The Phantom of Oz

by Cindy Brown

  “Because she’s the Wicked Witch of the East?” I was having a hard time keeping up.

  “Because she’s a real witch.”

  “She is not.” Arrestadt turned to me. “She’s a Goddess worshipper, not a Wiccan. And she’s very nice.”

  I was just about to ask how he knew so much about his wardrobe mistress when Candy nudged him. “’Scuse me. I need to use the ladies’.” They both slid out of the booth and Candy walked away and up the stairs to the bathroom with teeny tiny careful steps.

  Arrestadt sat down again across from me, elbows on the table, completely relaxed. He was one of those people who made you feel like he wanted to hear whatever you were going to say. I took a leap of faith. “I’m worried about Candy.”

  “The weight loss?”

  “Yeah.” It wasn’t the only thing, but it was a good beginning.

  “Me too,” he said. “Damn Anita.”

  “Yeah,” I said again, though I didn’t know why I wanted to damn Candy’s agent.

  “I mean, Candy probably did look fat on camera.”

  I swallowed the words I wanted to say. Sure, the camera added ten pounds or whatever, but I’d seen Candy on film. She looked luscious.

  “But a size zero?” Arrestadt continued. “Candy doesn’t have the build for that.”

  “Zero? That’s not really necessary for Hollywood, is it?”

  “Well, Andre does like his stars skinny. And Anita is pretty sure she can get Candy that screen test for his next film.”

  “Wait, Andre...you mean Andre?”

  “Yeah. One-name Andre.”

  A screen test with Andre was huge. Huge. The kind of huge where you’d call your best friend and tell her immediately. Or at least tell her sometime. I felt like I’d been sucker-punched. Still, this wasn’t about me. I was just about to ask Arrestadt if he thought maybe Candy was bulimic when he said, “Regardless, I think Candy’s going overboard. I’ve been worried about her too. She’s been...I don’t know...secretive. I thought you might know what was going on. After all, you’re her best friend.”

  I was Candy’s best friend. It was what I’d wanted to hear, but now it just sounded like bad news.

  Chapter 9

  As For You, You Did Not Exist

  The next day, I finished my work at Duda Detectives by one o’clock, just in time to make a quick stop before Candy’s rehearsal. Ricardo’s Salon was fifteen minutes away on Indian School Road. I found a spot in the salon’s tiny parking lot, hopped out of my truck, and opened the glass door. “Wow.” The smell of some powerful chemical stung my throat. “Hey, Ricky,” I said, or maybe coughed.

  “Ivy!” Ricky came over and kissed me on the cheek. His dark brown hair was cropped short and he wore a slim turquoise button-down that set off his eyes. “I didn’t see you in the book.” He backed up and looked at my hair. “But oh yeah, it is so time for your color.”

  “Um…” I ruffled my hair so my roots wouldn’t show as badly. “I think I’m coming in next week.” I looked around at the magenta walls, Indian-printed curtains, and gold tassels. “Hey, you redecorated. Nice.” Ricky was always redoing the salon. He once told me he liked doing hair because he loved transformation. I think he felt the same way about his shop.

  “I’m going to project Bollywood films on that wall over there.” He pointed to the one white wall in the place, right next to an old lady snoozing under a hair dryer, her hair wound around lots of little perm rollers. “Cool, right?”

  “Very cool.” I loved Bollywood movies. All that happy dancing. “You have a minute to talk? By ourselves?”

  Ricky glanced at a filigreed gold clock on the wall. “Probably just a minute. I’ve got a one fifteen, but she’s late.”

  The salon really didn’t have a private place, so we hung out near the front door. “It’s about Candy,” I said. “You saw her yesterday?”

  Ricky’s smile dropped from his face. “Yeah.”

  So Candy was telling the truth about that.

  “She’s destroyed her hair.” Ricky shook his head. “And she’s just bones.”

  “I know. I’m worried about her.”

  “You should be. Her hair fell out in clumps when I washed it.”

  I blinked, trying to erase that image from my head. “Uh, what causes that?”

  “Lots of things—stress, some drugs, rapid weight loss. It’s probably that last one,” he said.

  “Drugs? What kind of drugs?”

  “Not sure about all of them, but coke for sure. I don’t think that’s it, though. It’s so eighties.”

  “Did she say anything…concerning?”

  Ricky chewed on his bottom lip. “No. She didn’t seem like herself, though. Talked way too fast.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Is there anything else you thought—”

  “Psst.” A young girl with blue hair and a Ricardo’s Salon apron had come up behind Ricky. “Um, I didn’t want to wake Mrs. Crumpacker…”

  Ricky glanced at the gently snoring lady underneath the hair dryer.

  “But it’s fifteen minutes past time to wash her—”

  “Fifteen minutes?” Ricky yelped loudly enough that the woman woke up with a start. “Gotta go,” he whispered to me. “Have to make sure her hair doesn’t fall out.” Ricky glared at his assistant and rushed over to Mrs. Crumpacker. “Perfect timing,” he said to her. “Let’s get you over to the sink. And Ivy,” he said to me. “Feed that girl a cheeseburger, okay?”

  I drove back downtown to the Grand Phoenician Theatre. Well, as close as I could get to it. There was no parking within five blocks.

  “Excuse me. Pardon me.” I fought through the crowd milling around the stage door of The Grand Phoenician. “Oof.” Someone’s elbow caught me in the stomach. I turned around to see who. A woman pointed at me. “Is she someone? Is she it?”

  “Nah,” said a skinny guy with hipster glasses. “She’s okay, but she’s no beauty.”

  “I certainly am. Someone, I mean. And who are you to say I’m not a beauty?” I didn’t think I was one—a beauty, that is—but that was just rude. I was pretty enough, I guessed. Matt and Cody and Uncle Bob told me I was beautiful. I tried to believe it, but I was an actress. Part of my career—more than I cared to admit—depended on my looks. People thought actors were vain, but I suspected our obsession with our physical exteriors was more insecurity than vanity.

  “Yeah, but you’re not it, right?” The skinny guy waved a magazine at me.

  “Who’d want to be it?” I wasn’t completely sure what they were talking about, but “it” sounded like the monster in some low-budget horror movie.

  “Ooh, why not?” said a young woman with a tape recorder. “Do you have something to tell us?”

  “No comment.” Ha. I’d always wanted to say that. I reached the stage door, pushed it open, and walked a few steps to the security guard’s glassed-in office.

  “Ivy Meadows.” I signed in on the clipboard that sat on the little counter. “I’m here to see Candace Moon.”

  “Wait a second, missie.” The security guard was a different guy than last time, older, with the air of a retired cop. “No one gets in that’s not on my list, and you’re not on it. I got it memorized.”

  “Candy—Candace—will vouch for me.”

  “Can’t ask her while they’re still rehearsing. You can wait if you want, but—”

  “Let her in, George,” said a voice from the hall. “It’s just Ivy Meadows.”

  I wasn’t sure I liked the “just,” but I did like getting in. The guard pushed the button and the interior door buzzed as it unlocked. A black-clad guy with a goatee opened the door from the other side and held it open for me. “Hey, Ivy.”

  “Logan?”

  He gave a mirthless laugh. “Glad to see somebody recognizes me.”

  Logan was a techie
who’d been working in the Phoenix theater scene since he was in high school. He’d worked on several shows I was in and come to a few of the cast parties. “I almost didn’t. Recognize you, that is. Last time I saw you, you had glasses, no beard, and...”

  “Was thirty pounds heavier.”

  “Thirty? Really?” Logan had been slightly chubby, but pleasantly so, like an olive-skinned Pooh Bear with a five o’clock shadow. “Well, you look great,” I said, even though I missed the Pooh Bear look.

  “Glad someone thinks so.” He turned away and led me down the hall. “They’re still on stage.”

  I wondered what—or who—was bothering him but wanted other information first. “What’s up with the crowd outside?”

  “Reporters.”

  “Because of the ghost?”

  “Because of She.”

  “She?”

  “If you name her, you give her power.”

  I suddenly flashed on Logan and a bunch of other techies playing Dungeons & Dragons during long tech rehearsals. “Babette?” I asked. That would explain the “it” —as in It Girl—comments.

  “She and her junior she-devil.”

  “Should I know what you’re talking about?”

  “Only if you read Us magazine. Which I didn’t, by the way, until reporters pushed it in my face.”

  “Babette’s in Us?”

  “On the cover. She was attacked by the new Phantom of the Opera, you know.”

  Wow. Babette was really milking the chandelier accident for all she could. I followed Logan around the corner and down another hall. “Thanks for getting me in, by the way.”

  “No problem.” He straightened his shoulders. “They respect me here. I’m the production supervisor.”

  “You here full time?” A lot of—maybe most—techies worked freelance gigs at whatever theaters needed help.

  “Yeah. Finally finished my degree at ASU, worked gigs here for over a year, then the production supervisor moved to Chicago and he recommended me. It’s a really good job.”

  He didn’t have to tell me. Any theater job that promised full-time work was a small miracle. And…“Benefits. Do you get benefits?” I nearly drooled at the thought of healthcare insurance.

  “And a 401K,” Logan said. “Yeah. I got a great job. Production manager at the Grand Phoenician. Not that anyone would notice, of course.”

  “Okay, okay, I’ll bite. Anyone who?”

  “Oh, no one special. And it’s no big deal, really. I would just think that someone you once shared an intimate evening with would remember, possibly even recognize you when she saw you again. I’d think maybe she would thank you for the flowers you sent to her dressing room, or hell, even just say hi when she passed you in the hall, but I guess I’m just old-fashioned. Or just plain stupid.”

  Oh no.

  When Candy was working in theater in Phoenix pre-Matt, she was somewhat famous (or infamous) for her love life. She wasn’t slutty, but…“I’m a nice girl,” she used to say, “but not always a good girl.”

  A big partier, she usually got tipsy at cast parties and often wound up making out with some guy, just for fun. Unfortunately, some of those guys would moon after her for weeks afterward. It happened enough that the phenomenon acquired its own name. “You had a Candy Crush?” I asked.

  Logan pushed open a door marked backstage. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  Poor guy. He must have had it bad.

  Chapter 10

  It’s the Ghost Who Did the Trick!

  I stood offstage in the wings looking for Candy. The only people onstage were the kids and a pear-shaped woman about thirty years old. “You’re too fat,” a boy said to her. He looked vaguely familiar. “Too fat to fly.”

  “I am not too fat,” she replied. “I am pleasingly plump.”

  “Pleasingly plump like a plum,” said a girl’s voice.

  “Thank you, Madison,” said the woman, who had short hair the color of a cherry Popsicle. “I am pleasingly plump like a plum. Ripe like a tomato. Juicy like a peach...”

  “Nonetheless,” shouted a technician. “We need to recalibrate so we can fly you in safely. How much do you weigh?”

  “I’m not sure,” said the woman—must be Eden. “I think about a hundred and seventy pounds.”

  There was a collective gasp from the people onstage and in the theater. And a laugh from She Who Must Not Be Named. Babette stood a few feet from me, tapping her cowboy-booted foot. “And you say you’re not fat? What is that, one hundred and seventy pounds of muscle?”

  “It’s one hundred and seventy pounds of awesome,” said Eden. “High five, Madison.” They smacked hands.

  “Guys,” the stage manager said to the technicians, “can you recalibrate by the time Eden gets in place?”

  “Of course,” said the one who’d spoken earlier. “We’re professionals.”

  Eden walked past me to the twisting metal staircase that led to the facility’s fly space. I watched her climb, along with half the crew, who were admiring her pleasingly plump backside.

  “Wait,” I said to Logan, who stood next to me. “The Wicked Witch of the East flies?”

  “In this show, almost everyone flies,” said Logan. “After all, it is a space Oz-pera.”

  A flash as Babette took a picture of Eden’s ass as she climbed. “Will fattie fly?” she said out loud as she typed into her Smartphone. Probably tweeting.

  Eden reached the catwalk. Hey. There was Candy, already in place on the catwalk among the beams and lights, standing next to a large silver orb about six feet in diameter made of a shiny fabric over a cage-like structure. I waved, but she didn’t wave back. Must not have seen me.

  Logan followed my line of sight. “Glinda’s bubble spaceship,” he said. “Pretty cool, huh?” Eden stood on the catwalk, spreading her arms and legs so that two techies could strap her into a harness attached to a beam by a cable. “The Wicked Witch of the East wears a jet pack during the show,” Logan continued. “They’re not working in costumes until after break, which is good because the paint on the prop jet pack I made is still wet.”

  “You made the jet pack?” I asked.

  “Last one got ruined during the accident. It’s actually very cool that I got to do this. Prop and special-effects design is really my passion, and I’m hoping that—”

  “All set?” the stage manager called up to Eden.

  “Okay to go,” she said.

  “Good. Let’s take it from the top of the scene. Lights up.”

  A green light bathed the stage. “Standby Wicked Witch of the East, flying in downstage,” the stage manager said into her headset.

  “That’s notice of a piece flying in,” Logan said. “Or in this case, a witch.”

  “Bwahahaha,” Eden swooped down over the munchkins. Not too fat to fly at all. “My dear munchkins. Which one of you shall I munch for lunch today?”

  “She eats munchkins?” I asked.

  “Arrestadt took a few liberties,” Logan replied.

  “Is it you?” She hovered over the boy who’d called her fat earlier. He looked nervous, her hanging over him like that. “Or maybe you?” Eden cackled at a girl munchkin.

  “Standby Dorothy’s house, flying in downstage,” said the stage manager. A gray farmhouse dropped from the fly space, just a few feet from where we stood in the wings.

  “Aaah!” Eden screamed as the two-dimensional set piece descended. From the audience, it would look like the house was falling on her. “Aaah!” She collapsed onto the stage floor as the set piece touched down, then stuck her legs out of a carefully placed hole in the house (made to look like a basement window). “Aaah!” she said one last time, then, “Gluck.” Her legs twitched once, then were still.

  The munchkins cheered.

  From my place in the wings, I saw Dorothy enter f
rom backstage. Hidden by the set piece, she walked up to its backside, stepped around Eden, and opened a door that was cut into the house. The audience would see Dorothy stepping out of the farmhouse. Ah, the simple magic of theater.

  “Hold,” said the stage manager. “Let’s run that again.” They did. Eden had just flown in when...“The ghost!” said a man’s hoarse voice behind me. “She’s here. Up in the fly space.”

  Munchkins began to scream. “She’s there.” Madison pointed up. “Don’t you see her? The Lady?” More screaming.

  “Hold!” yelled the stage manager.

  People rushed onto the stage. Some were mothers protecting their darlings, but most were people hoping to get a glimpse of the ghost. “Quick, take a photo,” said someone next to me.

  I pulled out my phone. “What? Where?” No one answered, so I pointed my phone toward the rafters several stories up and snapped a bunch of photos.

  Madison’s mother arrived onstage. “What did you see?” she asked her daughter.

  “Lights. Up there.” She pointed into the fly space, which was crowded with cables and flats and lights.

  “Duh,” said the now-familiar hollow-eyed boy munchkin. I was taking a firm dislike to him.

  “No, above where the lights are supposed to be.” Madison turned to me. “Did you get a picture?”

  I scrolled through the photos I’d taken, but my phone was so small. “I don’t know,” I said, enlarging the picture. “I’m not sure what I’m looking for...Omigod.”

  “What?” said, oh, everyone.

  “These photos, they’re full of...glowing orbs.”

  “That’s just Glinda’s bubble,” said the munchkin I wanted to smack.

  No. I looked again at the four photos I’d taken. Each one of them was full of misty bright circles, like small full moons, or bubbles, or...

  “Spirit lights,” said Madison, peering over my shoulder. “Those are ghosts, or maybe just one.”

  “Just one? What’s she doing, blowing bubbles?” said the boy munchkin. I decided I wouldn’t learn his name. Didn’t want to give him any power.

  “I’d be happy to hold a séance,” Eden said. “I have a Ouija board and—”