Karen Joy Fowler: Standing Room Only      
       First appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction 
       August 1997. Nominated for Best Short       
       Story
                                                    
       ------------------------------------------

                                                   
       On Good Friday 1865, Washington, DC, was     
       crowded with tourists and revelers. Even    
       Willard’s, which claimed to be the largest   
       hotel in the country, with room for 1200      
       guests, had been booked to capacity. Its     
       lobbies and sitting rooms were hot with      
       bodies. Gaslight hissed from golden          
       chandeliers, spilled over the doormen’s      
       uniforms of black and maroon. Many of the    
       revelers were women. In 1865, women were      
       admired for their stoutness and went         
       anywhere they could fit their hoop skirts.   
       The women at Willard’s wore garishly         
       colored dresses with enormous skirts and      
       resembled great inverted tulips. The men      
       were in swallowtail coats.
                                                    
       Outside it was almost spring. The
       forsythia bloomed, dusting the city with     
       yellow. Weeds leapt up in the public         
       parks; the roads melted to mud. Pigs         
       roamed like dogs about the city, and dead
       cats by the dozens floated in the sewers
       and perfumed the rooms of the White House
       itself.                                      

       The Metropolitan Hotel contained an           
       especially rowdy group of celebrants from    
       Baltimore, who passed the night of April     
       13 toasting everything under the sun. They    
       resurrected on the morning of the 14th,      
       pale and spent, surrounded by broken glass    
       and sporting bruises they couldn’t           
       remember getting.                             
                                                    
       It was the last day of Lent. The war was      
       officially over, except for Joseph           
       Johnston’s Confederate army and some         
       action out west. The citizens of              
       Washington, DC, still began each morning     
       reading the daily death list. If anything,    
       this task had taken on an added urgency.     
       To lose someone you loved now, with the    
       rest of the city madly, if grimly,           
       celebrating, would be unendurable.           
                                                    
       The guests in Mary Surratt’s boarding        
       house began the day with a breakfast of       
       steak, eggs and ham, oysters, grits and
       whiskey. Mary’s seventeen-year old          
       daughter, Anna, was in love with John
       Wilkes Booth. She had a picture of him       
       hidden in the sitting room, behind a
       lithograph entitled "Morning, Noon, and      
       Night." She helped her mother clear the     
       table and she noticed with a sharp and        
       unreasonable disapproval that one of the    
       two new boarders, one of the men who only    
       last night had been given a room, was         
       staring at her mother.                      
                                                    
       Mary Surratt was neither a pretty women,
       nor a clever one, nor was she young. Anna
       was too much of a romantic, too star- and
       stage-struck, to approve. It was one thing
       to lie awake at night in her attic
       bedroom, thinking of JW. It was another to
       imagine her mother playing any part in
       such feelings.

       Anna’s brother John once told her that
       five years ago a woman named Henrietta
       Irving had tried to stab Booth with a
       knife. Failing, she’d thrust the blade
       into her own chest instead. He seemed to
       be under the impression that this story
       would bring Anna to her senses. It had, as
       anyone could have predicted, the opposite
       effect. Anna had also heard rumors that
       Booth kept a woman in a house of
       prostitution near the White House. And
       once she had seen a piece of paper on
       which Booth had been composing a poem. You
       could make out the final version:

       Now in this hour that we part,

       I will ask to be forgotten never

       But, in thy pure and guileless heart,

       Consider me thy friend dear Eva.

       Anna would sit in the parlor while her
       mother dozed and pretend she was the first
       of these women, and if she tired of that,
       she would sometimes dare to pretend she
       was the second, but most often she liked
       to imagine herself the third.

       Flirtations were common and serious, and
       the women in Washington worked hard at
       them. A war in the distance always
       provides a rich context of desperation,
       while at the same time granting women a
       bit of extra freedom. They might quite
       enjoy it, if the price they paid were
       anything but their sons.

       The new men had hardly touched their food,
       cutting away the fatty parts of the meat
       and leaving them in a glistening greasy
       wasteful pile. They’d finished the
       whiskey, but made faces while they drank.
       Anna had resented the compliment of their
       eyes and, paradoxically, now resented the
       insult of their plates. Her mother set a
       good table.

       In fact, Anna did not like them and hoped
       they would not be staying. She had often
       seen men outside the Surratt boarding
       house lately, men who busied themselves in
       unpersuasive activities when she passed
       them. She connected these new men to
       those, and she was perspicacious enough to
       blame their boarder Louis Wiechman for the
       lot of them, without ever knowing the
       extent to which she was right. She had
       lived for the past year in a Confederate
       household in the heart of Washington.
       Everyone around her had secrets. She had
       grown quite used to this.

       Wiechman was a permanent guest at the
       Surratt boarding house. He was a fat,
       friendly man who worked in the office of
       the Commissary General of Prisons and
       shared John Surratt’s bedroom. Secrets
       were what Wiechman traded in. He provided
       John, who was a courier for the
       Confederacy, with substance for his covert
       messages south. But then Wiechman had
       also, on a whim, sometime in March, told
       the clerks in the office that a Secesh
       plot was being hatched against the
       president in the very house where he
       roomed.

       It created more interest than he had
       anticipated. He was called into the office
       of Captain McDavitt and interviewed at
       length. As a result, the Surratt boarding
       house was under surveillance from March
       through April, although it is an odd fact
       that no records of the surveillance or the
       interview could be found later.

       Anna would surely have enjoyed knowing
       this. She liked attention as much as most
       young girls. And this was the backdrop of
       a romance. Instead, all she could see was
       that something was up and that her pious,
       simple mother was part of it.

       The new guest, the one who talked the
       most, spoke with a strange lisp and Anna
       didn’t like this either. She stepped
       smoothly between the men to pick up their
       plates. She used the excuse of a letter
       from her brother to go out directly after
       breakfast. "Mama," she said. "I’ll just
       take John’s letter to poor Miss Ward."

       Just as her brother enjoyed discouraging
       her own romantic inclinations, she made it
       her business to discourage the affections
       of Miss Ward with regard to him. Calling
       on Miss Ward with the letter would look
       like a kindness, but it would make the
       point that Miss Ward had not gotten a
       letter herself.

       Besides, Booth was in town. If Anna was
       outside, she might see him again.

       The thirteenth had been beautiful, but the
       weather on the fourteenth was equal parts
       mud and wind. The wind blew bits of Anna’s
       hair loose and tangled them up with the
       fringe of her shawl. Around the Treasury
       Building she stopped to watch a carriage
       sunk in the mud all the way up to the
       axle. The horses, a matched pair of
       blacks, were rescued first. Then planks
       were laid across the top of the mud for
       the occupants. They debarked, a man and a
       woman, the woman unfashionably thin and
       laughing giddily as with every unsteady
       step her hoop swung and unbalanced her,
       first this way and then that. She clutched
       the man’s arm and screamed when a pig
       burrowed past her, then laughed again at
       even higher pitch. The man stumbled into
       the mire when she grabbed him, and this
       made her laugh, too. The man’s clothing
       was very fine, although now quite speckled
       with mud. A crowd gathered to watch the
       woman–the attention made her helpless with
       laughter.

       The war had ended, Anna thought, and
       everyone had gone simultaneously mad. She
       was not the only one to think so. It was
       the subject of newspaper editorials, of
       barroom speeches. "The city is disorderly
       with men who are celebrating too
       hilariously," the president’s day guard,
       William Crook, had written just yesterday.
       The sun came out, but only in a
       perfunctory, pale fashion.

       Her visit to Miss Ward was spoiled by the
       fact that John had sent a letter there as
       well. Miss Ward obviously enjoyed telling
       Anna so. She was very near-sighted and she
       held the letter right up to her eyes to
       read it. John had recently fled to Canada.
       With the war over, there was every reason
       to expect he would come home, even if
       neither letter said so.

       There was more news, and Miss Ward preened
       while she delivered it. "Bessie Hale is
       being taken to Spain. Much against her
       will," Miss Ward said. Bessie was the
       daughter of ex-senator John P. Hale. Her
       father hoped that a change of scenery
       would help pretty Miss Bessie conquer her
       infatuation for John Wilkes Booth. Miss
       Ward, whom no one including Anna’s brother
       thought was pretty, was laughing at her.
       "Mr. Hale does not want an actor in the
       family," Miss Ward said, and Anna
       regretted the generous impulse that had
       sent her all the way across town on such a
       gloomy day.

       "Wilkes Booth is back in Washington," Miss
       Ward finished, and Anna was at least able
       to say that she knew this, he had called
       on them only yesterday. She left the Wards
       with the barest of good-byes.

       Louis Wiechman passed her on the street,
       stopping for a courteous greeting,
       although they had just seen each other at
       breakfast. It was now about ten a.m.
       Wiechman was on his way to church. Among
       the many secrets he knew was Anna’s. "I
       saw John Wilkes Booth in the barbershop
       this morning," he told her. "With a crowd
       watching his every move."

       Anna raised her head. "Mr. Booth is a
       famous thespian. Naturally people admire
       him."

       She flattered herself that she knew JW a
       little better than these idolaters did.
       The last time her brother had brought
       Booth home, he’d followed Anna out to the
       kitchen. She’d had her back to the door,
       washing the plates. Suddenly she could
       feel that he was there. How could she have
       known that? The back of her neck grew hot,
       and when she turned, sure enough, there he
       was, leaning against the doorjamb,
       studying his nails.

       "Do you believe our fates are already
       written?" Booth asked her. He stepped into
       the kitchen. "I had my palm read once by a
       gypsy. She said I would come to a bad end.
       She said it was the worst palm she had
       ever seen." He held his hand out for her
       to take. "She said she wished she hadn’t
       even seen it," he whispered, and then he
       drew back quickly as her mother entered,
       before she could bend over the hand
       herself, reassure him with a different
       reading, before she could even touch him.

       "JW isn’t satisfied with acting," her
       brother had told her once. "He yearns for
       greatness on the stage of history," and if
       her mother hadn’t interrupted, if Anna had
       had two seconds to herself with him, this
       is the reading she would have done. She
       would have promised him greatness.

       "Mr. Booth was on his way to Ford’s
       Theatre to pick up his mail," Wiechman
       said with a wink. It was an ambiguous
       wink. It might have meant only that
       Wiechman remembered what a first love was
       like. It might have suggested he knew the
       use she would make of such information.

       Two regiments were returning to Washington
       from Virginia. They were out of step and
       out of breath, covered with dust. Anna
       drew a handkerchief from her sleeve and
       waved it at them. Other women were doing
       the same. A crowd gathered. A vendor came
       through the crowd, selling oysters. A man
       in a tight-fitting coat stopped him. He
       had a disreputable look–a bad haircut with
       long sideburns. He pulled a handful of
       coins from one pocket and stared at them
       stupidly. He was drunk. The vendor had to
       reach into his hand and pick out what he
       was owed.

       "Filthy place!" the man next to the drunk
       man said. "I really can’t bear the smell.
       I can’t eat. Don’t expect me to sleep in
       that flea-infested hotel another night."
       He left abruptly, colliding with Anna’s
       arm, forcing her to take a step or two.
       "Excuse me," he said without stopping, and
       there was nothing penitent or apologetic
       in his tone. He didn’t even seem to see
       her.

       Since he had forced her to start, Anna
       continued to walk. She didn’t even know
       she was going to Ford’s Theatre until she
       turned onto Eleventh Street. It was a bad
       idea, but she couldn’t seem to help
       herself. She began to walk faster.

       "No tickets, Miss," James R. Ford told
       her, before she could open her mouth. She
       was not the only one there. A small crowd
       of people stood at the theater door.
       "Absolutely sold out. It’s because the
       President and General Grant will be
       attending."

       James Ford held an American flag in his
       arms. He raised it. "I’m just decorating
       the President’s box." It was the last
       night of a lackluster run. He would never
       have guessed they would sell every seat.
       He thought Anna’s face showed
       disappointment. He was happy, himself, and
       it made him kind. "They’re rehearsing
       inside," he told her. "For General Grant!
       You just go on in for a peek."

       He opened the doors and she entered. Three
       women and a man came with her. Anna had
       never seen any of the others before, but
       supposed they were friends of Mr. Ford’s.
       They forced themselves through the doors
       beside her and then sat next to her in the
       straight-backed cane chairs just back from
       the stage.

       Laura Keene herself stood in the wings
       awaiting her entrance. The curtain was
       pulled back, so that Anna could see her.
       Her cheeks were round with rouge.

       The stage was not deep. Mrs.
       Mountchessington stood on it with her
       daughter, Augusta, and Asa Trenchard.

       "All I crave is affection," Augusta was
       saying. She shimmered with insincerity.

       Anna repeated the lines to herself. She
       imagined herself as an actress, married to
       JW, courted by him daily before an
       audience of a thousand, in a hundred
       different towns. They would play the love
       scenes over and over again, each one as
       true as the last. She would hardly know
       where her real and imaginary lives
       diverged. She didn’t suppose there was
       much money to be made, but even to pretend
       to be rich seemed like happiness to her.

       Augusta was willing to be poor, if she was
       loved. "Now I’ve no fortune," Asa said to
       her in response, "but I’m biling over with
       affections, which I’m ready to pour out
       all over you, like apple sass, over roast
       pork."

       The women exited. He was alone on the
       stage. Anna could see Laura Keene mouthing
       his line, just as he spoke it. The woman
       seated next to her surprised her by
       whispering it aloud as well.

       "Well, I guess I know enough to turn you
       inside out, old gal, you sockdologizing
       old man-trap," the three of them said.
       Anna turned to her seatmate who stared
       back. Her accent, Anna thought, had been
       English. "Don’t you love theater?" she
       asked Anna in a whisper. Then her face
       changed. She was looking at something
       above Anna’s head.

       Anna looked, too. Now she understood the
       woman’s expression. John Wilkes Booth was
       standing in the presidential box, staring
       down on the actor. Anna rose. Her seatmate
       caught her arm. She was considerably older
       than Anna, but not enough so that Anna
       could entirely dismiss her possible impact
       on Booth.

       "Do you know him?" the woman asked.

       "He’s a friend of my brother’s." Anna had
       no intention of introducing them. She
       tried to edge away, but the woman still
       held her.

       "My name is Cassie Streichman."

       "Anna Surratt."

       There was a quick, sideways movement in
       the woman’s eyes. "Are you related to Mary
       Surratt?"

       "She’s my mother." Anna began to feel just
       a bit of concern. So many people
       interested in her dull, sad mother. Anna
       tried to shake loose, and found, to her
       surprise, that she couldn’t. The woman
       would not let go.

       "I’ve heard of the boarding house," Mrs.
       Streichman said. It was a courtesy to
       think of her as a married woman. It was
       more of a courtesy than she deserved.

       Anna looked up at the box again. Booth was
       already gone. "Let me go," she told Mrs.
       Streichman, so loudly that Laura Keene
       herself heard. So forcefully that Mrs.
       Streichman finally did so.

       Anna left the theater. The streets were
       crowded and she could not see Booth
       anywhere. Instead, as she stood on the
       bricks, looking left and then right, Mrs.
       Streichman caught up with her. "Are you
       going home? Might we walk along?"

       "No. I have errands," Anna said. She
       walked quickly away. She was cross now,
       because she had hoped to stay and look for
       Booth, who must still be close by, but
       Mrs. Streichman had made her too uneasy.
       She looked back once. Mrs. Streichman
       stood in the little circle of her friends,
       talking animatedly. She gestured with her
       hands like an Italian. Anna saw Booth
       nowhere.

       She went back along the streets to St.
       Patrick’s Church, in search of her mother.
       It was noon and the air was warm in spite
       of the colorless sun. Inside the church,
       her mother knelt in the pew and prayed
       noisily. Anna slipped in beside her.

       "This is the moment," her mother
       whispered. She reached out and took Anna’s
       hand, gripped it tightly enough to hurt.
       Her mother’s eyes brightened with tears.
       "This is the moment they nailed him to the
       cross," she said. There was purple cloth
       over the crucifix. The pallid sunlight
       flowed into the church through colored
       glass.

       Across town a group of men had gathered in
       the Kirkwood bar and were entertaining
       themselves by buying drinks for George
       Atzerodt. Atzerodt was one of Booth’s
       co-conspirators. His assignment for the
       day, given to him by Booth, was to kidnap
       the Vice President. He was already so
       drunk he couldn’t stand. "Would you say
       that the Vice President is a brave man?"
       he asked and they laughed at him. He
       didn’t mind being laughed at. It struck
       him a bit funny himself. "He wouldn’t
       carry a firearm, would he? I mean, why
       would he?" Atzerodt said. "Are there ever
       soldiers with him? That nigger who watches
       him eat. Is he there all the time?"

       "Have another drink," they told him,
       laughing. "On us," and you couldn’t get
       insulted at that.

       Anna and her mother returned to the
       boarding house. Mary Surratt had rented a
       carriage and was going into the country.
       "Mr. Wiechman will drive me," she told her
       daughter. A Mr. Nothey owed her money they
       desperately needed; Mary Surratt was going
       to collect it.

       But just as she was leaving, Booth
       appeared. He took her mother’s arm, drew
       her to the parlor. Anna felt her heart
       stop and then start again, faster. "Mary,
       I must talk to you," he said to her
       mother, whispering, intimate. "Mary." He
       didn’t look at Anna at all and didn’t
       speak again until she left the room. She
       would have stayed outside the door to hear
       whatever she could, but Louis Wiechman had
       had the same idea. They exchanged one
       cross look, and then each left the
       hallway. Anna went up the stairs to her
       bedroom.

       She knew the moment Booth went. She liked
       to feel that this was because they had a
       connection, something unexplainable,
       something preordained, but in fact she
       could hear the door. He went without
       asking to see her. She moved to the small
       window to watch him leave. He did not stop
       to glance up. He mounted a black horse,
       tipped his hat to her mother.

       Her mother boarded a hired carriage,
       leaning on Mr. Wiechman’s hand. She held a
       parcel under her arm. Anna had never seen
       it before. It was flat and round and
       wrapped in newspaper. Anna thought it was
       a gift from Booth. It made her envious.

       Later at her mother’s trial, Anna would
       hear that the package had contained a set
       of field glasses. A man named Lloyd would
       testify that Mary Surratt had delivered
       them to him and had also given him
       instructions from Booth regarding guns. It
       was the single most damaging evidence
       against her. At her brother’s trial, Lloyd
       would recant everything but the field
       glasses. He was, he now said, too drunk at
       the time to remember what Mrs. Surratt had
       told him. He had never remembered. The
       prosecution had compelled his earlier
       testimony through threats. This revision
       would come two years after Mary Surratt
       had been hanged.

       Anna stood at the window a long time,
       pretending that Booth might return with
       just such a present for her.

       John Wilkes Booth passed George Atzerodt
       on the street at five p.m. Booth was on
       horseback. He told Atzerodt he had changed
       his mind about the kidnapping. He now
       wanted the Vice President killed. At 10:15
       or thereabouts. "I’ve learned that Johnson
       is a very brave man," Atzerodt told him.

       "And you are not," Booth agreed. "But
       you’re in too deep to back out now." He
       rode away. Booth was carrying in his
       pocket a letter to the editor of The
       National Intelligencer. In it, he
       recounted the reasons for Lincoln’s death.
       He had signed his own name, but also that
       of George Atzerodt.

       The men who worked with Atzerodt once said
       he was a man you could insult and he would
       take no offense. It was the kindest thing
       they could think of to say. Three men from
       the Kirkwood bar appeared and took
       Atzerodt by the arms. "Let’s find another
       bar," they suggested. "We have hours and
       hours yet before the night is over. Eat,
       drink. Be merry."

       At six p.m. John Wilkes Booth gave the
       letter to John Matthews, an actor, asking
       him to deliver it the next day. "I’ll be
       out of town or I would deliver it myself,"
       he explained. A group of Confederate
       officers marched down Pennsylvania Avenue
       where John Wilkes Booth could see them.
       They were unaccompanied; they were turning
       themselves in. It was the submissiveness
       of it that struck Booth hardest. "A man
       can meet his fate or make it," he told
       Matthews. "A man can rise to the occasion
       or fall beneath it."

       At sunset, a man called Peanut John lit
       the big glass globe at the entrance to
       Ford’s Theatre. Inside, the presidential
       box had been decorated with borrowed flags
       and bunting. The door into the box had
       been forced some weeks ago in an unrelated
       incident and could no longer be locked.

       It was early evening when Mary Surratt
       returned home. Her financial affairs were
       still unsettled; Mr. Nothey had not even
       shown up at their meeting. She kissed her
       daughter. "If Mr. Nothey will not pay us
       what he owes," she said, "I can’t think
       what we will do next. I can’t see a way
       ahead for us. Your brother must come
       home." She went into the kitchen to
       oversee the preparations for dinner.

       Anna went in to help. Since the afternoon,
       since the moment Booth had not spoken to
       her, she had been overcome with
       unhappiness. It had not lessened a bit in
       the last hours; she now doubted it ever
       would. She cut the roast into slices. It
       bled beneath her knife and she thought of
       Henrietta Irving’s white skin and the red
       heart beating underneath. She could
       understand Henrietta Irving perfectly. All
       I crave is affection, she said to herself,
       and the honest truth of the sentiment
       softened her into tears. Perhaps she could
       survive the rest of her life, if she
       played it this way, scene by scene. She
       held the knife up, watching the blood
       slide down the blade, and this was
       dramatic and fit her Shakespearean mood.

       She felt a chill and when she turned
       around one of the new boarders was leaning
       against the doorjamb, watching her mother.
       "We’re not ready yet," she told him
       crossly. He’d given her a start. He
       vanished back into the parlor.

       Once again, the new guests hardly ate.
       Louis Wiechman finished his food with many
       elegant compliments. His testimony in
       court would damage Mary Surratt almost as
       much as Lloyd’s. He would say that she
       seemed uneasy that night, unsettled,
       although none of the other boarders saw
       this. After dinner, Mary Surratt went
       through the house, turning off the
       kerosene lights one by one.

       Anna took a glass of wine and went to
       sleep immediately. She dreamed deeply, but
       her heartbreak woke her again only an hour
       or so later. It stabbed at her lightly
       from the inside when she breathed. She
       could see John Wilkes Booth as clearly as
       if he were in the room with her. "I am the
       most famous man in America," he said. He
       held out his hand, beckoned to her.

       Downstairs she heard the front door open
       and close. She rose and looked out the
       window, just as she had done that
       afternoon. Many people, far too many
       people were on the street. They were all
       walking in the same direction. One of them
       was George Atzerodt. Hours before he had
       abandoned his knife, but he too would die,
       along with Mary Surratt. He had gone too
       far to back out. He walked with his hands
       over the shoulders of two dark-haired men.
       One of them looked up. He was of a race
       Anna had never seen before. The new
       boarders joined the crowd. Anna could see
       them when they passed out from under the
       porch overhang.

       Something big was happening. Something big
       enough to overwhelm her own hurt feelings.
       Anna dressed slowly and then quickly and
       more quickly. I live, she thought, in the
       most wondrous of times. Here was the
       proof. She was still unhappy, but she was
       also excited. She moved quietly past her
       mother’s door.

       The flow of people took her down several
       blocks. She was taking her last walk
       again, only backward, like a ribbon
       uncoiling. She went past St. Patrick’s
       Church, down Eleventh Street. The crowd
       ended at Ford’s Theatre and thickened
       there. Anna was jostled. To her left, she
       recognized the woman from the carriage,
       the laughing woman, though she wasn’t
       laughing now. Someone stepped on Anna’s
       hoop skirt and she heard it snap. Someone
       struck her in the back of the head with an
       elbow. "Be quiet!" someone admonished
       someone else. "We’ll miss it." Someone
       took hold of her arm. It was so crowded,
       she couldn’t even turn to see, but she
       heard the voice of Cassie Streichman.

       "I had tickets and everything," Mrs.
       Streichman said angrily. "Do you believe
       that? I can’t even get to the door. It’s
       almost ten o’clock and I had tickets."

       "Can my group please stay together?" a
       woman toward the front asked. "Let’s not
       lose anyone," and then she spoke again in
       a language Anna did not know.

       "It didn’t seem a good show," Anna said to
       Mrs. Streichman. "A comedy and not very
       funny."

       Mrs. Streichman twisted into the space
       next to her. "That was just a rehearsal.
       The reviews are incredible. And you
       wouldn’t believe the waiting list. Years.
       Centuries! I’ll never have tickets again."
       She took a deep, calming breath. "At least
       you’re here, dear. That’s something I
       couldn’t have expected. That makes it very
       real. And," she pressed Anna’s arm, "if it
       helps in any way, you must tell yourself
       later there’s nothing you could have done
       to make it come out differently.
       Everything that will happen has already
       happened. It won’t be changed."

       "Will I get what I want?" Anna asked her.
       She could not keep the brightness of hope
       from her voice. Clearly, she was part of
       something enormous. Something memorable.
       How many people could say that?

       "I don’t know what you want," Mrs.
       Streichman answered. She had an uneasy
       look. "I didn’t get what I wanted," she
       added. "Even though I had tickets. Good
       God! People getting what they want! That’s
       not the history of the world, is it?"

       "Will everyone please be quiet!" someone
       behind Anna said. "Those of us in the back
       can’t hear a thing."

       Mrs. Streichman began to cry, which
       surprised Anna very much. "I’m such a
       sap," Mrs. Streichman said apologetically.
       "Things really get to me." She put her arm
       around Anna.

       "All I want," Anna began, but a man to her
       right hushed her angrily.

       "Shut up!" he said. "As if we came all
       this way to listen to you."

       –for John Kessel