by Arlene James
“You know, given the time restraints, simpler is better in this case. We need to do as much as we can through narration. That way, the actors don’t have to learn lines, not too many, anyway.”
“You mean they’ll be pantomiming.”
“Something like that.”
“Yes, I see the wisdom there.”
“Good. Now we need all the details. You know the story, so let’s hear it.”
William scratched his head and began speaking. Minutes later, Cassidy got up to fetch paper and pen, and they moved into the kitchen, making use of the table there. Two hours later they picked up the phone and called Tony Abatto. Tony and pizzas arrived a half hour later, and shortly after that a friend of Tony’s came—a friend with a deep, resonant voice and a relaxed but expressive way of reading drama aloud.
Cassidy did not realize to what extent she had taken on the dual role of director and producer, but a look traded between Tony and William clearly demonstrated their mutual notice and surprise. As for Tony’s friend with “The Voice,” he never questioned Cassidy’s ability or authority, she so obviously knew what she was doing.
Cassidy went to bed late that night, exhausted but satisfied. Thoughts and ideas continued to percolate through her mind, however: scenes, sets, costumes, lighting... She saw with her mind’s eye Paul, dressed for the turn-of-the-century, working industriously in the old-fashioned kitchen of his home, wife at his side, her long skirts swaying gracefully as she moved, her long hair pinned loosely atop her head. Her eyes shone with love and confidence. Paul stopped what he was doing to put his arms around her and hold her close as the narrator extolled her limitless support as the premier factor in the formation and success of the original Barclay Bakery. The face of that loving, supportive woman was not that of Betina Lincoln, and not merely because Cassidy had never seen the woman. No, the face of the woman in Paul’s arms was Cassidy’s own, because in her heart that was where she wanted to be.
Yet in her heart Cassidy did not, could not, believe that she could or should be the woman to truly hold Paul Spencer. No, that role must ultimately belong to someone more beautiful, more intelligent, more worthy than she. Apparently, at least according to William, that woman was Betina Lincoln, and Cassidy couldn’t help thinking that once she and Paul were married, his feelings toward Betina would change. How could he not come to love such a strong, determined woman, a woman to “make a man’s mouth water,” as William put it. She couldn’t hope to compete with such a woman herself. No, she would be happy just being more than friends with Paul, just a little more than friends. It was enough. It would have to be enough.
Chapter Five
“I have the photographs,” William said, producing a manila folder from his briefcase. Cassidy, Tony and a trio of Tony’s fellow students looked up from the table that Cassidy had set up in the back of the shop.
“There’s one in here of the Barclays’ kitchen,” he said, digging through the folder.
Cassidy put her hands together in a gesture of prayer. “Thank heavens!”
“Actually, it’s a recreation, but the old man himself had it done in the twenties for an advertising campaign. They were opening their third shop.”
Cassidy and the others poured over the photos avidly. Paul strode into the room, his phone held to the side of his head, movements jerky, face radiating anger and frustration. “That’s the most inane thing I’ve ever heard! No one’s trying—” He broke off, ground his teeth and slapped the phone shut before dropping it into his coat pocket. He looked around at the faces now staring at him and growled, “Someone better get to minding the shop. There are customers out front!”
Tony gasped, straightened, and hurried away. Paul glanced at Cassidy and thrust a hand through his hair, muttering, “I never should have gotten you into this. Your business is falling apart, and you’re sitting around here agonizing over plans for someone else to tear apart!”
The students traded looks and developed sudden needs to be elsewhere. William sat down in one of their vacant folding chairs and moaned softly, his face woebegone, a hand clamped over his mouth. Cassidy sent worried looks from Paul to him and back to Paul, who jingled change in his pocket and muttered unintelligibly. Finally William ventured pitifully, “She didn’t like the script?”
Cassidy’s heart sank. They’d worked so hard on that script, their number-one purpose being, other than telling the Barclay story, to give Betina an important central role as Paul’s great-grandmother. How were they going to manage a rewrite with time running so short? Paul sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. “She says that playing the part of my great-grandmother will ruin her image.”
“Ruin her image?” Cassidy echoed in confusion. “But your great-grandmother was central to the development of the company!”
“Yes, she was, and for many years!” William exclaimed, sounding as confused as Cassidy.
Paul stabbed a finger in William’s direction. “Exactly! The old girl lived years longer than great-grandfather.”
“Didn’t she die in like 1975?” Cassidy asked.
“At ninety-four,” Paul confirmed. “She was the one who lived to see the company become more than a string of bakery shops. Her own son turned Barclay’s into a true manufacturer in the modern sense of the word. And that’s the problem!”
William shook his head. “I don’t understand. I thought Miss Lincoln would be pleased to have such a pivotal role in our little drama.”
Paul put his hands to his hips and said coldly, “Miss Lincoin, as it turns out, is vain to the point of idiocy! She refuses to play the part of an ‘old woman.’ Her words.”
“But the role begins with a very young woman, only twenty-one years-old and newly married,” Cassidy argued.
“That doesn’t matter!” Paul exclaimed, throwing up his hands. “The woman ages, and Betina believes that will ruin her image with all those people who’ll be in attendance. She even says the makeup to create the illusion of an older woman will ruin her skin!”
Cassidy stared a moment at Paul, sure she’d missed something important along the way somewhere. No woman could be that vain. Could she? Hopefully, she looked to her brother for explanation. William’s mouth was hanging open, alerting Cassidy that she, too, was gaping. She snapped her mouth shut with an audible click. William, too, struggled for composure.
“I-I’m s-sure Miss Lincoln m-misunderstands the, um, significance of the role,” he sputtered. “You’re off stage after the first two scenes, while she remains an important figure almost throughout.”
“Doesn’t matter,” Paul said succinctly. “She won’t appear as an older woman, period.” He lifted his face to the ceiling and exclaimed, “God, that woman makes me want to contemplate murder instead of matrimony!”
William was near tears. “What are we to do?” he wailed.
Paul struck a pose, hands on hips, head bowed, eyes riveted on Cassidy. “We’ll just have to find someone else to play the part,” he said, “and I know just the lady to do us proud.”
Cassidy and William gasped in unison. William; as usual, found his voice first. “Y-you can’t mean—”
“Oh, Paul, no. I don’t dare!”
Paul grabbed the back of the chair next to her and dragged it close, dropping down onto the edge of its seat “It’s either that or can the whole idea, Cass,” he said urgently, finding her hands with his. “Listen, babe, I know I’ve pushed friendship to its very limits where we’re concerned, but there’s no one else to do this, no one else I want to do it with. I’ll make it worth your while, I promise.”
“Oh, Paul, no! It’s not a matter of money...”
“I know that,” he said quickly, his voice going all silky and soft, “but I don’t have any other way to reward you for your support and your generosity...and your sweetness.” He reached up and stroked her cheek with the backs of the fingers of one hand. Cassidy melted, even knowing it was stupid.
William groaned and slid down in his chair, wailing, “O
h, no!”
Paul yanked his hand away and turned a glare on William.
“Sir,” William pleaded, “Paul, I beg you. Think what you’re doing!”
“What else can I do?” Paul demanded.
“But Miss Lincoln—”
“Miss Lincoln knows perfectly well that I have to find someone else to play the part. I warned her that I would, and she insisted that I do so!” Paul looked again to Cassidy, whose doubts must still have shown on her face, for he turned at once to William and demanded, “Tell her to do it!”
“Me?” William protested.
“You’re the one whose disapproval she worries about,” Paul pointed out.
William sat up in his chair, his gaze going to Cassidy. A look of some cagey force came over him, straightening his spine, lifting his chin, narrowing and hardening his eyes. “Well, by all means, then,” he said smoothly. Leaning forward, he pinned Cass with a look that frankly displayed a certain power. Cassidy shivered with the sudden knowledge that William would always wield that certain power over her—if she allowed him to. “We can’t let Paul down,” he was saying.
She wondered if supporting Paul was as important to him as he made it sound, and in the next heartbeat discarded the question as irrelevant. She turned her attention to Paul himself, sure of what she must do and why. “Of course, I’ll play the part, if that’s what you want.”
Relief slumped Paul in his chair. “Thank you. Thank you, Cassidy.”
William asserted himself again, saying, “We’ll need to make some revisions, of course, in the early part of the script, but that—”
“No revisions,” Paul stated flatly, daring William with a look to so much as argue.
William swallowed whatever he’d been about to say, and Cassidy pulled her hands from Paul’s, disciplining the small flare of satisfaction that William’s sudden loss of aggression produced. Subtly, she took control of the moment, pulling William’s folder of photos toward her. “Now let’s see what we can find of use here.”
Actually, they found a great deal of use, and within the hour Cassidy was out scouring antique and junk shops for the furnishings she needed. Paul had given her his flip phone, so that she could call when she found something she wanted to buy and he could arrange payment and delivery. By the time she returned to the costume shop at the end of the day, she felt that she’d moved mountains and was excited about a new idea concerning the decorations. She couldn’t wait to speak to Paul about it. She barely heard Tony’s goodbye as he hurried away, she was so busy dialing up Paul for the umpteenth time. The call hadn’t even gone through, however, when Paul himself opened the door and walked into the shop. She slapped the phone together and thrust it at him.
“Oh, Paul, I have the most wonderful idea!”
“Great!” he said, dropping the phone into his pocket and taking her by the arm. “Tell me all about it over dinner.”
She barely registered his words, so caught up was she with her idea. “It’s that picture of your great-grandmother’s kitchen,” she said excitedly, “and the way Hoot has decorated the restaurant. Think of it! We’ll decorate all the dining tables at the ball the same way your great-gandmother decorated hers!”
“Marvelous!” he said, maneuvering her around the shop as he flicked off lights and set the alarm.
“I’m hoping that Hoot can tell us where he got all that old mismatched flatware and—”
“Oh, I’m sure Hoot can do better than that,” he said, grinning at her. “Maybe he’ll loan it to us.’
“Do you think so? What about his tables and chairs? Do you think there’s a chance?”
Paul laughed and shoved her out the door, pulling her coat together and buttoning it. “Give me your keys.”
“What?”
“Your keys, silly, so I can lock the door.”
“Oh, my goodness! Tony—”
“Tony is gone,” he assured her. “Now it’s our turn.” He snapped his fingers together twice. “Keys, if you please.”
Laughing, she dug them out of her purse and dropped them into his hand, saying, “I can’t believe how everything’s falling into place.”
“I can,” he said, glancing back over his shoulder at her as he fitted the key into the first lock.
She was already on to another subject. “We’re going to need a couple of bolts of gingham to make tablecloths like your grandmother’s, and those little cream pitchers for the flowers will have to be ordered. A man showed me a wholesaler’s catalog of reproductions, today. I think we can work a deal, but I wanted to run everything by you first. Anyway, I told him—”
Paul stopped and hauled her around to face him. She hadn’t even realized they were walking!
“What?”
“This,” he said, pulling her to him. His mouth covered hers and stayed there for a long time, gently plying and manipulating until every other thought but kissing him back had left her head. She looped her arms around his neck and simply gave herself up to it, knowing somehow that this was part and parcel of the tacit agreement they’d made when they’d begun to work together. They couldn’t be together without this, not for long, and she wouldn’t think now of the time when they could not be together at all—because of this. It didn’t matter. Nothing and no one mattered except Paul. She understood that suddenly with such awful clarity and equal acceptance. She wouldn’t say that she was sorry, not even to herself, because somehow she knew that this was right. She and Paul Spencer together, as incredible as it seemed, was right.
Fate conspired to rob them both, and Fate would undoubtedly win, but not yet, not until after the ball. They deserved that much. She deserved that much, and she surprised herself by determining, somehow, to have it. That determination finally broke the kiss as she pulled her mouth from his, and, fixing her hands around the lapels of his coat, she looked up at him.
“Don’t ask her again until the new year,” she said softly. “Please. Give us that much time. Don’t ask her until January.”
“All right,” he said. “I promise.”
She laid her head against his shoulder and closed her eyes, letting him hold her, warming her against the cool evening air.
“We make a good team,” he told her wistfully, and she smiled into the front of his coat.
“A very good team.”
Until January. Only until January.
It was utter chaos in the beginning. The factory was dusty and chilly, the lighting too harsh and glaring. Tony and the half dozen recruits he’d managed to find for them were running around like the kids they were, playing an imaginary game of basketball without benefit of equipment. Paul came in late, while William and Cassidy were arguing about what should go where, and promptly got on the phone, demanding to know why the place hadn’t been cleaned as he’d ordered. Cassidy realized that their first practice was accomplishing less than nothing and understood with some dismay that only she could whip things into shape.
Leaving William talking to himself, she strode to the middle of the cavernous space and called for attention. When she didn’t get it, she waved her arms over her head and tried again. Finally she put her fingers in her mouth and let loose a deafening whistle. Everyone else immediately stopped what they were doing and turned in her direction, William with his mouth hanging open as if he couldn’t quite believe she’d called such attention to herself. Paul recovered from his surprise first, spoke briefly into the phone and put it away, his attention riveted.
Cassidy smiled slightly at his show of deference and lifted her chin, pitching her voice to carry clearly. “Thank you for coming. I’m sure you’ll agree that the sooner we begin, the sooner we may all go home.” General murmurs of agreement followed. She acknowledged them with a nod of her head and lifted a hand in Paul’s direction. “Paul, perhaps you have something to say to us?”
He nodded, cleared his throat, and wandered closer. “Thank you for coming on such short notice. I suppose the matter we must first address is the scheduling of subsequent re
hearsals. What times would you say are best?”
A discussion followed, concerning late evenings versus early mornings. Late evenings proved most convenient. Mondays, Wednesdays and Thursdays were settled on as the most workable days. With those matters settled, Paul turned the discussion to that of roles. “I will play the part of the late Theo Barclay myself, and Miss Penno—”
“Cassidy,” she corrected.
“Thank you. Cassidy will play the part of my wife, er, Theo Barclay’s wife, my great-grandmother, actually. That is, Jane.” Some laughter followed that bumbling remark, but Paul received it good-naturedly. He went on. “She is, also, the creative intelligence beyond the power, which—frankly—would be me.” More laughter. “That being the case, you may take her word as you would mine. In other words, do just what she tells you.” Tony lifted a brow at that. William lifted two, but no one else batted so much as an eyelash.
Paul deferred to Cassidy, who began by passing out scripts. She introduced the narrator as Andy, saying that other parts—most notably those of Paul’s grandfather, both as a boy and a man, and various other family members and business associates, and of course Paul himself, again as both boy and man—were up for grabs. Tony made the suggestion that Paul play his adult self as well as his own great-grandfather, and Cassidy agreed that such casting would lend the production the satisfying feeling of a circle completed. Paul readily accepted that added responsibility, and the subject of youngsters to play the young Theo and Paul came up. William stepped in here.
“I’ve been thinking about that. Why don’t we invite the children of our executive staff at Barclay to try out for those parts? They’d have to be of a certain age, of course, and boys, naturally, but there ought to be one or two with some acting ability and the desire to show it off.”
“A very good idea,” Paul replied. “The Pennos ride to the rescue again. I’ll leave the wording and dissemination of said casting call to you, Will, if that’s all right.”
