“Derek…” There was a long pause as Tiersjens grew uncharacteristically reticent. Derek experienced the strangest sense of déjà vu, almost as if he knew the director’s very words before they were spoken.

“Derek, there will be no offers from Hollywood. Your name is mud out there, has been, ever since you walked out on Tunnel in the Sky. Who would hire you after that? To be honest, Derek, your taking the Catskills job wouldn’t be a great favor to me. It’s my way of trying, one last time, to help you.”

Derek sneered. “Like you helped me by hiring that snot-nosed Todd Chestner to play Eatherly on the road? Dumping me in the process?”

“Don’t blame that on Todd. The kid idolizes you, Derek. I did it for the good of the show. Todd’s been covering for you half of the time anyway. Anyone but me would have replaced you three months ago.”

“But Derek, I am willing to give it one more go, for old times’ sake. Take the Catskills job, and get off this cycle of self-destruction while there’s still a chance!”

For a moment, Derek found himself captured by the man’s intensity. Peter Tiersjens could take a platoon of blase actors and light the fire of Melpomene inside them with a few words. “Derek,” he urged. “You used to say there was nothing more contemptible than the artist who lost himself on the Edge. Now you are sacrificing everything on the altar of Bacchus. ’Tis mad idolatry to make the service greater than the god!”

In the half-drunken fog, Derek’s belligerent side won a brief, but bitter, struggle.

“ ‘Cry, Troyans, Cry!’ ” He mocked the older man, quoting from the same play. “Cassandra, you can go to hell.” He stood up and walked unsteadily to the door. On the way he kicked Peter’s chair. His fists clenched in pleasure at the resultant shout and crash, and he left without looking back.

Later he had the satisfaction of punching Todd Chestner in his fatuous, earnest young face. It would take makeup an extra half hour to get the twerp ready, during the first week of the road show. That was some satisfaction, at least.