by Cindy Brown
“Shall I have to endure the public eye; To smile when I want to cry?”
Could she really be a man? The way she sang the song, so wistful and vulnerable, felt so feminine.
“Where are the trifle-y joys? The mother and the wife-ly joys?
Where are the simple joys of Hyannis Port?”
I clapped when Jackie finished, but she didn’t look at me. Was it because she didn’t want to meet my eyes?
“Good!” said John Robert. “Very good!” With the exception of trifle-y and wife-ly, the song was a marked improvement from yesterday’s Kennelot ideas. I probably just needed to relax and trust John Robert’s process. After all, it had already taken him to...Broadway! He turned to me. “Marilyn.”
“I’m so sorry about being late,” I said. “I’ve been on a calendar, but I’ve never been on time.”
“Delightful,” John Robert said. “You’ve been doing your homework.”
I had. Marilyn had a surprising number of really good quotes.
“I have a song for you, too.” John Robert handed me a few sheets of paper. “This one’s sung to the tune of ‘The Lusty Month of May.’”
I kinda figured that, seeing as how it was called “The Lusty Years of Men.”
“It’s about your marriages. I’m sort of setting the scene for the character, putting you into context, like I did for Jackie with “Simple Joys of Hyannis Port,” said John Robert. “Sing it acapella for now. I just want to see it on its feet.”
“Of course,” I breathed ala Marilyn. “Tra la!” I sang. “It’s James! Those lusty years of James! That lovely man who taught to me all the marriage games.”
“Should that be ‘sexy games’?” John Robert thought out loud.
“Tra la! Then Joe! Then Joe DiMaggio! Famous for home runs on the field and in our bed, you know.”
“Maybe ‘with gusto?’”
“Then Arthur! Arthur!” I stopped.
“Yes?” John Robert asked. “Do you need help with the tune? I know the name is two syllables instead of one.”
“It’s not that,” I said. “I wonder if that won’t confuse the audience. I mean, won’t everyone to be thinking about Arthur the King versus Arthur Miller the playwright?”
“Why would they?”
“Because it’s Camelot?”
“Drat.” John Robert deflated like a sad balloon.
“Which of us will sing ‘C’est Moi?’” I asked, hoping to cheer him up. “Me?”
“No.” John Robert shook his head. “You’re too unsure of yourself, Marilyn. Besides, the song’s about purity.”
“Hey.” I pouted in mock offense.
“It has to be JFK,” said Hayden.
“Didn’t he say it was about purity?” I said to Hayden. “That puts you outta the game, fella.”
“Which leaves me,” said Jackie. “And I do speak fluent French.”
“Exactly,” said John Robert.
“So Jackie’s Lancelot?” I asked.
John Robert deflated again for a moment, then brightened. “I did figure out what do with ‘If Ever I would Leave You.’ JFK could sing it to Marilyn. “
“That would be wonderful,” I breathed.
“It’d be all about sex...”
Not so wonderful.
“We’d call it, ‘If Ever I Could F—”
“Forget you,” I said quickly.
“Forget?” said John Robert. “That’s not what I was thinking.”
I knew that.
He frowned. “I’m not sure ‘forget’ works. Too many syllables. But the other—it’s too crude, right?”
We all nodded in relief.
“Okay. I get it. So...how about ‘If Ever I Would Shtup You’? No? ‘Bonk’ maybe?”
Chapter 35
I took turns watching John Robert and Jackie, trying to put the Ren faire puzzle together. He had been at the faire in costume before the joust. She was a Rennie (and a man). Riley’s horse ended up here at the ranch. There had to be a connection, but what?
Maybe Jackie could tell me.
When we had a break, I began a conversation with Hayden, watching for my chance. As soon as Jackie left the theater I excused myself and followed her. When she went into the powder room I crowded in behind her and shut the door. When she turned, I grabbed her hands and peeled the glove off one of them. “Man hands!” I said. “I knew it was you I saw yesterday.”
“Give me my glove,” Jackie hissed.
I held my cotton treasure aloft. “Only if you promise to tell me what’s going on.”
“If I tell...” Jackie’s mask crumpled for just a second, revealing a vulnerable face beneath it.
Sometimes I hated being a PI.
“If I tell you,” she said, her voice more under control. “Will you promise not to tell?”
“I promise,” I lied. Yeah, hated it.
“We can’t talk here. Follow me after rehearsal. My place isn’t far. Now...” Jackie was a first lady again, straight-backed with a little ice to her elegance. “Please return my glove to me.”
After rehearsal, I asked Jackie for her address and texted it to Uncle Bob. I had to be careful. She/he seemed like the harmless type, but at the very least, the harmless duplicitous type.
I followed her to a trailer park in Apache Junction. It was a nice one, a “mobile home community” with well-kept homes with window boxes full of petunias and little gravel yards full of lawn ornaments. Jackie parked in front of a vintage singlewide trailer. No room for more than one car. Jackie got out of hers, a baby blue 1960’s Cadillac. “Guest parking is down the road.”
She met me there and we walked the couple hundred feet back to her place. “Are you transgender?” I asked. “And what would you like me to call you?”
“I’m not transgender,” Jackie replied. “I’m a female impersonator who identifies as male and gay. And you can call me Jackie or Benjamin—she or he—depending on the setting.”
“So last night at the faire you were Benjamin.” I was curious about the two personas, but more curious about something else. “What were you doing there?”
“I work there, just like you. At From Hoods to Snoods—the hat shop? I’m only there when the faire’s in town—I don’t travel. I have full-time work at a milliner’s shop in Mesa.” We passed a yard full of citrus trees in bloom, their scent sweet and strong.
“Really?” I was about to ask how any milliner in Arizona could hire full-time assistance (Phoenix is not big on fancy headwear) when Jackie said, “We mostly work with cowboy hats.”
Ah.
“And where do you really work?” Jackie climbed the steps to the trailer.
I followed. “I’m an actor.”
“I see.” She unlocked and opened the door. “You’re an actress-slash-belly dancer from Liverpool who just happens to have a Phoenix agent who got you an audition with John Robert.”
“Um...” I said, then, “Wow.” My “wow” was partly intended to distract Jackie from her question while I thought up a good answer, and partly because, wow.
I had just stepped into a trailer, but I felt like I turned a corner into the sixties. A long low silk sofa sat on a faux fur rug. Sumptuous draperies in federal blue hid two of the walls. Another was lined with bookshelves. It was as if Holly Golightly had decided to have breakfast at the Kennedy White House.
The remaining wall was covered with material and acted as a soft bulletin board. Onto this wallboard was tacked dozens of photos of Jackie and Audrey Hepburn and Grace Kelly. I turned to look at Jackie, who lowered herself gracefully onto a velvet banquette window seat. “I long for the elegance of bygone times,” she said. “I was born in the wrong era.”
“And the wrong body?” I was still curious about the boy/girl thing.
“No. I don’t want to be someone else a
ll the time. I just like the feel of slipping into another persona.” A slight smile played on her lips. “You should understand.”
I did. Some people think actors are trying to hide from themselves, or don’t have their own personalities, but for most of the people I knew, it was more about curiosity and empathy—given a character with this particular background, at this particular time in history, in this particular set of circumstances, how would they act?
And maybe there was a little of the “hiding from ourselves” thing too.
“Why go to all this trouble?” I asked. “Why not just do drag?”
Jackie arched a tweezed eyebrow. “Have you ever seen a queen do Jackie? Or Audrey? No. They like the bold, brassy types. Like Marilyn. Which you do fabulously, by the way.”
“You’re an amazing Jackie,” I said. “And I’m not just returning the compliment. You’ve got her looks down, plus her voice, her walk...”
She shrugged modestly, but a shy pleased smile played on her lips.
“Does John Robert know you’re—?”
“No.”
“So you didn’t know him before this play?”
“No.” Her lips pursed in puzzlement.
“From the faire, maybe?”
“No.” Still puzzled, a bit tense.
“I heard that that jouster’s horse was found at John Robert’s ranch.”
“Oh.” Her shoulders relaxed. “Everyone says that was just a coincidence.”
Jackie seemed like she was telling the truth, but then again, she was a wonderful actor. Maybe if I cracked her façade a little... “And you’re sure that John Robert doesn’t know you. Benjamin, I mean.”
“I said no.” Jackie stood up and took off her jacket. For the first time I noticed muscled arms and broad shoulders usually disguised under sleeves. “And he can’t.”
“You do know that he—or someone else—will figure it out one day.”
“Once John Robert really truly believes in me, believes in what I can do as an actor, I’ll tell him. Then we can figure out how to spin it for PR.”
“Huh. That could actually work.”
“I’d say you have the bigger problem.”
“Me?”
Jackie hung her jacket over the back of the window seat, sat down, and looked at me thoughtfully. “It’s obvious why I’d want to be Jackie, just like it’s obvious why you’d want to be Marilyn. It’s the British belly dancer that’s the problem. A lot of us at the faire have been suspicious of you from the beginning.”
Dang. And here I thought I’d...
“It’s not your acting or your disguise, though,” Jackie continued. “They are lovely.” Lovely? She must have seen the doubt in my eyes. “Truly. Lovely costume, fun accent. But your story isn’t right. First of all, people in Liverpool don’t have Cockney accents.”
Arghh. I actually knew that. If I wanted to be Cockney, I should have chosen London as my hometown. Dang Beatles.
“And as you know, faire acts are their own businesses. Doug foisting you on Jasmine is like some shopping mall administrator making Forever 21 hire his teenage daughter. It just doesn’t happen. Whatever you’re doing for the faire—and I have my own suspicions about that—Doug should have given you a better cover. You could have been a strolling wench. There are so many of them—no one would ever think twice about you.”
“The belly dancer disguise was my idea—all those scarves, you know—but yeah, Doug should have known better.”
Doug. He’d made this big gaffe, he’d suggested the really bad mermaid idea, and...that thing that had been bugging me circled my head again, buzzing like a mosquito. I grabbed at the thought and actually caught it. Yes. Doug had talked about Angus in the past tense when he was still alive. Could he be involved with Angus’s death? “What do you know about Doug?” I asked.
Jackie told me what she knew: that Doug was Mr. Corporate, never dressed for the faire, never treated anyone as anything more than an employee. “So?” I said. “Sounds like a lot of bosses I’ve known.”
“Ren faires are different. We don’t work there for the money—some of the local talent make no money at all, just tickets. People work and live the Ren faire life for the creativity, for the community and camaraderie. The Phoenix Ren faire has become so big and so money-focused we’re worried—the community is worried—that it’s losing its heart.” Jackie glanced at a clock on the wall and stood up. “I’ve got to turn into Benjamin-pumpkin and get to the hat shop.” She stepped toward me. It wasn’t a threatening move, but it did remind me that she was actually a man, and from the look of those arms, a strong one. “I’ll keep your cover if you keep mine,” she said. “I’ll even tell the people who are wondering that you really are from Liverpool.” She smiled. “Most people don’t know a Cockney accent from a Cornish one. Do we have a deal?”
Hmm. I had a lot to lose if my cover was blown—basically my entire investigation, and possibly my chance to be on Broadway. What did I have to lose by keeping Jackie’s secret?
Chapter 36
I drove back to town, thinking about corporate profits and community and heart. It wasn’t until I hit the Phoenix city limits that I realized I had learned all about Doug, the faire, and my undercover problems, but very little about Benjamin/Jackie. Dang. Luckily I had his first name, address, and license plate number, plus the fact he worked in a milliner’s shop in Mesa. That info should be enough for a background check. If not, I could look through the list of employees for a Benjamin. He didn’t seem like a killer, but I still hadn’t figured out the John Robert-Ren faire connection, and Benjamin being in both places seemed awfully coincidental.
Since the faire was closed on Wednesdays, I was on my way to the office. I called Uncle Bob to see if he wanted anything from Filiberto’s (“Just a shrimp taco. No, two shrimp tacos. And some horchata.”), picked up lunch for the both of us, and got into the office a little after one. After wolfing down my carnitas burrito, I called Doug. “This is Ivy,” I said when he picked up. “Any word on William?”
“He’s going to be fine. They just kept him overnight. He needs to rest for a couple of days, but should be good to go on Friday. God, what an idiot.”
“What do you think happened?”
“God only knows. Some drug thing.”
“Are you going to fire him?”
“If I fired everyone who got high around here, I’d have to get a whole new crew.”
“Really?” I hadn’t noticed a lot of drug use when I hung out after-hours.
“Besides, William’s one of our biggest draws. People love his wizard show.”
Ah. Corporate profits.
“Are your insurance guys going to inspect the accident?”
“No. It wasn’t a big deal cost-wise.” Plus he didn’t want William’s drug use on record, I bet.
“If they do, or if you hear anything more about it, would you let me know?”
“Why? You think it’s connected to the Angus thing?”
“Maybe.”
When I hung up, my uncle said, “Why do you think this OD might be connected to our investigation?”
“I was talking to him beforehand, and he said something that made me think the jousting accident may have been a group effort.”
“Was he high when you were talking to him?”
I remembered William’s distracted air as he puffed on his pipe. “Probably. So yeah, I’ll take everything he said with a grain of salt...And there’s another thing...” I hated blowing Jackie’s cover, but it was part of my job, and the guy I was telling was the most trustworthy man in the world. So I told Uncle Bob about Jackie, and about seeing her as Benjamin at the faire before William’s OD. “I don’t know how or if that connects, but it seems strange.”
“Did she—he—know John Robert before?”
“Going to find out about that right no
w.”
Or not. I found out zippo about Benjamin, except for his last name, which was Maxson. No debts, no offenses, not even a traffic ticket as far as I could tell. Ah. There was another way to find information.
I called the horse’s mouth. “Want to go thrift shopping?”
“Now?” Timothy asked. It was four o’clock. Timothy worked temp jobs between gigs. Right now he worked evenings as a banquet server.
“Come on, seize the day. I need you help me pick out a few Marilyn outfits.”
“Why? You can’t possibly need any for the Camelot gig, because if you got the job you would have called your friend—your good friend—who helped you get it.”
Dang. “I’m sorry, there’s just been so much going on...”
“And a text takes so long.”
“But I am coming to see you in the gay rodeo on Friday and—”
“I’m thinking of wearing Cher’s “Half Breed” costume.”
“The one that shows a lot of skin?”
“I’ve been working out.”
“Didn’t you tell me this was dangerous drag?”
“Oh. Drat.” Timothy sounded a little depressed. “Back to the drawing board.”
“Remember how I was saying ‘and’ before we started talking about Cher?”
“Right.”
“And I saw a gorgeous silk tie at Re-dud that I was thinking of buying for you.”
“...What color?”
“Peacock blue.”
“See you at Re-dud in fifteen.”
Timothy met me in the parking lot, all atwitter. “So, remember when I told you about BWBG?”
“Um...”
Timothy rolled his eyes. “BWBG—Boys Will Be Girls?” He opened the door to Re-Dud and held it for me. “That new company where we’ll do classic musicals and plays—like ones by Rodgers and Hammerstein and Tennessee Williams—and men will play all the roles? How can you not remember this?” It was a good question. “Omigod, it’s going to be fabulous. Can’t you just see me as Blanche Dubois?” I could. “So, it looks like it’s really going to work. We’re still deciding on a season but the first show is slated for September. And really, honey, sometimes you need to be a better listener.”