by Cindy Brown
“When?”
“Before rehearsal.”
“Um...”
“I mean, was there a moment of silence or anything?” I had thought they’d say something at break, but no one said a word.
“No,” said Candy.
“I can’t believe it.” I stood up. “I don’t think I even heard his name today. It’s like saying ‘Macbeth’ in the theater or something.”
Candy’s eyes got big. “Omigod, the curse.”
“Don’t worry about the curse,” I said, “We’re outside the theater, not in it.”
“No, I meant—”
“How in the world can they ignore Simon?” I was hot now and not just because of the 103-degree day. “He was one of us.”
“But Edward’s in charge.”
“So?”
“So Edward hated Simon.”
“Because of the hat?” I knew Edward was pretty pissed about that. I had heard them arguing about it one night in the greenroom.
“You are ruining my concept,” Edward had said. “Without the hat, no one will understand you are the ringmaster. They will be thoroughly confused.”
“And you believe that’s for lack of a hat?” replied Simon. “Not because you costumed the wounded sergeant as a bloody tiger? Or because your soldiers are clowns? Or because Lady Macduff is a big bird?” Edward, taking the bird imagery surrounding Lady Macduff very literally, had costumed her entirely in feathers. A bit wide in the hips, Kaitlin looked like a large duck.
“Yeah, the hat,” Candy said, pulling me back to the here and now. “But mostly that thing between Simon and Pamela.”
“Oh. Right.” I shook my head. “Simon and Pamela. I just can’t see them together.” I once saw a statue of the goddess Athena, suited up in armor and ready for battle, a haughty smile on her lips. Pamela to a T.
“I don’t know what happened, but I guess it involved handcuffs.”
That I could see.
Candy pinched out the end of her half-done cigarette, stuck it back into her pack, and opened the door, holding it for me. I scrambled to my feet and we walked into the cool dark theater.
“And there was Streetcar, of course,” she said, stashing her pack away again.
When Simon first arrived in Phoenix, the theater community couldn’t believe its luck—a marvelous actor whose fame guaranteed a full house. But when he drank, Simon screwed up royally, and often.
Like the time he forgot his lines in the middle of a performance, and improvised by saying, “Fuck” over and over (luckily, since it was a David Mamet play, no one noticed). Or the time when the Ghost of Christmas Present got a little too jolly and regaled Scrooge with stories of Christmas debauchery that had mothers grabbing their tots and running from the theater. But the topper came during Streetcar Named Desire. Simon’s Stanley was fabulous, filled with booze and angst. “Stella!” he roared in the famous scene. “Stella!” Then “Stell—aaah!” as he fell off the stage into the orchestra pit.
“Yeah.” I’d forgotten Edward had directed that show. We walked through the greenroom and into the hall where the dressing rooms were.
“Simon.” Candy shook her head. “It’s too bad he was such a drunk.”
“But he wasn’t any more,” I said. “He was in recovery.”
“But hon...” She opened the dressing room door, then stopped, effectively blocking my entrance. She turned to me, her eyes wide.
“Have you been in here today?”
“What? No. I came straight into rehearsal. I knew I was late.”
“And you didn’t come in here last night after...”
Had it only been last night? I shook my head. “Why are you...” I trailed off as Candy opened the door wide, and pointed to something sitting on top of my makeup kit.
A note.
CHAPTER 10
I’ the Name of Truth
A slip of stationery, torn at the top and at the bottom, sat on top of my makeup kit. I sank down into my chair and picked it up. “I am so sorry I caused you pain.” It was the same handwriting I’d seen on the note for my orchid. The one signed “Your King.”
My king.
Simon.
Candy touched my shoulder. “It was here when I came into the dressing room last night after, well, after everything. You were already gone.” She sat down in a chair next to me. “I am so sorry.”
The same words Simon had written.
“Me, too,” I said. So he had done it. Somehow slipped past all my best intentions.
“You want to talk about it? Maybe over a strong drink? Oh, shoot.” Candy grimaced. “That was the wrong thing to say.”
I shook my head. “Don’t worry. But I have to work a shift at the Garden tonight. Thanks anyway.”
“Alright, hon. Take care of yourself.” She blew a kiss to me as she left.
I stared at the note. I’m sorry. Was that all Simon could say? I fingered the torn edges of the note. Maybe he had written more. He had to have written more.
I stayed in the dressing room for a few more minutes, waiting until I couldn’t hear any sound from the hall. Once I was pretty sure everyone had left the area, I opened the door, double-checked to make sure the coast was clear, and tiptoed down the hall. Upon reaching my destination, I stopped. Could I really do this? Yes. If there were more to the note, it would be here at the theater. I couldn’t imagine him writing the note at home and bringing it with him. I turned the handle to Simon’s dressing room, stepped inside and shut the door.
Though the mess had been cleaned up, the smell of death still hung heavy in the air. Luckily, I had anticipated this. I remembered that people used to sniff at perfumed handkerchiefs to keep bad smells away. I’d searched through my stuff in the dressing room for anything scented. Though some of my makeup was slightly perfumed, my tin of Altoids won out as strongest-smelling. Now, I popped open the lid and stuck my nose inside. It worked. All I could smell was peppermint.
I mentally patted myself on the back and looked around the room. Bill wasn’t using this dressing room. No one blamed him for wanting a different one.
Though the floor had been cleaned, the rest of the room was just as Simon had left it. The tackle box he used as a makeup kit was still on the counter. His script lay next to it, dog-eared from use. Tacked up on the mirror was the preview article with a color photo of Simon. In the picture, he was laughing, head thrown back, clearly delighted by whatever the interviewer had said. Oh, Simon...The grief I had swallowed threatened to reassert itself, so I took another big sniff of Altoids, pushing my nose deep into the tin. The shock to my sinuses pushed the lump of grief back down, and I looked at the room with more analytical eyes.
Next to the article, another piece of paper was taped to the mirror, this one with numbers written across it. I had Simon’s note with me. I compared it to the paper with the numbers. Not the same. The paper he had written “I’m sorry” on was good stationery, heavy and cream-colored. The paper taped to the mirror was lined notebook paper. The numbers were written in pen and began at 6. They were all in order and they were all crossed out except for the last number, 38. Interesting, but not what I was looking for.
I checked the clock on the dressing room wall. I should be leaving for work, but I really wanted to find the stationery, to see if I could tell what else Simon had written. It had to be here. Ah. Another piece of paper peeped out from underneath Simon’s ruined ringmaster’s hat. Maybe this was it. I didn’t have gloves, but Simon had left a pencil near his copy of the script. I used the eraser to pull the note out from under the hat, just in case there were fingerprints. I saw it on CSI once.
This note was on a plain white copy paper, the kind you use in a printer. In block letters was written, “You WILL wear the hat.” Didn’t seem to be the same penmanship as the note on the mirror
as the lettering was much bigger. Pretty sure it was Edward’s. Underneath the note was a doodle: Shakespeare wearing a top hat, but with a big circle around it and diagonal line through it, the universal symbol for “no” like you see on “No Smoking” signs. Simon had been quite the artist.
I searched the rest of the room thoroughly, even going through Simon’s makeup case. No stationery. No more paper at all. Nothing he could have written a note on.
CHAPTER 11
The Milk of Human Kindness
Being late to work meant fewer tables and less money. I tried to make up for it by being especially perky, an attribute that often resulted in bigger tips. “Here you are, milady.” I gave a little curtsey to my Olive Garden customers before moving the gigantic bowl of salad to make room for their gigantic plates of food.
“Mi-who?” my customer said, blinking up at me. Her eyes were heavily lined in navy blue. Her mascara matched.
“Hey, you callin’ my girlfriend names?”
That from the guy across from her whose T-shirt and gut spoke of his affection for Pabst Blue Ribbon.
“Honey, it ended with lady. I think it was a compliment,” she said.
Her companion poked me with an enormous breadstick. “You complimentin’ my girlfriend? You like girls or somethin’?”
“No. Sorry. I’m in a play, Macbeth, and...”
“Mac-who? MacGyver? They bringin’ him back on TV?”
“She said, ‘Macbeth,’ honey. It’s Shakespeare, I think.” His date smiled at me, her eyes crinkling up like navy blue spiders.
I nodded at her as I backed away from the table.
“Oh, Shakespeare,” Mr. PBR said. “Awfully fancy for a waitress, aren’t ya?”
“Olive.” Sue, my manager, had come up behind me.
Everyone here still used my old name. It amused them to tell people I was the original Olive. Sometimes they made jokes about playing in my garden, too, but usually not in front of the customers.
“I need to speak to you,” Sue said. “Now.”
“Enjoy your Garlic-Herb Mediterranean Chicken and Five-Cheese Lasagna.” I smiled at my customers and followed Sue into the kitchen, my sneakers squeaking on the linoleum.
Once through the swinging doors, Sue turned to me. Uh oh. She had a frownie crease between her eyes. “You were late.”
I stayed in Simon’s dressing room too long. “I know, but—”
She held up a hand. “I wasn’t finished. You were late again. And this theater schedule of yours.” Sue shook her head. I had needed to take off most evenings and weekends during the rehearsal period, and still needed dinners off most nights through the end of the run.
“I won’t be late again.” I crossed my heart. “And I could really help out once the show’s over. I could cover every vacation, every single one, and...” I stopped. Sue was staring hard at my face, her frownie crease deepened to a trench. “Olive,” she said, “What’s that white powder on your nose?”
Damn Altoid dust.
So. It won’t be Olive’s Garden any longer. I unlocked my car in the parking lot, careful not to touch any sun-heated metal. I needed to figure out my next step, but I didn’t want to think while driving, and I didn’t want to go home. I couldn’t think in my apartment, too many dishes and phone calls and half-read books calling to me. And it was hot. My last electric bill was a hundred and fifty bucks—a hundred and fifty bucks—for my dollhouse-sized apartment. I kept the thermostat at ninety now and hoped for a monsoon or a miracle to cool things down.
I ended up at Toyko Express. It was cool, pretty quiet, and they piped in classical music, which helps you to think clearly, or so I read in a doctor’s office magazine. I ordered a fish sushi tray and a cup of green tea, took it to an empty booth, and thought about my predicament. I would get paid for the play, but how far does $500 get you? That’s right, five hundred bucks for four weeks of rehearsal and a four-week run. And that’s not atypical for a non-union actor. Except for the big stars, we actors are a pretty poor lot.
I looked into my cup and swirled around the tea dust, hoping for a tealeaf reading or something. I wondered if I should have talked Sue into letting me stay on, if I’d made a mistake, choosing theater over a paying job with good tips. I wondered for all of five seconds. I loved the theater, had ever since I saw my first show, a children’s theater production of Dracula. I didn’t care that the bats were rubber and the accents fake, because it was happening, right then, right in front of me. I could touch Dracula if I wanted to. In fact I did; my mother should never have let me sit in the first row. No, I had definitely made the right choice to feed my soul. Now if I could just feed the rest of me.
“Olive? Got your message.”
Uncle Bob stood next to my table, balancing a tray with two steaming rice bowls and a super-sized soft drink crowded onto it. I’d texted him before I left the Garden. With everything going on, I wanted to be with someone who loved me.
“You doin’ okay?”
“Better now.” I was. My uncle always made me feel better. Even his Hawaiian shirts made me smile.
“You wanna talk about it? About Simon?”
I shook my head. I didn’t want to go there. I wanted to sit and eat with family.
My uncle sat down heavily opposite me and immediately started tucking into his dinner. He took a bite from one rice bowl, then took a bite from the other. I didn’t have to ask why. He had a teriyaki beef bowl, and a teriyaki salmon bowl. Bob’s a big guy with a family history of bad tickers. His doctor told him to eat less beef and more fish. Bob couldn’t give up the cow, so he decided that eating this way counterbalanced things. Only once did I try to talk to him about it. He just pointed at my Diet Coke and three slices of Meat-Lover’s pizza.
“Hey,” I said. “Did you know pandas do an average of eight handstands a day?”
“Ha!” Uncle Bob’s eyes lit up. He loved trivia. “I just heard about a dog who can read.”
“Really?”
“Yep. Print and cursive.” He chuckled. “Panda handstands. Ha!”
He smiled at me. He was grizzled and gray and not a little overweight, but he had a killer smile. When he didn’t have food stuck in his teeth.
“Thought you had a shift at the Garden,” he said between bites, dropping a bit of rice from his chopsticks. That was another weight-loss strategy of his. He read somewhere that people who use chopsticks eat less. Judging from the amount of rice on the table, I’d say that was correct.
“Olive’s Garden is no longer.”
“Somebody finally torch the damn place?”
Bob was no fan of Americanized Italian food. Americanized Japanese food seemed to be okay.
“I got fired.”
“Want me to torch the place?”
I loved this man. “It’s tempting, but they’d probably just rebuild it bigger.”
Both our faces fell at the idea of an even larger Olive Garden.
“So, your job at the theater?”
I recognized this as one of my uncle’s PI tricks. Ask an open-ended question and see what you get. My uncle watched me, a question in his eyes and teriyaki sauce on his chin.
I wasn’t giving in. “It’s a great theater company.”
“So it pays pretty good?”
Hoping to distract him, I pointed to the sauce on his chin. He wiped it and continued.
“Olive...”
No distracting Bob when he was on the scent. He was a private detective, after all. “You know your folks would help you out.”
“No.”
My parents lived in Prescott, a mountain town about two hours away. I wasn’t really on speaking terms with them. Oh, I let them know I was alive and well, but that was about it.
“Olive, I know how you feel. Your mom sometimes just says thing
s.”
Things that cut me to the quick. Neither Mom nor Dad could talk to me without bringing up Cody, even though it’d been more than ten years since the accident. No. I wouldn’t ask them for help. Ever.
“Not going there, Uncle Bob. Discussion closed.” I started stacking empty containers on my tray.
“Hey, hey, hey, no need to rush off.” He threw his hands in the air, as if to say, “I surrender.” “Sit,” he said. “I’ll buy you some more raw fish.”
I sat.
“I’ll sit, but I’m full.” I folded my napkin. I folded it again. And again. It was beginning to look like origami. I wondered if there was any money in origami.
“You know, I thought you were pretty good in that last show I saw. What was it called? The one where you got married and died?”
“Steel Magnolias.”
“Yeah. You were good.”
I shrugged a modest thanks.
“You know, I could use someone with your acting skills.”
I didn’t follow.
“You know, sometimes it’s easier to get people to talk to you if you can fit in, seem like their kind of people.”
Still not following.
“And sometimes I need to get information outta someone. It’d be great to have a cute blonde...”
I loved Uncle Bob.
“To get them talking. All aboveboard, though. You see what I mean?”
“Not really.”
“What I’m sayin’ is I could use some help with the business, my PI business. I’d pay.”
Now I did see. I saw through the loud shirt and teriyaki-ed chin to see a big beautiful guy who cared about me. I stood up. Uncle Bob looked a little worried he’d somehow offended me. I walked around the booth to stand beside him. I put my arm around his neck and kissed him on his stubbly gray cheek.
“When do you want me to start work?”