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“See you out there,” Frank said with a wink in the mirror before slipping out.
Betty picked up a comb and worked on my hair. “You seem on edge.”
“I’ll be fine.” I tried to convince myself more than her.
She set the comb back down and wrapped her arms around my waist, tiptoeing up to give me a kiss. I slid my hands to her waist while she kissed me softly, quieting the barrage of noise in my head.
“Better?” she asked when she pulled back.
“Much.”
“Let’s do this.”
I followed her to our entrance point at stage right in the wings. Frank and Meredith were already there. Frank, in full Velasco character, lifted his hat to us. Meredith was clutching her old lady handbag, muttering lines to herself. Funny that Meredith’s character wasn’t too far from the nervous character of Ethel Banks.
Brittany was in the wings, her headset on. “We’re at places,” she told one of our tech crew, Mike, at the soundboard.
The lights went up, the music dimmed, and Betty sashayed on stage for the opening scene. I watched her through the curtain.
Good God, she was beautiful.
The stage lights only enhanced her beauty—her coppery hair shining, eyes glittering, milk-pale skin looking soft and silky. I was so entranced that I almost missed my cue.
“Psst.Bennett,” whispered Brittany, pointing toward the door where I was supposed to stumble through, panting like a dog.
As soon as I was on stage, I fell right into being Paul Bratter, an exhausted and penniless young New York attorney with a quirky, free-spirited wife who’d bought an apartment on the top floor with no elevator and a hole in the roof.
I loved this play, I thought, as we journeyed through each scene seamlessly. It was amazing. The crowd was fantastic, laughing and reacting in all the right places. Audience participation makes a huge difference for stage actors. It keeps the energy up and lively. And they were giving us everything. By the time we passed the knichi scene, I thought the woman in the first row was going to hyperventilate from laughing so hard.
All of this was outstanding. That was why I was so utterly shocked when Betty forgot her line in the middle of Act Three.
I stayed in character, fumbling with my briefcase, as I realized Betty had drawn a complete blank. It rarely happened, but it wasn’t unheard of in a play where we had hundreds of lines, many of which were similar. The fear on her face had my gut clenching.
I was about to say a line a little ahead of time when she finally she spit out a line, skippingtwo pagesof script. The heat of the lights seemed to intensify, my heart rate tripling and growing too loud, pounding in my head. I wasn’t even supposed to be on this part of the room for that scene. I had to be near the sofa. I moved quickly and picked back up, trying to smooth it over. We fumbled through the rest of the scene, a little off since we were both trying to get our bearings.
Betty skipped ahead another line or two and flounced around the apartment, slamming things since this was our getting-a-divorce scene.
I caught up relatively quickly and fell back into place, but the damage was done. Her missing lines had me second-guessing my lines even as I said them. Because I was thinking so hard about screwing up, I bungled a line that cued Betty’s exit.
She overcame the error and exited anyway. We were near the end, and I was able to recover enough to do the final scene with all the energy I’d been doing during dress rehearsals all week.
When Betty shimmied out onto the makeshift ledge where I was dangling and singing the “Shama, Shama” song, she cupped my face and looked at me, an apology in her gaze. I shook my head slightly at her.
We delivered our last lines, she kissed me, then the curtains closed and applause and hollers filled the theater.
“That was a nightmare,” she whispered.
“Curtain call,” hissed Brittany from down below.
“Come on,” I told her, urging her back down the backstage steps.
We hurried down to the wings right as the curtain reopened and David headed out, taking his bow as the TV repairman. Then Frank swept on stage, bowing with his fedora in hand before he stepped to the side for Meredith.
When Betty and I stepped out together from opposite sides of the stage, took hands, and walked down the middle, the audience leaped to their feet, cheering and whistling.
We took our bows and clapped for Peter and Trish, who poked their heads out of the side curtain then pointed to our sound and light crew in the balcony. Then it was done.
This was when we’d step down in front of the stage and receive congratulations from audience members. Normally, I loved this part of acting, riding the euphoric high of being on stage and a job well done, chatting it up with locals who appreciate live theater.
