Tell-All

career.”
    As always, I drag the diamond in straight lines to mimic the tears running down Miss Katie’s face.
    I shake my head, Don’t. Don’t let’s repeat this torture. Don’t trust another one.
    As always, another duty of my job is to never press too hard lest the mirror shatter.
    My Miss Kathie slips a hand into the slit of one fur coat pocket, fishing out something pink she sets on the dusty shelf. Exhaling cigarette smoke, she says, “I guess I won’t be needing this.…” So many years ago, this something Miss Kathie meant to leave behind forever.
    It was her diaphragm.
    Terry slips the wedding band onto her finger.
    Miss Kathie smiles, saying, “It still feels warm.” She adds, “The
ring
, not the
diaphragm.”
    And I pour everyone another round of champagne.

ACT I, SCENE THIRTEEN
    The scene opens with a tight shot of John Glenn strapped into the astronaut seat within the capsule of the Friendship 7 spacecraft, the first American to orbit Earth . Beyond the capsule’s small window we see our glorious blue planet swirled with white clouds, suspended among the pinprick stars in the deep blackness of space. As Glenn’s gloved hands fiddle with the wide assortment of controls on the panel before him, flipping a switch, turning a knob, he leans into a microphone, saying, “Mission control, I think we might have a problem.…”
    Glenn says, “Mission control, do you read me?” He says, “I seem to be losing power.…”
    In unison, every light on the control panel blinks out. The lights blink on for a moment, then off. Flickering, the lights go out altogether, leaving Glenn in only the faint glow of the stars. Seated in absolute silence, Glenn wraps bothgloved hands around the microphone, bringing his mouth almost to touch the wire mesh of it and shouting, “Please, Houston!” Screaming, “Alan Shepard , you bastard, don’t let me die up here!”
    The shot pulls back to reveal an interior panel in the wall behind Glenn’s astronaut chair. A handle in the center of the panel begins to slowly turn. Drawing focus because it’s the only movement in the shot, highlighted by a key light in the otherwise murky compartment.
    Glenn quietly sobs in the darkness.
    Insert a close-up of the handle turning, intercutting with extreme close-ups of Glenn’s face, his sobs and tears fogging the inside surface of his helmet face shield.
    From offscreen, we hear a familiar voice say, “Pipe down.”
    In a medium shot, we see the panel behind Glenn swing open, revealing a stowaway Lillian Hellman as she steps free from what appears to be a storage locker. In one continuous shot, she steps through a doorway, under a stenciled sign reading, WARNING: AIR LOCK. Hellman says, “Wish me luck, you big baby.” She draws a deep breath, and her hand slaps a large, red button labeled, JETTISON. An inner door slides shut, sealing the air lock, and a burst of mist belches Lilly from the side of the orbiting capsule. She wears no helmet, no pressurized suit, only an elegant sports ensemble of slacks and sweater designed by Adrian .
    Weightless and floating in the black void of outer space, Lilly swims, holding her breath. Her arms stroke, and her legs kick in an Australian crawl, inching her way along the side of the orbiting space capsule until she arrives beside a small tin-colored box affixed to the outer hull. The box is stenciled, SOLAR MODULE, and it flashes with an occasional burst of bright sparks. Still holding her breath, her cheeksinflated and her brow furrowed in concentration, Lilly drags a ball-peen hammer from the hip pocket of her slacks ensemble accessorized with Orry-Kelly high heels. Her chandelier earrings and turquoise squash-blossom pendant are still tethered to Lilly, but float and drift in the absence of gravity. Gripping the hammer in her blue fingers, the veins swelling under the skin at her temples, Lilly swings the steel head to collide with the module box. In the vacuum of space, we hear nothing, only silence and the steady
thump-thump
of Lilly’s enormous heart beating faster and faster. The hammer strikes the module a second time. Sparks fly. The tin-colored metal dents, and flakes of gray paint float away from the point of impact.
    More hammer blows fall; with each the sound rings louder, then louder as we dissolve to reveal the kitchen of Katherine Kenton, where I sit at the kitchen table, reading a screenplay titled
Space Race Rescue
penned by Lilly. I wear the black maid’s