“What on earth are you talking about?” Caron said as she came into the office and perched on a corner of the desk. “You're both foaming and howling, and making no sense whatsoever. You sound worse than the Math Club voting on the banquet-night entertainment. The trig boys wanted to do a skit about Euclid in the nude. Miss Hoffmaken got her hypotenuse bent out of shape and nearly keeled over. It was
très amusant.
”
Luanne cheated by lifting up her ankle for Caron's inspection. “I was wounded in the line of duty, and therefore am obliged to ask your mother for a little bit of help in my hour of need. She's being snotty.”
“I am not,” I protested. “Beauty pageants offend my feminist sensibilities. They demean women by implying that worth is determined by thigh diameter and bust dimensions. No one, including women, should be judged on physical attributes, and especially by a bunch of slobbery old men. A beauty pageant forces women to parade around in skimpy clothes, pretending they're certified virgins who exist only to please men. Don't you agree, Caron?”
Luanne cheated some more. “Think about it for a minute, honey, while your mother finds a way to climb down from her soapbox without spraining
her
ankle. By the way, I got in a box of forties' cocktail dresses, and one of them is black with incredibly funky beadwork and a darling little skirt. I put it aside for you, and I'll let you have it if you'll sweep out the store before the weekend. I can barely walk.”
“Caron's not old enough to wear black,” I said.
“And it has a matching purse covered with the same beadwork,” Luanne continued, thus proving she was a master in the art of cheatery.
Caron eyed both of us, no doubt weighing the cocktail dress and purse against the obscure possibility of a learner's permit. She probably realized that the dress was already hers and the permit unlikely unless we saw a major change in the weather forecast in hell, because she gave me, her own flesh and blood, a dark look. “Luanne's supposed to be your friend, Mother, and you're always lecturing me about loyalty and stuff like that. Remember when Inez was invited to Rhonda McGuire's bunking party and canceled our plans to go to the movies? You went on and on about long-term values and character and all sorts of dreary things until I thought I'd absolutely die.”
“Inez was treacherous. Friends shouldn't test limits like that.”
“Besides,” Caron sniffed, “Inez's sister is in the pageant, and she said we could help her with her dress and hair. Inez and I think Julianna is a very strong contender for the title.”
“Julianna?” Luanne said, frowning. “Does she do a modern dance routine?”
Caron nodded wisely. “Yes, Inez and I convinced her not to do the scene from
Hamlet
when he's yelling at Ophelia about getting herself to a nunnery. Julianna was going to do both parts, but Inez and I felt she would look silly hopping back and forth on the stage. Besides, she's very interpretive in a leotard.”
“What are you and Inezâher agents?” I said.
“Julianna was very grateful for our input, Mother. She's hoping to win scholarship money so she can study neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins.”
“But the Miss Thurberfest pageant doesn't offer scholarships!” I crowed in triumph.
Luanne cleared her treacherous throat. “No, but the
winner gets a bunch of gift certificates from the Thurber Street merchants, and is asked to appear at some of the other pageants in the state. The current Miss Thurberfest, Cyndi Jay, told me she'd traveled all over the state and made a little bit of money through guest appearances.”
“You've met Cyndi Jay?” Caron gasped. “What's she like?”
“She's cute and perky, and is a pretty good performer. She's been cooperative all week.” Luanne took a plastic medicine vial from her purse, shook a capsule into her palm, and bravely gulped it down, making sure Caron and I appreciated her stoicism and determination to tough it out despite debilitating agony. She then made a major production of getting to her feet, embellishing it with moans, artistic grimaces, and wounded glances in my direction. “Well, I guess I'd better tell Sally to cancel the pageant, since I can't even manage the steps to the stage. It's a shame. The girls have worked all week, and almost everything is done. If there were just one person to supervise a few rehearsals and see to the judges and press people, we could have the pageant. But noooo.”
Caron turned her gasp on me. “Mother.”
The word consisted of two simple syllables and was the generic term to describe a biological relationship. Etymologically speaking, it came from the Greek
meter,
the Latin
mater,
or perhaps the Sanskrit
matr.
Caron's inflection imbued it with darkly mystical properties that brought to mind a jury foreman pointing an accusatory finger at a despicable felon destined to swing by the neck for a long, long timeâif the jury had its druthers, anyway.
I smiled at Luanne. “I'll get you for this.”
She smiled at me. “I know you will.”
Caron smiled at everyone.
The next afternoon I stood next to Luanne at the back of the auditorium. Despite her petty victory, she did not look especially happy. I was hardly abubble with glee myself. Tweedlehum and Tweedledrum. On the stage, forty rows of seats down from us, a girl in a stiff pink tutu was trying to coax a recalcitrant Pekinese in a pink clown's hat to leap through a hula hoop. She'd been wheedling away for five solid minutes.
“So what remains to be done?” I asked in a low voice.
“Here's the schedule,” she said as she handed me a creased paper. “Today the girls have fifteen minutes each to rehearse, and then they can wander away to pad their bras or whatever. Tomorrow morning is when things get harried. We have the technical, full-dress rehearsal at nine, and I'm hoping we can finish by noon. The girls have a luncheon with the judges at one; it's at Sally's cafe. The parade's at three, although only Cyndi and one of the judges will participate in that. Then we get serious at eight for the preliminary round, which results in the selection of the seven finalists for the grand finale on Saturday night at eight. During the day, the finalists will have to work on the production number for Saturday night, of course, and we'll have to schedule the talent to avoid a fatal dose of monotonality and batons.”
“That doesn't sound too dreadful,” I said mendaciously. “Who are the judges, when do they appear, and where do we stash them?”
Luanne leaned back against the wall and rubbed her eyes. “It's written down in the notebook somewhere, but it's all done. I'm feeling like hell right now; I think I'm going to limp to the office and lie down for a few minutes. Can you keep the rehearsal moving?”
“Can I order teenaged girls on and off the stage, you
mean? You go lie down. We'll zip through this thing and be home in time for cocktails.”
She moved past me and went down the corridor on the side of the auditorium. I kept one eye on the contestant on the stage while I glanced through Luanne's notebook. I discovered that the judges were to be State Senator Buell “Steve” Stevenson, who would also serve as emcee; Orkin Avery, the illustrious mayor of Farberville and the local Mercedes dealer when not snipping ribbons and breaking ground; and an unknown quantity described tersely as W. H. Maugahyder. Steve was due to arrive shortly to rehearse; the latter two were slated to appear in time for the luncheon and not a minute sooner, since we had no place in which to stash, alas.
I found two sketchy floor plans of the Thurber Street Theater. One showed the lobby and concession area out front, the two corridors on either side of the auditorium ( Luanne had designated spots for ushers) , and the stage and rows of seats. The judges were to sit in the front row, with a table in front of them so they could sip water and write down cryptic notes during the pageant. A short flight of stairs on the left side of the orchestra pit led to the basement, and there was a greenroom on the right side of the stage so the girls could pace and shred tissues or whatever would-be queens did in the critical preco-ronation moments.
The second sketch showed the basement dressing room. Two long, narrow rooms were for the contestants, and I could envision the chaos of clothing, nylons, leotards, hair dryers, cosmetic bags, batons, pooper scoopers, and other paraphernalia that would fill the rooms to waist level at best. One room, no bigger than a breadbox, had a star drawn on it. The reigning Miss Thurberfest, I guessed. Royalty had its reward, even if it was six by
six, damp, and apt to be as cozy as a crypt.
“Oooh, bad dog!” squealed a voice from the stage. “Couldn't you have waited five more minutes? Oh, really, Chou-Chou, I could just spank you!”
“Don't bother. I'm going to barbecue the mutt,” growled a second voice, although I couldn't determine its point of origin.
The girl snatched up her dog and clutched him to her chest. “Don't you say that in front of Chou-Chou. He happens to have a very, very good pedigree and never peepees on the floor at home. Besides, he's already all nervous about doing his tricks, and I don't want him to be intimidated by some nasty old threat.”
“Read my lips. If the damn dog pisses on the stage one more time, he'll never be scared again,” the voice continued.
“Ooh, you are so rude!” The girl scampered off stage, her pink ballet shoes leaving damp smudges on the wooden surface. Chou-Chou gazed over her shoulder with an enigmatic expression, perhaps gauging the potential for a vicious attack on someone's ankle.
While I stared, rather amused by the brief scene, a lanky figure appeared from one side of the orchestra pit. In fact, he rose from the depths like a missile from a silo, which gave me a hint of his identity. As I strolled down the aisle to meet the owner of the Thurber Street Theater, he went onto the stage and began to wipe up a puddle with a rag from his back pocket. He was decidedly tall, with light brown hair that needed a trim and a scraggly goatee that needed serious professional attention. His faded work shirt and overalls emphasized exceptionally long limbs, but his movements were brisk and economical.
“I'm Claire Malloy,” I said to his back.
“Is that so?” He finished the chore, then tossed the rag into the orchestra pit and started to walk away.
“I'm helping Luanne with the pageant,” I persisted.
He stopped and looked back at me. “Then tell that girl I meant what I said about the damn dog pissing on the stage. The uric acid eats the wood, and I've put too much time and money into remodeling this rat trap to have some halfass excuse for a dustmop damage it because of a nervous bladder. Understand?”
“I'll tell her,” I said mildly, not yet ready to declare war on the manââalthough not yet sure I wouldn't change my mind in the immediate future. “I've noticed the theater for years, but it was boarded up. How long have you been remodeling it?”
He cocked his head to one side and gave me what might have been a crooked smile. “I bought it seven months ago, give or take a month. It's a hell of a fine building architecturally, and the structure's still good. It was built back in the forties as an opera house; you can see where the boxes were before some fool plastered over them. It was a movie house in the fifties, an art cinema in the sixties, and a gay nightclub up until about ten years ago, when it was condemned and allowed to deteriorate.”
“You've done a remarkable job restoring it.”
“It's become an obsession with me,” he said, shrugging. “I've tarred the roof, plastered, painted, put down new carpet, reupholstered the seats, and tried everything possible to combat the mildew that seeps up from the basement. I'm hocked up to my armpits with the bank, but I've about got this dame back in shape.”
“So you're a professional restorer?” I asked, thinking about a stain on my office ceiling that might be symptomatic of roof rot, and therefore overlooking his use of
the word
dame,
which was not one of my favorites.
“Now I am. I used to be a local politician before I overdosed on hot air and bullshit.” He came across the stage in a few giant steps and held out his hand. “David McWethyâMac to those with a limited attention span.”
I shook the hand that had held the rag that had wiped up the puddle that had come from the dog that had pissed on the stage that Mac rebuilt. “Nice to meet you, Mac,” I said with a small nod. “I'm Claire Malloy and I own the Book Depot down the street.”
I waited for him to praise my architecture, but he merely grunted and said, “I'm surprised you or anyone else with a brain larger than a wart on a preacher's ass would be associated with this nonsense.”
“It falls in the area of civic duty, I suppose. It'll be over Saturday night, and the girls will all wander back to the real world.”
“I wouldn't presume they can find it on the first try.” He scratched his chin as he gazed in the direction Chou-Chou's owner had fled. “Just when you think you've seen the bottom of the well of human stupidity, someone like that girl comes along to demonstrate that the well has no bottom.”