I don’t know why it is that so many theatre-type smokers choose this particular brand. It could be because the company is known for big time arts funding, but more likely, it’s just the monkey-see, monkey-do principle in action. My dating history can be traced by the brands I’ve smoked over the years. Get a new boyfriend; switch to his brand. Makes the sharing of smokes easier. The heroin addict hangs out with the heroin addict, after all; the cocaine snorter with fellow snorters, and the smoker likewise. Gotta quit, one day.
“What was weird?” I asked Amber.
“That thing with Meredith. She doesn’t like you much, eh?”
“I think she’s just trying to establish that she has experience,” I said, carefully. “She wants to be treated with the respect that comes from seniority.”
“Huh,” said Shane. “And she gives the rest of us the respect that she’d give a babbling toddler. Still, I’m glad it’s you SMing, Polly, and not Jason. Sorry, Amber. Had to be said.” Amber seemed to take this remark in stride, blowing out a cloud of smoke and gazing contemplatively off into the middle distance.
“You’re right, Shane. Like, he is my boyfriend and everything, but he wouldn’t have been able to handle Meredith. She would have taken over.” I noted that Amber was speaking about Jason in the present tense.
“Meredith’s a high-maintenance puppy, definitely,” Shane said. It was a joke-label, not very complimentary but quite accurate.
“Which reminds me,” I said. “I should call Jason’s parents and find out if they’ve seen him. We’re going to look really dumb if he’s gone home to Mommy. Where did you say they lived, Amber? Laingford?”
“Yeah. They’ve got one of those monster homes on a lake up there. It was supposed to be a summer cottage, but Dr. McMaster—that’s his Dad—moved his practice up here from the city when Jason was ten. I’ve never been to the house, but Jason showed me a picture. It’s like Kurt and Goldie’s place. Huge.”
Kurt Russell and Goldie Hawn, the American movie stars, had built a palace on one of the lakes in Ontario cottage country some years ago. They sold it eventually, saying that the locals were bothering them. The local papers retaliated by saying that if Kurt and Goldie had wanted privacy, they shouldn’t have built a mansion on the waterfront of one of the busiest, most tourist-infested lakes in the region.
Amber rummaged through the bulging purse she always carried with her and produced a personal daytimer. “Here it is,” she said, handing me the diary. Sunday, which was our official day off, was marked with stars. “Important” was written on that day’s page in a childish scrawl. “Visit the Gorgons.” I copied down the telephone number.
“Jason called them that. Like I said, they weren’t close. We were supposed to go there for dinner and a spring cruise on Dr. McMaster’s antique motorboat. I bought a new outfit and everything.”
“For the doctor’s benefit, or for Jason’s?” Shane said.
“Ha-ha, very funny,” Amber said. “I just wanted to make a good impression, that’s all.”
“Dr. McMaster used to take young girls out on the boat all the time,” Shane said. “Trust me, if the new outfit is skimpy, it would’ve made an impression.”
“You know them?” I asked, surprised.
“Jason and I went to Laingford High together,” he said, with a wry smile. “I’m a local boy, too, you know.”
“Holy Toledo,” I said. “When were you there?”
“About ten years ago,” he said. Something passed across his face like a grey shadow, and he extinguished his cigarette, along with the subject. “I gotta take a leak before we start. Excuse me, ladies.”
“High school can do that to some people,” I said. “Bad memories. I should go make that phone call.”
“Polly?” Amber said, “if Jason’s not there—at his parents’ place, I mean—where do you think he is?”
I was going to say “at the bottom of the river”, but thought better of it. Amber was hard to read, and she was, after all, wearing a honking huge diamond that Jason had apparently trothed his plight with.
“He’ll turn up,” I said vaguely. “Ummm . . . Jason didn’t know that Shane was going to be in the cast, did he?”
“No. It was a last minute thing. After he found out, just after I got up here from Toronto, he burst into my motel room and asked me to marry him.”
“May I ask why you said yes?”
“Polly, we have a show to do. It’s my first big break, and I didn’t want to ruin it by pissing off the stage manager.”
“You accepted an offer of marriage because of a puppet show?”
“Well, that’s not the only reason. We have been going out for three years. We get along okay. Also, I’m pregnant.”
Thirteen
CAT: Deeds done in the dark are much more fun / than prissy Boy-scout stuff under the sun.
-The Glass Flute, Scene vii
“Are you happy about that?” I said. Amber looked at me thoughtfully, a tiny frown creasing her flawless forehead.
“I’m not sure,” she said. “I haven’t told Jason, although I think he probably guessed, but I’m not really sure it’s his.” She didn’t wait to hear my reply, which was just as well, as I hadn’t the faintest idea what to say.
“See ya upstairs, Polly,” she said and threw her cigarette into the shop pool. It went out with a faint hiss, like the voice of a tiny serpent.
I went to phone Jason’s parents.
Mrs. McMaster told me that the police had already called her and she hadn’t heard from Jason since he arrived in Sikwan the week before. She didn’t sound particularly worried.
“He used to go off in a sulk by himself all the time as a boy,” she said. “The police asked us to let them know if Jason got in touch, and I suppose it’s all we can do.”
“Did they tell you why we were concerned about him?” I asked.
“Well, they said that he hadn’t shown up for work, and there was some garment of his left in the theatre,” she said.
“Yes. His vest. The black leather one he always wears,” I said. There was a silence on the other end of the line. An empty one, as if Jason’s mother wanted to say “So? What’s your point?”, but was too polite to do so.
“Amber says he would never take it off, you see, and in the theatre business, stage managers always show up for work, no matter what. I don’t want to distress you, but we think something’s happened to him.”
“Well, that’s not what the police told us,” Mrs. McMaster said. “Frankly, Ms. Deacon, they warned us you might be calling, and said not to let you put ideas into our heads.”
Damn Becker. I should sue him for defamation of character. Still, my gut feelings about Jason’s disappearance sounded as lame when explaining them to his mother as they had when I had told them to the police. Maybe I was just making a murder out of a molehill, so to speak.
I was due back in rehearsal, but I knew I wouldn’t be comfortable about things until I’d spoken to Jason myself. Tobin was out somewhere, and the shop was empty. I stared at the pool, envisioning the various possible scenarios, all of them ending in Jason’s headlong splash into the pool, the struggles and grunts of a non-swimmer followed by a gurgle as he went under.
On my way back upstairs, Kim handed me a note from Rico.
“Polly,” it said. “Tobin had to go to Laingford, so I got a ride with him. He said to tell you that he called Jason’s Toronto number. No answer but he left a message on the machine. Can I get a ride in with you tomorrow? Drop by for coffee after rehearsal. Rico.”
The rest of the rehearsal day was relatively uneventful. The sing-through revealed that Amber, whose speaking voice was as light as popcorn, had a rock belt that could rattle the windows. Shane and Brad had fine, strong singing voices and Meredith sounded like Maureen Forrester in her prime. The four-part harmony they produced sent shivers up my spine, and Ruth at the keyboard was smiling from ear to ear.
“Well, even if you just stood there and jiggled dolls a
ll through the show, you’d still have their little bottoms pinned to their seats,” Juliet said with satisfaction. “We’ll cut it short for the day, I think. We’ve had a lot of excitement, and I imagine that Polly needs some time to go over her paperwork. Jason left a certain number of matters unfinished.”
“We’ll start at ten tomorrow morning,” I said, using my official “I am a stage manager whether I like it or not” voice. Meredith approached me as the others headed out.
“I gather that you’re officially taking over as SM, even if Jason shows up again,” she said.
“Yep.”
“Well then, I brought this up with him last night, and I was hoping he’d speak with Juliet. I don’t think the stage manager should do all the driving.”
“Excuse me?”
“Look, I know that there’s an extra ten bucks a day for driving, once we’re on the road. It’s in the Green Book. I think we should share the wealth around,” she said.
“That’s not company policy,” I said. It’s not an expression I’ve ever used in my life, but it just popped out. Meredith, I was discovering, brought out the mingy bureaucrat in me.
“We did it on the last tour I was on with Theatre on the Road,” she said. “It worked very well. Besides, some people are better drivers than others.”
I don’t know if she was trying to imply that I wasn’t a good driver (she could hardly know one way or another, as we’d never shared space in a vehicle), but my hackles went up immediately.
“All the more reason to stick to one driver who knows what she’s doing,” I said. “Besides, the insurance allows for one principal driver and a back-up. The Equity deputy is usually the back-up driver, so you’ll get a bonus on the days you drive.”
“That’s not good enough,” Meredith said. “I’d like you to talk to Juliet about it. Jason said he would.”
“Oh, I will too, Meredith. Believe me,” I said.
“And I hope you know that company policy forbids smoking in the van,” she said, on her way out.
Ruth had been puttering around with her equipment, and looked up in surprise at Meredith’s last remark, which had been unnecessarily loud.
“She’s going to be trouble,” Ruth said.
“Got that right. Ruth, tell me again why I didn’t tell Juliet to take a flying leap this morning when she told me I was taking over Jason’s job.”
“You need the money,” Ruth said.
“Oh.”
“And you’re just a girl who cain’t say no,” she sang, accompanying herself on the keyboard. “You’re in a terrible fix/ You always say C’mon, let’s go . . .”
“. . . just when I outta say shit,” I finished. We’d both been in a production of Oklahoma in high school, and had made up naughty words to most of the songs. Suddenly we were back there, goofing around like seventeen-year-olds. It was a good place to be, and I realized that the job stage-managing would have its benefits. I’d be spending a lot of time with Ruth.
“You going home right away?” Ruth said.
“Nope. I want to collect up Jason’s SM stuff first and update the cast list. There’s no computer in Polly-land.”
“When are you going to enter the twenty-first century, girl?” Ruth said.
“Hey. Juliet gave me a cellphone. I’m getting there.”
“And one day you’ll have hydro and running water in your home, just like the uppity rich folks.”
“Naah. Then I’d be like everybody else,” I said.
“Speaking of which, what was it like seeing Becker again?” I’d told Ruth about my short-lived relationship with the clean-cut cop and admitted that, while he drove me crazy, he also drove me crazy, if you know what I mean. In other words, I still liked him. More than a bit. Bummer.
“Oh, you know. Chalk and cheese. Fire and ice. Same old thing.”
“Anything there still?”
“I don’t know, Ruth. Probably not. Anyway, I’m still smoking dope and he’s still a cop, so there’s not much chance of a reconciliation.”
“Too bad,” Ruth said. “Well, I have to get back. Rose is calling me at seven, and phone sex is better than nothing.”
“Play safe,” I said. After she left, I restored the puppets to their proper pre-set positions backstage, as per Jason’s diagram. He had been efficient, I’d give him that. Then I gathered up all the paperwork, stuffed it into the cardboard box marked “Flute stuff” and headed downstairs to the office area behind the lobby.
Tobin was pouring a cup of incredibly thick coffee into his mug and going over a list of technical supplies for the show.
“Juliet’s gone,” he said. “She wants a production meeting at nine, if that’s okay with you.”
“Charming,” I said. “From lazy, late-rising puppet-maker to early-bird stage manager in one swell foop.”
“I’m glad you’re doing it, Polly. Couldn’t stand that little bastard Jason.”
“Gosh,” I said. “I didn’t know you felt so strongly.”
“Not enough to do him harm, if that’s what you mean,” Tobin said. “He just got up my nose, that’s all. Attitude.”
“So do you think he’s holed up somewhere, licking his wounded heart?”
“Nope. I think he’s feeding the smelt,” Tobin said. “But the police don’t think so, and they didn’t even bother to take his vest away.”
“Really? Where is it?”
“Hanging in Juliet’s office, dripping onto the carpet,” he said.
“Did they search the pockets?”
“I don’t think so. They just kind of looked at it, wrote some stuff down and left,” Tobin said. “Juliet picked it up and said she’d keep it for him until he shows up.”
“He’d have to ransom it,” I said.
“I think that’s the idea.”
“Rico said you called his Toronto number.”
“Yeah. I gave it to the cops, but I thought I’d call it myself, on the off-chance he was there. Told him to call us.”
“He won’t, though.”
“No. Doubt it.” We looked at each other for a moment, and then without speaking, turned and headed for Juliet’s office.
Juliet never locked the door. Any valuables were kept in the safe near Kim’s desk, but walking through the portals felt like burglary anyway. With the exception of Kim Lee and a few chosen men friends, her office was strictly off limits. If she conducted interviews, they were done in the place where the prospective employee would be working.
The room was Victorian in the extreme. Thick, crimson curtains festooned the windows, a fully stocked bar outfitted with heavy cut-glass goblets lurked in a corner, an honest-to-God crystal chandelier hung from the ceiling, and an inviting, overstuffed sofa, complete with lace antimacassars, had pride of place in front of an enormous desk. Show posters covered the walls, many of them advertising the old Toronto revues that had made Juliet Keating a famous name in the sixties. In amongst them were playbills from the Royal Alex and what used to be the O’Keefe Centre (now named for a new corporate benefactor, proving that theatrical prostitution is alive and well in Toronto). There were posters from obscure summer stock companies in rural Ontario, Nova Scotia and Vancouver, and several from New York. There were autographed headshots of famous and not-so-famous performers, photos of Juliet kissing or being kissed by various members of the glitterati, and one stunning shot of Juliet in full chorus girl gear, looking like a million bucks. I could’ve spent hours in there, just checking out the walls.
Jason’s vest was on a hanger suspended next to the radiator near the door, dripping water onto a newspaper spread carefully underneath it. Again, I was hit by how the vest seemed to represent Jason’s personality, how lost he would be without it. The pockets bulged. Nobody had even bothered to rescue the mini-Maglite that was slung through a loop over the breast pocket.
“As if he would go anywhere without his Mag,” I said, sadly, but left it where it was. I reached into the bulgy right-hand pocket and extracted a swollen, sogg
y notebook.
There’s a stage manager’s expression which goes “If it’s not on the page, it’s not on the stage.” Knowing how hyper-efficient Jason was, every chore, every moment of his working day would be recorded in the book. It amazed me that the cops hadn’t even bothered to look. Still, they thought he was alive, which would make the notebook irrelevant, I suppose. If he were dead, though, the book might contain some hint as to why.
“I’ll take this, if you don’t mind,” I said to Tobin. “If nothing else, there may be some show-stuff in it I need to know about.”
Jason’s keys weren’t there, but that was no surprise. Like Tobin, he carried his in a jingling mass on his belt-loop. They would be with Jason, wherever he was. A few drowned pens and pencils completed the inventory.
Outside, the evening had descended, but we didn’t want to turn on the lights in the office, both very being aware that snooping in Juliet’s inner sanctum would not be considered an acceptable after-rehearsal pastime.
“Do you have a copy of his résumé?” I said. “If he was pushed, as they say, and is actually dead, we’ll need to know more about him if we’re going to find out who did it.”
“I don’t, but Juliet’s got ’em all on file somewhere.”
“Shall we?”
We started to search. Most of Juliet’s paperwork was kept in an ancient four-drawer filing cabinet pushed against one wall, which was masked slightly by a lace cloth and a revolting collection of china shepherdesses.
It didn’t take us long to find the personnel file. Every production of The Glass Flute was filed according to year, and the thick, green folders bulged with headshots, résumés, production reports and profit breakdowns. I took a moment to snoop at the folder marked 1995. I’m not much of a money person, but it was quite obvious why Juliet liked to trot out the Flute when times were tough. The show truly raked in the bucks, according to the Steamboat Theatre bottom line. There was a five-year-old eight-by-ten of Meredith in the folder. She’d aged quite a bit in a short period, I noticed. At least here was proof, if one needed it, that she had indeed done the show before and therefore had a right to lord it over the rest of us.
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