Orbra’s scones and sandwiches for the workers. It was my idea.”
“It certainly was not,” Orbra said testily. “I told you I was planning to bring some things, and you started telling me which ones you wanted to eat.”
“Whatever,” Maxine retorted. “Now, where is my dressing room?”
Vivien drew in another deep breath, for Jake had gone back up onstage and was examining the broken catwalk. Why didn’t he just leave everything alone?
Why didn’t he just leave?
He was messing up her mojo. Bringing bad juju.
Bringing back memories.
“The dressing rooms are backstage, but they’re—”
Vivien’s warning that it was no place for a woman with a cane was cut off when the dainty lady with fluffy white hair hurried over to her. “Oh, I can just feel the energy here! The ghosts of musicals past! You must be Vivien Leigh Savage. I remember your record album, you know. Yours and your sister’s.” Her eyes showed a hint of sympathy. “And the fantastic performance at the Tonys.”
“Yes, I’m Vivien,” she replied, watching askance as Maxine Took made a beeline toward the steps at stage left even while she hoped the lady in front of her wouldn’t start singing “Happy, Happy Me”—the biggest track from The Savage Sisters’ one-hit-wonder album. It had hit number ten on the Billboard chart.
“I’m Iva Bergstrom. I’m so happy to finally meet you!” The cotton-haired woman was the epitome of the kindly grandmother type with her bright blue eyes and round, delicate cheeks. She was dressed sensibly and not quite so grandmotherly in dark blue capri pants and a light summer sweater twinset of lemon yellow. A perfect Mrs. Claus, if you were going for tiny, elegant, and not quite as chubby as the mister. Or maybe even a Mrs. Potts…
“Same here,” Vivien replied, then called desperately, “Maxine, it’s not really safe to be—”
“I’ll be fine,” retorted the woman, already thumping across the stage like she owned it. “It’s Juanita you gotta worry about. I got three legs to balance myself, and she’s got but two.”
Sure enough, Juanita was following in her costar’s wake, climbing up the five steps a little more carefully, but hardly less enthusiastically.
“I guess I’d better go with them,” Vivien said with a sigh.
“I’ll come too,” said Iva. “Orbra, come on—we’re going to go see Maxine and Juanita’s dressing rooms!”
Orbra set down her shopping bag (presumably filled with scones) next to the other ones that had been abandoned. “It’s been more than thirty years since I’ve been in here,” she said, following Vivien and Iva onto the stage. “I think the last performance I saw was Little Shop of Horrors, back in ’85, I think it was. Wonderful show, but a very strange one. I had nightmares about that horrible plant for weeks after. All I could hear was ‘Feed me, Seymour!’ over and over in my head intertwined with the dentist song.”
Vivien was more interested in catching up to Maxine and Juanita (for ladies in their eighties, they moved fast) than hearing about Orbra’s memories. There were tripping hazards all over, as well as old nails and splintered set pieces that could injure any of them.
“Maxine, Juanita, if you could just wait…” Vivien called, already envisioning news articles (Octogenarian Star Injured During Stage Reconstruction Honoring One of the Savage Sisters), lawsuits, and the tripling of her liability insurance.
As she darted across the stage, she passed Jake (who was still standing on it by the dangling piece of catwalk like he had a reason to be there), and he gave her a sidewise look with brows raised, along with a smirk.
“You can get off my stage any time now,” she said from between clenched teeth as she strode past.
He said something that sounded like But I like your stage…
Which made no sense, because he’d been the one who’d messed things up with them…
…and why was she even thinking about him?
Even further behind in her wake, she could hear Iva, who seemed to have decided to take the opportunity to deliver her own soliloquy about theater phantoms and the metaphysical to whatever audience was around to listen. She’d continued on in the vein of “ghosts of performances past” and was talking to Orbra about shows she’d seen.
“Maxine, Juanita, if you want to see your dressing room…” Vivien said, desperately projecting her voice to where they were just making their way beyond the wings. “I’ll show you. If you’ll just wait.”
To her relief, the two women finally stopped. Frazzled and annoyed (mainly because the unwanted Jake had to be