Who's Kitten Who? (7 page)

“‘Out’?” Nick repeated, blinking. “Where are you going?”

“I have a rehearsal. For the musical Betty roped me into, remember?”

“But what about my parents?”

“The three of you can spend the evening catching up,” I said cheerfully. “It’s obvious that you’re the light of your mother’s life, and I’m sure she’d like nothing better than having you all to yourself. You can tell her all about law school and…and you can show her the photos from our trip to Hawaii!”

Nick grumbled something I didn’t actually hear, since he’d stuck his head into the backseat to retrieve one more suitcase. I figured it was probably just as well.

Having a rehearsal to go to practically every night of the week was starting to seem like a real stroke of luck. Compared to feeling like one of the characters in
No Exit,
the Sartre play in which three people who hate one another are trapped together in a room for eternity, an evening of acting and singing and, yes, even dancing, suddenly didn’t sound half bad. Even if it
was
likely I’d end up making a complete fool of myself.

Chapter 6

“A dog is the only thing on this earth that loves you more than he loves himself.”

—Josh Billings

I
hope you’re not nervous, Jessica,” Betty said later that evening as I drove the two of us to Port Townsend for my first rehearsal with the Port Players.

Actually, I’d been on the verge of saying something along those exact same lines. Ever since she’d gotten into my VW, I could sense her anxiety. But I suspected it had nothing to do with whether she’d mastered all her dance moves. Instead, what was undoubtedly responsible was the fact that she was still upset about the tension in her household, as well as the possibility that someone in her theater group was a cold-blooded killer.

I decided to do my best to distract her.

“I’m a little nervous,” I told her. “But maybe you can take my mind off the butterflies in my stomach by telling me about Amelia Earhart. I don’t really know that much about her, aside from the fact that she’s one of the world’s most famous aviators—and probably the best-known female aviator of all time.”

“You’re right on both counts,” Betty said. “She racked up quite a long list of achievements. In 1932, she became the first woman to make a solo transatlantic flight. She was also the first person to fly solo from Hawaii to the American mainland, which made her the first person to fly solo anywhere in the Pacific and the first person to solo both the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans.” Her voice was becoming more animated, a sign that my ploy was working. “On top of all that, she held several transcontinental speed records and a women’s altitude world record.

“To me,” Betty continued, “she’s a symbol of adventure, a spirited role model who proved that women can do anything men can do.”

“Then I guess Simon Wainwright had a real brainstorm when he came up with the idea of writing a musical about her,” I observed.

“Definitely. Have you read through his fabulous script yet?”

“So far, all I’ve had a chance to look at is the scene with my speaking part.” I cleared my throat and, in my strongest, most self-assured voice, boomed, “Come on, Amelia. Let’s show these men the stuff we’re made of!”

“That’s very good, Jessica!” Betty exclaimed.

“Thanks. I’ve only said it about eight thousand times in the last twelve hours,” I admitted. “All day I kept muttering it under my breath as I drove from one house call to another.”

“At least you’ll get your scene out of the way early on,” Betty said. “Anita Snook gives Amelia her first flying lesson in scene four, I believe. You see, the play starts with George Putnam—he’s Amelia’s husband—narrating. He announces that Amelia Earhart is about to embark on a historic flight that will make her the first woman to fly around the world. Onstage behind him, the ensemble is bustling around, reading newspapers and talking about her groundbreaking flight. You and I are both in that scene.

“But then the play goes back in time, to Amelia’s childhood. She was only ten when she saw her first plane at the Iowa State Fair. A darling little girl named Wendy plays Amelia as a child. Then we see Amelia at twenty—that’s Elena’s first scene. She’s at a stunt-flying exhibition, and the pilot of a small plane deliberately heads toward her to give her a scare. But she stands her ground, not even flinching. There’s a famous quote about the experience, something like, ‘I didn’t understand at the time, but I believe that little red airplane said something to me as it swished by.’”

“So that’s where her passion for flying began,” I commented.

“Exactly. Then the play follows her through all the events in her early adult life: becoming a nurse’s aide in Toronto during World War Two, going up in a plane for the first time in Long Beach, California, with a pilot named Frank Hawks, and then her first flying lesson with Anita Snook—that’s you.

“The rest of the play takes the audience through her achievements, as well as her relationship with George Putnam. He was a publisher who started out doing public-relations work for her. But before long, they fell in love and married.”

“She died on that flight around the world, didn’t she? The one the play begins with?”

“That’s right. It was in 1937. She’d gone more than twenty-two thousand miles with her navigator, Fred Noonan, and she only had about seven thousand miles to go. But something went wrong and she never made it. She was never found either, which resulted in all kinds of speculation. One theory is that she and Noonan were captured by the Japanese and killed. Another is that they both came back to the United States but used assumed names.”

Betty shrugged. “As tragic as her untimely disappearance was, it adds to her mystery. She was truly larger than life.”

At least I didn’t get roped into playing Amelia Earhart, I thought as I pulled into a parking space in front of Theater One. Compared to playing Amelia, spitting out a few lines as Anita Snook should be a snap.

As soon as I walked inside, I sensed that the atmosphere was markedly different from the first time I’d been there, right after everyone got the tragic news about Simon Wainwright. That time I’d felt like I was attending a memorial service. Today there was a buzz in the air that practically screamed,
It’s showtime!

As I trailed down the aisle after Betty, swerving out of the way of the sewing machine someone had set up near the stage, I realized that the butterflies in my stomach weren’t the only ones doing warm-ups. The other members of the company were scattered around the first ten or fifteen rows stretching, doing breathing exercises, or earnestly studying their scripts.

“How come everyone’s sitting out front, instead of backstage?” I asked.

“Derek likes the cast members to sit in the audience as much as possible during rehearsals,” Betty replied. “Watching the rest of the cast rehearse helps familiarize everyone with the entire production. This way, everyone can also hear all his comments, so he doesn’t end up saying the same things over and over.”

Nearly all the cast members were dressed casually in T-shirts and jeans or sweatpants. In fact, Betty was one of the few who looked the way I’d expect performers to look during a rehearsal. She wore a black leotard and a pink chiffon skirt specially made for dancers, along with beige high-heeled dancing shoes with a strap across the foot.

“I’ll just tell Derek we’re here,” she said, dropping her bag onto one of the red velvet seats. “I’m sure he’ll be grateful that you showed up. Maybe even a little surprised.”

No more surprised than I am, I thought, once again wondering how on earth I’d gotten myself into this.

I was doing my best to reason with those annoying butterflies when I heard the woman sitting a few seats away from me say something. It sounded an awful lot like, “Ah, aw, oh, oo.” I wondered if she was in pain.

“Excuse me?” I said politely.

“Ah, aw, oh, oo,” she repeated. Apparently I’d heard her correctly the first time. “Ah, aw, oh, oo. Mah, maw, moh, moo. Mah, maw, moh, moo.”

“Sorry,” I said, trying not to let my embarrassment show. “I’ll just leave you to your…” I let my voice trail off, not certain how to refer to the voice exercises I’d finally figured out she was doing.

“Pah, paw, poh, poo,” she continued, glaring at me as I moved away as quickly and as quietly as I could.

I was actually relieved when Derek stood up in front of the stage and clapped his hands. “Okay, people. Everybody onstage. Jill is doing the choreography for ‘Wild Blue Yonder.’”

“Let me give you a quick overview,” Betty whispered after she and I shuffled up the aisle and onto the stage with all the other actors. “That platform up above is called a catwalk. It’s mainly used for lighting and sound equipment. Those balconies on either side of the stage are called juliets—as in
Romeo and Juliet.
And those three trapdoors on the floor open into the basement. By the way,
upstage
refers to the back of the stage.
Downstage
is closer to the audience.”

I simply nodded.

“Jill D’Angelo, the choreographer, changed some of the steps in the ‘Wild Blue Yonder’ number,” Betty continued in the same low voice. “She’s going to teach them to us right now. That’s Jill over there.”

She pointed to a slender, dark-haired woman standing on the stage. Like Betty, Jill was dressed like a pro, although her leotard, sheer skirt, and high-heeled dancing shoes were all black. I remembered that the director had been talking to her on Saturday, right before he’d decided to make me a star—or at least a member of the cast.

“This is what’s called a choreography rehearsal,” Betty added.

I blinked. “You mean there’s more than one kind of rehearsal?”

“That’s right. First comes the read-through, where the actors sit around a table, reading through the script. Next there’s a blocking rehearsal. The director blocks out the entire production, positioning everyone onstage for each scene. Of course, it’s all subject to change as rehearsals continue and it becomes obvious that some blocking works while other blocking doesn’t.

“After that,” she continued, “there are music rehearsals, choreography rehearsals, and integration rehearsals. When opening night gets close, we’ll start doing actual runs, which means going through the whole show. And the final week—tech week—is when the lighting people and the sound people come in to do their thing. That week, the members of the orchestra also come in.”

My head was reeling with all these new terms, not to mention the pressure of catching up. I was going to have to learn what everyone else had already been doing for three weeks, and fast.

I was still trying comprehend the challenge I’d taken on when Jill clapped her hands.

“Okay, my darlings, give me your beginning positions for scene four, please,” she said. “Jessie, you’ll be standing over here, next to Elena.”

I took my place, then proceeded to copy Jill’s movements as she began teaching all of us the dance number. I couldn’t help looking around at the other people onstage, wondering if any of them was harboring a horrifying secret. Was Simon Wainwright’s murderer the lanky, red-haired young man who played one of the two pilots who accompanied Amelia Earhart on her famous transatlantic flight? Was it the intense middle-aged man who played Will Rogers, the comedian and folk philosopher who was one of her contemporaries? Or was it possible that Elena, who’d been moved out of the role of Anita Snook and into the role of Amelia Earhart, was ambitious enough to have killed Simon, knowing that Aziza would drop out and she’d be the most likely replacement?

I had to remind myself that even though my main reason for being here was to answer all those questions, at the moment I had something much more pressing to attend to.

You’d better focus on dancing, I scolded myself, or you’re going to look ridiculous.

“Listen to me, my darlings,” the choreographer said, demonstrating the opening steps that accompanied the song “Wild Blue Yonder.” “It’s step, pivot, step, uh-
huh.
Got it? Let me just count it out, sweethearts, to the count of eight. If you start on the right, go left, and if you start on the left, go right. So cross over…that’s five, six, seven, eight…and one, two, three, four. I know I’m throwing a lot at you, and I know it’s busy, but you’ll catch on. And it will help if you start coming to rehearsals in clothes you can move in. Let’s take it from where Amelia sings the words
learn to fly.
And one, two, three, four…”

My head was swimming. This way, that way, step, pivot—I’d always thought that when it came to coordination, I was at least average, if not slightly above. Why, then, did I find myself going left when all the other members of the ensemble were going right?

“Umph!” one of the other dancers cried as I smashed into her, surprising myself as much as I surprised her.

“Jessie, that’s stage left,” Jill called with just a hint of impatience. “Stage left means left while you’re standing on the stage, facing the audience.”

I knew that, I thought, embarrassed. At least, I used to know that.

“Let’s do it again.”

This time, I managed to cross the stage without causing anyone bodily injury. Maybe I wasn’t exactly graceful, but at least I wasn’t dangerous.

“You’ll get it,” whispered one of the other members of the ensemble, a lithe blond woman named Courtney who looked as if she was still a college student. “Sometimes it takes a while.”

“Thanks,” I whispered back, genuinely appreciative of any encouragement I could get.

All of us in the ensemble continued to copy Jill’s moves, at the same time memorizing where our hands were supposed to be, which way we should be facing, and what our facial expressions should be. Never before had it occurred to me that every moment of a stage production—every word, every hand gesture, every smile, every step—was planned out in advance.

“Okay, my darlings, that’s good.” Jill extended her right hand with her fingers spread, as if she were imitating a gecko. “Then we go into a Fosse,” she continued, bending from the waist and freezing. “
Pose.
Then, for a completely different feeling, extend your arm—we’ll call it a Freddie.”

“What’s a Fosse?” I asked Betty, who happened to be standing right behind me.

“She’s referring to the kind of move the Broadway choreographer Bob Fosse would have used,” she returned in a low voice. “And a Freddie—”

“Don’t tell me. Fred Astaire?”

Betty beamed. “Now you’re getting it.”

“It’s kick and cross, pivot and pose,” Jill called. “Got it? We’ll end with a button.”

“Translate, please,” I whispered to Betty, growing increasingly frustrated over my inability to understand this foreign language.

“It means you wait until the very end of the song to strike your pose. You snap into it at the last second.”

“Got it,” I returned, wishing I felt as certain as I sounded.

“Okay, my darlings,” Jill exclaimed, clapping her hands, “let’s take it from the tippy top. Jessie, we’ll start with your line.”

The tiny amount of satisfaction I’d gotten from learning a five-minute dance routine vanished as I stepped forward as stiffly as a robot. As I gazed out at the endless rows of seats, I was suddenly gripped with fear.