Dorothy on the Rocks (20 page)

The phone rings. I don't answer. The message plays and then the beep and then Dee-Honey is talking very fast.

“Where are you, Mags, honey? We're all waiting for you at Ninety-sixth Street? I'm sure I gave you the call.
Robin Hood.
You left me a message saying you'd be here.”

Did I call her and not remember? Shit, shit, shit. I take a deep breath and I pick up the phone.

“Dee, I'm on the way. I'm sorry. There was a leak in my bathroom this morning and I had to wait for the plumber. He's just finishing. I couldn't leave because water was pouring into the apartment downstairs. Look, can you meet me at Eighty-sixth and Broadway? What? Sorry, Dee.” I actually cover the phone with my hand for a minute and pretend to talk to the plumber. I am a shit for sure.

“He says he'll be another two minutes. So I'll see you in a sec, okay?” I hang up the phone. Where is that bagel? I need to put something in my stomach. The brown paper bag is lying next to
the sink in the kitchen. I open it, unwrap the wax paper, and bite into the bagel. I hope the dense dough will soak up the three beers sloshing around in my belly. And then for a second I have a brain freeze, I can't remember what I'm doing. Then, yes, right—I have to meet Dee-Honey. Fuck. Maid Marian. Why do I have to keep playing these parts? Let's see, Marian falls in love with Robin Hood and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio (or Olivia de Havilland in the classic) played her in the movie. What else do you need to know? I hate my life.

I grab my shoulder bag and shove the rest of the bagel and an overripe banana in the side pocket. I can't find my keys. I can't find them anywhere. I look everywhere. I start to hyperventilate. The phone rings again.

“What?” I bark into the receiver.

“Mags, honey, we're on the corner. Are you on the way?”

“I'm almost out the door. The plumber is finally leaving.”

Fuck. Where are my fucking keys? Then I see the spare set Jack gave me back, on the table by the door. Big tears splash down my face. Shit! I pick them up, shove them in my pocket, where much to my surprise I find my own set of keys. All right. Calm down, put the spare keys in the drawer, and get the hell out of the apartment. Randall Kent is standing outside the car smoking a cigarette when I arrive.

“Mags, darling, nice of you to join us.”

“Can it, Randall, I'm having a difficult day.”

“Aren't we all, dear,” he says, climbing into the car.

“Sorry, everybody. It was a mess. The whole ceiling was pouring water.”

“I thought it was leaking to the apartment below,” Dee-Honey says, catching my eye in the rearview mirror.

“It was both places—my ceiling and theirs. The pipes burst—all of them. It was a fucking flood. Who's playing Robin Hood?”

“Wally Greig, you know him. He was out in LA for a while and now he's back. He's riding up in the truck with Frank. Didn't you do
Pied Piper
with him a few years ago?” Pauline Letts asks. She is sitting on my left, straightening out her needlepoint.

“Oh, yeah, sure. Isn't he kind of chunky for Robin Hood?”

“Fat, is that what you're trying to say?” Randall asks. “Yes, he's a plump Prince of Thieves, but Ron is out with the
Rumpelstiltskin
cast. Isn't that right, Dee?”

“Yes, honey, we are short on handsome princes right now. He'll be fine. Wally is a wonderful actor.”

“Yeah, but he's fat,” I contend. “He should be playing Friar Tuck, not Robin Hood.”

“Think how thin you'll look playing opposite him. Maid Marian will look absolutely anorexic.” Randall laughs. My head feels like it's going to explode.

I reach in my bag and get out the bagel. I finish it in four or five bites and then eat the banana. I feel better, but not much. I don't know how I'm going to get through the day.

“Where's the show?” I ask.

“Albany.”

“Albany?” I moan. “That's three hours away.”

“Plenty of time for a line rehearsal,” Dee says cheerily. “Does anyone have a script?”

As usual there is not even one script to be had among the whole cast. Dee-Honey's company believes in the oral tradition of theater. You learn the lines by saying them over and over onstage in front of five hundred screaming children. Once when I was going on for the first time in
Little Red Riding Hood,
I asked Dee for a
script. She had to call five people before she could rustle one up, and it wasn't a Xeroxed copy. It was mimeographed. The way they made copies back in the Dark Ages. It was like reading something printed on the Gutenberg press.

Three hours and 150 miles later we arrive in Albany. We've been through the play three times, with Dee-Honey filling in as Robin Hood.

Frank and the crew from the theater are putting up the set. Wally Greig is sitting in the front row of the theater eating a bag of potato chips and a turkey club on rye. He's as fat as I remember. He's going to look like Robin Hood, the Macy's Thanksgiving Day balloon.

“Hey, Wally.” I wave. “Looks like we're the lovebirds today.”

“Hiya, Mags,” he says through a mouthful of sandwich.

“Do you want to go over anything?” I ask. “We have that duet. We should definitely go over that as soon as Frank gets the sound set up.”

“Sure. Want some chips?” Wally offers me the bag.

I shake my head no, and just like that my stomach starts to turn. I have got to find a bathroom.

“Frank, bathroom?” I yell across the footlights.

“Stage left, down the hall.”

I walk, then break into a full-out sprint. I get there just in time. I heave it all—the beers, the bagel, the banana, the two cups of coffee. I heave and heave.

Then I hear a voice from the other stall.

“Is that you, Mags? Are you all right?”

It's Pauline. Shit.

“Fine,” I say. “It's food poisoning. I had some seafood last night
and I guess it was spoiled. I don't know. It was expensive. Geez.” I'm lying, lying, lying.

“I have some Tums in my bag if you need them.”

“Thanks, Pauline. I think I'll be all right now that it's out of my system. Seafood. I should never even order it, but I do love it and my boyfriend was paying, so, you know.” Lie, lie, lie. If fairy tales came true, my nose would be four feet long.

T
HE SHOW GOES
pretty well. At least until we get to the archery contest between Robin Hood and Sir Guy of Gisborne, the bad guy henchman of the scheming Sheriff of Nottingham. Randall Kent plays Sir Guy with a swagger and bite that would put Basil Rathbone to shame, and Wally's Robin Hood isn't so bad—he's just fat.

But, alas, in the archery contest it is revealed that Wally isn't only fat, he is also blind. As Robin Hood, the hero of our tale, he has to shoot the arrow offstage into a blanket that is draped over a ladder.

You don't actually have to hit anything, just get it in the right direction and, of course, get it offstage. Wally's first arrow lands below the curtain line and slides off the apron of the stage onto the floor. A child in the front row throws it back.

As Maid Marian in the disguise of a young lad of court, I catch it, thank the girl, whom I pretend is one of the townspeople, and ceremoniously hand the arrow back to Robin Hood, who puts it in the bow, shoots it offstage, but misses the blanket and hits the back wall. The arrow bounces off the wall with such force that it lands back onstage at Robin Hood's feet. The whole cast is shaking now with repressed laughter, Randall has turned his back to
the audience so he can bite on his hand to try to stanch his guffaws. One boy in the audience shouts something obscene and he is quickly escorted from the auditorium.

I, as the young lad aka Maid Marian, am keeping score of the match. Sir Guy of Gisborne is way ahead so I have to cheat the results in order for Robin Hood to win. It's terrible to have to do this in front of children. The kids in the audience start booing Robin Hood. On his third attempt Robin shoots the arrow straight up in the air; it comes down and hits Pauline, who is playing the Sheriff's daughter, right in her wimple hat. Pauline dives for the floor and the kids roar with laughter.

It's a train wreck. Dee-Honey is standing in the wings shaking her head and pulling at her hair. I run offstage and bring back the target, which is preset with an arrow, stuck in the bull's-eye. I declare Robin Hood the winner, explaining that the last arrow went up, came down, hit the Sheriff's daughter, ricocheted off the wimple hat, turned left, and hit the bull's-eye. A little like the magic bullet theory in the JFK assassination. The audience grumbles, a few girls applaud, and the show goes on.

After Robin Hood and I sing our final duet and the curtain comes down, Wally Greig gives me a hug and says, “Great show.”

“Not only is he fat,” I say in an aside to Randall. “He's also stupid.”

Pauline and I retire to the dressing room. She hands me the roll of Tums.

“Maybe you should take a couple. It's a long trip back.”

“Thanks.”

By the time we hit the road it's almost five o'clock. We stop at a Taco Bell on the strip outside of town. I order two chicken
tortillas and a large Coke. We all sit at a big table and chow down. Wally is a sport about the archery contest.

“Next time, wear your glasses, for Christ's sake,” Randall says. “Don't you have contacts?”

“Contacts don't help, neither do glasses. I have cataracts. I'm supposed to get surgery the end of this month,” Wally explains between bites of his supersized, extra cheese taco.

That shuts us up. My God, the poor man
is
going blind.

Then Pauline chimes in. “Well, you sounded wonderful in the songs, Wally. Your voice is as beautiful as ever.”

We all nod in agreement and quickly finish our meals. I take two more Tums. Then our not-so-merry band of men and women climb into the station wagon for the long trip home. Three hours, I think to myself, in three hours I'll be able to crawl into bed and forget the whole damn day.

I'm up at the crack of dawn. I look at the clock. It's 6:20 a.m. I get up and put water on for coffee. Then I sit in the chair by the back window. The courtyard is brimming with summer flowers. I don't know if someone plants them every year, or maybe they're perennials. The sun is coming up. I do my morning sits and stares. Bixby leaps into my lap, all twenty pounds of him.

“You're my big cat-boy, aren't you, Bix?” I snuggle my face next to his. “I love you . . . and I love Jack.” Bixby puts his paw on my shoulder and purrs.

“Where is he, Bixby? Where's my handsome prince?” I say and then recite in oval tone:

O fortune, fortune! all men call thee fickle:
If thou art fickle, what dost thou with him
That is renowned for faith? Be fickle, fortune;
For then, I hope, thou wilt not keep him long,
But send him back.

It's
Romeo and Juliet,
act three scene five. I pride myself on still remembering all the lines, and Shakespeare, like Hallmark, has a stanza for every occasion.

When I was seventeen and played Juliet, I was sure that love should be hard won, and that the most romantic thing in the world was strife. I don't believe that anymore. Or do I? If I hadn't told Jack to leave, he would be here right now.

My whistling teapot whistles. I put a filter in the coffee cone, add two scoops of grounds, and carefully pour the hot water through the top. Then I put a scoop of cat food in Bixby's dish. This is not a happy ending. In fact it's a lousy ending.

“A walk in the park is what I need to clear my head,” I say to Bix while looking through the cupboards for the insulated coffee mug my sister-in-law gave me last Christmas.

“I'll go over to Riverside Park and walk down to the boat basin. Maybe even get a paper on the way and sit by the river,” I tell Bix, who is now fully concentrating on his breakfast and not listening to a word I'm saying.

I haven't been back to Central Park since I was attacked; it's too soon. But I need to see some open space, and the boat basin is lovely early in the morning. And it's safe.

As I come out my door, Sandy and Mr. Ed are coming out theirs.

“Good morning, you're up early,” Sandy says. Mr. Ed just nods.

“Yeah, I couldn't sleep. Thought I'd go over to Riverside Park for a walk. Are you two going for a run?”

“Rollerblading actually,” Sandy says, indicating the bootlike shoes she is carrying in her hand.

“Oh, of course, you're going to have to hustle to keep up, Ed.” I lean down and ruffle his fur. Ed stares at me. I look up at Sandy.

“I think Mr. Ed is still upset with me. He's been very hot and cold. Has he said anything?”

Sandy smiles at me. “You know Mr. Ed. He's very private in affairs of the heart.”

“Oh, Mr. Ed,” I say into his ear. “I'm so sorry about what happened. You're my hero.”

Ed turns his head to me.

“What do you say, Ed? Are you going to forgive old Mags?”

He cocks his funny head to one side, considering the proposition.

“Come on, boy, forgiveness is good for the soul.” This is the kind of chicken soup philosophy that Ed is a sucker for, and sure enough he leans in and gives me a sloppy dog kiss right on the mouth.

“Oh, Ed.” I pick him up in my arms. “I love you, little guy.”

I look over at Sandy and she is crying.

“That is so sweet,” she says between sobs. “That is just so sweet. The two of you.”

It's not even seven o'clock and we are having a love fest right in the hallway. This is too saccharine for my blood.

Goodie lands on my shoulder. “Go with it, Mags, there is nothing wrong with a little love in the morning. Besides, the dog saved your life for goodness sakes.”

I shrug him off my shoulder and put Ed down. Sandy hugs me tight. Thank goodness I have a no-drip top on my coffee mug.