Is Barbara Walters really retiring? Really?!

Skepticism of course is warranted: Barbara Walters retiring? No she's not. But she says she is... then she says she's not. Last night on "Late Show with David Letterman," she and that other legend declared that they would walk off into the sunset together.... After first declaring that they had no desire to leave at all.

What's going on here? Shrinks have terms for this -- "inner conflict," is certainly one. "Lapsus linguae" may be the other -- a slip of the tongue that reveals the true inner emotions... Barbara's had those recently.

Wednesday night, watching her glide through the movable feast of power brokers in the Pool Room of the Four Seasons -- all gathered to fete this spectacular 50-year run which may or may not be coming to an end -- someone was overheard to say: "I give her three weeks."

That may be generous. I give her three days. (By the way, you may want to watch the tribute Friday at 9. It's quite good.) 

Everyone says the same thing about Walters: She looks great, vital, beautiful... a Dorian Gray in a red suit who defies the clock. They also say she can't retire, anymore than Mike Wallace or Walter Cronkite could. It's not just the push and pull of a great career - which always seems to exert a magnetic pull over any avowed intention to back out, drawing them back in, over and over again... It's something much deeper: An identity bound tightly to that career, as if one cannot be separated from the other. The obvious benefits of work are one thing -- keeping active, remaining vital, doing everything you are so good at doing. But it's that deeper power the legends never have control over - the one that says they have to keep going because if they don't, they stop becoming what they were all along.

Johnny Carson was the only singular legend in TV history that I'm aware of who could bodily remove himself from that strangely human paradox -- though hard to say how successful he was because he died a mere ten years after leaving "Tonight": A recluse in a Malibu compound who swung a tennis racket and had no wistful glance back to the glory days... Or so one is lead to believe. We are all still waiting for the Bill Zehme biography.

But Barbara's different. Wednesday night was Her Crowd: Oprah, David Geffen, Woody Allen and every other luminary you could care to think of, all elbow-to-elbow in a packed room that parted only when the queen moved through. She looked happy, and sad; in the moment and also wistful. She made jokes because jokes are always a nice way to diffuse complex emotions: "At least now I have time for Botox. But since I'm not going to be on TV anymore, I don't need the Botox."

 She explained (redundantly): "I don't know how to say goodbye. So I won't, and instead say, 'à bientôt...'"

That means "see you later." Or to quote that overquoted Hallmark-like saying, "A good-bye is never painful unless you're never going to say hello again."