Capitol Magic (12 page)

That's why we kept a costumer on hand during all performances.

A costumer, someone to run lights, someone to run the sound board, people to change sets and hand out props—it could take more than a dozen backstage folks to mount one of our productions. And I was the person in charge of all of them, at least until I was laid off. Kira Franklin, stage manager extraordinaire.

OK. That wasn't really the way that I thought of myself. I always stopped after the “manager” part.

But my father added the “extraordinaire” when he dutifully attended each of our productions. And so did my high school debate coach. And the handful of friends that I managed to rope into seeing individual shows, most often by handing out coupons for free dessert at our luscious gourmet buffet table (two entrées nightly!).

Come to think of it, most of my friends had dropped the “extraordinaire” a few years back, too. Maybe it was our Christmas production of Miracle on 34th Street, with a well-developed seventeen-year-old playing the little girl role, because we just couldn't find a kid who could stick to our rehearsal schedule.

Truth was, the Fox Hill Dinner Theater was not a leading light in the Twin Cities' theater community.

Let me explain a little more about who and what and where we were. You've probably heard of the Mall of America, right? The largest shopping mall in North America, with more than four hundred stores? Employs 12,000 people? Built around an amusement park, with a flight simulator, aquarium, and real live (okay, dead) dinosaur walk? Visited by forty million people each and every year?

Fox Hill was about a mile south of there.

We were located in an old strip mall, space we took over from a Woolworth's that was driven out of business by the big box stores even farther down the road. We had a decent-size “house” with seating for five hundred. There were two steam tables to serve dinner, and a thrust stage that reached into the audience, bringing musicals so close that patrons could practically touch them. But in a metropolitan area with a thriving artistic community and more than one hundred theaters, large and small, Fox Hill had its work cut out for it.

And things weren't exactly helped by the fact that our next-door neighbor was a porno-movie theater
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the Fox Hill Cinema. You might have thought that dirty movies were a losing business proposition in the wake of the Internet and perfect-for-home-viewing DVDs. The fading grande dame, though, had cleverly diversified to stay in business with its three-screen emporium. Two showed the latest skin flicks, and one showed art films.

It could be really interesting to watch the line at their ticket window. It was pretty easy to tell who was in line for the Truffaut retrospective, and who was waiting for Goldilust and the Three Bares. At the dinner theater, we tried to promote ourselves to the first group, and we hoped that the second crowd didn't wander through our doors by mistake. You had to take your customers where you found them, though. Isn't that one of the primary rules of business? Well, it should have been.

“Kira? Are you in here?”

As if to answer, I sneezed again. “Yeah. In the back room.”

Maddy Rubens pushed aside a sliding rack of thirty-six identical dresses—the irresistible Paris Originals from last year's overly optimistic production of How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying. Maddy was a lighting designer who had worked at Fox Hill on occasional gigs between the handful of dream jobs that she'd landed in New York, the more usual local productions, and the rare-but-lusted-after West Coast projects. More important, Maddy was my housemate and best friend.

“Jules and I finished going through the jewelry,” she announced. “There's enough crap out there for a dozen high school proms. Tiaras up the wazoo, and enough pearls to strangle a decent-size horse.”

“Gives all new meaning to the phrase ‘costume' jewelry,” I said.

“We're calling it a day and going to get burritos. Are you coming with?”

My stomach rumbled. Even though I'd had an Egg McMuffin with double hash browns for breakfast, I'd worked through our supposed lunch break. In fact, I'd had nothing but coffee since coming in that morning—four of my jumbo java mugs' worth. I'd brewed it first thing, taking elaborate care to put out the sign that read “Kira's Stash.” I liked my coffee twice as strong as anyone else did, and I'd finally conceded the necessity of labeling my own carafe after poor Anna had been kept awake for thirty-six straight hours following one particularly long dress rehearsal with nothing but my java for sustenance.

“Burritos sound great,” I said, “but I want to finish up Kismet.”

“The costumes will still be here tomorrow,” Maddy said, reasonably enough. “You work too hard.”

I sighed. “I don't work hard enough. I told Anna I would have all of this stuff ready by last Friday.”

“The same Anna who's signing your walking papers next week?” Trust Maddy to tell it like it was.

“Come on,” I said. “Could you just walk out? Leave all this behind?” Maddy snorted, but I knew that she was every bit as tied to the theatrical world as I was. We weren't in it for the money—both of us, along with Jules, could barely afford to pay my father rent on the second-floor apartment he provided us at well below market rate. We were in the theater because we loved it. It made our hearts sing, as corny as that sounded. We loved the creativity, the feeling that we were making something from nothing.

Either that, or we were bug-eyed crazy.

“Yeah, you're right,” Maddy agreed reluctantly, as I'd known she would. “But you still have to eat. Let's go! Jules is treating. We're going to get chips. With extra salsa. And guac-a-mo-le…” She turned the last word into a seductive song.

I shook my head reluctantly. “Nope. I wouldn't enjoy it, with this stuff hanging over my head. But tell Jules that buying tonight doesn't get her off the hook for the Scrabble victory dinner she owes me.”

Jules—Julia Kathleen McElroy—was the third occupant of our apartment. She was an actress. After spending years trying to top the charts in the Twin Cities theater scene, Jules had settled into a comfortable career doing industrials, training films for companies. Her most successful role had been “Stubborn Defendant” in You're Being Deposed? Expect the Worst.

“Fine,” Maddy said with a resigned sigh. But then she took a step closer to me, resting her blunt-fingered hand on my arm. “Just tell me with a straight face that this doesn't have anything to do with today's date.”

“Today's date?” I asked, and I almost managed to sound puzzled. What could I say? Acting wasn't my strong suit. I knew it would be overkill to say, “I don't have a date today. Do you?” Besides, I could never be quite that blasé about the greatest disaster in my entire life.

“Kira,” Maddy remonstrated.

I shook my head. “It doesn't have anything to do with today's date.” I said the words with the rote certainty of a small child reciting multiplication tables.

“I don't believe you.”

I raised my chin and looked straight into her piercing blue eyes, forcing myself not to blink my muddy-brown ones. (Read: I braced myself to lie through my teeth.) “Madeline Rubens, I swear on my next and last paycheck and all else that is holy that my skipping burritos tonight has nothing to do with today's date. Cross my heart and hope to die.” She just stared at me. “What? Do you want me to spit in my hand, so we can shake on it like five-year-olds? Make a blood oath?” I looked around with a cartoonish manic grin. “There's got to be a dagger or two in here somewhere. Where's the stuff from Camelot?”

Maddy rolled her eyes. “Okay, then. We'll see you at home. Cheerio!”

“Wait,” I called before she could walk away. “I thought you and Colin broke up last week.”

“We did.” She shrugged. “I just haven't broken the habit of saying ‘Cheerio' yet.”

I couldn't help but laugh as she left the costume shop. Maddy changed boyfriends more often than the porno house next door changed its movies. Colin had lasted two full weeks, which was typical. In the five years that Maddy and I had been housemates, only one guy had made it to a month, and that was because Maddy had spent three weeks on a road trip.

No fuss, no muss—when Maddy was bored she moved on, pleased to have learned a few words in a new language, or a couple of idiomatic expressions. Colin had actually taught Maddy the rules for cricket. Come to think of it, Gordon had taught her those rules a couple of years ago, and Nigel, a few years before that. Cricket comprehension didn't last much longer than love, in Maddy's book.

My life would have been so much simpler if I could just treat men, treat relationships, the way that Maddy treated hers.

I'd lied to her. Of course, my decision to skip burritos had everything to do with the date. January 7. One year ago today, I had been left at the altar by TEWSBU, The Ex Who Shall Be Unnamed.

Okay. Not quite literally at the altar. We'd planned a civil ceremony.

But I'd worn a white dress, with a veil and a train and everything. Maddy and Jules had stood beside me in personalized bridesmaid gowns. Their dresses had been made out of an emerald-green silk that actually worked well for both of them. Predictably, Jules had selected a stunning strapless sheath that showed off her willowy form, while Maddy enjoyed something substantially less revealing. My father had worn his tux. Judge Saylor, one of my father's former law firm partners, had stood at the front of the room, smiling and friendly as the minutes ticked by.

But TEWSBU never showed.

I wasted a couple of hours imagining every possible disaster that could have befallen him. People who worked in the theater were superstitious by nature, our imaginations heightened by the dramatic fare we consumed every day. I pictured my beloved mutilated in a car crash. I imagined him cut down by robbers when he stopped at the drug store for a silly, unnecessary disposable camera. I panicked that the stress of the day, the excitement of fulfilling his lifelong dream of perfect, permanent married love, had all proved too much for him, had brought on a heart attack.

Drawing on my experience as a stage manager, I'd started phoning hospitals. I had created so many contact sheets for so many shows—complete with blocks of emergency contacts in boldface type—that I knew most of the numbers by heart. My cell phone grew hot beside my ear as sympathetic nurse after sympathetic nurse reported that they had no patients matching my professionally accurate description of my fiancé.

Sometime during phone call fourteen, he left a voice mail. My so-called beloved was a director. His message used our common language, the patois of the theater that we both lived and breathed. He was sure I'd understand eventually, he said. He'd only just realized it himself. The blocking of our entire relationship was just not right.

Blocking. Where the actors stood when they said their lines.

I had spent the night of my would-be wedding, precisely one year ago, kneeling on the bathroom floor of the Hyatt Regency. Maddy and Jules had taken turns holding my torn-down updo off my face, offering me damp paper towels and glasses of cold water to rinse my mouth.

The guests—cast and crew from dozens of local shows, long-lost relatives, scores of my father's law firm partners—had pasted on fake smiles and eaten their filet mignon with merlot reduction, their potatoes Anna, their haricots verts. And I had eaten nothing as I tried to imagine how I could possibly face everyone the morning after.

I had eaten nothing that night. But I'd made up for it during the intervening year.

For twelve months, I had solaced myself with alternating treats of sweets and savories. In my frequent bouts of self-loathing when I thought about what I was doing to myself, I was disgusted by the amount I had consumed. Sure, I was tall—five foot ten—but there was a limit to the pounds that even my height could camouflage. A monolith of empty ice cream pints towered in my mind, mortared together with crumpled bags of Doritos, shredded boxes of Cheez-Its. My candy wrappers alone, laid end to end, could have spanned the Grand Canyon, and I couldn't bear to picture the veritable ocean I had consumed of the perfect comfort food: homemade Tater Tots hot dish.

I also couldn't stand to think of the four different wardrobes crowding my closet—four different sizes of clothes, laid out in a neat sequence, like my stage manager scripts. After rebuying jeans for the third time, I'd gotten smart and given in to elastic waistbands—bulky sweatshirts, fleece pants, all in black because I desperately believed the color was slimming.

What did it matter? I spent most of my time backstage in a dark theater. Why did I need a real wardrobe, anyway? It wasn't like the dating gods were showering gifts upon me. There might be dozens of theaters in the Twin Cities, but TEWSBU had friends in all of them. Stupidly, I was still caught off guard when theater people nodded as I introduced myself, a distant glint of recognition in their eyes. I was that one, they all seemed to say. And then they all darted not-surreptitious-enough glances at my ever-expanding waistline, silently saying, “Well, no wonder he left her.”

A lot of theater people could be superficial. That came from judging actors on their body types, day in and day out, defining whether they could fill a role based on how they looked. But the most frustrating thing about all of my weight gain? My chest was still flat as a board. At twenty-eight years of age, I could still get by wearing an undershirt, instead of the engineering feats of lace and wires that other women proudly sported.

I was jilted, fat, flat, and miserable.

And the absolute worst part was, I couldn't even drown my sorrows in alcohol. Sharing a few six-packs with girlfriends had carried me through the loss, years back, when my boyfriend broke up with me freshman spring at the U. And when I kicked out my sophomore beau, I already had a bottle of chardonnay waiting on ice. Tequila shots dulled the pain when my junior year beloved turned out to have a side thing going with my then-best-friend. And each and every time I broke up with one of those meaningless senior-year guys, a legally purchased martini had marked the occasion.