Ms America and the Brouhaha on Broadway

by Diana Dempsey

  “Why didn’t you tell me she was seeing Damian?” Uncle Jerry wants to know.

  Who’s Damian? That’s what I want to know.

  “Because it didn’t matter!” Kimberly wails.

  “These things do matter.” Uncle Jerry sounds quite agitated now. “You’re a wonderful photographer, Kimmy, but you’re young and you don’t have much experience. I have to go out on a limb to get you hired on these productions—”

  “Then don’t do it! If it’s too much trouble for you, don’t do it.”

  Now Kimberly sounds as petulant as Rachel sometimes does. Even though Kimberly is eight years older.

  Wow. Kimberly is only eight years older than my daughter.

  “My point is,” Uncle Jerry goes on, clearly doing his best to remain patient, “you’ve always done me proud, every show I’ve ever brought you in on, and—”

  “But not this time?”

  Silence. Then again Uncle Jerry speaks. I get the idea he’s choosing his words carefully. “What about a few weeks ago, during tech, when you burst into tears in front of everybody?”

  “That was because Lisette was screaming that I have no business being part of this production! That the only reason I’m here is because of you. Which is pretty ironic given that this show wouldn’t even be happening if Lisette’s father hadn’t paid for it.”

  “What Lisette’s father paid for is beside the point.” Uncle Jerry pauses, then: “You and she got into a tussle about you suggesting she bring in those beauty queens, too. What are their names? Happy, Twiggy, I don’t know. Anyway, what was that all about?”

  I clutch my handbag, miffed that Uncle Jerry is so dismissive of me and mine but dying to hear Kimberly’s response.

  “Everybody on this show knew Lisette needed advice about beauty pageants,” Kimberly says. “She was writing about it, but it was obvious she didn’t know the first thing.”

  “But why was it up to you to bring that up? That’s something for the director to suggest, not the junior photographer. I will tell you, that one time when Lisette said you put your nose where it shouldn’t be, I have to say I agreed with her.”

  “I can’t believe you’re saying that!” Kimberly yelps.

  “You were out of line there, Kimmy, but did I say a word about it at the time? No. But only now do I understand what Lisette meant when she said you did it to get back at her.”

  Silence. My mind cranks. How would bringing us beauty queens in as consultants be “getting back” at Lisette? And why would Kimberly be seeking revenge on Lisette in the first place?

  “That is the craziest thing I ever heard.” Kimberly’s voice is wobbling a bit. I wonder if she’s about to burst into tears like she apparently did in front of everybody a few weeks ago. “I can’t believe you think I would do that.”

  “What I think,” Uncle Jerry says, sounding as ticked off as ever, “is that you and Lisette were at each other’s throats—”

  At each other’s throats? Really? It was that bad?

  “—because of Damian. I will tell you something and I want you to remember it. If I bring you in on a show, you have an obligation to tell me about any conflicts of interest. Beforehand. Every time I bring you in to work with me, my reputation is on the line, Kimmy. Whether you like it or not.”

  Silence. I have a feeling Kimberly is hanging her head and looking pathetic. Of course, in her situation I might be doing exactly the same thing.

  “I am just shocked by all this,” Uncle Jerry huffs. “Especially given how Nonni and I raised you.”

  He stomps out. Kimberly is alone.

  Well, sort of.

  I hear her walk around a bit then stop. I wish she’d leave, or enter a stall so that I could leave, but no such luck.

  I keep waiting, feeling more awkward by the second. I should have boldly walked out of this stall the second Uncle Jerry left. By now it’s clear I’m just trying to avoid the humiliation of having to reveal my eavesdropping self.

  My word, I think a moment later, what is Kimberly doing? Maybe she’s hunched over a sink in front of the mirror, staring into her own eyes, trying to regain control of her emotions …

  Then I realize that if she is staring into the mirror, she might well be seeing the reflection of my chunky boots with the foldover cuff and faux shearling lining.

  Uh oh. I think she just did.

  Because all of a sudden she walks to my stall and stops. I cringe gazing down onto the toes of her chocolate-colored UGGs. “Whoever you are,” she says, “are you coming out or not?”

  CHAPTER NINE

  There’s nothing else to do but march out of that stall and face my fate.

  Kimberly’s blue eyes bulge when she sees me. Other than that, she looks like her usual self, her blond hair restrained by a headband and messy bun, her petite body encased in a blue plaid shirt belted over leggings. “You!” she cries.

  “I’m sorry, Kimberly. I should have made my presence known—”

  “Yes, you should have!” She shakes her head as if she can’t believe what she’s seeing. “You were listening in on a private conversation.”

  “Well, that’s true, but to be fair this isn’t exactly your private dressing room. And your Uncle Jerry really shouldn’t have been in here.”

  “Still.” She harrumphs. “You of all people. And after I brought you and your friends onto this show.”

  Which I am more curious about than ever. “After hearing what your uncle said, I have to wonder why you did that.”

  Kimberly looks stunned that I’m asking. And she’s silent for so long that I toss out a theory. “Did you do it so you could make some sort of point with Jason?”

  She’s unable to come up with a response to that query, which makes me think I hit the nail on the head. Finally: “I did it as a favor to you,” she asserts. “And also because, as I told my uncle, Lisette needed help with all the beauty-queen stuff.”

  I doubt that’s the whole story. “It just sounds like it was a very unusual suggestion coming from you.”

  “Look, I don’t care to get into it. This day is already bad enough.” Then she stomps out of the ladies room without another word.

  Darn. I didn’t get a chance to ask who Damian is.

  I find Trixie and Shanelle in a rear row of the theater nursing coffees from the backstage coffeepot. They’re posed like the other cast and crew: with a wooden plank across their seats so their laptops can perch on top for easy note-taking. The house lights are on and there is action onstage: crew members moving props, a couple of techs on ladders tweaking lights, actors huddling with Oliver.

  “They rolled away the stage staircase,” Shanelle tells me. “I bet they’re going to renovate it something fierce.”

  “They better,” Trixie says, “if they keep it at all. By the way, they’re just about to rehearse the fifth scene in the first act. I think Enzo rewrote it in a big way. How did it go with him?”

  “Fine. But that’s not what I want to talk about,” and I launch into a spiel about my restroom interlude with Kimberly and her Uncle Jerry. “So,” I conclude, “apparently there was a giant brouhaha between Kimberly and Lisette about some mystery man named Damian, whom Lisette was seeing. And that created a conflict of interest that Kimberly’s Uncle Jerry wishes he’d known about before.”

  “And we care about this for what reason?” Shanelle wants to know.

  Her question flummoxes me. “Well, aren’t you curious about everything that has to do with Lisette?”

  “Girl, I love you and all, but to be honest I am not that interested in Lisette. And I don’t think Trixie is, either.”

  Trixie shakes her head with obvious regret. “I’m sorry, Happy, but Shanelle’s right. Although I do feel terrible about what happened to Lisette. Anyhoo, we’ll find out more about her tomorrow. Her father is hosting a celebration of her life. Oliver says we all have to go.”

  There’s no way I’d miss it, even if it weren’t a command performance. But right now I can’t r
esist pressing my point. “Don’t you find it at least somewhat intriguing that Uncle Jerry says Kimberly and Lisette were, and I quote, ‘at each other’s throats’?”

  “I think you’d be hard-pressed to find an individual whose throat Lisette was not at,” Shanelle says.

  Trixie rubs my arm. She’s looking at me as if I were sort of pathetic, which perhaps I am. “You’re not still thinking Lisette was murdered, are you, Happy?”

  “You best not be thinking Kimberly murdered her,” Shanelle mutters.

  The thought had crossed my mind, preposterous though it might seem.

  Shanelle pipes up again before I come up with an answer. “You’re justified in being darn curious about Kimberly, though. That requires no further explanation.”

  “That is part of it.” I’m relieved there’s at least one thing on which we can agree. “I wonder if she had a broken childhood. Her uncle said something about how he and her grandmother raised her.” It’s sad if Kimberly had a rough upbringing, though it’ll take more than that to give me the warm fuzzies about her.

  Onstage the actors begin their rehearsal. Oliver positions himself in the front row to observe. I relax in my seat, half watching and half allowing my mind to wander. So did Kimberly think she’d earn Jason’s admiration by getting his wife and her friends a Broadway consulting gig? If so, her strategy worked. Jason told me he was impressed that Kimberly was so thoughtful and that she had that kind of yank.

  Of course, I must also wonder why Kimberly would want to impress Jason. What can he do for her? I suppose he can help her professionally if the calendars are a big success. Unfortunately, I’m concerned her interest is mostly personal.

  By that I mean romantic.

  Since I will not allow myself to dwell on that distressing possibility, I focus on the rehearsal. Before long I find myself lost in it. The rewritten scene is wildly improved and for the first time includes some of the feedback we beauty queens provided. If Enzo and Oliver work this kind of magic on the rest of the libretto, it’s just possible that the poster for Dream Angel won’t land on Joe Allen’s redbrick wall after all.

  The rehearsal breaks and Trixie consults her watch, a casual Timex with a fabric band featuring white dots on a navy background. “It’s already six,” she says. “Lord, I need more coffee to get through the next two hours.”

  “You may not want it,” I tell her, “if you hear the story Enzo told me today. He swears it’s true.”

  We head backstage and I begin the tale. “This was during a Broadway run of Les Misérables.”

  “One of the longest-running musicals of all time,” Shanelle says. “I always call it Les Miz.”

  “I do, too. Anyway, as you know, it has lots of child actors and their contracts include appearance clauses.”

  “All performers must have that,” Trixie says.

  “They do. Enzo told me there are all kinds of rules, about tanning and tattoos and weight and you name it. He said he’s worked on productions where the female performers are weighed every week.”

  “And not the men?” Shanelle cries. “That would get on my last nerve.”

  We arrive backstage and sneak into a corner. I keep my voice low. “The production went on for so long that one of the girls had a growth spurt and outgrew her part, according to the specs in her contract. So she got fired.”

  Trixie’s face falls. “Oh, how sad for that poor child.”

  “It’s a lesson in real life,” Shanelle says, “not just a lesson in show business. Anyway, what happened?”

  I can’t help chuckling. Nervy girl: I’ll give her that. “She peed in the backstage coffeepot.”

  “What?” Trixie squeals.

  “Yup. People were drinking the coffee and saying, wow, this tastes tinny.”

  “Oh, my Lord, can you imagine!” Trixie shudders. “Everybody must’ve wanted to skin her alive after that.”

  “Apparently the girl’s mother didn’t want to believe her daughter did it, which got all the mothers accusing each other’s children. It got so bad that two moms got into a fistfight at the stage door. The cops had to be called.” I pause before I deliver the punch line. “So after that, what do you think they called the production? Les Wizz.”

  After that cautionary tale, we approach the backstage coffeepot with trepidation. But with at least two more hours before we can call it quits for the day, caffeine is called for.

  Tonya Shepherds, the platinum blond onetime beauty queen who plays the lead in Dream Angel—and darn well, too—sidles close to me as I’m loading my java with low-fat cream. She looks cute in raw edge skinny jeans and a flowy green utility shirt partially tucked in. “I love the rewritten scenes,” she whispers. “Was it you who fed Enzo that line about rhinestones and roses?”

  “That was Trixie. How much rewriting is Enzo doing?”

  “A lot. I don’t know how I’m going to nail it all by Sunday.”

  “Are you saying—”

  “We’re back into previews on Sunday,” Tonya tells me.

  Wow. Only 48 hours from now.

  “Between you and me”—Tonya lowers her voice even further—“Oliver wants to take advantage of all the publicity we’re getting because of Lisette.”

  That would be cynical of Oliver, but I wouldn’t put it past him. “He’s not worried that Lisette’s family would think restarting Dream Angel so soon is disrespectful to her?”

  “Go online and read the update in the Times. There’s a quote from her father that Dream Angel is his daughter’s legacy and the best way to honor her is to resume production. You know the story of Rent, right?”

  Since I don’t, she tells me.

  “The creator, who wrote not only every single word but also composed the music, died the night of the final dress rehearsal. I think it was a heart problem that two different ERs didn’t diagnose. Anyway, Jonathan Larson was his name. He was only thirty-five.”

  “How tragic,” I murmur.

  “They skipped only one preview before they started up again. And of course Rent became a huge megahit. I gotta go,” she finishes, and whirls away.

  I relay the Dream Angel 411 to Trixie and Shanelle as I retake my seat in the audience.

  “What do you want to bet,” Shanelle murmurs, “that Oliver will use this as an opportunity to raise ticket prices, too?”

  We’re waiting for rehearsal to resume when I realize this is an excellent opportunity to review my photos of Lisette’s call log. Finally. I pull out my cell phone and what name do I quickly spy? That of Damian Paganos. It wouldn’t have meant much to me earlier today, but it sure does now.

  So this is the man Lisette was seeing. I squint at his photo, wishing I could see it more clearly. All I can ascertain is that he’s got dark hair and looks to be about thirty. His phone number begins with the Manhattan area code 212.

  I check my photos of Lisette’s texts, by now feeling a surge of sleuthing adrenaline. Yes, Damian’s name appears on that list, too, not surprisingly. It does not show up among her emails.

  “What are you doing, Happy?” Trixie wants to know. She’s to my left, with Shanelle to her left, and I see she’s playing Blendoku on her phone. That sort of thing is common around here. A couple rows ahead of us, two actors are playing poker on their laptops. There’s a lot of waiting around putting together a Broadway show. You have to pack your patience.

  I confess what I’m up to.

  “Ooh, let me help.” Trixie sets her phone aside. “Who did Lisette call a lot?”

  “Well, apart from the mysterious Damian, somebody named Wendy Jackson Rafferty.” Her photo reveals an African-American woman who looks to be in her fifties. Like Damian, she’s a Manhattan local whose name also appears on Lisette’s roster of texts. “Oh, good,” I add, “there’s email traffic, too.” Given that I have only a list of Lisette’s emails, though, all I can access is the beginning of the emails that were sent to her. “Wendy sent one twenty-four hours ago.”

  “What does it say?” />
  “ ‘Lisette,’ ” I read out loud, “ ‘the waiting is almost over. The board will meet tomorrow to make their decision, probably around ...’ That’s all I’ve got.”

  Trixie frowns. “That sounds serious, doesn’t it? I wonder what board Wendy is talking about.”

  “Let’s see if I can find anything from googling Wendy’s name. Okay, here we go. She works for a Pettigrew Realty.”

  “So Wendy is probably a real estate agent. Do you think maybe it’s the board of a homeowners’ association they’re talking about? Maybe Lisette needed to get approved before she could buy.” Trixie lowers her voice. “I hate to be mean, but I’m not sure I would’ve wanted Lisette for a neighbor.”

  “What are you two whispering about?” Shanelle leans over to ask.

  We’re bringing Shanelle up to speed when I realize that I have a few more photos of Lisette’s emails that I haven’t checked yet. And when I do, I discover another email from Wendy, from two days ago.

  “The day Lisette went home sick to her stomach,” Trixie reminds us.

  “Thanks to Oliver,” Shanelle mutters. “By the way, I heard that tech over there say that it’s taking so long to get rehearsal started again because Enzo has to lengthen the monologue. Oliver moved up a costume change.”

  This is the sort of detail that never occurred to me before I was a Broadway aficionado. Or is it aficionada in my case? Anyway, everything has to time out perfectly. If a performer must make a costume change, the action must continue without him just long enough so he can get that done. All theater is an elaborately choreographed dance, often with as much going on backstage as onstage.

  “What does the older email from Wendy say?” Trixie asks.

  “ ‘Lisette,’ ” I read, “ ‘I can’t make any guarantees. The Belfer is notorious for board turndowns. That said …’ That’s all I’ve got. So now we need to find out what the Belfer is.”

  “I’m on it,” Shanelle says, clicking madly on her cell phone.

  I can’t help but smile. Shanelle and Trixie may think I needn’t bother sleuthing, but they’re game to play along.