Backstage Romance: An Austen-Inspired Romantic Comedy Box Set

by Gigi Blume

  This piqued my mother’s interest. “What boy?”

  Mrs. Lucas gestured over her face and batted her eyes dramatically. “The Boy George.”

  “Colin?” My brows raised so high, they practically meshed with my hairline.

  “Lizzie,” said Dad in his calm dad voice. “Do you mind telling us what in the Sam Hill is going on?”

  “That’s what I want to know,” chimed in my mother. My sister, however, gave me a wide-eyed glare—the kind siblings gave one another when one of them was in trouble. She grinned and quietly took small bites from her pie, enjoying the entertainment. I had to explain, briefly, about the unfortunate events earlier in the day, how that ‘Boy George fellow’ stalked me at work, caused a scene, (well, caused me to cause a scene) and I was subsequently fired. Mrs. Lucas completed the story by telling us her dear Charlotte took pity on the poor man with his soiled suit and no one to spend the holiday with and invited him to celebrate Thanksgiving with them. Mrs. Lucas also informed us that Colin held no grudges whatsoever and in fact, felt responsible for my present unemployment.

  No kidding.

  And so, here was Mr. Lucas in my house, asking me to come back to work at the lodge while we ate pie. The sad part about the whole situation was that holiday fiascos were a regular occurrence at my house. There was that one time my cousin went vegan, and my grandma freaked out. Or the time my uncle brought his own frozen dinner because he was afraid of my mother’s cooking. (I actually didn’t blame him there.)

  We were all beginning to wonder if we could pull this Thanksgiving off without an incident. But, no. We were cursed. The usual dose of drama descended upon the Bennet household, and everything was right in the world.

  I accepted Mr. Lucas’ offer, and he relaxed, grateful to get the whole ordeal behind him. He and his wife stayed for coffee, and I quietly excused myself to play Scrabble with Mary in the den. Of course, I lost spectacularly. It was a metaphor for my life.

  13

  Telenovelas and Cap’n Crunch

  Beth

  Awkward didn’t even begin to describe rehearsal on Monday. When did my life become a vaudeville show for psychopaths? I was already accustomed to the dread of working with Will. Now I gotta add Colin to my list of people to avoid.

  We were finally out of the rehearsal studio and blocking on the main stage. The novelty of it alone put everyone in a state of awe. The set was far from being finished, but what work Jorge and crew had done was magnificent. The pirate ship nearly rivaled the one used in the Fantasmic show at Disneyland. There was rigging for acrobatics to be performed from the masts and several platforms and ropes for the actors to swing from bow to stern. A stunt choreographer was due to arrive Wednesday to work intensely with the pirates until Friday. So basically, I’d have three days off for the second week in a row.

  Jorge had returned from his no cell service jaunt and displayed the many awesome features of the pirate ship. He was almost immediately mauled by a flock of chorus girls led by Lydia and Mariah. They were of course enamored by him and the infuriatingly beautiful shoulder muscles taunting us all from beneath his Billabong surfer tank. I wanted to shoot a round of shells out of my eyes at the girls and watch them flap away like a gaggle of geese so Jorge would notice I still existed. But alas, he seemed to bask in the attention. Once Will arrived, Jorge disappeared backstage, and I didn’t catch a glimpse of him for the rest of the day. It annoyed me how much Will’s presence repelled him, but surprisingly, I didn’t miss him when he slipped into the shadows. I had more pressing concerns in the forefront of my mind.

  Caroline was the only female besides Stella in the cast not enamored by Jorge. I couldn’t give her much credit for that, though, because she took the first opportunity to tell me all about her opinion.

  “Don’t be fooled by his good looks, Eliza,” she said when we were alone. “I’ve heard some things about Jorge that weren’t very pretty.”

  “Oh?” I said. “What things?”

  “Just things.” She bristled at my question. “He was involved in some crime against Will.”

  “Can you be more specific?”

  “I don’t remember exactly,” she huffed. “But I wouldn’t expect it was very minor—considering his background. They should crack down harder on illegal immigrants.”

  Wow. Just wow. She was such a snob, I was almost speechless. Almost.

  “So, you’re telling me he’s a criminal because he’s not white? Unbelievable.”

  Her jaw fell to her chin, and she made a spiteful guttural sound in her throat.

  “I was trying to be helpful, Eliza. Excuse me for being a friend.”

  She flipped her hair and stomped away.

  Friend. Yeah, right.

  My true friend, Jane, was who I was most concerned about. She was never a very chatty individual to begin with, but something of a melancholy appeared to have overshadowed her. She was distant and closed off. What was going on with her? I directed my gaze to Bing and noticed a stiffness in his posture and a subdued remoteness in his demeanor. His back was turned to her from the opposite side of the stage as he inspected every inch of the pirate ship, giving it more interest than necessary. That wasn’t extraordinary in itself as he would have to familiarize himself with every detail for safety purposes. But as the day progressed, I watched him with a deeper level of scrutiny and noted his aloof disregard toward Jane whenever they weren’t acting on stage. As soon as a scene would end, they would break apart, and he’d walk away from her, putting as much distance between them as possible. I wanted to ask her what happened. I also wanted to kick him in the shins. Had they been fighting? I was so caught up in everything I’d been going through over the holiday weekend, I hadn’t noticed anything amiss. I was working at the lodge all the time. After the Yam Incident, as Charlotte merrily called it, Mr. Lucas had me working every day. I was a slave to Lucas Lodge for the unforeseeable future, and as a result, I’d hardly been home. I was also unable to carpool to rehearsals.

  The moment rehearsal ended both Monday and Tuesday, Jane bolted out of the theatre. By the time I arrived home after a crappy late shift, she was locked in her room asleep. I couldn’t even talk to her during lunch breaks. Whenever I had a tender moment to ask her how she was, she’d feign a smile and give me a laconic reply. “I’m fine,” she’d say dismissively and shut me out completely.

  It was Friday afternoon when it became such a problem, Lydia frantically interrupted my shift at the lodge.

  “What time are you off?” she inquired anxiously, barging into the dining room like a ferret on fire.

  “Why? What’s wrong?”

  Lydia was the type of girl who’d never set foot in a place like Lucas Lodge. Yes, she was wild with a side of crazy. Yes, she was poorer than dirt. Yes, she had her share of dancing on tables at sports bars. But she was also overly vain with her hot girl image. I guess Lucas Lodge was below even her low standards. Therefore, I knew there had to be some urgent business for her to seek me out at work. A slew of images ran through my mind. Did the landlord finally get fed up with her party girl antics and evict us?

  “Did you go skinny dipping in the pool again?” I asked, bracing myself for her answer. She stared at me for a second with her big Disney princess eyes. I could almost hear the gears clicking away as she contemplated my question.

  “There were no children present this time,” she said defensively. “But that’s nothing.”

  Here we go.

  “It’s Jane,” she said with a heavy exhale.

  “Jane went skinny dipping?”

  “No!” she cried. “She’s been watching Spanish soap operas on marathon.”

  That was bad. That was really bad. Jane didn’t understand a word in Spanish. She couldn’t pronounce taco correctly to save her life. The last time she watched telenovelas, it took three people to peel her off the couch and force her to take a cold shower.

  “Is she eating?” I asked.

  “Just dry cereal straight out of th
e box,” she said. “We’re out of Cap’n Crunch.”

  This was serious. More serious than last time. She needed some next level intervention.

  “You need to come home NOW,” Lydia continued. “I can’t even cross the living room without her demon stare shooting hexes in my direction. I’m this close to calling an exorcist.” She held up her thumb and forefinger to illustrate.

  I had another forty-five minutes before my meal break. If Charlotte could cover my remaining tables, I might have time to check on Jane before the dinner crowd. God bless her sweet freckled face, because she pulled through for me without hesitation. I got the rest of the night off.

  “Take the weekend,” she said with a smile. “You deserve it.”

  I found Jane in the darkened living room just as Lydia described her—slouched on the sofa, staring mindlessly at an over-acting Latina bombshell with rivers of mascara trailing down her cheeks. Her hairy chested love interest had his chiseled jaw set in a scowl so fierce he could cut steel with it. He was lustily saying something that had her wailing in a pool of tears and when her manicured hand flew to slap him, he caught her wrist and pulled her in for a forceful kiss. She melted in his arms, and they fell to the floor. Fade to black. Then a commercial for Tide filled the screen. That was my cue to open the blinds and force Jane to return to the human race. Preferably the English-speaking variety. But when I reached for the remote, she clawed it close to her chest and hissed.

  “Give me the remote, Jane,” I warned.

  “Go away.”

  “I live here.”

  She pouted in silence.

  “I paid for half of that TV.”

  Oh yes. I went there.

  She shifted on the couch, giving me more of her back.

  “Okay,” I said, stomping towards our flat screen Visio. “You asked for it.”

  It was time for some tough love. I reached behind the TV, sifting through the tangle of cables to where I could disconnect them randomly. I didn’t know a thing about how to plug them back in, and neither did Jane. It was a sabotage I was willing to make even though it meant I’d miss the next few episodes of Outlander.

  “No!” she cried in panic, almost flying off the couch. “Don’t do it.”

  I turned slowly to her with my hand extended, bidding her to give me the remote like in a hostage situation.

  “Give me the remote.”

  Her fingers were white around the little device, clinging onto it as a lifeline. I’d never seen her so wild looking. Her face was so pale, it was almost translucent, and there were bits of Cap'n Crunch in her disheveled hair. Geez, whatever Bing did to her, he would pay big time—as soon as I got the current situation under control. Lydia stood to the side of the couch with her knees bent and her arms extended… ready for what? To catch Jane in case she flew in her direction like a fly ball?

  “Give me the remote, Jane,” I warned again. I felt like I was talking Meg Giry down off the Coney Island Pier. (#spoilers)

  Give me the hurt and the pain and the remote, Jane.

  She shook her head in tiny protests, but I could tell her resolve was crumbling. The commercials were almost over, and I had to act fast. With careful steps, I inched closer to Jane, my palm outstretched in gentle supplication. I was moments from my target when Lydia reached for the spray bottle we used to mist the plants and squirted Jane in the ear, momentarily distracting her. I grabbed the remote, and Jane dissolved into a heap on the floor, bellowing like a tired toddler. I shut off the TV and flew to her side, rubbing her back and pulling her sticky hair from her face. Lydia joined us on the floor, and we group-hugged in a mess of wet tears, sweaty pajamas, and sticky Cap'n Crunch hair for a full ten minutes.

  At length, Jane allowed us to take her into the kitchen for a paper towel, which she wiped her face and blew her nose with it as she sat at the table. I gave her a minute before speaking, exchanging the dirty paper towels in her hand for clean ones. Toilet paper would have been better, but the bathroom was too far. I didn’t want to lose my patient.

  “Are you ready to tell me what happened?” I asked.

  “Did he cheat on you?” Lydia growled. Clearly, she was hungry for blood. But Jane shook her beautiful, blonde head with a sniffle. Bing wasn’t the cheating type.

  “Did he break up with you?” I gently bid. She just shrugged.

  “Does he have herpes?” chirped Lydia. I furrowed my brow at her incredulously, but Jane released a minuscule laugh through the tears, a small breakthrough in her woe.

  “No,” she said softly.

  “Tell us what happened,” I said, still stroking her back. My other hand labored to shove the remote in my back pocket undetected. We didn’t want any relapses here.

  “I’ll break his pate across,” warned Lydia. Ah, how comforting a Shakespearean threat is when one is brokenhearted.

  “I don’t know what happened,” Jane feebly admitted. “He won’t talk to me.”

  “The fiend!”

  “Thank you, Lydia,” I said, slicing her a pointed stare. “You can sheath your rapier.”

  And turning back to Jane, I whispered, “Tell it to us from the beginning.”

  Bing had gone with Will to New York for Thanksgiving. When his phone went straight to voicemail, Jane assumed he’d run out of battery or forgot to turn it back on after his flight. But the next day, it rang and rang before her call was redirected to a new, more formal greeting for his outgoing message. She knew he had heard her messages if not seen her texts. She didn’t hear from him all weekend. No calls, no texts. Nothing.

  “I tried to ignore my suspicions,” she said quietly. “He was in New York, having fun. He didn’t need to check in with me.”

  I wanted to tell her that a man in love like Bing was with her wouldn’t let a day go by without calling. It didn’t make sense. Bing couldn’t keep his hands off her before he left California. But I kept my mouth shut and let her finish her story.

  Then she told us that his social media was filled with photos of him all over New York with a beautiful girl I could only assume was Georgia Darcy. She was fresh faced with a brilliant smile—her shoulder-length, honey hair blowing in the wind in front of Rockefeller Center, on the Empire State Building, in Central Park—and Bing posed with her like a silly tourist with rosy cheeks and bundled in scarves against the autumn chill.

  But he wasn’t a cheater. Jane was sure of that. Still…

  “I wasn’t jealous,” she assured us. I believed her. She wasn’t the jealous type. “But on Monday, Caroline took me aside and told me Bing was going out with Will’s sister.”

  Why that little busybody.

  “I don’t buy that for one second,” I exclaimed. “Caroline just likes to stick her fake nose where it doesn’t belong.”

  “I’ll steal his phone,” offered Lydia. “I can check his call history to see if he’s been calling her since he got back.”

  “No,” said Jane. “I asked him if there was someone else. I wanted to give him my blessing if there was. To give me closure. But all he said was, ‘There’s no one.’ Those are the only words he’s spoken to me since he returned.”

  Jane fell into a wash of fresh tears and covered her face with two full sheets of Costco-brand paper towels. The stiff material stuck out like angel wings on either side of her face, and all I could see was the nest of golden locks from behind the white barricade and her thin hands scrunching the towels in the middle.

  I was determined to find out the truth somehow. I regretted not befriending Bing earlier, so I could hear his thoughts on the subject. I couldn’t exactly approach him in rehearsal and casually ask why he was acting like a dirtbag. I refused to believe Bing would let himself become influenced by the stellar way Will treated women.

  14

  What Is This Feeling?

  Will

  Bing was asking for it. The only reason I agreed to do this ridiculous production was to help him in his career. He had the ‘It’ factor. I could spot it the first time I saw
him rehearse. He’d been an emergency replacement the last month of the tour for a swing who took the old saying ‘break a leg’ a little too seriously. Bing auditioned and took his place immediately. One would say he lucked out. But there was something special about Bing. He was a talent you don’t see very often. He had all the requirements for a successful Broadway career, but I knew, with the right connections, he could make it in Hollywood. He was green and needed some leading roles on his resume. The acting experience would be helpful for when he auditioned for films. I could help him with that. And now I regretted this whole stupid business. He was incredibly sulky all the time and that affected his performance. I hoped his poor attitude didn’t reflect on me. The musical director Fitz Hanlon and I were old friends. We’d known each other forever. We were cool. Cole Forster was another story. I suppose I only cared what he thought of me for Stella’s sake. Besides, Cole knew everybody in the theatre world. He could make or break Bing’s Broadway ambitions.

  But Stella—she was special to me. She’d known me since I was a child, having starred in a heist film with my father and later cast him as her first guest star in the premiere of The Gardiner. She was more than a colleague. She was almost family. So when she’d called me asking for help with her charity event, I couldn’t refuse her. But I did have one condition. “Come see this guy perform,” I’d said, “and if you like what you see, maybe you’ll have a role for him in one of your plays.”

  She agreed to fly out to Atlanta to watch the show, saying she wanted to see it anyway, but I knew she was there to reciprocate my favor. Turned out she did in fact have a part for Bing. In Pirates of Penzance. There was one more caveat to the deal. I had to play The Pirate King. I protested at first, arguing that I couldn’t possibly fit it in my schedule. My agent Tobias had been badgering me to sign on to do another Fast and Dangerous film. It was a twenty-million-dollar contract and rumor had it, Rick “The Brick” Savage was attached to the project.