Chapter 17

  The rustling of Xeroxed programs dimin-ished, the shift and mutter of bodies on the wooden bleachers of the high school gymnasium/theater settled, and the orchestra—which was mostly the high school band brought together for their one summer gig—exploded into the overture of West Side Story.

  Within several bars Joe caught the familiar refrain of “Maria.” After that he wasn’t so sure what they were playing, but he’d never had much of an ear for music. Though he suspected most of the members of the Beaverton High School Band didn’t have much of an ear for music either.

  Then, with a sound like popcorn near the end of the popping cycle, the drummer gamely wrapped up the overture and the faded blue curtain creaked open to enormous applause.

  Joe clapped as loudly as anyone, since he realized he knew almost everyone performing.

  How odd.

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  Emmylou had promised him these were the best seats in the house when she sat them close to the front but off to one side. Seemed like an odd choice to him, but in his acquaintance with her, he’d realized that Emmylou mostly knew what she was doing.

  Joe had seen one of the revivals on Broadway, and—not that he wanted to be a snob or anything—he had to admit the rival gang members had been a little more convincing. Still, these guys were doing their best.

  “ ‘When you’re a Jet, you’re a Jet,’ ” sang Edgar Kew, the town barber, in a voice that made up in volume what it lacked in tone. His gang followed him around the stage, singing and dancing, one Jet a few steps behind on account of his walker.

  Most of these Jets were a little closer to their dying breath than their first cigarette, but nobody in the audience seemed to care. Including Joe. He was as into it as anyone when his date gasped.

  “Oh my God,” Emmylou said beside him, and he followed her startled gaze to where Ernie, the proprietor of Ernie’s bar, whose curly black wig might once have belonged to Burt Reynolds, snapped open a switchblade.

  “Must be a method actor,” Joe whispered back. No rubber or plastic for old Ernie. He had a real knife with a wicked-looking blade, and the way that dance number was going, somebody was going to lose a limb. Fascinated, and rapidly reviewing what he knew of emergency first aid, he watched the rest of the number, but the other Jets weren’t stupid. They kept a good distance from Switchblade Ernie.

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  When they were done, the gymnasium walls shook from the sound of loud applause. Joe doubted the original cast ever got a better reception on Broadway.

  When the last Jet had swaggered through the number, mostly without bumping into any other Jets, he heard a voice order, and none too softly,

  “Okay, get off now, get off.”

  Startled, he stared into the wings, of which he had a good view, from where Emmylou had seated them. A middle-aged woman he didn’t think he’d seen before had a clipboard in hand and a pair of reading glasses on the end of her nose. The glasses were on a chain she hung around her neck.

  “Is she part of the act?” he whispered to Emmylou.

  “Stage manager. She’s deaf as a post and thinks everybody else is, too.”

  From that moment, Joe settled back to enjoy himself. No wonder everybody in town got so excited about their summer production.

  Maybe these weren’t the greatest actors in the world, but that didn’t stop them for a second.

  And “Tony” had a surprisingly good voice.

  Joe recognized him. His name was Eddie something and he was a polite older man. Emmylou had told him the guy was recently widowed, but she hadn’t needed to. The man walked on the right edge of the sidewalk as though there were someone walking by his side.

  When he came out for his “Maria” song, Eddie got a good clap. He acknowledged this with a bow. “Mar-eee-er,” he said in a good, strong bari-tone, sounding a lot like Ted Kennedy. Usually, he dressed as though he were going to the of-

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  fice, in a shirt and tie and blazer of some kind, but obviously that wouldn’t do to play the part of a Polish West Side gang member, so he was in costume.

  And Joe loved his costume almost as much as he loved Ernie’s wig. Tony’s khakis were neatly pressed, his black wing tips shone, and his short-sleeved checked shirt still bore the creases where it had been folded in the package.

  Then he started to sing. The man had a great voice, and was putting ever y bit of emotion he could into it. When he got to the chorus, where he repeated his love’s name over and over, he paused for a gracious moment for the audience’s applause to die down, then took a deep breath and added even more gusto to his final, “Mar-eee-er!”

  There was something bothering Joe about the show, and suddenly he realized what it was.

  He leaned over to Emmylou. “Didn’t Olive and Lydia say they were playing—”

  “Nuns,” the woman with the clipboard snapped, and just as the poor Tony took another breath, a gaggle of nuns tumbled out on stage.

  “ ‘How do you solve a problem like Maria?’ ”

  they chorused, clearly under the impression that this year’s production was The Sound of Music.

  For a moment the nuns stared at Tony and he stared back.

  After a long moment of agonizing silence, Tony rallied. “ ‘I’ve just met a girl named Mar-ee-er,’ ”

  he sang, sounding less sure of himself.

  The nuns looked at each other. And at the audience. And at Tony. Joe noted that one par-

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  ticular nun had shortened her habit to midthigh, showing off a nice pair of legs in black stockings. She’d also let enough red curls peek out of the white nun-thing on her head that he recognized Lydia.

  “ ‘How do you catch a cloud and pin it down?’ ” the nuns questioned.

  “ ‘And suddenly that name will never be the same . . .’ ”

  Oh, you said it, brother.

  Back and forth they went, Tony and the nuns, singing about their two Marias. It wasn’t the best-timed duet Joe had ever heard, and the band wasn’t sure what to do with it, so they mostly seemed to play whatever the hell notes they felt like. They did their best, but at the end of it, you had to wonder about who this Maria was. A flibbertigibbet Austrian training to be a nun or a soulful Puerto Rican shop girl?

  He might have suspected the nuns interrupt-ing Tony was deliberate if Emmylou hadn’t started shaking beside him in silent giggles.

  Now he remembered that the two factions refused to rehearse together, and he supposed that somewhere along the way there’d been a slight misunderstanding about which play they were putting on; perfectly normal for what he’d seen of Beaverton.

  Well, after that, holding a wave upon the sand would have been a cinch compared to holding Beaverton’s production of West Side Story together. Frank Elbart, the man with no short-term memory, was supposed to play Bernardo, Maria’s brother who is accidentally killed by her new love Tony. It was a part he’d played many times as a young man, Emmylou had explained,

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  so the part was firmly imbedded in his long-term memory. The poor guy couldn’t remember what he’d eaten for breakfast but he remembered soliloquies from thirty years ago. However, he became understandably confused when he stepped on stage as Bernardo to find a bunch of nuns who displayed some odd habits.

  In the melee, Ernie had walked on to see what was going on, and he still held his switchblade.

  Watching Mr. Elbart, Joe was amazed at how the man transformed the instant he clapped eyes on that knife. He wasn’t a geriatric gang member anymore. Suddenly imbued with fierce dignity and a commanding air, he stalked forward toward Ernie, whose wig had slipped over one ear.

  Everybody stared at Frank Elbart. You couldn’t help it. He was mesmerizing.

  He wrested the switchblade from Ernie, turned to the audience, and held the knife high so the overhead gym lights flashed off the razor-sharp blade. Joe wondered whether anyone could possibly get here in time if he called 911.

  “ ‘Is this a dagger which I see before me? The handle toward my hand?’ ” Frank Elbart intoned gravely.

  “Oh my God,” Joe whispered to Emmylou.

  “He thinks he’s Macbeth.”

  “We did that one last year. He’s a brilliant Macbeth.”

  Elbart continued, speaking to the knife as though he doubted it were real.

  “ ‘Come, let me clutch thee.

  I have thee not, and yet I see thee still.

  Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible

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  To feeling as to sight? Or art thou but A dagger of the mind, a false creation, Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain?’ ”

  Talk about a heat-oppressed brain! In his passion, Frank waved the knife over his head with flair. He was a tall man to begin with, and the reach of his arm was commanding, certainly long enough to slice through the fly rope sus-pended above his head. There was a funny noise, like a large balloon popping.

  “Oh, shit,” said the stage manager, dropping her clipboard with a thump.

  In seconds, flimsy paper hearts and tiny silver stars floated down on the heads of everyone on stage like a twirling silver and pink snowstorm.

  Every single person on stage turned to the stage manager as though she’d know what to do. Joe had to give her credit. She might have been hard of hearing, but she didn’t lack aplomb.

  “Kiss her,” the stage manager yelled to Tony.

  “Kiss Maria.”

  “She’s not on stage!” he called back. And Joe had a feeling she was the only cast member who wasn’t.

  “Well, kiss anybody.”

  Then Tony glanced at the assembled company.

  With a shrug, he walked smack up to Lydia, easy to spot in her minidress nun’s habit, and kissed her full on the lips.

  The stage manager stepped forward and started clapping, so they all joined in. Emmylou wiped the tears of laughter from her face while the actors began bowing.

  The poor band, meanwhile, was in a fix.

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  Those who’d ever figured out their place in the music had long since lost it. A lone clarinet piped out a few notes and gave up.

  It seemed as though the musical would end with a whimper when a lanky kid with a tuba, who Joe guessed would one day be mayor, suddenly stood and yelled to his band mates, “ ‘In the Mood.’

  ” He snapped his fingers and

  counted them in, “And a one, two, three!”

  Well, the Beaverton High School band might not know Bernstein’s score to West Side Story as intimately as possible, but they knew “In the Mood.” All the band members rose and went at it with gusto, enthusiasm, and volume. Eddie/Tony, who’d been kissing Lydia a pretty long time considering the woman was supposed to be a nun, grabbed her hand and began to boogie. Not to be outdone, Macbeth took the stage manager’s hand and started to swing, kicking up puffs of pink and silver paper.

  The audience clapped and laughed and cat-called, and then they all started dancing: cast, crew, and audience.

  Joe turned to Emmylou and said, “May I have this dance?”

  She blinked and looked dubious, as though she thought he’d mash her toes.

  So naturally, being a competitive sort, he led her down the bleacher steps to the gym floor, then spun her into a complicated jive sequence that ended with her locked right up against his body.

  “I didn’t know you could dance,” she said a little breathlessly.

  “I can not only jive, but I can fox-trot, samba, waltz—both fast and slow—and do pretty much

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  any dance called for at weddings, dinner dances, or on cruise ships.”

  “A man of many talents, then,” she said with a laugh.

  “And you keep up just fine,” he told her, pleased at how easily they’d fit together even in an impromptu sock hop.

  It lasted until the band ran out of music.

  When “In the Mood” came around for the second time, Joe said, “Let’s go,” and walked his girl out into the starry evening.

  “I have a couple of questions about tonight’s performance,” he said after a few minutes of blessed silence.

  “I’ll bet you do.” Her voice sounded a little strained, which he suspected was from laughing so hard while trying not to make any sound.

  “What were the hearts and stars floating from above all about?”

  “They weren’t supposed to be released until the grand finale at the end, when Maria and Tony kiss.”

  They walked a few more steps. “The last time I saw West Side Story it was a tragedy. I could have sworn Tony got knifed to death.”

  “Well, the Beaverton Little Theatre Company thinks that there are enough sad stories in life, so they pretty much give every play we do a happy ending. In this version, Tony gives Bernardo a bloody nose, and Tony gets a cut requiring no more than a Band-Aid. After the blissful final kiss, I believe he and Maria move to Queens and open a dry cleaners.”

  “Ah.”

  “Do you want to know how they fixed Macbeth last year?”

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  He thought about it. Then said, “No.” Some things were better left unknown.

  They walked hand in hand just like a couple of high school sweethearts and Joe began to wonder if Emmylou really needed rescuing from this place—or if he should worry that he was starting to appreciate its distinctive attrib-utes.

  “Are you up for the cast party? It’s at Ernie’s.”

  “Oh, I am.” So they altered course and soon found themselves in a packed, raucous bar where cast and crew showed up—some still in costume. As far as Joe could tell, there were no hard feelings about the tiny misunderstandings. He got the feeling that sort of thing happened all the time.

  He chatted to those he knew, met some new people, grabbed a couple of beers, and passed one to Emmylou. He mingled, and she mingled, but he was always aware of her position in the crowded place. A couple of times they made brief eye contact, and he knew she was as aware of him as he was of her.

  When the aunts arrived, the party really started, and continued for several hours, including an impromptu sing-along as well as passages from Hamlet and Death of a Salesman, courtesy of the versatile Mr. Elbart.

  When Joe and Emmylou returned to the B&B

  much later, Joe realized he was crazy about this women, crazy in a way he’d never felt before.

  They paused outside the front door and, maybe because the high school sweetheart image was still with him, he leaned in and kissed her softly.

  “Thanks for a truly unique evening.”

  Chapter 18

  “Morning, ladies,” Joe said as he walked into the dining room the next morning, looking awfully good for a guy just out of the hospital.

  “What are you going to do today, Joe?” Olive asked him.

  “I’m going to visit Miss Trevellen, and Emmylou’s coming with me. Right, Em?”

  “That’s right. But we shouldn’t go too early.

  She’s probably tired from last night.”

  “Nonsense. She’s always up with the larks.

  What are you going over there for?”

  “Joe wants to see her collection of toy soldiers,” Emmylou said before he could let the aunts in on his true purpose.

  “She’s quite a collector. And a walk will do you both good. Very relaxing, walking.”

  Not for Emmylou, knowing that Miss Trevellen didn’t have Joe’s cell phone.

  In short order, Joe realized she didn’t have it either. They arrived at her door and she seemed

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  delighted to see them, if puzzled. Crafty old thing. Emmylou had always half suspected her pilfering was connected to loneliness. She often had fresh baking on hand when Emmylou arrived to retrieve one of her things.

  Joe, to give him credit, acted genuinely happy to see the older woman and gave as his excuse his desire to see her snuff box collection again.

  “Of course, my dear young man. I’ll make some coffee.” While she was gone, Joe quickly scanned the room but, of course, there were no cell phones.

  “Where is it?” he asked in an undertone.

  “If she’d borrowed it, it would be in this room.”

  Once more he walked around, shifting objects to look behind them, opening a cigar box to see if the phone was inside.

  Emmylou wasn’t enough of a hypocrite to help him when she knew perfectly well the phone wasn’t there. Instead she went out to the kitchen to help their hostess with the coffee. In a few minutes Joe joined them, using the opportunity to scan the kitchen. There was one old wall phone. Miss Trevellen wasn’t even in the age of the portable, never mind the cell.

  He pointed to it with a smile. “That’s a pretty old-fashioned phone, Miss Trevellen.”

  “Oh. Well. I don’t much care for the tele-phone. I don’t spend much time on it and if I had one of those carry-around ones, I’d only lose it.”

  “Don’t tell me you don’t have a cell phone.”

  “Goodness, no. I wouldn’t know what to do with one.”

  “Well, I would,” he muttered.

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  They drank their coffee and chatted about the weather and Joe’s recent illness, and even about antique snuff boxes and toy soldiers. Emmylou was impressed that he actually did know something about antiques.

  He didn’t mention the phone again and she didn’t bring up the subject. Instead, on the way back to the Shady Lady he said, “Can I book my room for the next week?”

  “Of course.”

  He laughed. “You’re not a very astute businesswoman, you know. You should at least tell me you have to check your bookings.”

  She sent him a rueful glance. “You strike me as an intelligent man. You must have figured out by now that business at the Shady Lady isn’t exactly booming.”

  “Business in Beaverton isn’t booming.”