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knowledge, he was shocked to learn his pa, the king, had lately passed away.”
    â€œPerrier,” the waitress said. Casey raised a forefinger.
    â€œBut his discomfiture was greater,” recited Howard, “when he learned his dearest mater had been married to his uncle”—and here Howard raises his eyebrows menacingly and pushes out the word—“ Claude without the least delay!”
    â€œAnother iced tea?” Mine. Cokes for the boys, pear juice for Jennifer, beer for Josh.
    â€œFor it seemed to him indecent,” explained Howard, “with his father’s death so recent, that his mother should prepare herself another bridal bed. And there seemed to be a mystery in the family’s royal history, but he failed to follow any clue, for fear of where it led.”
    With a curious glance over her shoulder at Howard, the waitress retreats to the kitchen. Perhaps it is Howard’s narrator accent, a crisp and remarkably authentic 1950s BBC British. “While he’s in this sad condition he’s informed an apparition is accustomed to perambulate the castle every night. That it looks just like his sire, both in manner and attire, but is silent, staid, and stoical—which doesn’t seem quite right.” Howard puts on a quizzical look, like a demented peacock: “Having heard this testimony from Horatio, his crony, he decides to take a peep at this facsimile of his pop.” Two matching plosives.
    So at midnight’s dismal hour
    Just outside the castle tower
    He confronts the grisly phantom and he boldly bids it STOP.
    Josh leans to Jennifer, whispers something, and she smiles and nods. Casey is loving Howard’s Hamlet . He has already heard King Lear this way, lines that both send up and honor the play, at a party at our home, and Romeo and Juliet on, I believe, a tennis court in Santa Monica. Howard memorized these parodies in college.
    Those in the industry recognize us. They recognize Stacey and Casey and Josh and Howard. They watch Howard, the waiters who are actors, the dishwashers who are writing screenplays, the hostess who is waiting for a callback. They know his face from the trades. They know he can help green-light a movie, buy a script, make a career. It is Hamburger Hamlet on a Tuesday evening, and we are in Los Angeles, and anything is possible.
    Howard tells us Shakespeare’s story, of anger and greed and violence and pain. Then the grisly phantom faded / Leaving Hamlet half persuaded . The tables around us, one by one, fall silent to watch and listen, those next to them notice the silence, then the focus, then the words, and they too still. Spends his time / in frequent talking to himself / of suicide and other subjects tinged with doom . And Howard, because he is an innate performer, increasingly projects to include them, so that in this room the circumference of his words enlarges to fit the expanding circle of attention paid to them. The waiters stop to watch, and so their busboys’ busy motions gently still, and they too turn to our table.
    And so then one after other / King, Laertes, Hamlet, mother / With appropriate remarks / They shuffle off this mortal coil .
    When he reaches the end, everyone dead, we all applaud. The room fills with the sound. Howard bows to the stalls, accepting the declamation. Amid the applause people murmur. “Howard Rosenbaum,” they say, and his title at the studio, and the last movies he worked on, as if his name were a powerful enchantment and they were spinning a spell. I love Howard’s golden light when he is in his element, the vigor of my husband’s love of these words and stories, but I dislike the hunger this city focuses on him, their celluloid obsession. And I quietly prepare to withdraw into myself as usual and leave them to this world. But this evening, something is different.
    It is, I realize, the play. Even in this permutation, I notice, the story holds its own. I look around