Bad Company

by Sarah Dreher

  Stoner spread a blanket on the ground at the edge of the water. A young hemlock cast a spike shadow. Honeybees buzzed in a clump of pale blue early autumn asters nearby. She unpacked the sandwiches and boxed juice drinks, and anchored paper napkins against the tentative, casual breeze with small stones.

  “Okay.” Gwen sat cross-legged on the corner of the blanket, her brown eyes large and deep behind her reading glasses. She was wearing shorts and running shoes without socks. Her legs were tan and firm.

  “Yeah,” Stoner said, forcing her eyes to focus somewhere other than on the sight of Gwen in the sunlight. “Okay.”

  Gwen clicked her pen and picked up the tablet. “Let’s go through the cast of characters, no pun intended. First, there’s Rita.” She wrote her name on the pad.

  “And Seabrook.”

  “I really don’t think Seabrook’s a threat.”

  “Unless he’s Rita’s alter ego,” Stoner pointed out. “In which case he could be very dangerous.”

  Gwen glanced at her. “You think Rita’s disturbed?”

  “No. But she does strike me as a little unstable. And there’s something going on between her and Marcy. Did you notice the way Rita glared at her? I wonder what that’s all about.”

  "Bad history," Gwen said. She picked up a sandwich and bit into it. "Marcy ran off with Rita's lover. Rita took to drink and was hospitalized briefly. But that was a couple of years ago. She's been fine since."

  "How do you find out these things?"

  "I ask questions, silly."

  "So do I."

  "Not really," Gwen said. ''You ask polite questions, and you don't follow through. You have to keep after it until there aren't any more questions to ask."

  "That seems so rude," Stoner said.

  Gwen laughed. "If you were a teacher, you wouldn't think of it as rude. You'd think of it as survival."

  "How do you know when there aren't any more questions?"

  "Their eyes lose that 'can I go now?' look."

  "So who told you about Marcy and Rita?"

  "Sherry."

  The hemlock was oozing a small stream of sap. A column of ants trudged up and down the trunk.

  "Okay, let's talk about Marcy," Stoner suggested. “What's your opinion of her?”

  Gwen chewed the end of her pen for a moment. "I don't have one, really. She's lively."

  "Bouncy."

  "Helpful."

  "Intense." She glanced at Gwen. "Did you find her intense?"

  "Not particularly. What do you mean?"

  “Well, I only spent a couple of minutes talking to her..."

  "More than I spent," Gwen said.

  "There was something about the way she looks at you. It's just very… intense."

  "Intense," Gwen repeated, and wrote it down. "Anything else?"

  Stoner shook her head.

  "Moving right along. Who was the short butch with the tool box?" ‘

  'You thought she was butch?"

  ''Yeah, didn't you?"

  "I've seen butcher."

  "Dearest," Gwen said with a little smile, and patted her knee, "you've been butcher. On several occasions. But she did have that baby butch air about her."

  "Are you sure it wasn't the tool box?"

  Gwen sighed. "I may not have been out as long as you, Stoner, but I have learned a little something in the past few years. And one of the things I've learned is that tool boxes do not necessarily butches make."

  "Okay." She nibbled off a corner of her tuna sandwich and looked up at the tiny white clouds casually drifting through the sky. It was turning hot, even for Maine, and she felt lazy. "Did you catch her name? The baby butch?"

  "Boneset," Gwen said.

  "That should be easy to remember. Baby Butch Boneset."

  "So associate to her."

  "Quiet, serious, task-centered..."

  "With access to tools and ability to use them," Gwen added. She made a note beside "Boneset."

  "Barb, the technical director," Stoner said.

  "I couldn't tell anything about her, could you? She just sat there and wrote things."

  "She was making a map or chart of some kind."

  "I think it was a lighting design."

  Stoner looked over at her. "Can you read those things?"

  Gwen shook her head.

  "Neither can I. I did notice, though, that the paper she was using matched the paper that was used for Sherry's note. And that the pad was half empty. If I could get my hands on it for a few hours, maybe I could match the tear lines."

  "Good idea," Gwen said, and made another note. "How are you going to do that?"

  "I'm not." Stoner grinned. "That's your job, Ms. Props Person."

  "Thank you." She opened a box of juice. "Now, may we take up the subject of the playwright?"

  "Playwright?"

  "The play recorder, if you insist on being accurate. The play scribe. The woman who's writing down what the others create."

  "Oh," Stoner said. "You mean the African-American woman."

  "The very tall, very powerful, very colorful, very statuesque African-American woman who has had you drooling since you first laid eyes on her."

  "Well, her name's Divi Divi, and she's..." Words failed her.

  "Magnificent?" Gwen suggested.

  "That's it. I haven't talked to her yet, have you?"

  Gwen shook her head. "I didn't want to deprive you of the pleasure of interviewing her."

  Stoner glanced at her. "You're not jealous, are you?"

  "Of course not."

  "I'm not lusting."

  "Not even a little?" Gwen asked. Her eyes sparked mischievously.

  Stoner raked at the grass, causing the line of ants that were headed their way to declare an earthquake emergency. "Well, just a little. I know it's not very politically correct."

  "I don't think feelings can be politically correct or incorrect," Gwen said as she unwrapped a second sandwich. "Only behavior."

  "You're probably right."

  The day was turning hotter. There was a soft splash from the lake, where the kingfisher dove for another morsel. The sun made her sleepy and comfortable. She didn't want to go back to the barn. It was all noise and motion in the barn.

  "Let's run through what we have," Gwen said. "There's Sherry. Producer. She called us in, which doesn't make her innocent but decreases the probability of her guilt. Seems fairly open..."

  "I'd hardly say that," Stoner pointed out. "She didn't tell us about the note until we dragged it out of her."

  "True. But she was very open about the fact that she was hiding something." She added to her notes on Sherry. "Not open but transparent. Okay?"

  "Okay," Stoner said.

  "Rebecca's the director," Gwen went on. "We don't know her yet. Roseann, who's playing the lead and apparently the only one who's new to the company. Was that your impression?"

  Stoner nodded. The sun was making little drops of perspiration run down between her breasts. Her skin smelled of heat and salt. Store it up, she thought, store up all the warmth and the good smells and the sunlight, because winter's never far behind.

  This winter they'd be in a new place. Away from the city with its dirty slush and constant drizzle and impossible parking and people in bad moods. It might be colder out in the hill country, but at least the air would be clean.

  "Barb," Gwen said as she wrote and reviewed. "Tech director. Quiet and businesslike. May have paper that matches the threatening note. Rita and Seabrook, possibly unstable. Marcy of the wandering eye, bouncy, intense, and helpful in her own way. And, last but not least, Divi Divi. Plus a few assorted women of unknown name and function, extras, stage hands, probably both."

  "See any suspects?"

  "Not yet. Of these..." Gwen flipped the page and started another list. "...the actors include Marcy, Divi Divi, Roseann, Sherry and Rita."

  Stoner opened her eyes. "I didn't know Sherry was acting."

  "Minor part, according to her. Does it change things
?"

  "I guess not. It just makes her a more likely target. If someone wants to sabotage the show, they could get rid of the producer and an actor by getting rid of her."

  Back in the forest, a woodpecker hammered furiously at a hollow tree.

  "We need to know more about these people," Gwen said.

  "Yeah." An ant was creeping across her leg. She felt too lazy to chase it.

  "Time to start infiltrating."

  "Uh-huh." She was almost asleep, suspended outside of time and space.

  "I'll approach Barb and offer my services. Techies are great at back stage gossip."

  "Okay." Everything was receding into the distance. She could feel herself drifting down, down...

  "I think you should try to connect with Rebecca."

  Stoner didn't bother to answer.

  "Motive," Gwen said, and poked her with the pen.

  Stoner started, nerves fluttering wildly, and groaned. "It's a beautiful day. Can't we just enjoy it?"

  "We can enjoy it when we've earned it," Gwen insisted. "Motive."

  The woodpecker stopped drumming. It was probably taking in the sun and soft air. It had probably decided work could wait. It knew the days of warmth and leisure were limited. It didn't have Gwen nagging.

  "Motive," Stoner said. "Okay. Someone has been forced into doing this play. Or maybe they wanted to do it, but right now they don't feel like working that hard. But there's another person who keeps pushing, sending our suspect into a murderous rage..."

  "Greed, revenge, jealousy," Gwen wrote, ignoring her.

  "Suspect, whose pleas for mercy have gone unheeded, strikes out in blind fury and destroys everything and everyone in her path."

  "All right, Stoner." Gwen put her notebook down and stood up. She peeled off her shirt and shorts and underpants and kicked her shoes out of the way. "Race you to the water."

  It was mid-afternoon by the time they got back to the barn, warm, damp, refreshed, and—in Stoner's case—placated. The coolness in the old building actually felt good. It was a relief to be out of the blinding sunlight.

  The cast and crew were sitting in a circle on the stage, while Rebecca talked from notes on her clip board. Stoner found chairs away from the center of activity.

  "All in all, it was a pretty good rehearsal," Rebecca said in a winding-up voice. "Div, any script changes?"

  "Nope," said Divi Divi.

  "So the script is set as it is?"

  ”Unless we come up with some big holes."

  "Okay. Swell. Good. Let's take five minutes, then do a quick line run-through to establish continuity." Women began talking, standing, stretching. Rebecca lifted a whistle that hung from a plastic lanyard around her neck and gave a short, shrill blast. "Sisters, please." They sat back down. "Before we break, are there any announcements? Anything we need to process?"

  Everyone looked blank and thoughtful. Marcy raised a tentative hand.

  Stoner thought she saw Rebecca heave a resigned sigh.

  "Yes, Marcy?"

  "I have a problem with a line on page 16."

  Everyone picked up her script and turned to page 16.

  "The one about the hamburger."

  Rebecca closed her eyes.

  "I thought we agreed," Marcy persisted, "this character was a dyke. I don't think a dyke would just go and eat a hamburger."

  "Nukeburger!" Seabrook roared. "Dyke the nukeburger."

  Marcy gave him a dirty look.

  "Well," Rebecca said with infinite patience, "it's up to the collective. But I think there are a lot of lesbians who eat hamburgers."

  "But I don't think we should validate that," Marcy insisted.

  "Oh, come on," one of the extras/stage hands shouted. "Let's just rehearse."

  "Suppose we take a vote," Rebecca suggested. "How many..."

  “Wait a minute," Marcy broke in. "This is a collective. We go by consensus.”

  Boneset pulled herself to her feet. "Go ahead and consense. I have work to do." She picked up her tool box and strode to the back of the barn.

  Rebecca tried again. "Look, is there anyone who objects to us changing the hamburger to a... a what?"

  "Tofu burger," Marcy said.

  Nobody seemed to mind. "Div," Rebecca said, "will you make the changes?"

  "Uh-huh," said Divi Divi.

  "Five minutes," Rebecca repeated. "Then a line run-through. Then we'll work on rough spots. And remember, we have our first tech rehearsal tomorrow. That's with props, costumes, and, we hope, with lights. Barb?"

  “We'll have 'em," Barb said, "if I can get some help this evening with hanging them."

  Stoner nudged Gwen. "Volunteer," she said under her breath. "Both of us."

  Gwen nodded.

  "It'll be long," Rebecca went on, "and boring, so..." She broke off as Sherry stood and started toward the door. "Sherry, where are you going?"

  "To change."

  “We're about to do a line run-through."

  "No sweat. I'll be back. If I'm late, work around me. I only have a small part."

  "There are no small parts," Rebecca said. "Only small actors."

  Sherry gave a laugh and a wave. "Whatever." She scurried through the door.

  Rebecca turned back to the others. "Okay, about tomorrow's tech run-through. Barb will tell us what she needs, so take direction from her. The most important thing is that you be on time, ready to work..."

  Marcy began to contort herself into a series of peculiar and improbable positions.

  "Marcy," Rebecca said, "can you tell us what you're doing?"

  "I have to stay warmed up," Marcy said. She expelled a series of sharp, loud grunts.

  Rebecca looked as if she wanted to walk out. She hesitated, looked at Barb, looked at Marcy, looked at the others, and decided the show had to go on. "They have to check sight lines and focus the lights, which means they need you to be ready to be anywhere you're going to be on the stage at any time, which means we walk through. Stop and go."

  Marcy uttered a shrill wail, like a cat in heat, and settled into a round of chicken clucks.

  The rest of the cast was growing very still and very quiet. Stoner could feel the air stretching tight and hard. Any minute now there'd be that moment when time stopped, the world stopped—the moment right before the powder keg blew.

  "I'm going to kill her," Rita said. “We'll take a vote. Who wants me to kill her?”

  The cheer that erupted broke the tension. Apparently oblivious, Marcy rolled on the floor, arching her back and hissing.

  "Even if you're not on stage," Rebecca pushed on, "please keep yourselves available. Any props or costume pieces you've offered to lend or have borrowed should be here. Any questions? Okay, let's start our line run-through."

  "Hey!" Marcy yelled. "I'm not through."

  They all waited patiently, morbidly fascinated, while Marcy did a few more stretches and moans. At last she got up, panting and sweating.

  "Anyone got a towel?"

  Boneset tossed one from the back of the barn. Marcy inspected it with some distaste, finally found a corner that was clean enough to suit her, wiped her face and arranged her hair. She dropped the towel on the floor.

  "You're welcome," Boneset called.

  "Listen," Marcy said, "I don't see why we all have to sit around while they focus lights. Not all of us."

  "Because they asked us to," Rebecca said tightly.

  "And waste a whole lousy day?"

  "You have something better to do?" Rita asked.

  "Of course I have something better to do."

  "Sandbag her!" Seabrook ordered.

  Rebecca made one last try. "I realize it can be annoying, but they need all the help we can give them."

  "It's their job. If they can't do their job..."

  "Marcy, please. They wouldn't ask if it weren't important."

  "It throws my timing off to sit around," Marcy whined.

  Rita gave her a sarcastic smile. "What timing?"

  "I'll explain it
to you later," Rebecca said to Marcy, and silenced Rita with a gesture. "Can we move ahead now?"

  “What about the energy circle?" Marcy asked. “We have to raise the energy."

  "Douche-bag," said Rita.

  Rita might be "all right" now, but there was still a lot going on between her and Marcy. Stoner made a mental note of it.

  Rebecca gestured the cast forward. They all joined hands in a circle. All except Divi Divi, who crossed her large arms across her large chest and wandered over to Stoner and Gwen.

  Up close she was even taller, even more imposing, even more...

  "Either of you got a drink on you?" she asked.

  "Sorry," Gwen said. ''I'm Gwen Owens, by the way. And this is Stoner McTavish." She held out her hand.

  Divi Divi swallowed it up in hers and turned to Stoner. "I'll bet folks are always asking you where you got a name like that. They're always asking me."

  Stoner smiled. "I was named for Lucy B. Stone. How about you?"

  "I was named for a beach on Aruba. No. I'm not from there, I was conceived there. Or so my mother claims."

  "It must have been memorable," Stoner said.

  Divi Divi shrugged hugely and gracefully. "I guess so. I wasn't around at the time." She gestured toward the company. "What do you think of the play?"

  “We haven't really seen the play," Gwen said. "Just the preliminaries."

  “What's it about?" Stoner asked.

  "Beats me. I knew when I started, but there's been so much input it doesn't make any sense any more."

  The playwright, seeing her creative child torn apart by dozens of hands, each with an agenda, decides to end the show and save herself from disgrace.

  Stoner hoped that wasn't the case. She really hoped that wasn't the case.

  From the stage came a very loud, unanimous, "Oooooooommmmm."

  "What are they doing now?" Gwen asked.

  "Mingling auras," Divi Divi explained. "A little something Marcy picked up in a Feminist theater sharing, caring, and growing workshop."

  "Does it work?"

  Divi Divi gave a deep, rolling laugh. ''You look at that bunch and tell me if you think it works."

  Gwen watched them for a moment. "It doesn't work," she said.

  ''You two girl friends?" Divi Divi asked abruptly.

  Stoner said, "Uh..."

  Gwen said, ''Yes.''