“Hello, Vivien!” Bella said with a wave as she came forward to give Vivien the sort of hug professional women often gave each other even if they weren’t close friends. “I hope you don’t mind that we stopped in. Susie mentioned all the activity—that’s her nephew over there, carrying one of those boxes—going on today, and I just had to stop by and congratulate you again…and welcome you to town as another small business owner.”
“That’s so nice of you,” Vivien replied sincerely. “Thank you. The volunteers are really making quite a dent in the cleanup work. And it’s nice to see you again, Melody. I hope Cherry didn’t work you too hard yesterday.”
“Oh, no, of course not. She’s just brilliant. It really helps with my anxiety doing those long, slow yoga poses,” Melody replied.
“Vivien, you might not remember me, but I’m—I was, I mean—Susie Parminster. Now it’s Wallaby—my husband’s a dentist, if you need one—and I just have to tell you how excited we are to finally have a live theater coming back to town.” Susie was beaming and looking around as if it was Christmas.
“Oh, yes, of course I remember you,” Vivien replied, scrambling for details. And then they came to her. “You were Marty the year they didGreasein high school—and of course Melody was Sandy.”
And I was nothing.
“That’s right!” Susie seemed to be delighted to be remembered. “Hello, Robbie!” she called, waving to her nephew. “Keep up the good work!” She turned back to Vivien. “And welcome back to Wicks Hollow. I’m sure it’s going to be quite a change from the hustle and bustle of—New York? That’s where you came from, right?”
“The home of Broadway,” said Melody with a smile. “I’ll bet it was wonderful being there and able to see any show anytime you wanted.” She sounded a little wistful. “We get to Chicago a couple times a year—I’ll take my father even now—but they just don’t have the variety there.”
“Yes, I saw a lot of shows when I lived there.”Both in the audience and from backstage.
“Well, my dear, I’m sorry to interrupt—we just wanted to stop in and say hi. Do you mind if I just show them around backstage really quickly right now?” asked Bella. “We won’t be a minute. I’m just so curious to see what you’ve done already.”
“Well, not a lot, really, but sure, feel free. It’s not as if you haven’t been here before—and there are people everywhere, so nothing’s off-limits.” Which reminded Vivien that the Tuesday Ladies were still AWOL somewhere backstage, and that probably meant trouble.
But before she could do that, Randy Hebden, the electrician, hailed her from one of the side aisles. “Hey, Vivien, you got a minute?”
She hadn’t expected to see him today, but she was happy to look at the numbers for updated lights and sound equipment and to answer some questions, especially since, until he was done with his part, there wouldn’t be any air conditioning in the building. July and August in Michigan could be steamy, and as far as Vivien was concerned, the sooner, the better.
Finally, she was free to weave her way through the backstage area in search of Maxine, Juanita, Iva, and Orbra.
She found them in the props room.
“Rosencrantz would never have used that type of sword, Maxine,” Juanita said. “It’s too skinny—”
“I know that,” snapped Maxine, who was whipping the flexible-bladed sword through the air as if her friend was Guildenstern himself and she was driving him back in a fencing match. She was also wearing the Phantom’s mask, and Vivien’s headache suddenly got worse. “I was just testing it out—”
“Then why did you say it was probably fromRomeo and Juliet?” demanded Juanita, who happened to be holding a much larger broadsword type of weapon that might have been fromKing Lear. She was wearing the ruby slippers, which were missing half of their sequins.
ThefreakingOdd Couple—right here, live and in person, Vivien thought. Female version.
Only she wasn’t sure who would be Felix and who would be Oscar.
“Maybe it’s fromRosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead,” said Iva, who was digging through a large trunk. She was a librarian and knew all sorts of random things. “Although I believe Rosencrantz used a knife, not a sword, in that one.”
Fortunately for Vivien’s peace of mind, the swords Maxine and Juanita were brandishing were retractable stage props made from foam and light plastic, and therefore the biggest hazard from either was the amount of dust flying through the air.
She hoped.
“Oh, look! I’ve always wondered how they did the change of the pumpkin into Cinderella’s coach,” Iva said, her voice rising with enthusiasm. “This has to be the framework for it—and heavens to Betsy! Look at the size of this!”
She was grappling with a collection of light metal rods that were covered with shimmery white material in a sort of tentlike construction. It could very well have been Cinderella’s pumpkin-coach. Unfortunately, there were holes chewed in the flimsy, gauzy material, and some of the rods were bent, while others were detached from their moorings. With Iva having somehow gotten in the center of it, her attempts to set it up gave the prop—and her—a fluttery, spectral appearance.
“Oh, look at this!” exclaimed Orbra. She was examining a flying monkey whose wings still had fishing line trailing from them. “He’s almost cute up close. Maybe Vivien will let me have him.”
“You can hang it in your office,” Maxine said in a surprisingly agreeable tone, still examining how the blade of her sword retracted quickly and silently. Still wearing the Phantom mask.
“You’re the one who should hang it in her office, Maxine,” snarked Juanita. “He’d feel right at home with the Wicked Witch of the West.”
“Juanita, you cad! How dare you!En garde!” cried Maxine, and she whipped the epee through the air so vigorously that she wobbled and almost lost her balance. Of course, the elderly woman was still holding her cane in the other hand, so at least she didn’t spin and tumble to the ground, although she knocked off the mask, and her bottle-bottom glasses went askew.
“Well, I can see I’m going to have to separate the two of you before there’s any bloodshed back here,” Vivien said with a grin. “The scones are going fast, Maxine, so if you want one, you’d better grab one before it’s too late.”
