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.
Okay. 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 34 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.
But TEWSBU never
showed.
I wasted a couple of hours imagining every
possible disaster that could have befallen him. People who
worked in the theater were superstitious by nature, our
imaginations heightened by the dramatic fare we consumed
every day. I pictured my beloved mutilated in a car crash. I
imagined him cut down by robbers when he stopped at the drug
store for a silly, unnecessary disposable camera. I panicked
that the stress of the day, the excitement of fulfilling his
lifelong dream of perfect, permanent married love, had all
proved too much for him, had brought on a heart attack.
Drawing on my experience as a stage manager, I'd
started phoning hospitals. I had created so many contact
sheets for so many shows—complete with blocks of emergency
contacts in boldface type—that I knew most of the numbers by
heart. My cell phone grew hot beside my ear as sympathetic
nurse after sympathetic nurse reported that they had no
patients matching my professionally accurate description of
my fiancé.
Sometime during phone call fourteen, he
left a voice mail. My so-called beloved was a director. His
message used our common language, the patois of the theater
that we both lived and breathed. He was sure I'd understand
eventually, he said. He'd only just realized it himself. The
blocking of our entire relationship was just not right.
Blocking. Where the actors stood when they said
their lines.
I had spent the night of my would-be
wedding, precisely one year ago, kneeling on the bathroom
floor of the Hyatt Regency. Maddy and Jules had taken turns
holding my torn-down updo off my face, offering me damp
paper towels and glasses of cold water to rinse my mouth.