Page 3 of Twelve Days and Twelfth Night

Maggie strolled down the aisle. The stage was small, but she liked how the wall encircled the floor seating and how balconies stacked up that wall like bunk beds.

She could practically see actors in Elizabethan garb calling out lines. “Too bad Shakespeare wouldn’t fit for a Christmas show. I can’t see our boys sitting through a play in Ye Olde English anyway.”

“That’s what they thought for the Exposition too, so the Globe Players performed short versions of Shakespeare plays. They were a big hit. The scripts are in the office. Want to see?”

“Why, yes.” Maggie followed the yeoman up the aisle. “Short versions?”

“Yes, ma’am. About an hour.”

“An hour . . .” The men might sit through that, especially if it were a comedy, especially if supplemented by song-and-dance numbers and plenty of pretty girls.

Frank Sebastian entered an office off the lobby, shoved boxes aside, and opened a file cabinet. “Here we go. The Taming of the Shrew, Hamlet, Twelfth Night, Macbeth—”

“Twelfth Night? May I see?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Maggie took the thin script. “I played Olivia in this play in high school. I loved it. Full of comedy and mistaken identities. And . . . and Shakespeare wrote it for Christmas.”

“Huh.” The sailor screwed up one eye. “The fellows always like a good laugh.”

Maggie clutched the script to her chest, and a plan danced in her head like a Busby Berkeley spectacular—the venue, the program. All she needed was a star.

Los Angeles, California

Prescott Duke sat in a leather armchair in front of Melvin Underwood’s shiny desk, and his foot jiggled. “Anything for me? Anything at all?”

Melvin rested his big hands on his big belly. “You know the answer, Press.”

Prescott tugged at his shirt collar. “I know I’m done in movies. I know that. I mean, I’ll do anything. A charity gig, a—”

“What are you worried about?” Melvin’s thick gray eyebrows fused. “You have a fancy house, a fancy car, and enough money for life if you manage it well. And you do.”

“It’s not the money. It never was. I’d work for free.”

“Never say that to your agent.”

Prescott cracked a smile, then sobered. “I mean it, Mel. I’m going stir-crazy. It’s been almost two years since the accident. I’m tired of doing nothing all day.”

“What’re you going to do? Get a job?”

Modern art hung on the paneled walls, a far cry from the tar-papered walls of the tenement where Prescott had grown up. “I’ve been thinking about it.”

Melvin sighed and leveled his gaze at Prescott, hard but not unkind. “With those hands?”

He flinched and rubbed the gnarled skin. In the agonizing weeks in the hospital, he’d lost four of his fingers, two on each hand. Even holding a pen was difficult.

“Listen, kid. I’m not being mean, just realistic. You’ve got a sixth-grade education and no job skills. What’re you going to do? Go back to the boxing ring where I discovered Joe Prescott and turned him into Prescott Duke?”

Heaviness filled his chest, and he shook his head. He had nothing but his voice. But with a mangled face, acting and singing were out of the picture.

Melvin fished a pear from the fruit bowl on his desk. “A lot of men would be happy to be retired.”

“I’m only thirty-five. I shouldn’t be retired.”

“It’s not too late to take up drinking.” Melvin flashed a mischievous smile and bit into the pear.

Prescott was in no mood to play along. “Never.”