There was something so perfect about her. Her tight jeans and black leotard showed off a fantastic, voluptuous body that must have at one time been very athletic but had not seen a gym in at least a couple of years. Her dirty blonde hair was that of a grown-up: Well past shoulder length, it formed a baroque swirl of curls and folds and weaves around her sensuous ears and neck. Her eyes shone with warmth, joy and lust.

She was the newest member of the troupe. Within the ridiculously long five-year span the troupe was in existence, she was an era unto herself. The cast of performers now comprised three men and three women, and starting that night, the dynamics became infinitely more complicated.

As we converged on a big round table at the Szechuan Palace, my homing signal was confused. At Chucklehead dinners, I was adept at making my movement seem totally random while in actuality plotting a convoluted trajectory that would land me right next to Angie every time. This time, I was thrown off by the appearance of this new woman, at once totally entranced and drawn in and at the same time quite wary. I don’t know whether it was by accident that I wound up sitting next to her, and, if it were an accident—whose accident it was.

I appeared to mind my own business while following her every move from the corner of my eye. She caught my full and undivided attention when she slapped her hand down on my knee and leaned over to confess, “You people make me feel so old!”

“Why? Just how old are you?” I whispered, and immediately it dawned on me this question was rude.

“Thirty-five,” she said. I kind of tilted my head back to get a better look at her, which immediately made her laugh. Back in my childhood in the Midwest, thirty-five meant fat and tired, bending over the kitchen table making Jell-O pudding while screaming kids with chocolate mustaches ran underfoot. “Why, how old do I look?”

I had her clocked at well over thirty. “Twenty-eight?” I ventured.

Gently, she tugged on my ear, drawing me closer to her lips so that her warm breath tickled my earlobes. “The things you say are as pretty as your eyes.” From that sweet molasses drawl, I figured she was from the South or Midwest. Her face was angelic and aristocratic, but she had mischief in her eyes and just enough sassy, redneck vulgarity to her tongue to be a lot of fun.

“So, which sketches did you write?” she asked.

“The Bernie Goetz subway sketch, Young Urban Professional Man, and The Nightmare Sketch,” I recited, as if they were operas rather than 3-minute skits.

“The Nightmare Sketch?”

It was my opus. Some audiences howled and screamed and damn near threw up by the end of it. “That’s the one where the guy falls asleep in the couple’s apartment and they act out these weird scenarios to give him nightmares,” I explained, and immediately it sounded really, really lame.

“I love that skit! It’s ingenious!” she squealed, momentarily leaning into my shoulder, and it was such a lovely squeal, I wanted to hear it all night.

“So, how did you wind up joining us? I’ve been out of the loop here.”

“I met Rick at an acting class at the New School. We wound up doing a scene together from ‘Danny and the Deep Blue Sea.’ Talk about naïve!”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, you know the play?” she asked, and I nodded. “Rick was so sexy, I mean, look at those eyes.”

Rick saw her gesture toward him, and he smiled, his wonder-struck, toddler eyes seeming to sparkle on cue, but he pretended to be oblivious.

“—and the thing was he seemed so macho, I mean, my God!” She started laughing, a high-pitched, melodic laugh as intoxicating as her squeal. “We rehearsed that scene for two weeks before I ever figured out he was gay.”

“Yeah, he’s not easy to nail down. How did you find out?” I asked.

Suddenly a menu opened into my face, and I took it from Cindy’s grasp. “I think they’re about to come around for our order,” she said.

We stopped talking for the time being to begin reading out menus. That’s when I realized that much of the other conversation around the table had stopped and most of the table’s twenty eyes were turned toward us. From across the table, Angie gave me a knowing smile.

Dinner with the Chuckleheads always took a very long time, because of the course of after-dinner beers. While I was looking at my watch, which showed about 10:45, Cindy said, “You’ve sure been looking at your watch a lot. Do you have somewhere to go?’

“Yeah. Brooklyn. Sheepshead Bay, near Coney Island.”

“My God. Please tell me you drove.”

“Drive? That would require a car. I took the subway.”

“You’re not taking the subway at this hour,” she said. “You can stay in my apartment—I’m over on Riverside.”

This really wasn’t necessary. It was only an hour ride, the subways ran all night, and I had taken the subway home at this hour countless times without coming to any harm. “If it wouldn’t put you out,” I said. “It would sure take a load off my mind.”

As dinner broke up, and I was climbing into the cab with Cindy Lou, the entire troupe was staring at me—Angie, with a secretive smile, and the guys all looking somewhat jealous and stunned. Cindy leaned forward and told the cabdriver, firmly but patiently, which route to take to get to Riverside Drive. When I pulled out my wallet, she said, “Really, don’t bother—I’d have to pay cab fare anyway.”

The building was beautiful, more beautiful than anything I or my friends had lived in. The lobby was well lit and had a door man. “Hello, Enrique,” she chirped a him and he responded, “Good evening, Ms. Barrett.” She put her arm on my lower back and gently guided me into the elevator. “I’m glad you could stay over! This is going to be fun!” she said.

Though it was dark, I could see that her apartment was very well furnished, with a leather sofa, a well-equipped kitchen, and a stereo system that seemed to take up an entire wall. Whatever she did for a living, it must have paid well, or perhaps she was a trust fund baby. “Would you like a nightcap?” she whispered, opening the refrigerator and pulling out a bottle of Chablis.

“I’d love one,” I whispered back.

“Sit sit sit,” she said, and dutifully I wandered over to the leather sofa and sat down. She poured the glasses nearly to the top, carried them over to the sofa, and handed me one. She tried to sit down gracefully on the sofa while holding her drink, but tumbled back and wound up practically in my lap. Some of her wine splattered on her and me, but nearly half it wound up on the sofa. She started to laugh, but covered her mouth. “Can I have some of yours?” she pleaded softly.

“No, that would be a complete breach of etiquette,” I said, with total deadpan. “I’m afraid you’ll just have to lick the sofa.”

She laughed again, bringing tears to her eyes, covering her mouth so tightly that all I could hear was her throat gulping for air. She choked for a second, then gasped for breath, fanning herself with her hand. “Oh, don’t make me laugh like that. I’ll wind up waking Howard and Zachary.” When I looked at her quizzically, she added, “My husband and son.”

I nodded as this sank in. Many of the fantasies I had been harboring over the last several hours came to a crashing halt. We finished our white wines without saying much else, though she continued to smile radiantly at me. Then she said, quietly, “Here, I’ll make up the couch for you.”

When she left the room, I stared toward the door. There was one bolt to turn, and a chain. But I was drunk and tired and it was late, and to leave now would have been an admission that I had totally misread the situation.

Cindy brought out pillows and blankets and arranged them carefully on the couch. As I began to pull off my shoes and socks, she knelt down, kissed me on the forehead, and whispered, “Let me know if you need anything.”

Dawn was a long, long time coming, and when it did, it came in the form of little footsteps. Excited footsteps ran into the living room about three feet from where I slept and stopped dead for several seconds. Then they ran into another room, where I heard muffled speaking.

I sat up. A man in his early forties, slightly overweight but generally in good shape, with only the hint of a bald patch, walked down the hallways from the bedroom to the bathroom without really acknowledging my presence.

Within just a few minutes, he emerged with the owner of the little feet—a four-year-old with blonde hair like his mother, both of them dressed in windbreakers. I held out my hand and introduced myself. After a brief pause, the man introduced himself as Howard, but did not acknowledge my hand hovering in mid air. I said hi to the boy, who looked up at me like something scary at the circus. Almost immediately, Cindy came out, still dressed in her nightgown. “Rob is one of the writers for the troupe. We were out sort of late and I didn’t want him to have to take the train all the way into Brooklyn.”

Howard nodded, seeming to assimilate all this and store it for future reference. “I was thinking we could all have breakfast together!” Cindy suggested.

“Zachary and I are going to the park,” Howard informed her.

“Well, don’t you want breakfast first? I can make a nice Spanish omelet”

“That’ll take some time and Zachary’s hungry now. I thought I’d just get him something on the way to the park,” Howard said calmly. Turning to me, he started to mouth something vaguely civil, but instead gave me a polite nod, and finally walked out with Zachary.

“What would you like to listen to with breakfast?” Cindy asked.

I looked over her classical selection. After she pooh-poohed Stravinsky and Prokofiev as inappropriate breakfast music, I said, “Your choice.”

Cindy put on Vivaldi’s “The Four Seasons” and went ahead and made omelet for the two of us, but the magic of the previous evening was gone. I sort of sleepwalked through the entire breakfast and gave her a stiff hug goodbye as I headed out into the daylight. That was the first and last night I spent at Cindy Lou’s.

Things between Cindy and me had cooled off by the next rehearsal, held in Rose’s apartment. They were rehearsing Russell’s latest script, in which, Spanky and Rick were playing teenage boys watching a pornographic video. (We produced the video, too, which consisted of long, out-of-focus shots of armpits and navels moving back and forth rhythmically while Dirk and Rose moaned almost lethargically in the background.) Then Spanky’s mom (played by Cindy) comes home early and unexpectedly from her stay at the Betty Ford Clinic and catches them in the act. They’re embarrassed enough that she has caught them, but completely mortified as she begins to pontificate on the beauty of these two characters engaged in the act of passionate physical love. To make matters even worse for Spanky’s character, Rick confides in him, “I think your mom’s really hot!” Cindy was not only hilarious in the sketch, but very convincing, and didn’t seem to mind portraying the mother of a guy ten years younger than she was.

I was very pleased to see that Cindy was doing such a great job. What bothered me was that she never made eye contact with me the whole time.

As the meeting began to break up and people started going their separate ways, I made the tragic mistake of taking one last pit stop in Rose’s bathroom. When I came back out, Cindy was gone.

Drifting toward the door, I thanked Rose for hosting the rehearsal, and then eased out into the hall. As no one was around, I sprinted down the stairs and out onto the street, and began jogging in the direction of Sixth Avenue, where Cindy would undoubtedly be catching a cab uptown.

When I caught sight of Cindy, I knew any opportunity had flown. She was walking with Russell—affable, androgynous, back-stabbing Russell–who now had his hand planted firmly and affectionately on her butt.

Cindy’s career with our troupe lasted nearly 10 months, during which time she played hard-driving female executives, pretentious psychics, and alcoholic new-age moms, often in scripts written by Russell. Her affair with Russell soon became common knowledge, even to Howard. Their marriage began falling apart while Cindy was still in the troupe. When the divorce proceedings and custody battle started, she had too much on her plate and had to give up acting with us and, after four years with us, Russell quite the troupe as well. A year or so later, Rick mentioned that he had run into Cindy on the street, and that she declined invitation for drinks because she was regularly attending AA meetings, but that was the last time any of us saw her.

In the years since, I’ve wondered whatever happened to her. In particular, I think about that night. What opportunity had I missed and when, and would I have accepted the responsibility for seizing it? Was I invited there as a wedge to her marriage or a gangplank to something else?

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