by Gigi Blume
I had travelled the expanse of this great earth. I had been in places as diverse as India, Guatemala, Brazil, Germany, China, and South Africa, just to name a few. In my travels, I had encountered cities and slums in varying degrees of society, customs, and enlightenment. I was no stranger to the diversity found in the most distant corners of the world. But never had I ever beheld the singular, outlandish abomination that was Lucas Lodge. Where would one even begin to describe this place? The entryway was akin to an old-timey Las Vegas casino. I think I’d seen the same carpeting at Circus Circus. As I made my way through the front lounge, the floor yielded to checkered tile that I imagined Alice encountered in her adventures in Wonderland, except in place of the White Rabbit, a silver-haired, ostentatious man greeted us in a garish, peacocky sort of fashion and loudly introduced himself as Sir William Lucas. He tripped all over himself in effusions of outrageous salutations and, beseeching me for a photo to hang on his wall, he directed Bing and me to our seats at a booth covered in leopard-print fur. I most likely would have paid little attention to his ramblings anyhow, but I found myself more disinterested than usual as I scanned the restaurant for a sight of Beth. I told myself I was just curious and nothing more, imputing my desire to see her to the virtues of pride. Yes, pride, and justifiably so. I wasn’t to be castigated by a waitress.
You dropped something, she’d said. Oh, it’s just your tact.
I couldn’t see a trace of her without drawing attention to myself by craning my neck. Perhaps she had the night off. That would be the best scenario. I was beginning to relax when we were greeted tableside by the small voice of our waitress. Beth. How could it be we were seated in her section? Fate was an ugly visitor sometimes. By the looks of it, she wasn’t any more thrilled by the situation than I was. We’d be forced to… exchange pleasantries!
She shifted her weight to one foot, making her hip jut out to one side as her eyes locked onto mine, narrowing into slits.
“Really?”
My thoughts exactly.
“Okay, whatever.” She sighed heavily and rolled her eyes. “I bid thee welcome, good sirs. Dost thou care for an ale or perhaps a robust mead?”
She was using a posh English accent and if I wasn’t completely mortified by the whole business of being found in her section, I’d have been immensely amused.
I contemplated an escape as she rambled through the specials. Honestly, I didn’t hear a word she said. I was too busy planning my own death hoax, wondering how to stage an alien invasion, or staging a distraction by way of fire—anything to get away from her. I half consciously heard Bing order a drink then excuse himself to the men’s room, but I was overwhelmed by my inability to concentrate. Beth wore this atrocious wench costume, and I couldn’t help but ogle at the way the bodice accentuated her curves. It was like her figure was teasing me, dancing in my line of vision, just waiting to be—
“Have you decided, My Lord?” her little voice squeaked, erecting a blockade upon my thoughts.
“What?”
“I have to address the guests of Sir William Lucas with a title. May I call you ‘My Lord,’ or do you prefer another royal title?”
“Oh,” I croaked. What kind of crackpot place was this? She waited for my reply, but she kept looking over her shoulder impatiently. Why couldn’t I just order a beer or something and get this over with?
“Um,” I said taken by surprise. “I am the Pirate King, so you can call me… Your Majesty?”
Where the blazes did that come from?
She placed a hand on her tiny little waist and scowled at me. “Very well, Your Majesty, shall we pour the pirate sherry or would a Bud Lite be your pleasure?”
My pleasure? The way she looked in that costume—I drew a blank.
“Dilly dilly.”
That, my friends, was the ridiculous reply my blood-deprived brain offered. What was wrong with me?
“Bud Lite it is,” she said rather salty and turned on her heel in the fastest exodus imaginable. She walked away from me again, and I wasn’t in any more control than I had been earlier in the day. She infuriated me to no end.
The form of another female slipped her way into my vicinity. This one wasn’t any more pleasant than Beth, but at least she didn’t get under my skin. Caroline sat herself down next to me and scooted her hips flush against mine on the furry bench seat. She certainly wasn’t very shy. I’d had my share of bold women, but I wasn’t in the mood at present.
“I bet I can guess what you’re thinking,” she said huskily.
“I doubt it,” I replied laconically.
She held a fruity-looking cocktail and set it down on the table to free her hands to turn my chin towards her face. Whoa! She wore a lot of makeup. She smiled coquettishly and ran her tongue along her top teeth. Checking for rogue lipstick perhaps?
“I’m really good at this game,” she purred. “Stare into my eyes.”
I really wasn’t in the mood for this, and I let my expression show it. Maybe she’d get the hint and leave me be. And why hadn’t Bing returned?
“You’re thinking about how disastrous rehearsal was today,” she said.
“Not really.”
“Well, it’s not a very happy thought by the look on your face.”
“You think?” My reply was laced with a heavy dose of sarcasm.
She adjusted, positioning herself up on her knees so her head was at my level and stared intently over my features.
“Hmm. I know. You’re thinking about how stupid this party is.”
“I’d hardly call this a party.”
She inched a little closer. “It can be if you want it to.”
I did my best in the distracted state of mind I was in to expose her lack of logic. “As you said, if this were a party, I’d think it’s stupid.”
She opened her mouth to reply but must have thought better of it and clamped it shut.
“In any case,” I continued, “that’s not what I was thinking.”
In an overt, suggestive manner, she wrapped her lips around her straw and took a long sip of her cocktail, never taking her eyes off me. It was a little more than disconcerting how tawdry she was. Frankly, I was rather embarrassed for her.
“So?” she said, batting her lashes. “Are you going to tell me?”
Tell her what I was thinking? Oh, darlin’ there were sooo many things I was thinking. Where to begin? But before I could respond, the one image that rushed to the forefront of my mind and assaulted my senses manifested before me, bearing my Bud Lite on a tray. Beth took one look at Caroline, set the beer on the table, and whisked herself away again. Caroline took the opportunity in that moment to throw her arms around my neck.
“Well, what are you thinking?”
Caroline was a good-looking woman, and she knew it, but she was laying it on a little too thick. And without glancing away from Beth, watching her tend to her other tables, I gave Caroline my answer.
“I’m thinking,” I said in a low gravely tone, “how much I like a gorgeous pair of fine--”
She snorted and gave me a little chastising smack on the back of my hand. “Oh, you are a naughty one, aren’t you?”
And it was then that I finally looked at her.
“…eyes,” I said. “Fine eyes.”
A splattering of crimson overspread her cheeks, and I realized with some regret she must have taken it as a compliment to herself. But she was playing a game as women like her often do, and in a coy, kittenish purr, she said, “Whoever could you mean?”
I suddenly felt claustrophobic, caged in by a pair of long, ivory arms. A dancer’s arms. She was probably exceedingly flexible, I mused. But why didn’t she do anything for me? Was I losing my libido? I turned my eyes to Beth. No. Definitely not losing my libido.
Untangling myself from Caroline’s tentacles, I slid the best I could along the furry surface of the booth, all the way around to the other side, still maintaining my eyes on Beth. Caroline’s scrutiny followed the direction of my gaze to
where Beth stood across the room, and her jaw fell open.
“Her?” she cried incredulously
“I gotta go.”
I extracted the first bill I found in my wallet and tucked it under the beer bottle, unabashedly leaving Caroline behind without another word. I didn’t even care where Bing was at that point. There must have been something in the air at Lucas Lodge that made my head feel so foggy. It wasn’t until I escaped into the cool, November night that my mind cleared.
“Hmmph,” I growled as I climbed into my Ferrari. Regional theatre! What had I gotten myself into?
4
Spiders, Sharks, and Barnacles, Oh My!
Beth
“That Quasimodo left me a hundred-dollar bill.”
I was livid. Not only did Darcy purposefully sit in my section to taunt me with his arrogant ‘dilly dilly’ and ‘call me your majesty,’ but he found pleasure in degrading me by flaunting his wealth in my face. Yeah, I was a waitress like every cliché Hollywood hopeful, but unlike him, I didn’t have a rich daddy with connections to pave my way through tinsel town. It was the end of the night, and I had to vent about it to Charlotte, and although I hadn’t ‘musical cussed’ all day, I decided it was a Hunchback of Norte Dame kind of night.
Charlotte was genuinely confused and blinked her eyes at me for a few moments before asking, “Is that… a bad thing?”
“Of course it’s a bad thing!” I cried indignantly. “He’s trying to put me down by throwing his money around, implying I’ll never make it as an actress, thinking that he’s better than me.”
“Or maybe he just was happy with your service,” she said with a shrug.
“He ordered a beer and didn’t even drink it. What a gargoyle.” I then told her about the conversation I heard between Will and Bing by the costume rack, how he descriptively dismissed my talent, how he sat in my section to act like an entitled Phoebus, and how he was practically copulating with Caroline in the booth. And then he left. He just left, abandoning his friend. “Bing looked all over the bar for him,” I added. “Jane had to give him a ride home.”
Jane actually had no problem with that.
“Well,” Charlotte said after some thought, “would you rather he’d not left you a tip at all?”
“That’s not the point. It’s the principle of the whole thing.”
“Oh.” She shrugged. “Okay.”
She resumed her side-work of marrying ketchup bottles and was silent for some time, and I was disappointed to learn she’d considered the subject dropped. But then, after several minutes, she said, “You must have made quite an impression on him to single you out like that. He would never have so much as spoken to you if he didn’t notice.” She stopped her actions to punctuate her thoughts. “No, there’s more to this than what’s at the surface.”
“Did you not hear what I’ve been telling you?” I cried. “There’s no more than what’s on the surface. He’s a surface kind of guy. He’s… shallow.”
“What makes you think that? You don’t even know him.”
She leveled her gaze to stare me down behind those thick-rimmed glasses. “He’s not Brett, you know.”
I snorted, trying to find the words to support my argument and also a little miffed that Charlotte didn’t seem to be on my side. Did she have to bring up Brett? My ex might have been a ruthless, Hollywood, social climber, but he was small beans compared to Will.
“He’s obviously shallow,” I replied. “Look at the movies he makes.”
I had a more profound basis for my interpretation, but I couldn’t put it into words. Loathing Will Darcy was an intangible feeling. It was there, but the justification was just out of reach. That didn’t make it less credible though.
“Let me ask you something,” she said. “If you were offered ten million dollars to make a sell-out movie, would you do it?”
I thought about it for a half second before answering. “Would there be nudity?”
“Um, maybe just your bootay.”
I knew where she was going with this. I wasn’t a shallow person. I considered myself a serious actor. I was committed to my craft. But I was broke. And truth be told, I couldn’t say with one hundred percent certainty I would turn down an offer like that. Actually, I’m sure I wouldn't be able to resist it. And did she just the word bootay?
“So…” I croaked. “Does Darcy bare his—ahem—derrière in his movies?”
“Oh, yeah,” she said with a little too much enthusiasm.
Ewww!
I was so glad I’d never seen any of his movies. I wouldn’t be able to look at him with a straight face if I’d seen him in the buff. Geez, if I were to ever go nude in a movie, there’s no way I could let Mom and Dad watch it. Fortunately, that was rarely a problem in the world of musical theatre.
“I’d request a body double,” I decided. “IF… and that’s with capital letters, I were offered ten million dollars.”
Charlotte didn’t have to look so smug. But at least she didn’t say anything more. She made her point. I didn’t have to agree with her, but she felt satisfied to leave it there. It was all hypothetical anyway. The principles that applied to me certainly were different for a guy like Will. I knew I was right about him because, frankly, I was never wrong.
All I had to do was get through with this show and take every opportunity to avoid contact with him. For the most part, especially while we were only rehearsing music, it didn’t take much effort. It was a rather unfortunate impasse. I wanted with all my heart for this experience to be all I had ever dreamt. No, I wasn’t on Broadway—yet—but performing at the Gardiner was a giant step in my career. I wanted to love every second of it, savor each moment, make important connections and post about it on Instagram. Instead, I dreaded rehearsals, dragged my feet every time I walked through the door, and couldn’t wait for the run to be over. All because of one man. One infuriatingly chauvinistic, egotistical, arrogant, pretentious (albeit hunky) man. I hated that perfectly symmetrical, esthetically pleasing, phony smile; the way he would soft-soap Stella Gardiner, the way he beguiled the directors in his favor, but especially how he influenced his friend Bing. It was a mystery to me how a sweet-tempered guy like Bing and a grump like Will could be friends. Sure, Will had all the right connections, but Bing didn’t strike me as the worshipful barnacle type. The only thing Bing seemed to worship was the ground on which Jane walked on. He followed her around like a puppy dog. Over the course of the week, I couldn’t help but steal a glance at Will every now and then just to see the look on his face when Bing favored Jane’s company over his. A couple of those times, however, I caught him glancing my way instead. What was he trying to prove by giving me the stink eye? I felt like I was in high school all over again. I was the band geek and for some unknown reason, the football star shot eye daggers at me while Caroline, the flossy cheerleader, clung to him like—well, like a worshipful barnacle. At least it was finally Friday, and rehearsal was ending.
“Caroline might not be the sharpest tool in the shed, but she’s definitely the hoe.”
I practically choked on my own spit before I turned around to see Lydia making tawdry jokes.
“What did you say?” I managed to squeak.
She was right behind me, conspiring with Holly, another soprano in the chorus, who laughed so hard, I was afraid I’d have to employ CPR on the poor girl. But Lydia didn’t let up.
“Seriously. Her hoo-ha has more users than Twitter.”
Lydia had most likely been at it a while, because Holly seemed to be hyperventilating. In a fun way, I guess.
“I mean, she was craving Five Guys before it was a restaurant.”
Holly doubled over, practically in tears and turning bright red. “Oh my gosh, stop!”
Those girls! I was certainly not a fan of Caroline, but I wasn’t so low to resort to hoe jokes. I did, however, agree with them on one thing. She wasn’t the sharpest tool in the shed if she was at all attracted to Will Darcy. But then again, maybe they deserved eac
h other.
“Hey, I’ve got one,” I said. “She’s so fake, Barbie is jealous.”
Crickets. Clearly, I didn’t have the talent for juvenile insults. Lydia and Holly shook their heads and offered me a consolatory pat on the back in a nice try but no cigar sort of way. Then they abandoned me.
It was the end of a truly horrible day. My old Volvo broke down on the way to rehearsal, and I had to run the rest of the way.
Let me repeat that. I had to run in Los Angeles.
It was like my car waited until my AAA membership expired. I was grubby, tired, hangry, and I had to work the closing shift at the lodge. Most of the cast had cleared out of the rehearsal studio, and I needed to find Jane to ask for a ride because Holly and Lydia had already gone out for drinks. I was just on my way to search for Jane when I was stopped in the hallway by the theatre’s chief costume designer. I knew her name was Ari—I’d met her when we were sent to her costume shop in the bowels of the theatre to have our measurements taken. I remember her chiding me for sucking in. I argued that I’d be wearing a corset, but she won me over by telling me a funny story about a costume malfunction in Tartuffe.
“Would you do me a huge favor?” she said to me a little out of breath. She had a bolt of brocade satin in her arms and a huge bag slung over her shoulder. “I’m late for an appointment but I can’t leave this lying about.”
It took me a moment to register what she was saying. My brain was still clearing out the bad hoe puns. And so I stared at her for a few seconds longer than was socially acceptable. Derp. Yo speako English.
“Would you be a dear?” she pleaded, offering the bolt of fabric to me.
“Oh!” I said with a jolt. “Do you want me to take that down for you?”
She most likely thought I was a ninny. I took the fabric and smiled, nodding like a clod, and she gave me a big hug, bidding her appreciation and before running toward the door, called over her shoulder, “Just put it on the cutting table and shut the door on your way out. It will automatically lock.”