A/N: I kind of really love this chapter? I don't know... as soon as I came up with the idea for it, I really blew through the whole thing! Let me know what you think!

Doing interviews was no longer a foreign activity to Midge. Being on tour with Shy actually meant that she was being interviewed for newspapers and women's magazines all over the country. If a media outlet wasn't part of the press hoard that got to interview Shy, she was usually their next call. The women's magazines especially wanted to speak with her, thinking they could get the inside scoop on tour life that wasn't given by the men.

When The New Yorker came knocking though, it had been over four months since Midge had to put on her interview face and make nice with the press. There was still no news of the European leg of Shy's tour, but she'd been steadily doing gigs and Suzy was making a lot of connections. She was getting herself out there, and making sure her face was known. They went to a lot of Lenny's shows, and ate lunch at The Stage at least once a week… The Gaslight had been busier than ever.

"So, Mrs. Maisel," the woman that was interviewing her, Kathy, sat across from her with a bright smile and a beautiful hat that Midge wanted to ask her about later. "Should I call you that, or do you prefer something else?"

"Oh, Midge is fine! Mrs. Maisel is just my stage name." Midge waved it off, then answered the question she already knew was coming, just out of habit. "I'm not even a Maisel anymore actually, but I got to keep the name in the divorce."

"So you're a divorcee then?" She wrote this information down as though it was breaking news. Midge furrowed her brow at the woman, wondering how likely it was that she'd never heard of Midge before getting this assignment. "That's interesting."

"Anyone that comes to one of my shows would know that though. It comes up a lot in my act; kids, ex husband, family stuff. I talk about what I keep in my purse, so clearly nothing is off limits."

Kathy took these words into consideration. She nodded her head and scribbled some words on her pad of paper again. Midge looked over at Suzy, who was sitting at the bar with Jackie.

"How do you balance that? Single mother and going out all hours of the night to do your comedy?" Midge bristled a bit at the woman's tone. From the corner of her eyes she saw Suzy straighten up, ready to draw blood if needed.

"Well their father watches them, and my parents. They are all very supportive of my work. I got remarried over the summer as well, and as long as he isn't working he will stay home with them too. I usually don't leave until they're already asleep, then I get back before they wake up," Midge tried to laugh it all off. "They don't even know I'm gone most nights."

"Mhm…" Clearly Midge wasn't giving this woman what she wanted. It made her a little nervous about what could possibly be next. "And what of these rumours about you and Lenny Bruce having a salacious affair?"

BINGO

She was looking for a scoop. She was hoping that this conversation would get her some sort of juicy detail that would either give her bigger interviews in the future, or maybe even a promotion. Unfortunately for her, Midge had been dodging comments and questions about Lenny for the better part of two years. Whenever people even hinted at his name, she had a list of excuses and reasons to use in order to avoid the topic altogether.

"Lenny Bruce and I have never had an affair, salacious or otherwise."

She had a gig later that night at Joel's club. He and Suzy had drawn up a contract and everything, saying that Midge would perform at least once every two weeks when she was in town. The flexibility was unheard of, and Joel didn't actually hold her to anything, but Suzy was proud to have gotten some of her own contract writing practice in during the process. Even with the tour, Reggie's team had dealt with the contract writing while Suzy and Midge made amendments where they saw fit.

"So, I got interviewed by The New Yorker earlier today," Midge told the audience. She'd gone over the beats of the story with Lenny before leaving for the show. He'd found the whole thing rather funny, and much like her, was ready for the cat to just come out of the bag already. "It was the first interview I've had while home that was actually done by a woman. I was so excited when I saw her walk into The Gaslight. She had a gorgeous hat on, that no matter how the interview went, I knew I had to ask her about."

The audience laughed, riveted from the moment she grabbed the microphone. She recognized some of them, and was happy to see that Joel had some regular customers. It would be easier to tell this story with some familiar faces, and a group that actually wanted to hear what she had to say.

"Let's say the interview was shorter than expected. She wasn't so much interested in me as a comedian, but interested in me as a female comedian." Midge glanced over at the bar and saw Suzy looking as unimpressed as usual, which must mean she was doing well. "Instead of asking me any of the normal interview-type questions, she wanted to know how I got to where I am now. How much or who did I have to do in order to get on the tour with Shy, and also headline venues like this fine establishment."

Joel raised his drink to her from his spot near Suzy at the bar. The women in the audience were nodding in understanding. Even if they weren't in the same industry as Midge, they could relate to the problem she'd faced earlier.

"You know what she really wanted to know about? Lenny Bruce."

There was a chatter among the crowd. Suzy and Joel looked at each other in confusion. She hadn't told them that she was about to drop this bomb, but it had gone on too far. The New Yorker prodding her about the situation just showed that there was no reason to hide it anymore. She brushed it off with Kathy earlier, but that was just because she didn't want to give the nosy woman what she wanted. Midge and Lenny were going to tell the story themselves.

"All of this came about, I'm sure some of you know, after Lenny opened for me at The Gaslight one night. I'd been blackballed after I trash talked Sophie Lennon very publicly on stage," the whooping and cheering brought a smile to her face even bigger than the one that she'd already been sporting. "After that, her manager made sure that no one would hire me for a gig. At one point, even The Gaslight wasn't allowed to let me do shows."

Walking across the stage, she ran a hand over a wrinkle near her waist. She did this sometimes, pretending to be distracted by something so small while the audience laughed, or absorbed her words.

"I'm not sure how many of you know this, but a few months before that, my husband left me. That guy over there, actually," She pointed the mic towards Joel and smiled. The part of the audience that was new to her comedy looked shocked that she would call him out like that. "Nah, we're both a lot happier now than we were together."

There was no falsity in her words, even where there used to be… at a different time.

"Anyway, the night the owner of this place, Joel," she pointed again. "Left me, I drank a bottle of wine, stumbled into The Gaslight, walked up on the stage like I owned the place and 'performed'. It wasn't so much a performance as public disgrace and humiliation, but Suzy saw something in me that night. I was boozy and sad, and angry that my soon-to-be ex-husband left me. More mad that he seemed to choose a career in comedy over the life we had together..." She turned the mic on Suzy then, loving how the audience would turn to look at who she was pointing at in the back of the room. "Long story short, I got thrown into the back of a Police car for indecent exposure. I still don't think that actually happened… but a lot of people have assured me that it did."

Midge loved the wave of laughter that flooded the room at that joke. She loved it even more the second time around, when for the fourth time, she pointed the mic towards the bar.

"Who was in that Police car already? Lenny Bruce. Lenny did me the favour of opening for me a few months later to repay me for bailing him out the morning after we were arrested together. I asked him if he loved comedy, he told me that he'd literally rather do anything else." There was more she could say. So much more that goes into the story that she wanted to share with people, but now wasn't the time. Maybe she would write something about it? "We kept running into each other. A jazz club here, a dirty bar there, and one time I stood backstage for him when he did The Steve Allen Show. He even came to visit me when I was on tour with Shy, and he saw that we both happened to be in Vegas."

The next act was standing near the stage, and Midge almost felt bad about the fact that he was going to have to follow her after this. He looked nervous, and she was certain she'd never seen him before, but hopefully he wasn't too new to the comedic scene.

As if a gift from heaven, a woman shouted out from the shadows just as Midge was about to open her mouth to drop the bomb: "So you didn't sleep with him?"

"See, that's the thing. I did not have an affair with Lenny Bruce," she put the mic back on the stand and looked down at her feet for a moment. Then, with the biggest, shit-eating grin she could manage: "I married him in Vegas, then I slept with him."

The room exploded.