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Kate looked up. “I was just getting to the good part.”

“That’s what you said five minutes ago. You can’t begin a play in the Gay Nineties talking about kangaroos and macaroons.”

“Quadroons and octoroons. The terms are outdated and offensive. I get it. But that question is verbatim from the 1890 census. I researched it.”

“The cutting room floor is smothered in research.” Bass tore the page from the script, crushed it into a ball, and pitched it into the aisle. He might as well have ripped Kate’s heart from her chest.

“But this is a critical point,” she said. “The census of 1890 is the first time the U.S. Census office used electromechanical tabulating machines.”

“So what?”

“Our government got its first taste of technology—and it couldn’t help but turn it against its own people. Suddenly, the Census Bureau could nail down the name and address of every single American with a drop of African blood in his or her body. This is1890.The possibilities are so much scarier now. This goes to the heart of my theme.”

“What theme?”

“Technology and the abuse of personal information.”

Bass poured more vodka. “Ms. Gamble, this is a playwriting competition for scripts about women’s health and sexuality. We’re looking for the nextVagina MonologuesorMenopause:The Musical. Not the nextSnowdenorOslo.”

Kate blinked hard, confused. Bass definitely should not have started that second liter of vodka. His assistant corrected him gently, his voice carrying.

“Mr. Bass, the women’s festival isnextweek.”

“Well, even so. Ms. Gamble, you can’t write a historical play that isn’t historically accurate. What kind of tabulating technology even existed in 1890?”

“Hollerith machines,” said Kate. “The old punch-card technology that predated computers. It was invented in the nineteenth century by Henry Hollerith.”

“Which your audience couldn’t care less about.”

“They should care. I wrote a short scene to explain. It starts at page eight.”

“And it runs to what page?”

“Twelve.”

Bass yanked the pages from the notebook and tossed them into the aisle.

He might as well have grabbed Kate by the throat and thrown her across the stage. “You’re just awful,” she said.

Bass closed the notebook on what was left of her tattered script. “Thisis awful.”

With a snap of the director’s fingers, his assistant summoned the next victim.

“Contestant two-oh-nine, Esther Baldwin.”

“That’s it?” asked Kate. “I’m done?”

A young woman hurried down the aisle, script in hand.

Bass shot one final dismissive glance in Kate’s direction. “If your name is not Esther Baldwin, then yes, you are done.”

Kate stepped away, and Ms. Baldwin took her place at center stage. The polite response would have been to find a seat and wait for all the contestants to finish. Kate wasn’t feeling it. She hurried off the stage and headed straight for the rear exit, taking the side aisle farthest away from Bass. The door creaked on her way out, barely audible, but Bass was incapable of letting anything slide.

“Quiet!”

Kate continued through the empty lobby, past the will-call window, and out the main doors. There was a trash can at the curb outside the theater. She shoved the script into the receptacle with all the anger, disappointment, and embarrassment she was feeling, never looking back on her way to the Metro station. She caught the train as the doors were closing and took a seat by the window.

What a jerk,she thought, as the train entered the dark tunnel, but she actually pitied him. She wanted to admire a director of his talentfor “paying it forward” and holding contests for aspiring playwrights, but maybe the rumors were true: he was a drunk who could no longer find work on Broadway, and he simply needed the money. Alcoholism is a scourge. Kate’s mother struggled with it. She’d been sober for nearly two years, but even at her lowest point she was classified as “high-functioning.” Bass was the same, which meant that while his words wounded, all too often it was only because the truth hurt. Still, he could have been nicer about it. The words of John Wilkes Booth as he leapt from the president’s box to the stage on the night of April 14, 1865—“Sic semper tyrannis!”—had no application to Lincoln but seemed to foreshadow the arrival of Irving Bass more than one hundred fifty years later:

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