“Make sure to check for razor blades,” John snarled at Felicity. Meanwhile, Valerie was tightly securing a cotton ball to his wrist with adhesive tape.
Valerie patted his back. “Try to keep your right hand elevated as best you can. Okay? I’ll put in a call for Hammond just in case we have to replace you.”
Within what seemed to me, at least, to be less than sixty seconds, Felicity and three stage crew folks, dressed all in black, arrived with costumes and accessories, yanked the clothes off all four actors down to their underwear, and had them redressed.
“All set for Act Two,” Felicity said, panting a little.
John feigned a kick in Pippa’s direction. “Get your little mutt out of here before she runs on stage and ruins everything.”
Baxter, like me, was remaining silent throughout, but his eyes widened, as did mine, at John’s nastiness toward Pippa. Felicity merely pursed her lips and swept up Pippa into her arms and left the area.
“It’s going well, John,” Sally said in a sweet voice. “Pavlov has been almost flawless.”
“Maybe too much so,” Valerie said. “It’s not getting the usual laughs.”
Again, John jerked his elbow in the direction of Karen and Greg and glared at Sally. “That’s because the three of you must have thrown out your notes. You’ve forgotten all of my directions!”
“The biggest laugh was when you kept telling Sally, ‘Ow, you hurt my wrist,’” Greg noted—accurately.
“That’s because it was the only line with authenticity to it,” John retorted. “I had to say something to explain why I was applying pressure to the wound I shouldn’t have so that I didn’t bleed out in front of a Standing Room Only crowd. Especially you, Greg! You’re the weak link in this play. I should fire you on the spot!”
“You’re the one who’s sleepwalking through his performance!” Greg said. You’re wrecking your own play, even though you’re the one who’s so freaked out about the doggie going rogue during the performances.”
“Guys, please!” Karen said.
“Let’s just nail it in the second act,” Sally said. She gave John a quick hug, which he accepted as if he was a scarecrow—with one arm lifted at a right angle.
“Someone probably will drive a two-inch nail into me next,” John grumbled.
Baxter widened his eyes at me. “He’s not normally like this.”
“Sure he is. You obviously have never had to deal with the guy at work,” Sam Geller said as he brushed past us, carrying a coil of cables.
After watching him leave the vicinity, Baxter said to me, “Huh. Sam might have a point.”
Baxter returned to his lookout spot. I returned to my seat. Pavlov was still quietly awaiting my return, though she did appear to be greatly relieved, judging by her exuberance as I greeted her.
The second act began smoothly. All of the drama surrounding John’s bizarre injury had enlivened the actors. Pavlov, too, was doing fine. I followed along with the script and gave her the instructions.
After a few minutes, the timing was off. John had gone off script again. Something seemed to be wrong with him. He was looking wobbly and sweat was dripping off his face. His lines were coming out in a slur. Deeply worried about him, I rose, wondering if I should try to help him somehow. We were not even halfway through the second act. I didn’t know what to do.
Pavlov was standing still, staring at me. I’d made what John had warned would be my worst possible mistake—I had lost my place in the script.
Chapter 7
On stage, John pulled his sleeve down and stared at his bandaged wrist. “Still bleeding,” he murmured.
“Did Blue bite you?” Sally asked. Although she kept her face tilted toward John, her eyes darted toward Karen and Greg, clearly discombobulated as to what they should do.
“I don’t feel so good,” John said.
“I faint at the sight of blood,” Sally said. Then she promptly swooned, in what I hoped was simply an act.
The audience laughed.
“I think I’ll join you,” John said, then dropped to the floor. The line sounded like a joke, and the audience laughed again.
“Steve? Georgia?” Greg said—the character’s names for John and Sally—the conked-out actors.
“Oh, dear,” Karen said. She bent over John and put her hand on his neck, feeling for a pulse on his carotid artery. She did the same thing for Sally. When she rose, her face looking less tense; I surmised that neither of them had actually lost consciousness. “They’re both out cold. I guess Steve was right. He and Georgia do have something in common. They both faint easily.”
Once again, the audience laughed.
“This is awkward,” Greg said. “Maybe they’d wake up if we threw water in their faces.”
Sally shook her head. “That sounds unpleasant.”
“Okay. In that case, let’s get the dog to lick their faces.” He pulled a dog treat out of his back pocket and placed it on John’s forehead.
“Come on, Blue.” He gestured at Pavlov to come toward him. “Treat! Yum, yum! Go ahead, Boy.”
Having trained her not to accept treats without my or Baxter’s okay, Pavlov stayed put.
“Blue is a girl,” Karen said.
“Is it?” He bent down to look at Palov’s underside. “So it is. I hope I haven’t caused her a case of gender confusion.”
“But that’s why she won’t listen to you. I’ll bet I can get her to give me a kiss.” Without waiting for his reply, she knelt down and brought the dog biscuit up to her lips. Gripping the biscuit between her teeth, she knelt and said as clearly as she could, “Come give me a kiss, Blue,”
“Grab it, Blue,” I said, not actually having a command for this circumstance.
Pavlov gently took the dog biscuit from her teeth. The audience gave a collective, “Aww!”
“See what I mean?” Greg adlibbed. “You do love Blue more than me!”
Karen was giving me the nonverbal signal for a canine to lie down behind her back. I gave that verbal command, which Pavlov promptly obeyed.
“Now the dog’s fainted, too,” Greg said. But he was looking at John as if concerned. “He touched John’s forehead. “He’s burning up. Is there a doctor in the house?”
The audience took it as a joke or part of the play, laughing and applauding. Greg turned his back to the audience and mimed pulling a cord. Sam saw it and closed the curtain. The audience gave a huge ovation, obviously believing this was the end to the second act.
Baxter rushed onto the stage to John’s side. Pavlov started wagging her tail at the sight of him. I told her to come, pointed at a dog bed near the stage door and told her to lie down.
“John?” Baxter said. “What’s the—”
“I’m sick as a dog. Heart’s racing. Can’t feel my arm. Got to get to a bathroom.”
“Greg, give me a hand.”
Sally sprang to her feet. She was starting to cry. “I think he’s truly ill.”
“He’s got the symptoms of aconite poisoning,” I said. “The tack must have been tainted with poison. It’s gotten into his bloodstream.”
“Oh, geez,” Karen said. “Did we jeopardize his life by continuing the scene? Has anyone got a cell phone on them?”
“I do,” Sam said. He promptly dialed.
“Tell the dispatcher that the doctors need to do a blood test and check for aconite poison,” I told him.
“Will do,” Sam said and moved away to a quieter spot.
Greg returned, while Karen, Sally, and I were listening in silence to Sam’s voice in the background. He called the poison “anocondite,” and I corrected him and added, “It’s from Monkshood wild flowers.”
“Allie thinks John was poisoned,” Karen explained to Greg. “Sam’s calling nine-one-one.”
Greg gave a solemn nod. “That’s what Baxter thinks, too. He’s calling nine-one-one, too. Valerie already joined them.”
Sam hung up. He took a couple of steps toward us and said, “The dispatche
rs just figured out someone already called it in.” He walked over to Pavlov and gave her a quick tummy rub, then headed for the door. “I’m going to go see if Val’s cancelling the performance, so I can go home.”
Sally snorted and crossed her arms. “Great work ethic he’s got.”
Nobody spoke. I glanced over at Pavlov, who was watching me with sleepy eyes.
“The thing is,” Greg said, “we don’t have an understudy to the understudy.”
“At least if we have to end the show,” Sally said, “I can go with John to—”
As if on cue, Hammond stepped through the door. “I’m here,” he said, striding toward us. “I got Valerie’s call and came right over. My blood pressure is under control, and I started to feel like a heel for leaving you out here on the stage I was afraid to be on myself. I’ll reclaim my role, and Valerie can make an announcement that he’s taken ill from a twenty-four hour flu bug.”
“So we’ll just carry on as if the muddled scene never took place?” Sally asked.
“No,” Karen said, “we’ll start it from where it ended and joke about it being too strong alcohol. And we’ll pick it up from where we went off script.”
“But...what if he’s truly been poisoned?” Sally asked. “With a lethal dose?”
“Then I’m sure he’d want us to carry on and complete his show for the audience,” Hammond replied. “He’s the one with the determination to take this show on the road. And sell it all over the country.”
“Technically, I’m the one who poisoned him when I grabbed his wrist,” Sally said, hugging herself, her lips trembling.
“We don’t even know for certain that there was poison on the tack,” I countered. “Even if there was, whoever put it inside his cuff is guilty of a crime, not you.”
Valerie arrived. “I’ve been with Baxter and John. The ambulance is on its way, and as physically fit as John is, I’m sure he’ll be just fine. Put him out of your minds for the next forty minutes or so, shall we?”
Sally was crying softly, and Valerie pulled her into a hug. “I meant what I said. My mother was a trauma nurse. She’s told me about the miraculous recoveries she’s seen. He’ll be fine. The best thing we can do for John is to knock everyone’s socks off. Okay?”
Sally nodded and dried her eyes.
“I’m going to make a brief announcement to the audience,” Valerie said calmly. “We’ll start from where you left off, and you can all make a couple of jokes about how different Steve looks. Got it?”
Nobody said a thing.
Valerie pursed her lips, then straightened her shoulders. “Okay, folks. Let’s give it your all. Hammond, your shirt and slacks are close enough to Steve’s costume in the second act.”
“That’s why I wore them,” he said under his breath.
“Actors, take your places,” Valerie said as she headed off.
I physically accompanied Pavlov to the spot where she had been and commanded her to play dead, thinking what a miserable command that was, given John’s circumstances. I was worried for Baxter’s sake, too. I had no idea what it must be like to see your close friend crumble in front of you from a homicide attempt. He must be beside himself.
Sally and Hammond sprawled on the floor, and Karen and Greg resumed their standing positions. As Hammond rose and went over to Sally, I gave a “release” command into the microphone. Hammond shook Sally, and she let out a death-curdling scream, then cried, “Steve! What happened to your face?” The audience laughed and clapped.
I told myself to concentrate on Pavlov, to follow the script that listed her cues and targets. She was panting and kept glancing over at me. Picking up on my mood, Pavlov was both tense and distracted. It occurred to me that, in the previous shows, both John and Flint had also been carrying heavy emotional baggage. Good Dog, Blue! represented an enormous opportunity for John. Maybe I’d been overlooking the obvious dog/owner simpatico.
The remainder of Act Two went well. They shortened the second intermission and commenced with the third act. By then, the actors were in full stride. The audience was enjoying the performance. Hammond was clearly a better actor than John, and Greg was much better than he’d been in any of the scenes I’d seen him perform to date. Toward the end of the third act, I threw in a “hide your eyes” trick, when Greg made an especially bad pun. The audience roared. The play ended, and the actors left the stage.
“That covering-your-eye thing with your dog was a nice touch,” Hammond told me.
“Thanks. It’s a trick I learned from Kyra Sunshine’s book. You put a piece of sticky tape on their nose to train them the command.”
“Clever.” He gave me a hug. “This has been a great show. You’ve done an awesome job with Pavlov.”
“Thank you. Although having the director be carted off to the hospital in an ambulance was hardly great.”
“There’s that, of course. But I’m sure Valerie’s right, and that he’ll be fine.”
“I hope you’re right.”
The actors went out for their ovations. Although I’d forgotten the protocol for Blue in the ovations, Baxter remembered and gave Pavlov a pair of roses. The actors turned and called, “Come, Blue!” And I told Pavlov to go to marker two, then gave her a “drop it” command, right in front of Karen. I then gave her a “grab it” command. She was supposed to pick up one of the roses and bring it toward Sally. Instead she looked at me and wagged her tail.
Karen picked up her rose, and when Pavlov failed to pick up the second one, she patted her on the head, gave it back to her, and said, “Good dog, Blue.” The audience laughed and applauded with abandon.
Pavlov and the rest of the cast returned backstage. I smiled at Baxter who was heading toward us. He looked tense and merely gave me a nod.
“Has anybody heard how John’s doing?” Sally asked.
“Valerie said she was calling the hospital just now,” Baxter said.
My thoughts raced. Now that the performance had ended, it felt so heartless for us all to have continued with the play, not knowing if its creator was even still alive.
Both Valerie and Felicity joined the cluster of actors and me. Pippa, still wearing her purple gown, was trying in vain to get Pavlov to play keep-away with some tattered rags that someone had knotted together for her. The rest of us waited silently for Valerie to give us an update.
“I called the hospital, and they admitted John,” Valerie said as she strode toward us. “Strictly for observation. He’s out of danger. He’s been doing better since they’ve been giving him intravenous fluids.”
We all spontaneously applauded.
“Oh, thank God,” Sally said.
“Crisis averted,” Greg said.
I sighed with relief.
“Pavlov is an excellent understudy for Flint,” Valerie then said to me. “Too bad she’s only here for a week.”
“We can always ask Pippa to hold up the tent post,” Felicity said.
“All Pippa does is bark at everybody on stage,” Hammond grumbled.
“It worked perfectly well on opening night for Blue to be barking over Sally’s lines,” Felicity snapped. “That’s really the most John had to do with the dog’s role. It would have been easier to stage that way, which is precisely the way I’d written it to begin with.”
“You wrote Good Dog, Blue!?” Valerie asked.
“I sure did,” Felicity replied, her features now in deep scowl. “He bought it from me. For a dollar. Back when I thought he was the love of my life.” She spotted Pippa still trying to get Pavlov’s attention. “Come on, Pippa, let’s start collecting the costumes.” She strode down the hallway.
Baxter and I exchanged glances. He looked at least as surprised as I was at Felicity’s statement. We followed her to the dressing room, Pavlov trotting toward us.
“Felicity, can we ask you something?” I called after her.
She stopped and waited for us.
“Did you really sell your script concept for a dollar?” Baxter asked.
“I sold him the whole shebang. My first draft. He wrote up a contract and everything. All freehand, while we were in bed. We both signed and sealed the deal by making love.”
“And then John rewrote it and took it from there?” I asked.
“Yes. But, like I said, I’d envisioned the two couples sharing a small, headstrong dog like Pippa, who would bark whenever the husband’s new love interest tried to speak, and would try to get in the way of the wife’s love interest and trip him. I trained her so that, when she was on one of our two stages, she would bark at anybody who took a big step toward her. Then I planned to train her to lie down at actors’ feet whenever I gave her a special command, “Lie down feet.” But John said he was going to get himself a pet herding dog to play the role. And that’s what he did.”
“The Blue Heeler he used to own?” Baxter asked.
“Right. The original ‘Blue.’ But Blue was already eleven when John got him from the Humane Society. John decided that he needed a younger dog to play Blue in the play. That’s why he got Flint.”
“Huh. I didn’t know any of that,” Baxter said. “It sounds like you really got the short end of the stick.”
“Sometimes that’s the way it goes,” Felicity said. She opened the dressing room door and forced a smile. “Excuse me. I have a lot of costumes to wash.”
***
I studied Baxter’s handsome profile as we drove to the hospital. He’d been silent for a while, and I suspected he, too, had been stunned by Felicity’s revelation. We’d had one harrowing experience after another since we’d arrived this afternoon. In the backseat, Pavlov had fallen asleep, although I always marveled at dogs’ ability to wake up within an instant of a pack member leaving the area; she would undoubtedly awaken the instant we arrived. Flint, too, would be anxiously awaiting his owner’s arrival in vain.
“John never mentioned that Felicity had written an original version of the play to you?” I asked, as a conversation opener.
He shook his head. “I’m a little surprised she told us about that. Their past history makes her look guilty. Give the position he apparently put her in...dumping her and taking up with the lead actress...she’d be a prime suspect in wanting to make him massively sick. If it turns out she’s guilty, I hope she didn’t actually want to kill him.”
Dog Drama Page 7