by Cindy Brown
You know you’ve got a good man when he spends half an hour picking cactus needles out of your behind.
“It’s an amazing opportunity,” I said as Matt and I finished up a pre-callback dinner of tuna mac and cheese, courtesy of a box and a can in my cupboard. “I’ve never gotten this far with Arizona Center Stage before. Hardly anyone I know has.”
Arizona Center Stage brought most of its talent in from out of town. Local actors might get to play a small role or fill in the chorus, but the fact that I was called back for the lead in Annie Get Your Gun was nothing short of miraculous. It might have had something to do with a scathing Arizona Republic article about the theater’s dismissal of the local talent pool. Or the fact that Marge knew the assistant director. Or that it was just a callback.
Matt put down his fork. “But you still haven’t read the play or seen the movie?”
“I did pick up a side from the theater”—a side was a copied section of the script— “and I’ve been listening to the cast album. The music’s by Irving Berlin, and there are some amazing songs, especially ‘Anything You Can Do’ and ‘There’s No Business like Show Business.’” I sang the last line with gusto, channeling Marge (Arizona’s Ethel Merman, remember). “What do you think? Marge is teaching me to belt. I’m not a powerhouse yet, but I think I can sell them with my sass and spunk.”
“You do have sass and spunk, but don’t you think you should have read the script?”
“I tried, believe me. But I couldn’t get hold of it. See, theater scripts aren’t like books. They’re proprietary. Samuel French and Dramatists and the other script publishers don’t want everyone picking up copies and putting on shows without paying royalties, so they make them hard to get. I couldn’t find a copy at the library or online. There was one on eBay, but the seller was from New Zealand. Didn’t think it would get here on time.”
“Isn’t there a movie you could watch, at least?”
“Yeah.” I cleared our dishes, walking the six steps from my eating nook to my tiny kitchen. “I have a hold on a copy from the library, but whoever has it right now hasn’t turned it back in. I even asked the librarian if there was a way to contact them, but nope. Luckily Marge said the script is pretty fluffy, that it’s the singing and attitude that matter.”
“Sass and spunk.”
“Exactly.” I kissed him on the top of his curly head as I walked past him to the couch. I grabbed my duffel bag, which held my purse, the side from the script, and two pairs of shoes: soft-soled jazz shoes and character shoes, those chunky-heeled Mary Janes ubiquitous onstage. “Walk me to my car and kiss me for luck?”
“You look great,” Matt said as we headed down the Astroturf-covered stairs outside my second-story apartment. I wore a form-fitting red t-shirt, black leggings, and a short flippy black and red skirt—easy to dance in. “But…”
“Are you still worried because I don’t know the play?”
“I can’t help it. I’m a student at heart.” Though Matt worked at my brother’s group home, he was on track to graduate with a Masters in Social Work in a few weeks. “I would want to know everything I could before committing to something that would take months of my life.”
“Don’t worry.” I unlocked the cab of my truck. “I may not have been able to read the script, but I did read everything I could find about Annie Oakley. She was an amazing woman.”
“Then you’re perfect for the part.” Matt held my face in his hands and kissed me tenderly on my split lip. For a moment, I wanted to stay right there for the rest of my life, in a hot, dirty parking lot littered with candy wrappers and full of Matt-ness. But…“I have to go,” I murmured into his ear, forcing myself to pull away. “The stage calls.”
“The force is strong with this one.” Matt was a bit of a nerd—one of my favorite things about him. He kissed me again. “May the force be with you. And break a leg.”
Chapter 11
I stretched in the hallway of the Berger Performing Arts Center, a multistage facility that housed Arizona Center Stage, along with several other companies. “Don’t think we’ve met before,” I said to the actor next to me. “Are you from out of town?” He nodded. “You Equity?” I asked. He nodded again.
In order to get into Equity, the actors’ union, you had to earn points by appearing in shows produced by theaters that worked under Equity contracts. I had enough points to audition with the big dogs but hadn’t joined the union yet. I wasn’t sure what to do about that. Equity status was a bit of a double-edged sword in a place like Phoenix. It certainly had its pros: it showed everyone that you were a professional who considered acting a career, and you’d never see a non-Equity lead with the bigger companies. But it had its cons too: mostly the fact that there were just a handful of female Equity roles in town each season, and once you got your card, you were pretty much prohibited from accepting non-union work. If you wanted to make a living in the theater, you’d have to travel or move to a bigger market.
“I’m just eligible,” I said. “Don’t have my card yet.”
The guy gave me a look I interpreted as “How the hell did you get in here?”
“I know. It’s crazy that I’m even here.” The guy was now stretching his other leg, his head turned away from me. “By the way, I’m Ivy Meadows. Stage name, of course. Hey, did you know that Annie Oakley was a stage name too? Her real name was Phoebe Ann Moses. Or maybe Mosey. The historical record is unclear.” The actor looked at me, which I took for a sign of interest. “She had a nightmare childhood. Her dad died after being caught in a blizzard, and then her mom couldn’t afford to raise the family, so she sent Annie and her sister to a poor farm.”
It looked like he nodded ever so slightly, so I went on: “The poor farm sent her to live with this horrible family, who treated her like a slave and abused her so badly that she ran away back to the poor farm. Then, while she was still just a girl, she singlehandedly lifted her family out of poverty, even paid off the mortgage on her mother’s house so her family could all live together again. Know how she did it?”
He shook his head and stretched his back. “All this time she was trapping and hunting—had been doing it since she was eight years old. She began selling the game and pretty soon was making a good living.”
The actor raised his head to smile at a slender man in an untucked button-down shirt and jeans who had stopped to listen. “Is this Annie Oakley you’re talking about?” said the second man.
I nodded. “She was amazing. Really changed the world’s idea of what a woman could do.”
“But she couldn’t get a man with a gun,” said Button-down, smiling.
“What? Oh, the song.” I’d heard “You Can’t Get a Man with a Gun” on the cast recording. “I haven’t figured out why Irving wrote that song. After all, she did.”
“She did what?”
“Well, she won that shooting match with Frank Butler. Ha! Can you imagine? I mean, he was a famous marksman, and she was only fifteen.” The actor beside me stared at me intently, as if trying to convey some message. “No wonder Frank was smitten. He wooed her, really pursued her, you know, until they married.”
“He wooed her?” Button-down’s smile had slipped. “Pretty sure it was the other way around.”
“Nope. He was definitely the woo-er. And they had a long and incredibly happy marriage.” I couldn’t figure out why Button-down looked annoyed, or why the actor was now clearing his throat. “So I’d really love to play her in this musical. Show the whole world what a strong, smart woman she was.”
“We’ll see,” said Button-down, and he disappeared through a door that led backstage.
“We’ll see?” I said to the actor. “I don’t get it.”
“Don’t think you’ll get the role either.” He had a surprisingly high voice. “That was Larry Cooper.”
“The director?” My chest began to get tight.
&
nbsp; “The director. Who flew in from New York to do this show. Who fancies himself an expert on musicals. And who hates to be corrected.”
Chapter 12
I knew what hell was. It was cold and dark and filled with things that rushed out of the darkness, screaming as they careened past, their breath fouling the air and rocking your pickup truck.
“There can’t be this many eighteen-wheelers in the whole country,” I muttered to myself as another rig blew past me, kicking dust in my face like some big bully. “Why are they all on this stretch of road at the ungodly hour of five o’clock in the morning?”
Yes, five o’clock. In the morning. The last time I was up at five o’clock I was still awake from the night before. “Not a morning person” was stamped heavily on my DNA. But I’d heard that the pack of Chihuahuas was most active in the early morning and late night. I didn’t have a chance to get out to Sunnydale last night after callbacks, so I bit the bullet and got up way too early after a sleepless night.
I hadn’t recognized Larry Cooper precisely because he was such a big shot. Like a lot of big theater companies, Arizona Center Stage held season auditions, where actors performed songs and monologues in front of theater personnel—often the artistic director. For my audition I performed a monologue from a great one-act called Graceland and sang “I Cain’t Say No” from Oklahoma!, hoping those choices would help the theater’s people see I was perfect for Annie. They did see something in me, because I was called back, where I performed again in front of the theater’s assistant artistic director. Last night was a second callback, with the field whittled down to only a few of us actresses, onstage for the first time in front of the show’s actual director. I sang with as much spunk and sass as I could, but even so, I didn’t hear anything except, “Thank you. We’ll let you know,” from somewhere in the darkened theater.
I got off the freeway, headed down Bell Road, and went through a Jack in the Box drive-through. I took a big swig of coffee as I pulled back into traffic and promptly burnt my tongue. Even that didn’t wake me up entirely. I drove until I came to the spot where I’d seen the Chihuahuas disappear into the desert. I eased my truck onto the gravelly shoulder and scanned the desert, now charcoal gray under the lightening sky. Nothing.
Even so, I put my plan into action. I got out of the car with my two big Jack in the Box bags. I took a wrapped-up kiddie hamburger from one bag and threw it as far as I could into the desert. I had a pretty good arm, so the burger made it forty feet, rattling a desert broom bush as it touched down. I lobbed another one a bit closer to the road, then another, until I had a Hansel-and-Gretel trail of burgers leading to the road. Before getting back in my truck, I carefully placed the piece de resistance—a bacon ultimate cheeseburger—on the shoulder near my truck. Lassie loved cheeseburgers. And he loved me. I figured if I could get him this close, his cheeseburger-and-Ivy love would be strong enough to overcome his yearning for a pack, and he’d leave the Chihuahuas and come with me.
I waited in the cab of my truck with the window rolled up, partly because the pre-dawn morning was chilly, but mostly so the dogs would smell hamburgers instead of me. I sipped at my cooling coffee and watched the sun rise over the desert, its long fingers painting the desert gold.
The desert broom near the first burger shook. I watched carefully, but I couldn’t see any animal. Then again, Lassie was black and the Chihuahuas were short. Another nearby bush trembled. Definitely something there. I eased open the car door a crack so I could call Lassie when he got near. I watched the brush along the hamburger trail shiver as the dogs got closer.
Wait, what was that rumbling noise? Not thunder. No clouds in the sky. I heard it again, a low growling noise. Oh, sheesh. I took the lone breakfast sandwich out of the Jack in the Box bag and bit into it. Ugh. Cold egg and sticky cheese. At least it could keep my grumbling stomach from scaring the dogs away.
Or was it my stomach? No. Another growl, definitely from outside the truck. And closer. I slid down so most of me wasn’t showing and peered out the dirty window. Two figures slunk close to the dirt, gray and tan bodies blending into the indistinct shadows thrown by the rising sun. They came closer, and yes, they were growling. The noise made the hair on my arms stand up. So I did what any human being would do. I jumped out of the car.
“You better not eat Lassie!” I yelled at the surprised bobcats, whose ears flattened against their heads when they saw me. “If you do, I’ll come for you. And you owe me twenty bucks. Hamburgers don’t grow on bushes, you know.”
Chapter 13
High noon. There I was, alone on a dusty desert road, standing on the exact spot where a man had died. All traces of blood had been cleaned up, or maybe dried up and blown away on the wind that swept down the street. A hot wind for November. It kicked up little dust devils, blew sand in my face, and knocked against the iron tools that hung on the outer walls of the building so that they sounded like Marley’s chains. Maybe this is what they meant by an ill wind.
“Hey! Girlie! We’re closed, and this is private property.”
Yep. Ill wind.
Nathan strode toward me, arms windmilling as he shouted, “What are you, deaf or something? Or just blonde?”
Being an actor has its benefits, like being able to act calm and professional and say, “Why, hello, Nathan. I believe you were expecting me,” when you really want to smack someone. “Arnie said you’d introduce me to Josh. So I can learn about Gold Bug’s history for the tour?” I’d gone over to Arnie and Marge’s after the burger/bobcat incident, and we worked out the whole set-up.
“Oh.” I swore Nathan’s face fell when he realized there’d be no confrontation. “Yeah. I didn’t recognize you.”
Really? I had on a t-shirt and cowboy boots just like the day we’d met. Only difference was I wore a denim skirt instead of jeans.
“You should always wear skirts.” Nathan ogled me from the waist down. “Yeah. I’ll make sure your costume has a short skirt.”
Normally I don’t mind showing off my legs—they are two of my best assets—but the skeevy way Nathan looked at me, sort of “sex mixed with dollar signs,” made me feel creepy-crawly.
“What era is Gold Bug Gulch supposed to reflect?” I kept my tone and language overly formal. Maybe if I sounded like a professor, he’d treat me with more respect.
“We’re going for the town’s heyday, around 1889.”
“Then no short skirts, I’m sorry to say.” I was not sorry at all.
“Yeah, sure.”
I made a show of looking at my watch. Never figured out why so many people don’t wear them anymore; watches work great as real-life props. “I’m supposed to meet Josh for a tour of the town.” Today’s meeting would be all about the town. I wanted to get Josh on my good side before asking him about Mongo or any business deals.
“Follow me. I’ve got to talk to him anyway.” Nathan started down the road ahead of me, toward the chimney smoke that rose from a building on the edge of the renovated town. I studied him from behind as he walked. He was built like Arnie, short and square, but where Arnie exuded joy and a sort of childlike excitement about pretty much anything, Nathan’s energy was all closed up tight and nervous—like a skunk who was deciding whether to spray you or not.
Huh. Arnie…Nathan…Oh. Right. “Want a piece of gum?” I offered him a stick from a pack I’d just bought.
He shook his head and kept walking. No DNA today.
“I’m so sorry about Mongo.”
Nathan shrugged.
“How do you think it happened? The shooting, I mean?”
“Chance just forgot to switch out bullets for blanks.”
“Could somebody else have done it? Switched the bullets?”
“They didn’t.”
“But they could’ve? I’m only asking because I get a little nervous around guns.”
Nathan stopped and turned to m
e. “The guys used to load their guns with blanks over there.” He pointed to a small area across from the saloon bounded by a short wooden fence and gate marked “no trespassing.” Inside the area was a counter. A wooden wall at the rear of the space held pegs, and “Justice of the Piece” was hand-painted above them. “But from now on, no more hanging guns there—blanks or no blanks.”
So the guys had left their guns there. And someone could have tampered with them.
Nathan turned and began walking again. We finally stopped across the street from a corral, empty now but for one horse. The adobe building in front of us had a big open entrance and an iron gate instead of a door. Metal letters mounted on the front wall spelled out “Smithy.” Something glowed inside.
We walked through the entrance. Electric fans whirred, hefty and rusty-looking metal tools lined the walls, and a brick forge hulked in the middle of the dimly lit room. With its chimney and small oven-like opening, the forge looked like a built-in barbecue, but the smell of the coals was not the familiar friendly scent of charcoal briquettes, but an acrid metallic one I could taste in the back of my mouth. The blacksmith stood with his back to us, using tongs to hold something in the fire. Josh was tall and lean, with a full head of dark brown hair and a sweat stripe down the back of his chambray shirt. He cranked a fan with his free hand, and the coals changed color from orange to magenta.
“Josh!” yelled Nathan.
Josh tensed, a near jump. He caught himself quickly, his muscles relaxing. He didn’t turn and kept his eyes on the coals. “Nathan. I’ve told you not to do that.” His voice was tight, and I recalled what the Wickenburg cowboy said about a pot under pressure. “Liable to get a hot horseshoe in the face someday.” He looked over his shoulder at Nathan, whose face still had that tight skunky look. “Might improve your looks.”