Imaginary Friends by Nora Ephron Page B

cigarette
.
    Cigarettes. That’s more like it.
[Fumbling with the notebook.]
I guess you didn’t see
Julia
.
    MARY : No, I didn’t.
    PARIS REPORTER : Oh, it’s great. It’s about how Lillian Hellman smuggled all this money into Germany in a fur hat and saved people from the Nazis.
    MARY : Mmmmmmm.
    PARIS REPORTER : Did you read
Scoundrel Time?
    MARY : No … although I did read about it—
    PARIS REPORTER : She stood up to Senator McCarthy, you know. She was the only one, really. She said, “I cannot fit my conscience into your expectations.” Something like that.
    MARY
exhales smoke straight at the reporter
.
    What do you think of her?
    MARY : Lillian Hellman? I can’t stand her.
[She smiles.]
    PARIS REPORTER : Really? Gosh. Why?
    MARY : I first met her at Sarah Lawrence—
[To the audience.]
Blah blah blah—
[Back to the
PARIS REPORTER
.]
John Dos Passos—
[Back to the audience.]
Blah blah blah—
[Back to the
PARIS REPORTER
.]
D-O-S P-A-S-S-O-S. Two “S’s”—
    PARIS REPORTER : Thank you.
    MARY : … didn’t like the food in Madrid—
[Back to the audience.]
Blah blah blah—
[Back to the
PARIS REPORTER
.]
She was just brainwashing those girls—it was really vicious. And so somebody like that writes a book like
Scoundrel Time
, and I think that it’s still scoundrel time as far as she’s concerned. It’s as if she thinks she’s the only person who behaved morally during the McCarthy period. Everything she writes is false, including “and” and “but.”
    MARY
smiles again. Big smile this time, the smile you smile when you say something funny for the very first time and it’s a surprise to you. The
PARIS REPORTER
looks down at the tape recorder to make sure it’s working
.
    Is that working?
    PARIS REPORTER : Yes.
    MARY : Good.
    The
PARIS REPORTER
exits and we’re now in New York
. MARY
’s college friend
ABBY KAISER
sits down. Like
MARY ,
she is dressed like a garden-club matron
.
    ABBY KAISER : How’s it going?
    MARY : No one’s said a thing. Never a good sign, I’m afraid, so it’s probably not selling at all. But I’m going to be on
Dick Cavett
. He’s going to do two shows.
    ABBY KAISER : Two! Oh, Mary, that will help, won’t it?
    MARY : Let’s hope so. Does anyone watch it?
    ABBY KAISER : Less so now that it’s on public television, but the advantage is that everyone who watches it buys books, so you’re reaching the people you want to, the core audience, I think it’s called. What are you going to say?
    MARY : I don’t know. I have to come up with something clever, I suppose.
    ABBY KAISER : You always say the cleverest things—
    MARY :
You
think they’re clever.
    ABBY KAISER : They
are
clever. They’re famously clever.
    MARY : I did an interview in Paris a few months ago—
    ABBY KAISER : I saw it. In that little English-language newspaper.
    MARY : You saw it?
    ABBY KAISER : Someone sent it to me. Someone I know who knows I went to Vassar with you, who sends me everything about you.…
    MARY : It was not a very nice article.
    ABBY KAISER : I know.
    MARY : The writer kept comparing me to Lillian Hellman. I had no idea that’s what he was going to do. All about dashing Lillian Hellman and frumpy me.
    ABBY KAISER : Can you imagine? Well, you can’t let things like that bother you.
    MARY : Oh, I don’t, really.
[Beat.]
He wrote that I looked like a garden-club matron.
[Beat.]
But I said something funny in it, I think. About Lillian Hellman. I said, “Everything she writes is false, including ‘and’ and ‘but.’”
    ABBY KAISER : Yes, that
is
funny.
And
clever. “Everything she writes is false, including ‘and’ and ‘but.’” That’s good, Mary.
    MARY : Do you think I should say it? On
Dick Cavett?
    ABBY KAISER : Sure. How do you do that?
    MARY : Do what?
    ABBY KAISER : Say it? Do you just sort of pop it in?
    MARY : Dick Cavett has to ask me a question that it’s the answer to.
    ABBY KAISER : How do you get him to do that?
    MARY : They call you ahead of