by Mindy Klasky
“We’re at my mother’s house. I decided to take a personal day, and I kept Nora out of day care.”
“What’s the occasion?”
“Steve is moving out.” She sounded strong when she said it. Determined. As if this were a decision she had made by applying every single one of the analytical tools she’d gained after completing all three years of law school, after working as an attorney-lobbyist every day since graduation.
And yet, I knew her well enough to hear the catch of emotion on the very last word. “What happened?” I asked.
“Nora took her first steps last night.”
“That’s wonderful!” I said, shoving down a twinge of guilt that I hadn’t been there to record the event with godmotherly attention to detail. Not that I hadn’t been preoccupied with a few other things the night before…
I could picture the frown that made Allison’s next words sour. “Steve wasn’t here. He said that he was working late, but he didn’t pick up the phone at his office. Or his cell. It was four in the morning when he finally got home, and he’d just taken a shower.”
“Ouch,” I said, wincing as I pictured the scene.
“I made him pack a suitcase, then and there. He tried to tell me I was being unreasonable, that we should sleep on it, but I wouldn’t even go into the bedroom with him. I don’t know where he’s going to stay, what’s going to happen now, but I’m not letting him back into my house.”
“Allison…” I said, a little awed by the steel inside her words. “I am so proud of you. I wish I’d been there, to help you.”
She gave a rueful laugh. “There wasn’t much for anyone else to do.”
“I could have made tea for you. Kept you company while he packed. Just … been there, after you threw him out.”
“Right,” she said. “As if I’d call you in the middle of the night.”
“I’m awake then,” I reminded her. “Every single night.” I thought about everything that Al had gone through in the past six weeks. “Look,” I said. “I know I haven’t been the best friend. I haven’t been around as much as I’d like to be. From here on out, though, I’m here for you. I can keep an eye on Nora, help out with stuff around the house…. If you need anything—anything at all—you have to promise me that you’ll ask.”
“Okay,” she said.
“No,” I said. “Promise. Right now. This is serious. Woof-woof serious. Don’t make me call your sister and tell her your deepest, darkest secret!”
My threat earned me a laugh. “Okay, I promise.”
“And say that you’ll have dinner with me tomorrow night.” I would have argued for that night, but I knew that—best friend or not—I was in no shape to get to Al’s house that evening. Not with zero sleep and a heaping portion of post-adrenaline lag. Besides, I had promised James that I would be here when he woke. “I’ll bring cupcakes,” I said to Allison, hoping to sweeten the deal.
“Just promise that none of them are Rocky Byways.”
“I promise.” Before I could say anything else, Nora let out another squeal of delight. “Go,” I said to Allison. “Take care of Nora. I’ll see you tomorrow. And just for the record? I think you’re really brave.”
“Aw,” she said. “You say that to all your friends with cheating husbands.”
“Nope. Just the ones who do something about it.”
I shook my head as I hung up. Six weeks before, I never would have thought that Al and Steve would be splitting up. I’d believed they had a perfect marriage, the dream relationship that I had craved since I was first able to make my Barbie doll kiss Ken.
But things changed. I had changed in the past six weeks.
Strike that. I hadn’t really changed. I’d just become more of what I already was. A sphinx. And there was going to be plenty to do once the sun set, to cement that new identity. But first, I had to get some sleep. And I wasn’t going to do that, stretched out on the Spanish Inquisition Couch.
I shrugged and crossed the living room. I took care as I opened the bedroom door; I didn’t want to awaken James.
He had curled onto his right side, nestling his arm beneath one pillow. The other pillow was waiting for me, settled on the other half of the bed. He’d folded back the bed linens on my side, a silent invitation.
I slid between the sheets cautiously, not wanting to jar him. I wasn’t careful enough, though. He murmured as he stirred, reaching out a questing hand. I wanted to lace my fingers between his. I wanted to nestle my back against his chest, to spoon.
But more than that, I wanted his burns to finish healing. It was time for both of us to sleep. I guided his hand back to his side, edged the sheet up to his shoulders.
As I lay there in the dark, waiting for sleep to overtake me, I thought back to my first week working for James. What had he told me, after Brandt attacked? When he’d grudgingly let me stay on? That I was on probation for a full three months.
Well, it was time to renegotiate a thing or two. I was pretty sure I’d fulfilled my probation. And I really was going to need a higher salary, for wardrobe expenses, if nothing else. And I’d appreciate a little help with interior decorating costs—I was going to have to repaint my apartment, or I’d end up losing my security deposit.
I’d start making my arguments just as soon as the sun set. Just as soon as I headed back to work. Just as soon as I returned to my job—Court Clerk for the Eastern Empire Night Court.
THANK YOU!
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SNEAK PEEK: HOW NOT TO MAKE A WISH
If you enjoyed Sarah’s story, you’ll love How Not to Make a Wish, the story of a stage manager, a doomed production of Romeo and Juliet, and a genie who just might make things better. Or worse. A whole lot worse.
* * *
I LOVE THE theater. The theater is my life.
At least that’s what I told myself as I suffered my third sneezing fit in an hour.
Standing in the costume shop at the Fox Hill Dinner Theater, I extracted a linty tissue from my pocket and blew my nose, trying not to pay attention to the clouds of dust swirling in the overhead fluorescent lights. If I let myself think about how much debris filled the air around me, my lungs would seize up and I’d collapse in front of a dozen feather-covered costumes from Gypsy.
“Gotta have a gimmick, Kira Franklin,” I muttered to myself.
A gimmick—that was the name of the game in the cutthroat world of Midwestern dinner theater. And without one, Fox Hill would be out of business in less than a month. Anna Harper, the dinner theater’s artistic director and my boss for the past seven years, was fully aware of our company’s dire straits. She’d been hinting for months that I should get my résumé out, that I should try to nail down my dream job at Landmark Stage, the Twin Cities’ newest theatrical darling. In fact, she’d pretty much told me that my next paycheck would be my last—the theater loved me, couldn’t work without me, but just couldn’t afford to keep me, blah, blah, blah.
Alas, my Fox Hill credentials weren’t likely to spark interest from the Landmark. Like it or not, I’d limited my marketability by staying with Anna for as long as I had. Every time I applied for a position with the prestigious Landmark Stage—even just working in the ticket office—I received a polite, anonymous, form-letter rejection.
Nevertheless, barring a miracle, Anna was going to have to cut me loose. But we wouldn’t go down without
a fight. Prior to hiring some starry-eyed kid right out of high school, Anna had decided on one last money-making scheme: selling our old costumes to the public. We were trying to be as festive as possible as we launched our last-ditch bid for survival—we had taken out full-page ads in both the Minneapolis StarTribune and the St. Paul Pioneer Press announcing our grand sale: Evening gowns! Dance wear! Halloween costumes for young and old alike!
We played up the glamour, providing a long list of our hit shows from the past decade. We kinda, sorta, maybe hoped that no one would focus on the fact that most of the costumes were designed for a handful of quick outings on stage. We absolutely refused to make any guarantee that seams would hold, that sequins would stay attached, that feathers and ribbons and bows would last through a single wearing at a glamorous society ball.
That’s why we kept a costumer on hand during all performances.
A costumer, someone to run lights, someone to run the sound board, people to change sets and hand out props—it could take more than a dozen backstage folks to mount one of our productions. And I was the person in charge of all of them, at least until I was laid off. Kira Franklin, stage manager extraordinaire.
OK. That wasn’t really the way that I thought of myself. I always stopped after the “manager” part.
But my father added the “extraordinaire” when he dutifully attended each of our productions. And so did my high school debate coach. And the handful of friends that I managed to rope into seeing individual shows, most often by handing out coupons for free dessert at our luscious gourmet buffet table (two entrées nightly!).
Come to think of it, most of my friends had dropped the “extraordinaire” a few years back, too. Maybe it was our Christmas production of Miracle on 34th Street, with a well-developed seventeen-year-old playing the little girl role, because we just couldn’t find a kid who could stick to our rehearsal schedule.
Truth was, the Fox Hill Dinner Theater was not a leading light in the Twin Cities’ theater community.
Let me explain a little more about who and what and where we were. You’ve probably heard of the Mall of America, right? The largest shopping mall in North America, with more than four hundred stores? Employs 12,000 people? Built around an amusement park, with a flight simulator, aquarium, and real live (okay, dead) dinosaur walk? Visited by forty million people each and every year?
Fox Hill was about a mile south of there.
We were located in an old strip mall, space we took over from a Woolworth’s that was driven out of business by the big box stores even farther down the road. We had a decent-size “house” with seating for five hundred. There were two steam tables to serve dinner, and a thrust stage that reached into the audience, bringing musicals so close that patrons could practically touch them. But in a metropolitan area with a thriving artistic community and more than one hundred theaters, large and small, Fox Hill had its work cut out for it.
And things weren’t exactly helped by the fact that our next-door neighbor was a porno-movie theater⎯the Fox Hill Cinema. You might have thought that dirty movies were a losing business proposition in the wake of the Internet and perfect-for-home-viewing DVDs. The fading grande dame, though, had cleverly diversified to stay in business with its three-screen emporium. Two showed the latest skin flicks, and one showed art films.
It could be really interesting to watch the line at their ticket window. It was pretty easy to tell who was in line for the Truffaut retrospective, and who was waiting for Goldilust and the Three Bares. At the dinner theater, we tried to promote ourselves to the first group, and we hoped that the second crowd didn’t wander through our doors by mistake. You had to take your customers where you found them, though. Isn’t that one of the primary rules of business? Well, it should have been.
“Kira? Are you in here?”
As if to answer, I sneezed again. “Yeah. In the back room.”
Maddy Rubens pushed aside a sliding rack of thirty-six identical dresses—the irresistible Paris Originals from last year’s overly optimistic production of How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying. Maddy was a lighting designer who had worked at Fox Hill on occasional gigs between the handful of dream jobs that she’d landed in New York, the more usual local productions, and the rare-but-lusted-after West Coast projects. More important, Maddy was my housemate and best friend.
“Jules and I finished going through the jewelry,” she announced. “There’s enough crap out there for a dozen high school proms. Tiaras up the wazoo, and enough pearls to strangle a decent-size horse.”
“Gives all new meaning to the phrase ‘costume’ jewelry,” I said.
“We’re calling it a day and going to get burritos. Are you coming with?”
My stomach rumbled. Even though I’d had an Egg McMuffin with double hash browns for breakfast, I’d worked through our supposed lunch break. In fact, I’d had nothing but coffee since coming in that morning—four of my jumbo java mugs’ worth. I’d brewed it first thing, taking elaborate care to put out the sign that read “Kira’s Stash.” I liked my coffee twice as strong as anyone else did, and I’d finally conceded the necessity of labeling my own carafe after poor Anna had been kept awake for thirty-six straight hours following one particularly long dress rehearsal with nothing but my java for sustenance.
“Burritos sound great,” I said, “but I want to finish up Kismet.”
“The costumes will still be here tomorrow,” Maddy said, reasonably enough. “You work too hard.”
I sighed. “I don’t work hard enough. I told Anna I would have all of this stuff ready by last Friday.”
“The same Anna who’s signing your walking papers next week?” Trust Maddy to tell it like it was.
“Come on,” I said. “Could you just walk out? Leave all this behind?” Maddy snorted, but I knew that she was every bit as tied to the theatrical world as I was. We weren’t in it for the money—both of us, along with Jules, could barely afford to pay my father rent on the second-floor apartment he provided us at well below market rate. We were in the theater because we loved it. It made our hearts sing, as corny as that sounded. We loved the creativity, the feeling that we were making something from nothing.
Either that, or we were bug-eyed crazy.
“Yeah, you’re right,” Maddy agreed reluctantly, as I’d known she would. “But you still have to eat. Let’s go! Jules is treating. We’re going to get chips. With extra salsa. And guac-a-mo-le…” She turned the last word into a seductive song.
I shook my head reluctantly. “Nope. I wouldn’t enjoy it, with this stuff hanging over my head. But tell Jules that buying tonight doesn’t get her off the hook for the Scrabble victory dinner she owes me.”
Jules—Julia Kathleen McElroy—was the third occupant of our apartment. She was an actress. After spending years trying to top the charts in the Twin Cities theater scene, Jules had settled into a comfortable career doing industrials, training films for companies. Her most successful role had been “Stubborn Defendant” in You’re Being Deposed? Expect the Worst.
“Fine,” Maddy said with a resigned sigh. But then she took a step closer to me, resting her blunt-fingered hand on my arm. “Just tell me with a straight face that this doesn’t have anything to do with today’s date.”
“Today’s date?” I asked, and I almost managed to sound puzzled. What could I say? Acting wasn’t my strong suit. I knew it would be overkill to say, “I don’t have a date today. Do you?” Besides, I could never be quite that blasé about the greatest disaster in my entire life.
“Kira,” Maddy remonstrated.
I shook my head. “It doesn’t have anything to do with today’s date.” I said the words with the rote certainty of a small child reciting multiplication tables.
“I don’t believe you.”
I raised my chin and looked straight into her piercing blue eyes, forcing myself not to blink my muddy-brown ones. (Read: I braced myself to lie through my teeth.) “Madeline Rubens, I swear on my next and last
paycheck and all else that is holy that my skipping burritos tonight has nothing to do with today’s date. Cross my heart and hope to die.” She just stared at me. “What? Do you want me to spit in my hand, so we can shake on it like five-year-olds? Make a blood oath?” I looked around with a cartoonish manic grin. “There’s got to be a dagger or two in here somewhere. Where’s the stuff from Camelot?”
Maddy rolled her eyes. “Okay, then. We’ll see you at home. Cheerio!”
“Wait,” I called before she could walk away. “I thought you and Colin broke up last week.”
“We did.” She shrugged. “I just haven’t broken the habit of saying ‘Cheerio’ yet.”
I couldn’t help but laugh as she left the costume shop. Maddy changed boyfriends more often than the porno house next door changed its movies. Colin had lasted two full weeks, which was typical. In the five years that Maddy and I had been housemates, only one guy had made it to a month, and that was because Maddy had spent three weeks on a road trip.
No fuss, no muss—when Maddy was bored she moved on, pleased to have learned a few words in a new language, or a couple of idiomatic expressions. Colin had actually taught Maddy the rules for cricket. Come to think of it, Gordon had taught her those rules a couple of years ago, and Nigel, a few years before that. Cricket comprehension didn’t last much longer than love, in Maddy’s book.
My life would have been so much simpler if I could just treat men, treat relationships, the way that Maddy treated hers.
I’d lied to her. Of course, my decision to skip burritos had everything to do with the date. January 7. One year ago today, I had been left at the altar by TEWSBU, The Ex Who Shall Be Unnamed.
Okay. Not quite literally at the altar. We’d planned a civil ceremony.
But I’d worn a white dress, with a veil and a train and everything. Maddy and Jules had stood beside me in personalized bridesmaid gowns. Their dresses had been made out of an emerald-green silk that actually worked well for both of them. Predictably, Jules had selected a stunning strapless sheath that showed off her willowy form, while Maddy enjoyed something substantially less revealing. My father had worn his tux. Judge Saylor, one of my father’s former law firm partners, had stood at the front of the room, smiling and friendly as the minutes ticked by.
