Yuri, looking burnt out, is bent forward on the couch, his hands pressed together. Adrienne, he says, you’re so goddamned involved in the minute vibrations of your soul, that you never see anything as it really is.
Yuri, if you saw a movie of our life, Adrienne says — I thought about this this morning at breakfast — you would find me the more sympathetic character.
Yuri thinks about this, seems to envision such a movie, admits that Adrienne might be right. If that were so, he says, it would only go to prove the deceptiveness of cinematic illusion.
Two policemen emerge from the house across the street with a young black man between them, his hands in cuffs. A handful of onlookers applaud. This is a terrible mistake, the prisoner says. I was the one being robbed.
We cut to Yuri and Adrienne getting dressed to appear “live” on the Norman Safflower midnight talk show. Adrienne changes her clothes several times, unable to decide what she wants to wear. She asks Yuri which of two outfits he prefers. He chooses the more conventional one, and Adrienne decides to wear the other. That was my real choice, Yuri says.
In a taxi going to the television studio, Yuri takes Adrienne’s hand. He kisses her. Is this a terrible mistake we’re making, baby? she asks. We’ll do fine, he says. We see Adrienne and Yuri, in makeup, waiting backstage at the television studio for their entrance. The make-up transforms them; they look as if actors are impersonating them. An obsequious woman briefs them on the format of the show. Wives and husbands will be separated for the first part of the program, and interviewed independently. In the second part, they get to discuss each others “input” face to face. Yuri objects, says that no one told them they would be required to answer questions apart from each other.
I refuse to go through with this, Adrienne says.
We cut to Carroway and Anna Marie watching the Norman Safflower show on a large color television. Safflower, a distinguished looking white-haired man with an unusually resonant voice, is on screen introducing his guests. The guests (a pair of tennis pros, a brace of lawyers, and Yuri and Adrienne) seem barely visible next to the charismatic presence of the host. What we are dealing with tonight, Safflower intones, is the innate competitiveness of the male animal and the female animal. The camera pans the faces of each of the subjects (as Safflower calls them), the women first, Adrienne averting her eyes. From a long shot, we discover that husbands and wives are seated on opposite sides of a revolving stage.
The women are interviewed first. The silken-tongued Safflower wants to know how they would compare their own competence in their respective fields to that of their husband’s.
The camera is on Adrienne, who seems frozen momentarily, unable to get out a word. She smiles nervously, opens her mouth without sound. Safflower repeats the question, says not to worry she is among friends. Looking away, Adrienne says that she and Yuri are equally competent, that their strengths lie in different areas, that she’s a better technician but that his intuitive gifts are greater.
But you do feel you’re the better technician? Safflower asks. Do you think your husband would agree to that judgment?
We get the gist of the program through a succession of brief takes. Prodded by Safflower, Yuri says at one point, I have no intention of deprecating Adrienne’s abilities, which are considerable, but much of what she knows she’s learned from me.
The show turns into a nightmare for the participants, though they pretend for the most part — Yuri and Adrienne the exception — to be amused by the conflict the moderator generates.
In the second half of the show, husbands and wives face each other across a table. The hostility has become almost tangible. The male lawyer says, as if a joke, that his wife has the sense of high purpose of a Madame de Farge. When she picks up her knitting, I confess I get a little nervous.
Well, she says, looking at her husband — the camera moving between them — I don’t wittingly defend violators of the public trust. And I won’t sacrifice the truth as I know it just to get a client off.
Adrienne says at one point — He may have taught me everything he knows, but I’ve already forgotten whatever that was.
In the taxi going home from the television studio, Yuri and Adrienne are so furious with each other they can barely speak. This was your idea, Adrienne says.
They bump shoulders going into the house and face each other like lifelong enemies.
I’ve known all along that there are other women, she says.
You don’t even know who you are, he says.
When Yuri returns after taking home the sitter, Adrienne has his suitcase packed and waiting for him. He goes up to the bedroom, ignores Adrienne who is pretending to sleep, and repacks in a white heat, throwing the clothes his wife had given him across the room. Before leaving the house, Yuri goes into Rebecca’s bedroom and lingers, sitting on his suitcase next to the bed.
We see Yuri leave the house with his suitcase, walk into a local upscale bar, and order a Scotch with water. A woman comes over and sits down next to him; she introduces herself as a former patient.
We cut to Adrienne getting undressed — she has been under the covers in her clothes — in a kind of dazed slow motion. She is lying in bed with the lights on, dozing, when the phone rings. You woke me up, damn you, she says to whoever it is. A woman’s voice asks to speak to the other Dr. Tipton.
Yuri’s not here, Adrienne says. Who the hell is this?
Anna Marie identifies herself, says she has left Carroway and needs someone to talk to.
You’re not thinking of doing something desperate? Adrienne asks.
I don’t understand what you’re asking, Anna Marie says. What do you mean by something desperate?
We next see Adrienne in the bathroom taking a couple of valium, and then curled up on the living room couch reading a magazine.
Adrienne is just beginning to doze off on the couch when the doorbell rings. At first she is afraid to answer, then she picks up a poker from the fireplace and goes to the door.
Anna Marie appears and identifies herself. Adrienne steps aside and lets her in. She looks for a place to put the poker she has been holding behind her back.
Some time has passed. The two women are sitting on the couch, talking with a certain ease.
Carroway gets off on women who are smarter than he is, says Anna Marie. He thinks of sex as an educational experience.
We cut to Yuri sitting on a couch in Peter and Barbara Cohen’s living room. Barbara sits across from him in an oversized bathrobe.
I’m writing a novel, she says, about my own tattered marriage in the disguise of Adrienne’s and your marriage. You’re the first person I told this to. I hope you feel privileged. If you want to go to sleep just say so and I’ll go away.
I’ll take a hotel room tomorrow, Yuri says. I don’t think I’ll get to sleep tonight. Look, don’t feel you have to entertain me, Barbara.
I’m going to fix myself one more drink and then go to sleep, she says. An hour later they are still talking.
We cut to a shadowy figure standing sideways at the entrance to the Tiptons’ house. He knocks twice. We hear Adrienne’s voice asking who’s there.
It’s me, Carroway says.
Adrienne opens the door just enough to make herself heard. What do you think you’re doing here? she says.