back; they run to each other, kissing cheeks and grabbing at hands. The most pristine friendship on the show, probably, if you don't count Dale. And we never do.
Libby: "Of course I came to your sendoff. The whole thing's my fault..."
Ethan: "You didn't make me do anything. You didn't ask for anything I didn't want to give you. And I mean, we both came out ahead, so..."
Libby: "Did we? It's easy to say that. Hard to believe."
Ethan: "I want nothing more than a clean slate. Over and over, until I get it right; it's my main personality trait. The romance of the future, like Austin Langham but not shitty."
Libby: "Have you been reading Norman Vincent Peale? It being 1957 and all."
Ethan: "Trust me that I'm not putting on a brave face. It's the right time to go, and I mean, there's no repairing things with Bill..."
Libby: "It's hard for me to accept that."
Ethan: "It's not your problem, Libby. It's not your burden. I've never not been his protégé, think about that for a second."
Libby: "Okay."
Ethan: "And I'm in love!"
Libby: "I love talking about love! Who are you in love with? Who?"
Ethan: "Uh, Virginia Johnson? You'd think that would have come up."
Would you, though? I can't imagine Bill coming home with stories of love in the halls, at any point in his entire life. But especially not when you're his only two human connections, and he just brutally ended things with both of you on the same day.
MASTERS
Libby: "Knock, knock! I'm just here to spy and find out more about this situation."
Jane: "I'm just here to be mortified in front of you by your husband."
Masters: (Does so in record time.)
Jane: "Ugh. It's a madhouse here today, we've got so much crap for the presentation."
Masters: "I can't be doing my real job! Vir-Jane, you tell everybody I'm dead until the nineteenth."
Libby: "So, no lunch with your wife?"
Masters: "[Unnecessary details.]"
Jane: "Virginia left us a little shorthanded."
Masters: "We'll be fine, you."
Libby: "How about, I answer the phones while you work, until then."
Masters: "A pregnant woman answering the phone? Why not just take up motocross?"
Libby: "Chill, brother. All I do all day is wait for this stupid baby. And for you to come home."
Masters: "I would say I prefer to keep my home and work life separate, but we both know what a macabre joke that would be. Implying I have a home life, I mean."
Libby: "Let me be your new Virginia!"
Masters: "I just threw up in my mouth a little bit."
Libby: "Your new old Virginia, the secretary."
Ghost: "There was never a point where I was just that, was there?"
Masters: "Fine. Just to show that dumb ghost we don't need her."
Libby: "Great! And BTW, I just figured out why she stopped working nights."
Masters: "Okay I really am going to throw up now."
Libby: "It's because she has a new beau! My best friend Ethan Haas."
Masters: "Stop talking about that, or I will punch the entire universe in the face. I hate both those motherfuckers."
Libby: "It's insensitive in a way I know you won't understand, when you act like my pregnancy is the worst crime ever perpetrated on you."
"Anyhow, he seems to be taking it in stride. In fact, I don't think I've ever seen him happier. A good woman can make all the difference. Annnd there's the phone! Better get to work!"
She's goofy, and lovely, and so chipper and excited he can't help but let her be. Partly that. Of course, mostly it's that she will now shut up, and the phone will stop ringing, and he can continue sweating bullets over this presentation. Come the nineteenth, he can think about these things, he thinks. Until the nineteenth, he means, he doesn't have to. And then it's just numbers again.
Once you were a bird in flight.
HOME
Libby: "Why don't you take a break and eat dinner?"
Bill: "I don't even know what you're talking about right now."
Libby: "Bill. Put food in your face."
Bill: "Okay. And what about your dinner, aren't you having dinner?"
Libby: "I ate my dinner an hour ago, about three yards from you. We actually talked about it. I was in front of the TV because you are boring, and I asked if it would bother you and you said no and first I thought you were being polite and then I remembered who I was married to and that of course it wouldn't bother you, because you can't hear it anyway."
Bill: "Okay. And what about your dinner, aren't you having dinner?"
Libby: "Bill, once this presentation happens, what then? That's the end of the show's first season, or what?"
Bill: "Then I am a real live boy. It stops being something that is maybe super creepy and not legit, and starts being science. I can get money for it and publish it and everything. The imprimateur. But it means I have to be rad, like, super-rad, on Friday."
Libby: "Not awards, or recognition, or..."
Bill: "Awards only matter to those who care what other people think. I barely even recognize that other people are alive."
Libby: "So but okay, I'll ask a third time. When does the moment come where you stop feeling like you've got something to prove."
Bill: "There's always something to prove, silly!"
Libby: "No but I meant like, about yourself."
Bill: "Still not registering the difference."
Libby: "We are not actually people, living our lives, a woman and a man who have begun the project of living, until this happens. Until you come home and see home around you. So maybe you should have a better answer the time I ask. Okay?"
Bill: "Okay. And what about your dinner, aren't you having dinner?"
JOHNSON
Virginia chases Ethan down the stairs and lets him out the front door, before waking the kids.
Virginia: "Yo girl, how you like your eggs?"
Ethan: "Unfertilized? Or I guess scrambled?"
Kids: "Why are we eating fucking eggs? We want crap cereal for plastic toy reasons."
Virginia: "Eggs rule. Eggs is the most romantic thing I have ever done."
When the doorbell rings, the kids instantly know it's him; she watches him with them, being adorable and maybe just a little bit cloying, and there is a moment where it's crazy to think about, how far down you have to go in that boy to hit anything hard, or bad. It's there, everybody has it and men in 1957 have no reason not to, but he really is just very innocent. She hit him like a gale force wind, picked him up and twisted him around, and now he's back in Oz.
Ethan: "That's so weird, I was craving scrambled eggs."
Tessa: "How about fried chicken? Can you come for dinner?"
Virginia: "If he wants. Lillian's going to a conference outside Knoxville, so I'll be home early."
Ethan: "She didn't ask you to go with? You should go with. I can stay here!"
Virginia: "Whoa you just pressed every button I have."
Ethan: "And the world didn't end."
The kids beg one way, Ethan begs another way. Ethan begs the right way: Respectfully, quietly. "It'd be just the right amount of fun," he says, neither wheedling nor dealing: "Not too little, not too much. Gin, come on. Go. I've got you covered."
Covered. A thing she didn't know she could like being; could imagine being. But then, how would she? Covered isn't caged by Bill Masters, covered isn't disappointed by George, covered isn't trapped on a farm with that boy they all thought she'd marry.
When a woman twists herself backwards to please someone we call it sickening and cliché. When a man does it, often it's a thrill because he's shaving against the grain of the cliché. But either way, we're really just singing the same old tune, because men are supposed to be pleased, and women are supposed to do the pleasing.
If Ethan Haas has decided to form himself around the pearl she placed inside him, I say it's his life. You'll not find a better guide to manhood than Virginia Johnson, after all.
FRIDAY
The man speaking, Dr. Ditmer, talks about diverticulitis so exceedingly thoroughly that before you know it, he's all alone. All alone with his intestinal lesions. It puts Bill right off, and he rushes back to the office, hands clenched to his sides like a boy.
"It's not BIG ENOUGH," he roars. Something of a theme, this week. Later Ethan will instruct the children on homonyms, like "darn" and "darn." Turns out you can use "big" and "small" to describe anything under the sun, depending on where you're standing. Right now, Bill means big-as-in-loud.
Libby: "I mean, diverticulitis. Compared to human sexuality."
Masters: "Vir-Jane!"
Jane: "...You shrieked?"
What he wants is to demonstrate exactly what these men want to hear, the only thing they ever want to hear: About dicks.
A study that reveals previously unknown, historically unknown facts about vaginas doesn't matter because vaginas don't matter, because women don't matter, because the definitions of both "vagina" and her synonym "woman" is: "where dicks go." So you gotta sell them their dicks back to them first.
Yours, mine, ours. Big and small, flaccid and erect. Dicks on the ceiling and dicks on the countertops. Dicks dancing like candelabras on every conceivable surface. Dicks on holiday, dicks at Waterloo and Thermopylae, dicks at Woodstock and Altamont. Penises on safari, penises having breakfast at Tiffany's or on the go. What's that, a pontoon boat? Yes, albeit one constructed from penises. What's that in the sky? A dream of penises, fighting other penises in the squared circle, for the grand prize of one million penises.
Libby: "So if you're so into dicks, why wasn't this stuff already in the..."
Masters: "Stupid me thought it would be too distracting from the interesting part. I forgot that the interesting part to me -- and the army of women I hide behind -- is the opposite of the actual interesting part, which is the one I gotta suck for grant money on Friday like my life depends on it. Dicks for all!"
Jane: "So what do I ask Lester for? If you want it all, you want it all? You want the mineshaft? You want the collarbone?"
Libby: "I don't even know what these words mean but I fucking love this."
Masters: "And one more thing! Get the info of every lady who had strong orgasmic responses to Ulysses. We'll bring 'em in for a variety pack and see if size matters."
Libby & Jane: "You do realize that plenty of women have had dicks in them before, and are capable of human speech to tell you this information."
Masters: "But I wasn't in charge of it! I didn't have my eye on it."
HAAS & JOHNSON
Ethan and Henry work on homonyms, which seems like torture to just randomly come up with those, but they have fun. Ethan faces his first challenge.
Henry: "How about use like use a napkin, and youse, as in 'Youse better trade me that fucking baseball card.'"
Ethan: "WHOA. Uh, where did that word come from?"
Tessa: "His gross friend who says it all the time."
Ethan: "Okay, no pressure, sport? But that word is going to make people think of you in a way you do not want to be thought of. Let's think of better, softer words that we can use instead of ones that will make people think you are trash and our family is trash."
Henry: "Darn as in 'darning socks,' and darn as in 'Oh phooey, I burned the darn muffins.'"
And that's when the doorbell rings, and because there's a certain Everybody Loves Raymond hackiness to this entire part of this episode, and you can already tell how it's gonna go, the first words George says when Ethan answers the door are, "Who the fuck are you?"
They fight about how much Virginia talks about them -- George, all negative; Ethan, not at all -- and what Ethan's responsibilities are, and George is basically pretty reasonable in that he can't account for himself the way Ethan can -- "we don't have a schedule because my job literally is to not have a schedule" -- but Ethan can't account for himself in the way George demands -- "I'm a doctor, as recently as yesterday" -- and then they just sort of settle in, to the chaos that George brings.
It's a warm chaos and a good one, I mean, she keeps him out not because he's destructive or abusive, but because they made different choices. She is doing her best to tame herself, and he has the privilege of knowing he'll never need to do that. So I would certainly enjoy having this charming, brilliant musician George around. And I think Ethan does, more than he admits.
But there's also more here than mere sexual competition -- which would rule her out altogether, by making her body their playground -- or Ethan's presence activating George's vestigial parenting -- which isn't even George's problem; it's a shorthand for the divorce's mandate, which really isn't a problem -- and it's animal and it's physical, and it's about providing resources, and it's about secondary sexual characteristics and all the usual clichés. The dick-measuring.
But moreso -- and mostly, really -- it's about trying to touch as many parts of each other as quickly as possible to figure out where they are similar and where they are different, because if they can figure out how they fit together, they both think, they'll get a better angle on Virginia: The only thing they really need to know, and never will.
Mostly, it's a no-homo slap fight; playing Simon on each other's hearts. It sounds like drums and it never gets too harsh, and if you play it right you end up with respect. Not affection or pleasantness, but respect, and honestly that's the best you can hope for when you're boning somebody else's wife.
Because just like dick-measuring is always a metaphor, so too in this case is the dick itself always a metaphor, as Ghost Gini will explain in the end: Not whether you're big enough, or bigger than the last one, but whether or not it means enough. Body hair, medical degree, dick size: All of them are the same metaphor, for a question that exists in a direction you can't point to, but can be fairly simply expressed:
Whether or not you're worth being loved.
EL AUTOBUS
Virginia: "This bus is bullshit."
Lillian: "Train fare is seven bucks. How many pap smears is that."
Virginia: "I don't fuckin' know."
Lillian: "Bitch, yes you do."
Virginia: "Yeah, I know. Three."
Rando: "Ma'am, can you turn off your reading light?"
Lillian: "I don't know, can you stop trying to keep all women's cervixes in the dark?"
Virginia: "Lillian, STFU and take a break. You're being so Masters right now."
Lillian: "There's nothing to look at! And I could save this man's wife!"
A lady who is kind of like if Jane and Betty were one UrSkek of a person leans over. Blowsy with Shirley Temple curls and a sex-doll "o" to her mouth at all times. Pretty stock character, performed pretty well.
Sissy: "You ladies want a ham sandwich?"
Lillian: "Fuck your ham sandwich."
Virginia: "Dr. DePaul, let's see what it's like if we act awesome, instead of horrible. What do you say? Like, as practice for this conference. Now Sissy, where are you going?"
Sissy: "My sister's wedding in Kingsport."
Virginia: "Oh, how nice. I love weddings. I just keeping having them."
Sissy: "Uh, in this case we think the groom may have held up a service station. We're not entirely sure. But we think."
Virginia: "Now Dr. DePaul, aren't you glad we started talking to this girl? You like things that are fucked up, and now look. We got to hear a fucked-up thing."
MASTERS
Jane: "Hey, Mr. Numbers. How you gonna pull this off? You want them to use two different-sized dildos, in two different visits..."
Masters: "Just fix it!"
Jane: "No I mean like, by Friday we can do maybe twelve."
Ghost Virginia: "That's not a statistically valid sample, buddy."
Masters: "It's fine. PS, I will just lie about it. Setting a certain tone for the rest of my career, whatever good things I will do."
Libby: "I found more ladies who enjoyed Ulysses, here are their files. Now, when I call them, do I tell them it's going to be like this, or just act really coy and cute so they have no idea what to prepare for."
Masters: "Uh, I'm the only person who can know who they are, because of science. So don't worry about it. Actually, both of y'all leave so I can call them. And/or have more conversations with my judgmental hallucination over here."
Libby: "I feel like I'm always a step behind!"
Jane: "Tell me about it. It gets better."
Libby: "And then right when I'm figuring it out, I'll have to leave again... Which is fine, I just wanted to see him, you know, someplace where he's actually happy."
Jane: "And?"
Libby: "Not hugely different. Still basically a dick."
Libby: "But I do get why he's so into this. I love reading these things... Here's a lady's virginity story. And here's a lady who never had intercourse until she was 43..."
Jane: "Damn!"
Libby: "-- And it turns out she's multiorgasmic."
Jane: "Talk about patience being rewarded."
Libby: "That's really sweet. I was actually thinking about it the other way. Too bad this woman was denied something very neat -- about her own body, that belongs to her, that she could have accessed at literally any time -- for 43 fucking years just because the repression of sexuality is our culture's number one tool for keeping men on top."
Jane: "There was this one lady... Here's her giant file... She came back 23 times!"
Libby: "Let me see that shit! Wow, no Ulysses even one time, just constant intercourse for science. I bet she's got a story."
Jane: "The Lady Who Could Really Take A Dick."
HAAS & JOHNSON
Now they are all watching a Western and eating TV dinners, because George has won the battle of who could care less, because terrorism always wins and you never argue with a two-year-old. And Ethan feels very weird about all of this, because he wants it maybe more than it wants him, still.
Henry: "How did Indians shave, if they didn't have razors? Or indeed anyone of history?"
George: "[Some made-up lie about buffalo teeth.]"
Ethan: "Actually different populations have wildly different growth depending on evolution."
George: "Like Ethan here, he evolved to be hairless and beautiful, like a woman. Whereas I was evolved to be Wolverine from the Cold North. I get five o'clock shadow by nine."
Ethan: "I shave precisely, with my surgeon's hands."
And so on. After they are done getting gay on each other about body hair, the conversation turns to whether or not Ethan is "The Man" and/or even a man, and meanwhile Ethan is pointing out that all of George's choices -- to be unstable in all areas, to be a deadbeat, to whatever bohemian bullshit of the era -- are in fact choices, like any other, and don't necessarily relate to the giantness, much less firmness, of his huge throbbing life story.
George: "The trick is to shave against the grain..."
Ethan: "With the grain. Against causes in-grown hairs and razor burn."
George: "Maybe in sissies, but if you want a close shave it's the only way to go."
I got real annoyed when they went to the "grain" well -- so much of this whole thing reminds me of that Wonder Years feeling of like, how fucking fascinating can the Baby Boomers be to themselves if they only know the same three jokes? -- but that cracked me up in spite of myself. "Yeah, maybe in sissies." Ha. Also this one, where George is nattering at him about the "Establishment" and being "The Man," whatever counterculture "selling out" bullshit about never actually growing up, and then:
Ethan: "'Kowtowing to...'? You mean like people with jobs? Who support their families?"
George: "I don't see you with either of those things, Buddy."
Gorgeous. I like how much respect the story gives George. Both of them, really, but always George. So quick, and mean. And Ethan's so judgy and his eyes get so wide when he feels like he's in over his head. Which is ever since Georgie walked in. He was so sure he'd have this thing on lock, and he was right: The kids adore him, he's young enough to see where they're coming from. But he had no idea that the sins of yesteryear were on him.
It's like this. Bad Ethan got into it with her because he thought his desire for her was the same thing as a spiritual connection, which is wrong because it's still all about him. When he punched her, he was punching life for punching him; he was punching back. And that's a thing that assholes and little children do; it's why babies cry and shit their pants, because they don't understand that they are not about the world.
And then Vivian came and said, "This is what it feels like when you put a woman into a picture you've drawn yourself. It feels awful, and you go along with it anyway, and one day you look in the mirror and you don't recognize yourself." And so aren't you glad Virginia did not let you lock her in that glass coffin? Because that meant you were right to choose her in the first place: She is actually challenging, she is actually a human being. This is a way to grow, which is what love is.
And now he is back, having figured out a thing that George doesn't know, that Ethan wouldn't know without having been with both of these women, which is that he is not the world, and the world is not him. It does not revolve around, does not orbit, the gravity of his heart. He takes that heart out of himself altogether, and places at the center of the home: That is what a man does. He stewards; he makes of himself a foundation stone; he gives up all his power to something larger than himself.
Whether or not he's embodied it, or will succeed, we don't know, but he can see it from where he is; and that's how you can see how and why only Ethan, of her three men, has actually stumbled onto this truth. Because you can't scream them into it -- ask Libby and her echo -- and you can't hate them into it -- ask Mrs. Langham, who knows damn well what she agreed to. And if the heart resides elsewhere -- ask Barton -- he'll never feel like a man in his own home. You can't bargain, like Margaret, or wear him down, like Vivian. You can't make a man love himself, not even Dale could do that, and you can't make a man stop hating himself. Estabrooks Masters didn't learn that one until he was long gone.
You can't make it happen for them, period, no matter how often or loudly or scarily or pathetically they beg you to do it.
Nobody was ever tamed at another person's hand.
MASTERS
Libby: "Bill? I can't stop thinking about this one couple in the study, the ones that kept coming back."
Bill: "Yeah? Because I like barely remember who that is. But I am just awake enough to throw some fake details at you, like how they were a married couple..."
Libby: "Actually no, she was twice-divorced with two kids and he was a hollow tin robot, made mostly of numbers."
They thought you were hollow, full of empty space, nothing inside. They didn't know that you were Pompeii; that if you opened up your chest the passions would erupt, the beauty and the sadness and the infinity of your need, and you'd take the whole world with you. That you contained universes. If they knew, they'd beat you for crying, like daddy. This way everyone is safe.
Libby: "So I guess in a way you introduced them, through your work."
Bill: "That's one way of saying it, I guess. If you're being sentimental."
Libby: "They must have fallen in love. Did they fall in love?"
"That question lay outside our area of inquiry."
What he means is, when the princess sews the Swan Brothers their sweaters, and turns them into boys again, the runt of the litter gets left out. One arm remains a wing.
What he doesn't know is, that's the most beautiful part of us all.
FLEABAG
The bus has broken down, and now the ladies -- Sissy in tow, having been adopted in a sort of Some Like It Hot solidarity; the unspoken reasoning that a woman traveling alone will never make it home again -- are staying overnight in a motel with only one bed and a brick wall for a view. The bus is at eight, the trip has six hours left, and the spot is for 2:45. So we'll see.
Sissy pops a dime in the bed-box, for "fifteen minutes of tingling relaxation and ease," and Virginia just kind of sighs, because he's everywhere lately. Hiding in broom closets with Jane, glinting out of the whipcrack crystalline intelligence behind Lillian's eyes now and then. Of course the bed vibrates; does it come with a camera, too?
Virginia and Sissy have a fairly contrived conversation about her job as a hairdresser that contains one truth -- the house always takes half, regardless of whatever womanly job you're performing -- and one awkward segue to the news that Dr. Masters collects directly for his services, since he brings in so many patients, and this Lillian calls a "sweetheart deal" because he's skimming.
Virginia just kind of shakes her head, bemused, because Lillian's being very Masters about it, mistaking life on paper for how the real world works, but she's got a point. (Insofar as Bill Masters has nothing to do with the pointlessness of pap smears and she is being irrational about that connection, I mean, but Gini will get her there.) It's hard not to see her as envious, and self-defeatingly naïve, which is nothing new -- "I have to go begging for a pittance, but meanwhile..." -- but it's more interesting to watch as a forward development in Lillian's view of Virginia, and of all women.
Once she's all bitched out, she turns to the mirror and lets Sissy do her up in rollers for the conference. But first, Sissy's got fifteen minutes of tingling relaxation and ease. So while Johnson and DePaul are sort of quietly, exhaustedly at an impasse they'll get through immediately, you have the adorable sound of Sissy going "uhhhhhh" on the bed, like a kid talking into a box fan.
Which adds to the overall feeling that DePaul, the thing that was always so hard to swallow about her, is her complete inability to accept or acknowledge what actually is, to put that in her toolbox in order to affect change on what is. The thing that pisses me off more than anything, in life or a story, is when people get in their own way in this fashion, because it's inefficient and contributes nothing to the forward movement of the universe: You can tell a million men that they are assholes and think you're being a feminist, but at the end of the day you've changed not one mind. You've done nothing but get yourself off, and alienate people from the cause you claim to support, because the fact is that nobody on Earth ever changed their mind by getting yelled at. And once you know that, and refuse to think of different or better ways to get things done, you have put yourself before the cause, and we've lost you.
So in the same way that Ethan and George and Bill want Virginia to come into their lives and open the windows and move the furniture around, improve the feng shui, that's what Virginia is doing with DePaul, slowly but surely. First by showing her that women are not the enemy -- which is what aligning with men tells you -- and that men aren't the enemy either. Who is the enemy? Nobody. Sexism is forces, not people. Forces to which we're all subject. Who is the enemy? Certainly not Dr. DePaul. But sometimes, Dr. DePaul.
If you look back over the season, it's been a love triangle in a way: Virginia, confronted with male and female versions of the same robotic hierophant, trying to choose which one to align with, which to learn from, which path to choose. They both have tremendous advantages and tremendous disadvantages. You will gain some rooms in your own house you didn't know where there; you will lose parts of the house you didn't know you'd miss. And now, as DePaul slowly thaws out and falls for her just as intimately as Masters -- the woman without a daughter; the swan boy without a sister -- it becomes an actual choice.
Both paths are high-risk, high-reward. Both paths are open to her because she is special; because she thought them into existence. Imagined them into being.
One of them is about saving lives, and the other is about beautifying them. Sanctifying them.
MASTERS & TOLL
Michael Cassidy, whom I have just loved ever since The O.C., has been loitering in the waiting room for quite a while. Jane has eyes for him, while he has eyes for Libby, which results in some funny but not that funny stuff that parallels the Ethan/George stuff in a way that's annoying and also pretty smart: They don't come at each other directly -- they don't even know it's happening, and Libby would laugh her ass off if she did -- but they both orient toward the boy, instead:
Dr. Malcolm Toll, who listens to her on the phone and says she's got a "smile" in her voice. And so in return Jane -- clearly one of the funniest people on the show, I thought so even back in the days of Betty DiMello, whom by the way I heard might be returning year, and presumably the worse for wear -- straps on this sort of manic Joker-grin and talks really weird with a smile in her voice. Always just at the edge of broad, and never going there. Especially in this episode, which is unsubtle in a lot of ways, it's great to watch Jane being as wacky as she possibly can without falling off into stupid. Great.
Libby looks at him like he's an adorable puppy, which he is (the actors are the same age, but it works) and then Bill appears, causing him to step all over himself to get in there so we can revisit the motif from an even more contrived angle:
Toll: "Dr. Haas left some very big shoes to fill..."
Masters: "Not so big, really."
Seems he's heard about an opening for protégé Fellow, now that Ethan's been drop-kicked out the door, and he's ready to rock. Looking for a doctor-daddy like he was to Ethan, and Barton was to him, before the whole line got tainted somewhere along the way.
Missing Ethan, maybe; in the same way he misses Catherine, or Virginia: Not wanting a replacement for the thing that broke him. "I could be your new Ethan," Toll almost said. "Your new-old Ethan, who conspired with you against your wife and not the other way around."
"You could be my Barton Scully. My new-old Barton Scully, the one who loved you more than Frances, or any father, ever could."
Either way, all of those ways probably and more, Masters is too busy being nuts to even replay the whole offensive "Ethan knows what he did" nonsense. Just wanders back into his office without looking up from his paperwork, leaving the ladies to deal with his dreamy young stalker.
Toll: "Well, I got some big old feet. Is what I was going to say. Before you vanished."
Jane: "Word! How big are those things?"
Toll: "13.5 US."
Jane: "Sexy!"
Toll: "Ever since I was 11!"
Jane: "Uh wait, we're actually talking about your feet? Shit. My bad."
OUTSIDE KNOXVILLE
The last boon has already doggled by the time they get there; Lillian gets woozy and sits down, complaining that it's her spirits and not her cancer doing it. Really it's both; really they're so cathected inside her at this point, cancer and purpose, death and life, that she might not notice a difference anymore.
Lillian: "And you know who is fucking to blame for this?"
Virginia: "You're going to say, somehow, Bill Masters. Who used to conspire with you against me, and not the other way around."
She goes on another "for want of a nail the cervix was lost" progression to explain why they have missed their last chance at glory and now she will only be eating worms, but Virginia points out that, yet again, she has traced it back only insofar as she still doesn't hit reality, because it's too scary to follow back all the way.
Any buck, sufficiently passed, ends in one of two terrifying terminal points: Either it's something immutable about reality you can't change, or it's something you totally can.
Yes, we missed the conference because our bus broke down because our train was too expensive because they only gave us $600 because nobody cares how many women die because nobody cares how many women live. But that's not where it ends. You ended it at: And that's why Bill Masters is a grifter, because if they had that money to redistribute maybe we'd get some, because women are marginal and a rising tide lifts all boats. Which isn't wrong, but still doesn't matter, because it doesn't change anything.
A child under the age of five, screaming "It's not fair!" can expect merely pointing that out to have an effect on the situation, because we take great joy in teaching children that they deserve fairness, which causes all kinds of fucked-up behavior down the road. A grown woman who still cannot stop blaming the concept of men for her own social paralysis... Needs a Gini Johnson. And that's what the universe hands her.
Virginia: "...For real, homie? This all leads back to ineffective, baby-delivering, perved-out, autistic William Masters."
DePaul: "Well. With what he represents..."
Virginia: "Nope, see right there you're doing it. The same thing they do to us. Talk about the problem, not the face you've mashed onto the problem."
DePaul: "The system is gamed. Rigged."
Virginia: "Yeah, by centuries of it working that way. If he were taking the money maybe I wouldn't be so Paul Rand about this, but I happen to know he's plowing it right back into the study, so yeah. He found an exploit in the system. Way to go, genius. The end."
DePaul: "But those advantages are baked into the cake of..."
Virginia: "Again, you're not wrong. Except that we're talking about an exception. A man who uses his male privilege whenever he can, but is not wired the right way, and is deeply weird. Weird enough to change the world. Talk about what you're talking about."
DePaul: "Having a dick doesn't hurt."
Virginia: "Being gorgeous doesn't hurt either. Being white hasn't hurt either of us at all. We're both born of a class that made education and cultural capital something to which we aspired and eventually claimed for our own. Being brilliant enough to make it through med school in the first place, that doesn't hurt. Being born in 1930 rather than 1530, or 3000 BCE, that certainly didn't hurt. Being born in fucking America, and not rural China, or the Sudan. Let me take a snipperoo at the ol' clitoris real quick and then we'll see how fast you get bored complaining about institutionalized misogyny at the University of Washington."
DePaul: "What, so I'm just an asshole for complaining?"
Virginia: "No. (I mean yes, but that's always true.) I'm saying the rain comes down on all of us, and some people have better umbrellas than others. Are you going to get any drier by pointing that out to people? Or do you want to fix your umbrella."
DePaul: "And the people with the better umbrellas have no responsibility to..."
Virginia: "Morally yes. But effectively, no. And the way to get that done is to talk about the umbrellas instead of judging and yelling about the umbrellas, instead of trying to figure out who has life the hardest, and who has it the easiest, and who should feel the most guilty, and who should feel the most clean. Because while you are having that conversation, we are all getting fucking soaked."
DePaul: "So fuck me for being pissed about this, specifically because I'm a rich white lady."
Virginia: "No, fuck you for thinking men hate you when the truth is that men don't know you exist. Facts on the ground are, we are denied access to a gamed system. Find the exploit, the crack. The crack is access. This whole show is about how I did that, and changed the world."
The country doctors are all on the links, telling jokes: How do you stop a woman from drowning? There's a fraternity all around us. But there's a sorority too. It's been there all the time. Getting drunk in the lobby, because they don't know they exist either.
THE SORORITY
Virginia: "Ladies. How many of you nabbed your doctor husbands at work?"
All of them. One was a nurse, one was a receptionist.
Virginia: "And how many of them benefit from having you there in their practices, whispering in their ears? Letting them know what women are like when they're not in the stirrups? Reminding them a woman's body is more than a machine that can't keep the pounds off."
Betsy: "My Doug used to say Let's check the oil before he did a pelvic exam."
Virginia: "And you broke him of that, I'm sure."
"You know, there's this new cancer test that they're doing in all of the major metropolitan hospitals. A simple cervical swab, it takes less than ten seconds. Why, Lillian was just telling me... What were you telling me earlier? Its' called a pap smear, right?"
Who is the enemy? If it's not men and it's not women, who's left?
HAAS & JOHNSON
George can never tell when he's getting off work, because that's the life he designed. Those are his choices. And like DePaul, like all of us, he can't always see how that works.
Ethan: "They tried to stay up, but they just couldn't do it. Tucked 'em in twenty minutes ago."
George hisses about it, like a swan, grabbing at random straws -- "Did you give Tessa her stuffed turtle?" -- but Ethan's got an answer for all of it. George still thinks this is about them: About their hearts, these twin stars revolving, and all the planets pulled back and forth between them.
George: "You're just loving this."
Ethan: "I am just loving them."
George: "I don't need a lecture from you, kid. Fucking my ex-wife doesn't make you..."
Ethan: "I'm going to marry her, and we're going to make decisions together. I'm going to get a job, and there's no telling where we'll end up."
George: "That is dirty pool. If you wanted me rabid about holding onto this family, mission accomplished."
Ethan: "You're welcome to visit. Just like you visit now."
George: "You're acting like a good guy but you're being a real dick about it. You'll never be their father..."
Ethan, verbatim: "-- You want to keep the title, George? You got it. All I want is the job."
Which is when he wins. Me, George, the right to exist on that porch. Ethan Haas, I think you might be a man.
MASTERS
Hallucinates an entire session, sitting at his desk: If Virginia were participating in this folly of his, this impossible proof of a thing men desperately want to know and will never know for sure.
Ghost Gini: "What are you even doing, Bill? There's not enough time to get it right."
Masters: "I am freaking the fuck out. Choose your phallus. Three sizes, you pick."
Ghost Gini: "I feel like Goldilocks... Oh, Bill. You're waiting to see which one I choose. Wondering if it reflects a particular preference..."
Masters: "No, I am doing science. I know the outcome already."
Ghost Gini: "Twelve women is nothing worth talking about."
Masters: "I can say it points to further inquiry; I can revisit the findings if..."
Ghost Gini: "What is it, what do you know it'll be."
Masters: "That the size doesn't matter."
Ghost Gini: "Which you can't know."
Masters: "Which I will, nevertheless, report. And rake in the acclaim and money so I can further the study of... You gotta get them in the tent before you can sell 'em anything."
"You're not giving them the gift you think you are. Now, after all those jubilant small-to medium-sized men come home and crawl into bed beside their sleeping women, they're gonna stare up at the bedroom ceiling and they're going to realize that if size doesn't matter, something else does. And that something else is going to scare the hell out of them. Because maybe they don't have it."
Ghost Gini: "And maybe Ethan does."
"It's not about whether you're big enough, it's whether you're good enough. God hands you your dick, but you have to come up with a strategy for it all on your own. This country with no map, that every man must conquer on his own. That's why some boys like to stare into it for hours at a time, the finger-bangers, and some just fiddle around until they figure out what works (for them) and some of them do that gross ponytail thing of being really into 'your' pleasure, which is a total fake-out and the super grossest thing of all. Because when you strip away the body hair and the upper-body strength and the paycheck and the size of your cock, all you really know about your worth is what they tell you. And that, you'll never believe."
William: "If this doesn't go well, I will have lost everything. You let this genie out and now you're gone, and my careful equilibrium is gone, and my wife knows what I am actually like, and I have nothing left except the work, and then that will be gone."
Virginia: "You're a bigger man than that, aren't you?"
William: "I don't think I am, no."
THE BUS BACK
Virginia: "Hickory, Maryville, Spartanburg, Dalton, Albertville, and Williamsburg. Advocates in six cities, six states, one fell swoop. That is a good day's work. The shortest distance between two points is a straight line. The crack."
Lillian: "Most of them met their husbands at work. It makes me wonder where they'd be if they'd actually pursued careers."
Virginia: "I can't tell if you're calling me a whore or what you are doing."
Lillian: "I'm not looking for a man. Apparently me and my clitoris don't need one, according to Masters..."
Virginia: "And me. That one specifically."
Lillian: "And nobody will ever know."
Virginia: "Okay, now I'm sure you're being a bitch. Did I not just do magic for you?"
Lillian: "The irony is that after all that, it'll be a man telling women they're responsible for their own satisfaction. At the cost of yours. Don't you ever want anything of your own? When was the last time you sang?"
Virginia: "Something of my own? Who has that? Who, ever, has that? Even you, what do you have?"
Lillian: "I have cancer. Cervical, actually. A pap smear found it when I was twenty, I got radiation and a hysterectomy, and I was cured. That's when I decided to specialize in gynecology. And then about 18 months ago, it showed up in my liver. Stage IV."
Virginia: "Jesus. I get what you're saying now, sorry."
Lillian: "I'm not going to be around, to see the testing become routine. I'm going to have to hand off. To someone who can fight the fight, talk small but think big. Find the shortest distance between two points. Do you know anyone like that?"
But Virginia's too busy looking at her, heart breaking, to consider it. Lillian pushes her face against the rainy glass, wishing for sleep. Virginia takes her hand. They ride on, through the night. Back home, back toward Friday. Back toward the crack; a total of six advocates that now sounds exactly like nothing at all.
AM
When Ethan puts the kids sweetly on the bus and it drives away, George is leaned way back against his cool car, smoking a cigarette. Ethan squares his shoulders, ready for round three. Can't wait until Virginia gets home.
George, brusque: "What do you call that spot under the knee that the doctor taps with a hammer and makes your leg kick?"
Ethan: "Patellar reflex. Are you threatening my..."
George: "That thing. Virginia's mine. You tap, I kick. Hard."
Ethan: "That is awesome that you are here saying that right now. And understandable. She's awesome."
George: "I didn't want kids. I love the ones I got. But I knew eventually they'd pull her away from me, and they did. She took her heart out that belonged to me, and she put it at the center of the home. And I let her do it. I let her take those kids, because if you don't want your kids to turn out like you, what do you teach them? How can you demonstrate a negative?"
Ethan: "Um."
George: "Anyway, you seem awesome. And I travel a lot for work. So."
Ethan: "It is workable. It's a job to do together."
George: "I need somebody to understand that I don't love them less. It hurts to do it. Even if I'm just giving up an idea."
Ethan: "I kind of love you right now."
He's too fresh-faced, too open-handed, too charitable and understanding. It gets George's back up, honking and biting, hissing; it puts a little of the old nastiness in his eyes. If there is no enemy, then all we have are the facts on the ground, and those are untenable. It's too much responsibility.
"It helps knowing that what she and I had, you'll never know. Because she's not the girl she was back then. Have you ever heard her sing? She doesn't even hum anymore. But the two of us onstage... It was sexual but more than that, it was perfect. It was like what sex is trying to be. Before she was tamed. And that's what I have, now. That's my consolation prize, for not being what she grew into."
He drives away. Ethan of a year ago, well, that would be it. He'd be starry-eyed thinking this is a fantasy he should be living in. Maybe part of him is; that was George's intent, after all. But Ethan today, post-Vivian, post-suckerpunch, post-Bill... It's the facts on the ground, that matter. Every fact a strut, a stud, a load-bearing pillar on the foundation.
NIGHT
He's not sleepwalking, he's just looking out the window. Thinking about what the ghost said, about whether the worth of a man is in the foundation stone or the size of your dick or the motion of the ocean. Thinking about a direction you can't point to, and what echoes back from there.
When Libby awakes, she can feel him, thinking. Worrying at it. It sounds in his breath and heartbeat across the room almost like one of those nightmares. He'll get up in front of them on Friday, with his future -- with the future of the world -- in his hands, and find he has no clothes on. They'll see his penis, and the world will end. It's the dream she hears, and the dream she speaks to.
William: "Go to sleep, stop worrying. I should be taking care of you."
Libby: "You do. Even when you don't, you do. Even when you need me, that helps too. I mend myself by mending you."
William: "She's in here with us too now. You brought her, when you read the..."
Libby: "You do take care of me. You feel good, inside me. You feel just right."
William: "Libby, no. Please don't."
Libby: "Whether or not you're up all night, obsessing over doctor's penises because you're a doctor, with a penis, you need to understand this. I know I wasn't your first. But you were mine. And once I met you, I've never wanted to be with another man."
Who is the enemy? There is no enemy.
HAAS & JOHNSON
Virginia: "Jesus, that guy. I'm so sorry about George, I had no..."
Ethan: "Stop, it's fine. It was kind of awesome, actually."
Virginia: "I don't want to know. Just hold onto me until I'm dry, and warm."
Virginia: "If I die, that man gets the kids."
Ethan: "Um, what? Segue?"
Virginia: "He's their father, it's 1957. So I can't die. Just promise me I won't die."
Ethan: "I'm a doctor, so we're starting strong."
Virginia: "You, your life now. Any job offers? Anything close by? I can't put too many more miles on the car, going back and forth. Which, PS, I would do. I wouldn't just let you go."
"Well, why don't you let me worry about that? In fact, why don't you let me worry about everything? You want to quit your job? Go to school full-time? Become a doctor? Stay home with the kids? I don't care. I'm on it."
Virginia: "Damn. You must've really been through it, to miss me so much. What is this?"
Ethan: "If there is something you always wanted to do, someone you wanted to be and you never got the chance, I will make that happen. I want us to be a team."
Virginia: "That's a little too close today. Masters & Johnson. DePaul & Johnson... We're already a couple, I mean, you go back in your boyfriend box at the end of the..."
Ethan: "A team. Burns & Allen. Lewis & Clark."
Virginia: "Bonnie & Clyde..."
Ethan: "No, that was before. I am being serious."
Virginia: "Haas & Johnson..."
He smiles, goofy; he has no idea how almost-right it sounds. How approximately perfect a team they could make, if things were to go a different way. But Hass & Johnson don't change the world.
THE FAIR
The young couple is so romantic, walking through the fair with two laughing, adoring children. Eyes glassy with sugar and the hour and the night, the thrill of every single ringing bell and flashing light. Virginia locks herself in a glass booth and sings, so the whole fair can hear it: A song about a man who hid his heart away so well the girl never even knew how much he loved her. A boy with one swan's wing.
Tomorrow, she'll be waiting for the elevator. Masters will turn to look at her, steal a glance. She'll be smiling to herself about her suitors, about DePaul and Haas, about the wild adventures she's being asked to enjoy. Things she wanted to do; women she wanted to be. Women she still can save; things she can have that are all her own.
Tomorrow, he'll be waiting for the elevator, nervous in every way a man can be nervous, Friday pounding in his ears. Caught between love and desire; waiting for the echo. Johnson will turn to look at him, steal a glance. She'll know everything he's thinking, and feeling, on sight. They'll get on the elevator together, and apart. She'll want to pass him her umbrella across the crowd, she'll want to bandage the wing she broke; she still won't know how.
Tonight, though: Tonight she'll sing.
JACOB CLIFTON is a freelance writer and critic based in Austin, Texas. He currently recaps Homeland, Hostages, The Good Wife, and Masters Of Sex for TWoP. Jacob can be found online at jacobclifton.com, Twitter, and Facebook.