Carmela asked for, and received permission, to attend the dress rehearsal. Antonio felt it would be appropriate since both he and their son would be spending the day there. Typically, it was left to her to find her own transportation, he would be using the car, and Carlos had his own. Accepting his expected inconsideration with long practiced compliance, she helped him on with his jacket, kissed his cheek and waved him on his way from the front door. After Carlos left, Carmela dutifully cleaned up the kitchen, swept the floor, made the beds - Carlos' bedroom always took longer - and carried the dirty linens to the laundry room. With the house to herself, she began a leisurely program of self-indulgence, beginning with a soothing but stimulating session in the Jacuzzi bathtub. Dragging a loofah brush down her leg, she smiled, thinking how Antonio would react to this decadent extravagance. If he only knew, her smile widened, conjuring a picture of she and Ivan in the garden shed; the definitive decadent deed. But he never would. When it came to clandestine dalliance, Ivan and she were classic practitioners.

With a judicious but humble telephone call to the Bader's, Carmela secured her transportation.

*****

Ramon strutted from his bathroom and opened his closet door, introducing a full-length reflection of his well-muscled, nude body in the mirror mounted on the back. He struck a few poses, examining each with critical approval and finishing with a series of John Travolta disco moves. The part he'd been given, as Private Courts, was a token in the least, but it put him next to Amanda Wells in the rehearsal, and that was anything but a token to Ramon. Pulling on a pair of tight, pale green Dockers, he savoured the memory of his accidental glimpse of Denise, as she stood in the costume room in nothing but the unlaced corset Ellen was fitting to her slender frame. He grinned, sliding into a cream coloured, light-weight cotton shirt, leaving the top three buttons undone to display the thick gold chain he felt set off his tanned chest to the best advantage. Pocketing his wallet, loose change and trusty comb, he slipped barefoot into a pair of beige loafers and saluted his reflection goodbye as he left his apartment for the playhouse.

THE PLAY

Activity backstage was chaotic, dredging up Nigel's original misgivings over using the local residents. The petty squabbling from the pre rehearsal meeting resurfaced, as egos clashed over every aspect of the play, including the behaviour of several members of the troupe. While not a total failure, the rehearsal had morphed into an increasingly combative series of adlibs as the actors acted out their real life feelings and suspicions through their respective characters. Meanwhile, Victoria gleefully altered the scripts accordingly. The dozen or so local business people that comprised the audience seemed to enjoy the performances, even though the plot totally eluded them, laughing, miraculously, in most of the right places as well as some that obviously annoyed the performers. Carlos, Everet and Ross executed their cues with consummate professionalism, adjusting admirably to the missed marks, tardy exits and entries, and flubbed lines. Victoria perched on a stool in the wings gleefully noting every miscue on her copy of the script with a huge red marker. She looked forward eagerly, to the post rehearsal meeting, where her notations would no doubt be hotly debated.

Nigel stood propped against the wall in the dressing room corridor, harried and exhausted. His own performances, alternating between that of the weak willed sheriff losing control of the angry mob, to referee, to ego stroking councilor, seemed more worthy of attention than the play he was trying to produce. After receiving a deliberately evasive excuse for dirt smudges on his wife's clothing, Allen had stormed onto the stage ahead of his cue, delivering an angry answer to a relatively innocuous question before it was asked. Ramon's five word exchange with Amanda was enacted with such a sexually charged quality, Milo accidentally swept his offending hairpiece off in a fit of pique, bringing a roar from the audience that drowned out Shelia's nervously delivered speech. And when Daryl's Senator Peekman refused to die from Donald's Private Gouger's, point blank, gunshot wound, until Tiffany hissed him into submission, Nigel crept away in defeat to the sanctuary of the deserted corridor.

"What are you doing down here?" Victoria asked, looking down at Nigel from the top of the iron stairs.

"Contemplating suicide."

"What on earth for?" she laughed, coming down to join him.

"You're joking, right?"

"On the contrary, didn't you hear our audience?"

"Victoria," he said with despair, "they're laughing harder at the dramatic parts than the intended funny ones. It's turned into a Benny Hill farce."

"If it entertains, it's a success," she responded philosophically, "don't knock it, dear, embrace it... exploit it."

He looked at her with admirable disbelief, "You never quit, do you?"

"Never. Quitters are just fuel for achievers." Her smiling eyes twinkled with confidence.

"Where are we now?" He asked, referring to the progress of the play.

"Probably in the path of what will be a stampede of irate thespians any moment now. Everet just lowered the curtain on the drawing room scene."

"Oh god," He moaned, straightening up and plowing his hair back with a frustrated sweep of his hand. "Would you alert Ellen for the next change, please?"

"Cheer up, Nigel," she smiled, heading to the costume room.

"Oh! Oh my!"

"Oh my, doubled!" Victoria exclaimed, stopping with her hand on the doorknob, viewing the episode she'd interrupted with astonishment. Ellen leaped back, flame-faced, covering her naked bosom while Denise snatched a bolt of cloth from the table to hide her own nude body.

"I- we- costumes... we were- we were fitting costumes?" The query in her statement made manifest, the incontrovertible truth of their real activity. Composing herself, Victoria took a quick peek down the hallway and stepped into the room, closing the door.

"Trust me, my dears," she said kindly, "my initial surprise was solely that of one who has been away from the vagaries of theatre life for so long. You have nothing to fear from this old lady." Ellen and Denise looked at one another with uncertain relief. "But your charges are only seconds from bursting in behind me. I'll go and stall them while you... gather yourselves." She winked compassionately and left the room.

"Everything okay?" Nigel asked, as she came back down the corridor.

"You don't want to know... yes," she smiled, patting his arm reassuringly, "everything's fine." He followed her bouncing step back up the stairs with a curious glance, directing it back to the costume room door.

"Just what was that blatant display with Lopez all about." Milo muttered angrily, taking Amanda by the arm and trailing the others back stage.

"Why Major Stiff, what on earth are you insinuating?" Amanda waved her prop fan beside her cheek like a sullied southern belle.

"Don't you give me that- that little Miss Chastity." He hissed, shaking his reviled hairpiece in her face, angrily.

"Why Milo, I believe you're jealous." She lifted her chin, and guiding her hoop skirt past a rack of scenery boards, stepped ahead of him, bustle quivering saucily.

Back on the other side of the stage, next to the piano and the music system, Allen confronted Jean, and the equally dust smeared, Ross.

"And I suppose this happened moving furniture?" his fingers flipping the front of her blouse and his voice rising in volume and temperature.

"I told you what happened," she lied boldly, "look to your own actions before you suspect others, Allen."

"What's that supposed to mean?" his eyes drilled the silently observing Ross.

"You and your acting scene with Tiffany." Jean turned her attention to Ross, deliberately avoiding her husband's reaction.

"Tiffany! Now you just wait a min- goddamnit, Jean, I want eye contact when I'm talking with you!" He shouted.

She spun suddenly, eyes blazing, lip curled, "Eye contact! You want EYE CONTACT? I'LL GIVE YOU EYE CONTACT!" And she did, with a well-placed fist that sent him staggering back, catching his saber in the curtain ropes and leaving him dangling like a stringless marionette.

*****