form for Gerold tomorrow.”
As Polly and her posse said good-bye to Charlotte, she gushed about having a lovely evening and that the next time they got together it would be for a dinner at Pepper Plantation. Charlotte was thrilled with anticipation and accepted for any night that Polly found convenient. “Let’s check our calendars and discuss a date tomorrow,” Polly suggested as she stepped out into the cool evening air and walked down the sidewalk. As she waved back at Charlotte she said sotto voce to Tim and Placenta, “The wine tasted like Listerine.”
Settled into the car and cruising down Fountain Avenue toward LaCienega Boulevard, Polly said, “Let’s recap. Likes dead celebrity possessions. Quick to convict Sharon. Admits to having a temper. Somehow got her old job back.”
Placenta added, “Sally Struthers isn’t in Cleveland. I was in line with her at Gelson’s Market yesterday. She was buying up all the Entenmann’s cheese Danish rings.”
“Add liar to Charlotte’s resume,” Polly said.
Chapter 8
T he world of regional theater was a distant universe, far away from the mundane bore of an insurance company office or auto parts warehouse. However, regardless of where one worked, there was one common denominator: sex. In every show, on the first day of rehearsal, the cast and chorus sized each other up and soon partners were paired up for friendships and sexual trysts that seldom ran beyond the end of the production. Girl dancers two-stepped with boy dancers. Boy dancers do-si-doed with other boy dancers. An ingénue might fancy the older star who was on television when she was a kid. The female lead might take a chorus boy for her temporary lover. There were as many backstage sex scenarios as there were worldwide productions of Mama Mia .
Polly had seen the entire spectrum and combinations during her years in television and touring in summer stock. She had witnessed wives arriving from out of town with the kids to join their actor husbands on the road for the summer, missing by moments the actor’s boyfriend or girlfriend scurrying out of the hotel room. She’d overheard actors on their dressing room phone lying, “Honey, we’re working really hard. If you visit right now, I don’t know when I’d get to see you.” In the meantime, a new paramour in the dressing room was doing God only knows what to satisfy the actor.
A star of Polly’s stature was particularly vulnerable to someone paying romantic attention to her and she could succumb in a nanosecond. Therefore, when they traveled, Tim felt it incumbent upon himself to assess the members of the theater company and decide who in the show might be particularly stupid enough to try to latch on to his mother. Thankfully, this time out her daydreams were not about a muscled twenty-something dancer with a prodigious hokeypokey; her thoughts were preoccupied with police detective Randy Archer.
It was already warm and smoggy in Glendale when Polly, Tim, and Placenta arrived at the theater at eight thirty the following morning. Tim parked the Rolls near the stage entrance and no one in the car missed seeing that Gerold’s Jaguar was in the lot too. “I wonder if he’s out walking off his Häagen-Dazs today,” Polly said. “I’ll wager that his happy hands are getting their exercise on Mag Ryan.”
Placenta scoffed, “In that case, there ought to be a portable heart defibrillator backstage. I’d love to give that ape a jolt of seventeen hundred volts.”
The trio stepped from the car and walked through the doorway marked ENTR É E DES ARTISTES . They whispered good morning to George, the half-sleeping old man supposedly guarding the door, and Tim signed them in on the visitor log. Then they made their way down the hall toward the stage wings.
In her trademarked yodel, Polly called out ahead as she approached the stage. “I’m hee-er!” she announced. As Polly predicted, Gerold and his young girlfriend were already at the reading
As Polly and her posse said good-bye to Charlotte, she gushed about having a lovely evening and that the next time they got together it would be for a dinner at Pepper Plantation. Charlotte was thrilled with anticipation and accepted for any night that Polly found convenient. “Let’s check our calendars and discuss a date tomorrow,” Polly suggested as she stepped out into the cool evening air and walked down the sidewalk. As she waved back at Charlotte she said sotto voce to Tim and Placenta, “The wine tasted like Listerine.”
Settled into the car and cruising down Fountain Avenue toward LaCienega Boulevard, Polly said, “Let’s recap. Likes dead celebrity possessions. Quick to convict Sharon. Admits to having a temper. Somehow got her old job back.”
Placenta added, “Sally Struthers isn’t in Cleveland. I was in line with her at Gelson’s Market yesterday. She was buying up all the Entenmann’s cheese Danish rings.”
“Add liar to Charlotte’s resume,” Polly said.
Chapter 8
T he world of regional theater was a distant universe, far away from the mundane bore of an insurance company office or auto parts warehouse. However, regardless of where one worked, there was one common denominator: sex. In every show, on the first day of rehearsal, the cast and chorus sized each other up and soon partners were paired up for friendships and sexual trysts that seldom ran beyond the end of the production. Girl dancers two-stepped with boy dancers. Boy dancers do-si-doed with other boy dancers. An ingénue might fancy the older star who was on television when she was a kid. The female lead might take a chorus boy for her temporary lover. There were as many backstage sex scenarios as there were worldwide productions of Mama Mia .
Polly had seen the entire spectrum and combinations during her years in television and touring in summer stock. She had witnessed wives arriving from out of town with the kids to join their actor husbands on the road for the summer, missing by moments the actor’s boyfriend or girlfriend scurrying out of the hotel room. She’d overheard actors on their dressing room phone lying, “Honey, we’re working really hard. If you visit right now, I don’t know when I’d get to see you.” In the meantime, a new paramour in the dressing room was doing God only knows what to satisfy the actor.
A star of Polly’s stature was particularly vulnerable to someone paying romantic attention to her and she could succumb in a nanosecond. Therefore, when they traveled, Tim felt it incumbent upon himself to assess the members of the theater company and decide who in the show might be particularly stupid enough to try to latch on to his mother. Thankfully, this time out her daydreams were not about a muscled twenty-something dancer with a prodigious hokeypokey; her thoughts were preoccupied with police detective Randy Archer.
It was already warm and smoggy in Glendale when Polly, Tim, and Placenta arrived at the theater at eight thirty the following morning. Tim parked the Rolls near the stage entrance and no one in the car missed seeing that Gerold’s Jaguar was in the lot too. “I wonder if he’s out walking off his Häagen-Dazs today,” Polly said. “I’ll wager that his happy hands are getting their exercise on Mag Ryan.”
Placenta scoffed, “In that case, there ought to be a portable heart defibrillator backstage. I’d love to give that ape a jolt of seventeen hundred volts.”
The trio stepped from the car and walked through the doorway marked ENTR É E DES ARTISTES . They whispered good morning to George, the half-sleeping old man supposedly guarding the door, and Tim signed them in on the visitor log. Then they made their way down the hall toward the stage wings.
In her trademarked yodel, Polly called out ahead as she approached the stage. “I’m hee-er!” she announced. As Polly predicted, Gerold and his young girlfriend were already at the reading
Similar Books
