“Most of the audience is soused,” Wanda informed us with pride and a huge smirk. “I made my Long Island ice tea. It’s a killer.”
“Are the NASTY people here?” DeeDee asked while dramatically signing everything she was saying to warm up for her debut.
I was pretty sure there were no deaf people in the audience, but DeeDee was so wound up I wasn’t going to burst her bubble.
“Yep and they’re wasted. Fabio has been plying them with drinks for the better part of an hour and I’m pretty sure Bob is puking his guts out in the men’s room,” Wanda said as she passed Bo off to her raccoon Shifter husband Kurt so they could get seated.
She gave them a quick kiss and let the male half of the cast know we were dressed and it was safe to join us. My dad had outdone himself on the costumes. They were so authentic it was almost creepy.
“How do I look, Mommie?” Sassy asked as she twirled around in a pale pink dress layered with yards and yards of frothy tulle.
“You look just like Christina,” I told her, giving up my snarky ways and playing along with her game.
“Well, I should think so. Fabio procured all of the costumes from the private vault of Joan Crawford,” she informed me.
“He did what?” I yelled and looked down at my mint green fitted silk shantung suit and gagged a little. Almost creepy was incorrect—it was truly creepy. “Joan Crawford wore this?”
“She did,” Wanda confirmed. “I’m fairly sure Fabio procured the costumes creatively so everyone be careful not to ruin them. I’d hate to see our director spend time in the pokey for wanting us to look fabulous.”
“He’s never going to go on the straight and narrow, is he?” I mumbled as I took in the array of costumes with a critical eye.
“Oh heavens no.” Wanda chuckled and shook her head. “You’re father is special—one of a kind. He might have quit gambling, but he needs some felonious excitement. As long as he’s not hurting anyone, I say fine.”
“Could this generous description of my dad be because you look like a million bucks in your outfit?” I surmised with a raised brow.
“Possibly,” Wanda agreed with a giggle. “Or maybe it’s the fact that I had to sample all the pitchers of Long Island ice tea… ”
Awesome. Wanda was tipsy and I was wearing a mean dead movie star’s clothes.
I’d be having a chat with my dad after the show. We had enough funds to procure what we needed legally. However, I would not judge. Hell, it was all I could do not to poof to Paris and go on a shopping spree that would set me back a few decades. One day at a time was my new motto.
“Baba Yoskankaroo is here,” Sassy informed me as she stuffed her bra with wads of toilet paper.
“What are you doing?” I gaped at her in shock. Her knockers were huge. She didn’t need any added help.
“I want to be noticed,” she replied logically.
“And falling over because your boobs are going to outweigh the entire rest of your body is your idea of standing out?”
“You might have a point,” Sassy mused as she removed a roll or three from her bra. “Did you hear me? Baba Yobergermeister is in the audience with her icky little warlock posse.”
“Heard and ignoring,” I answered as I carefully applied blood red Chanel lipstick. Thankfully it was mine and it was new. The thought of wearing Joan’s actual lipstick was gag- inducing and I wouldn’t have put it past my dad to have procured that stuff too. “Baba Yoharshpunishment is dating my dad.”
“Sweet Glenda the Good Witch with a broom up her ass, you’re screwing with me,” Sassy shrieked much to the distress of my left eardrum. “Baba Youmpaloompa is gonna be your step-mom?”
“If you value your life, you will never utter the words Baba and mom in the same sentence again,” I snapped. “I already have one scary mother. I don’t need another.”
“Dude, sorry. I feel you on the mom thing. Mine left me at an orphanage for wayward witches when I was seven,” Sassy said and then dropped her gaze from mine.
“For how long?” I asked wishing my mom had done the same. My childhood would have been a lot better.
“Um… for always,” she replied and then went back to stuffing her bra.
Hell’s bells, why didn’t I know that? Well, maybe because Sassy and I had never really talked about anything with substance even though we’d spent nine months in the magical pokey together. Her lack of education and constant need for attention made a little more sense now. She was still a pain in the ass, but there was an explanation.
“What about your dad?”
“No clue who the sperm donor might be,” she said with a careless shrug. “I’ve thought about trying to find him, but I’m sick of being disappointed. I’m happy here. I like Assjacket. Jeeves is the first man I’ve ever met that loves me for me. Plus he’s hung like a horse.”
“Didn’t want to know that.” I groaned and grabbed her hands before she could make her knockers so obscene they would be the star of the show. “Take the toilet paper out. You don’t need it. You are fine just being you.”
“Are you fine being you?” she asked turning the tables and putting an ironically pertinent question on the table.
After a long pause and an even longer sigh, I answered. “I’m trying. I’m really trying.”
***
The Community Center was packed and my stomach churned painfully. Why in the ever-loving hell did I agree to this? I couldn’t act my way out of a hole. Even though I didn’t have to speak a word, I still had to pretend. This was not going to end well.
New leaf, new leaf, new motherfucking leaf.
“Okay everyone,” Fabio whispered, more excited than I’d ever seen him. “Most of the house is blotto, so they’re gonna love it. Just listen to the voice-over and do like we did in rehearsal. You will all be brilliant.”
“What if we forget what we did in rehearsal?” Jeeves asked, slightly less bouncy than normal—and far more pale.
“Go with your gut and make it up on the spot. Just don’t knock anyone off the stage,” my dad advised. “All right everyone, take each other’s hands.”
Sassy grabbed one of my hands and my buddy Simon the skunk grabbed the other. I knew my palms were sweaty and my body trembled.
“You’re gonna be wonderful,” Simon whispered as he gently squeezed my hand. “I’ll keep the spotlight on you and you’ll be so blinded you won’t see anyone in the audience.”
“Promise?” I asked. Simon was a true friend.
“On my life,” he vowed. “Just smile and look pretty. It will be over in fifty one minutes and twenty seven seconds.”
My dad cleared his throat dramatically, wiped a fictitious tear from his eye and straightened his beret.
“Oh Great Goddess,” he began reverently. “Please be with us tonight as we pull one over on our inebriated guests. We are the lucky ones to have been given the gift to perform Mommie Dearest. How blessed are we to be wearing the actual clothing of some dead and awful people?”
“Very blessed,” Bob yelled as he entered the room looking like he’d been on a three-day bender.
“Just remember my friends,” Fabio said. “When words simply aren’t enough to tell the story, we sing. And when raising our voices in song can’t convey our deepest emotions… we dance. That is the beauty of theatre. Our bodies are our tools and nothing can stop us!”
“Lack of talent can,” I mumbled.
“Nope,” my dad disagreed. “Lack of talent is a myth. All you have to do is want to be out there and share the four and a half hours of hard work we did and you will be welcomed with open arms and drunken love.”
“Amen,” Bob shouted over his shoulder as he ran back to the men’s room.
Looking around the circle, I grew calmer. Roger, Simon, Wanda, DeeDee, Sassy, Jeeves and the chipmunks were ready to go, along with many of my other Shifter friends. Chad, Chip and Chunk had joined the cast and were playing acrobatic B-actors that performed in Joan’s films. Their excitement was p
alpable. They were fitting into Assjacket splendidly. It was getting easier to ignore the gum thing too—well, kind of.
“Alrighty people, let’s go!” Fabio saluted us and made his way out into the back of the house to run the sound. Simon followed to man the spotlight and we all got into our places back stage.
And the shitshow began…
CHAPTER 17
“Motherfucker! I think I lost part of my boob out there when I did the forward roll,” Sassy lamented as we stood in the wings and watched the chipmunks make a lopsided pyramid much to the delight of the crowd.
Sassy was correct. There was a large wad of toilet paper center stage.
“I told you to take that crap out of your bra,” I whispered as I waited in terror for my entrance.
The show was a hot mess, but the audience was loving it. Maybe Fabio was right. Just going out there and letting it rip would be fun.
“I got busy giving Jeeves a good luck hand job and forgot to take it all out,” she replied in a tizzy. “Should I zap it off the stage?”
“Goddess, no. You might catch the chipmunks on fire and cause a stampede to the exit. We need to have a show on record where no one gets maimed. Leave it. We can pick it up during our scene,” I told her as I tried to stop my lips from quivering in nervousness and block out the fact that Sassy had just told me she’d serviced Jeeves before the show.
“Good thinking.” She quickly removed another huge wad from her bra and tossed it on the prop table. “Do you know what the plungers are for?”
“No and I don’t want to,” I told her as I bent over and touched my toes.
“What are you doing?”
“I don’t know,” I snapped. “I’ve seen it on Dancing With The Stars. I figure this is what you do before you go out on stage.”
“Right,” Sassy agreed and touched her own toes. “Um, Zelda?”
“What?” I asked as I stood back up and grabbed onto the wall so I didn’t fall from the head rush I’d just given myself.
“You’re on.”
Shit. She was right. I was supposed to go out there and listen to my dad’s voice and mime the crap out of what he was saying.
Was I going to really going to do this?
Sassy gave me a smile, a hug and a hearty shove.
Yep, I was going to do it.
Great Goddess on high, Simon was correct. The spotlight was so bright I couldn’t see a single face in the audience. Unfortunately I couldn’t see anything at all and narrowly missed walking right off the front of the stage and into the unsuspecting arms of a patron. Thankfully Chunk was quick on his feet and pulled me back from the edge.
I’d be at loathe to admit it later, but I was having fun. The more I got into it the better it was and the crowd was hooting, hollering and applauding like crazy. I knew some of the noise was the alcohol talking, but it was fun to pretend it was for me too.
Sassy ran out on the stage and joined me as my dad droned on about how Mommie was too vain to get fat and have children and decided to adopt as a publicity stunt.
Was that actually true?
“Joan and her children, Christina and Christopher, posed for many pictures in every popular magazine of the time!” Fabio’s voice boomed through the speakers.
“Bob, get your beaver butt out here. We’re on,” Sassy hissed under her breath as Bob stood frozen in the wings refusing to move.
“To the world Christina and Christopher had the perfect life with their loving Mommie, but was that really what was going on?” Fabio’s recording crooned.
“Bob you little butt-brain, get yourself and your uni-brow out on this stage immediately,” Sassy demanded in what kind-of sort-of passed as a loud stage whisper.
Bob was still frozen like a statue and going nowhere fast. Whatever. We could do it with out him. I gave Sassy my best Joan Crawford eyeball and pulled her attention back to me. We posed and smiled as Simon blinked the spotlight on and off as if it were a giant camera. I was literally seeing spots by the time we’d done all twenty-five poses.
Bob was still in the wings looking like he was going to hurl. I knew I could whip up a little magical wind and blow his sorry ass onto the stage, but since the costumes were on loan I didn’t want Bob’s bile to destroy them. I did this for Fabio to save him from going to jail. However, I also did it for myself because getting thrown up on wasn’t on my agenda for the evening.
And then every actor’s nightmare happened… or at least mine.
The audio went out. There was no more voice-over. No more Fabio telling the crowd about Joan’s farked up life and what a shitty mother she was. Nope, there was nothing but silence.
Horrible, heinous silence.
My heart thundered in my chest and I was certain it could be heard in the next county. My mouth went dry and I felt ill. Should I poof away and never come back? No. That was a weenie move, but what in the heck was I supposed to do?
Sassy looked up at me with huge eyes. She was on her knees pretending to be ten year old Christina and was as thrown as I was. I vaguely heard my dad freaking out in the back of the house as he tried to fix the sound system. The audience was still with us, laughing and thinking this was part of the show. Drunk patrons were a huge blessing. Goddess bless Wanda and her Long Island ice tea.
But this wasn’t part of the show—not even a little bit.
“Press the red button,” I heard Simon shout to my dad over the loud ringing in my ears.
“Where in the hell is the red button? I can’t see it,” My dad shouted back.
“I got ya,” Simon told him as he moved the beam from the spotlight off the stage to illuminate the back of the house so my dad could see.
This was bad—very bad. Not only was I on stage feeling more naked than if I was naked, I could now see everyone in the house—and they were staring at me… waiting.
Closing my eyes, I inhaled through my nose and blew it out slowly through my mouth. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, according to Kelly Clarkson. I was a witch that could take out the continental USA with a blink of my eyes. I had popped hundreds of evil honey badgers and I could heal head wounds and ruptured spleens with my bare hands and magic. Why was standing on stage in front of intoxicated Shifters making me want to melt into the floor like the Wicked Witch of the West?
“What do we do?” Sassy whispered in a panic.
“Um… ” I stuttered as I took in the sea of faces who were beginning to wonder what was going on.
I spotted Mac looking concerned, but as supportive as ever. His wave of encouragement was nice, but it wasn’t his ass up on stage. It was mine and my daughter Christina’s. Maybe I should just grab a stack of wire hangers and pass them out and it could become an interactive show. No. Bad idea. Wire hangers and sloshed Shifters equaled the loss of many eyeballs.
Fabio said to just make it up if something went wrong. I was good at creating fairy tales. Maybe I could do this too. I’d just leave the sex part out.
As my own internal panic attack continued, something oddly familiar and uncomfortable washed over me. I glanced out at the audience and my eyes landed on Baba Yaga who was smiling at me and urging me to continue. She was dressed like a Madonna extra from a 1980’s music video. That didn’t surprise me. Her taste was appalling, but she was always on my side. As much as I bitched about her, I knew she wanted the best for me. She was odd in her methodology, but she was consistent.
No, it wasn’t Baba Yocray-cray that unsettled me, it was the woman seated next to her. Why was she here? Who on the Goddess’s green earth thought that bringing her here was a good plan? Did my father know she was in the audience? I never thought I would lay eyes on the woman again in my life. The lead ball of fear in my stomach disintegrated and was replaced by butterflies of insecurity.
Slowly I walked to the edge of the stage keeping direct eye contact with the woman who bore me. She stared back with no expression on her face whatsoever. She wasn’t angry or resentful. Was she happy to see me?
&nb
sp; No. She wasn’t happy. However, she wasn’t trying to kill me either. She was somber and detached…
Sassy was breathing hard and mumbling to herself but I barely heard her ramblings as I was totally focused on my mother. I knew my pseudo daughter was talking, but I couldn’t make out what she was saying. Everything in the room disappeared for me except my mother’s emotionless face. And then I heard Sassy speak.
A Witch In Time: Magic and Mayhem Book Three Page 13