Brett and Meredith didn’t stay at the Ammermans very late since they still had work on the house to do. They put in another couple hours on it, then more or less wound down; they’d had enough for one day.

They’d decided days before that Brett would get the downstairs bedroom, while Meredith would take one of the upstairs ones, with Kellye getting the other one when she showed up. They didn’t have any real furniture with them – just the busted chair, which counted for nothing – but they did have air mattresses and sleeping bags they’d scrounged from the Wickwire attic. Despite it being before their normal bedtime, they decided to turn in so they could get a good start the next day.

That meant they got up early the next morning, right around sunrise. They’d decided last night to go out for breakfast, and Brett had asked then if there was a diner within driving distance. There was, Marty had told them; it was called “Mom’s” and was on up the main highway a ways, at the corner of the highway and the road that connected Coopersport and Oxford. However, Marty had warned them that he didn’t think it was very good, but that they ought to find out for themselves if it was to their taste.

They were still yawning and scratching, trying to get themselves switched on for the day, when they climbed out of the van at the diner. They soon found out that Marty had been dead right. The food wasn’t very good; the sausages tasted like sawdust and the home fries were burned almost black. While Brett wasn’t a very good cook, he was enough of one to know that it’s hard to screw up a scrambled egg, but somehow they managed it at Mom’s. On top of that, the waitress was snappy and surly.

“At least the coffee is all right,” Meredith complained. “But really, they ought to have named this place ‘Grumpy’s’ instead of that one on the way here.”

“You got that right,” Brett agreed. “But look at it this way. We’ll just have to find another one, even if we have to go farther.”

“I can make do with cereal and coffee in the morning if you can,” she nodded. “There’s no reason we have to put up with this on a regular basis. Maybe once in a while we can go on into town.”

“Works for me, at least assuming that Kellye doesn’t go nuts on us and start making breakfasts, too.”

“I don’t want to ask her to do it, but it sure would be nice if she did, wouldn’t it? But let’s talk about something else. We can bitch about breakfast a little more freely when we get back out in the van. Besides, I had an idea I wanted to talk to you about.”

“What’s this?”

“Last night it came to me that we ought to get on the Internet and see if we can find one or more real short plays, five- to ten-minute things, something we can give an audience for an encore.”

“Not a bad idea,” he agreed. “We’d have to have it set up, rehearsed, and ready to go since there wouldn’t be any way we could do it flatfooted. We might want to work Kellye into it, too. I don’t think we ought to ask Mike, since he’s doing an awful lot for the hell of it, anyway. But if we do it, we really should look for them while we’re back at my folks’ place.”

“Why is that?”

“While you and Samantha were out in the kitchen last night I was talking with Marty about Internet connectivity out here. It’s crappy, at best. Marty and Samantha have a satellite connection and it’s not too bad, but he tells me that we’d have to contract for a year. That means that we’re pretty much stuck with a dial-up connection.”

“Wow,” she shook her head. “I didn’t even know they had those anymore.”

“They do. It’s pretty slow compared to what we’re used to. The folks are lucky to have DSL, they’re just in range to do it. A mile up the road from them it’s dial-up. That means we need to get the phone line hooked up. That won’t be cheap, but we need the Internet and it’s cheaper than satellite.”

“What’s it going to cost to have a phone line turned on?”

“I don’t know, and after talking with Marty yesterday I realize it’s one of those things we have to do today. We might only plug it into a computer, and not even actually use the line for a phone, since we have cell phones.”

“I guess we don’t have much choice,” she agreed. “I think we need to have an Internet connection even if it’s a lousy one. Is there anything else we need to do?”

“Yeah, Mike wants us to get the electricity in our names, well, at least in my name. We’re not using much now, but when it comes time to use those window air conditioners, they’re really going to spin that meter around.”

“Anything else?”

“I have to sign up for dial-up service, but we don’t have to do it here. Besides, I’ll have to do a little research on what service to use, and that’ll be done best on the Internet at home, anyway.”

“Boy, we’re really getting settled into this place for four months, aren’t we?”

“Oh, yeah. I’m trying to not think about what happens when this summer is over with and I have to move back home. More subbing, that is, both kids and milking.”

“Unless something else comes up.”

“True, but let’s face it, Meredith. We were lucky to turn up this job and have it last for four months. There’s not that much else out there for us. This deal is good, but at least for me it’s just shoving back the time when I have to make a decision about doing something normal about my life. I’m not getting any closer to it, but I want to enjoy this summer since it could be the last time I get to do anything like this.”

“I’m not real sure what I’ll do when this is over with either,” she agreed. “I just know I don’t want to move back in with my sister. The last few days have been nice, even with having to crash in a sleeping bag on an air mattress, since I haven’t had to put up with her or her little brat. Beyond that, I don’t have any big ideas, either.”

They finished their breakfast as quickly as possible, then went back to the house and got back to work. They made good progress; with a little help from the phone book down at the winery they were able to arrange for electric and phone service. They wound up eating dinner with the Ammermans again, meat loaf this time, and talked about theater and wine with them until it got late.

The next morning they worked on the house. Around noon, they agreed they’d gotten done about all they could, so they unloaded the rest of the things from the van, then got on the road for Brett’s folks’ house.

In a couple hours of Internet time they were able to sign up for dial-up Internet and come up with several possibilities for the short encore plays Meredith had suggested. It wasn’t as easy as it sounded; they had to have things that were simple, and where sets wouldn’t matter, but they did find some candidates, mostly free ones they got online.

“So what do we do next?” Meredith asked once they had that issue corralled.

“We’ve got one bed nailed down, but I’d like to come up with two more somewhere,” he replied.

“You’re right. I think it would be nice if we could get another one for Kellye.”

“I’ve got a couple people I could ask, but if that falls flat we’ll have to visit a secondhand store or two. I’m thinking maybe tomorrow or the next day we take dad’s pickup and haul the heavy furniture and beds over there. Maybe we can make it a one-day round trip. Then, we come back, load the van with the rest of the stuff we’ll want, then we can go ahead and move over there.”

“It might be a little early, but I’m sure there’ll be things we can do. You have to call people around here since I don’t know anyone.”

Brett remembered that he’d thought Diane Graveline might be able to help them out, so he called her first. “Sure,” she replied. “There are a couple old twin beds up in the attic, and the mattresses ought to be good if mice haven’t been in them. Since it’ll help out Samantha and Marty, you’re welcome to use them for the summer. They’ve already invited us over for a play or two, and I’m so looking forward to seeing what you’re putting together.”

“We’ll be over in the morning,” he replied. “Dad’s truck isn’t here right now.”

The next morning Brett swapped vehicles with his father for the day and went over to Diane’s early. It turned out that she’d already had the beds and mattresses snaked downstairs to their garage, so loading them was no trick. She also offered a couple of rather battered chests of drawers, which would simplify things at the house, too. With the addition of the bed from Brett’s parents, the pickup was pretty full. Both Brett and Meredith thanked her – it was the first time Meredith and Diane had met – and got on the road for the winery.

It was as long a drive over there as ever, but they made it by midday. It took them a while to get the beds unloaded, two of them up the stairs and set up, and then assemble the one from the Wickwire’s, but they got it all done. They checked in briefly with Marty and Samantha at the winery, took a few minutes to move the couch from the Ammerman basement to the house, then got on the road back to Brett’s parents’ house.

It was just as well that Meredith drove her own car when the two of them were on the road back to Curlew Creek the next day. The van was loaded to the gills, almost as heavily as Meredith’s Chevy, but it contained many things they would need for the summer. At that, there was clearly going to be a visit to a dollar store and perhaps elsewhere to complete the job. By working late, and with a little help from Marty and Samantha, they had the vehicles unpacked and the house set up by the time they headed for bed.

By now, it was early May. They still had two weeks before the scheduled casting call, and there had been times when Brett had wondered about what he was going to do with the time, aside from brushing up on Same Time Next Year with Meredith and working up one or more of the encores. It turned out that he needn’t have worried, because there was plenty to do.

The big project at first was to build the moveable platforms for the stage. The initial plan was to build six of them, so they’d have a stage area twelve by sixteen feet. But, once they looked at some partially completed ones, the space seemed like it would be more than a little restrictive, so after discussions with Marty, they built another six platforms to double the area. The platforms were simple, just boards and plywood held together with drywall screws, but with a dozen to build it took some time. Marty and Brett came up with a way to hook them all together temporarily so they wouldn’t slide around, and they decided to paint all of them, black on the sides and a medium brown on the top. Meredith helped out with the project and did most of the painting.

While they were at it, they built six flats. These were simple, just light wooden frameworks with unbleached muslin stapled over them, then pulled tight with paint. It was something both Brett and Meredith had done before, starting as far back as high school; they could be decorated and repainted as needed.

The lighting, as expected, was a little more work. Brett just decided to use several hardware store light fixtures and common outdoor-style floodlights, and these worked out pretty well when attached to a long board placed between two of the overhead beams in the room. Rather than get an electrician involved, Brett decided to wire them up with plug-in cords. The commercial dimmers he could find at the hardware store didn’t seem to be up to the loads of the floodlights, so Brett built a control box with several switched circuits; the lights could be raised or dimmed by just throwing the appropriate switches. It wasn’t elegant, but it worked.

In that time, Marty got tickets printed for the first several shows, plus more for the later shows in the season, which didn’t name the show but did give the dates. He printed up some posters announcing the plays; Brett and Meredith spent most of one day just hiking around Oxford, Centerton, and Coopersport distributing them and talking up the dinner theater series, which had already been announced in the local papers. It was fun, and from what they could tell there was at least some interest.

One evening about halfway through the period Brett was sitting in one of the folding lawn chairs in the living room reading an old Best Plays synopsis from back in the thirties. He wasn’t actually looking for a play to produce, but it was nice to have a thorough background in what had been done in the past. Besides, it killed a few hours. Meredith was at the folding card table that served as a desk, checking her e-mail when she looked up and announced, “Someone’s driving in.”

“I don’t know who that could be,” he said. “Probably somebody lost.”

“No!” she replied, showing more interest. “It looks like Kellye!”

That was enough to get Brett to put the book on the floor. There had been phone calls back and forth keeping Kellye updated on progress and giving her directions how to find the house. The two of them trooped outside to see Kellye getting out of her car, which they could see was packed pretty full although nothing like Meredith’s had been when she’d moved in. “Hey, Kellye,” Meredith called. “Good to see you!”

“Boy, is this place out in the sticks or what?” Kellye called back. “I guess since you’re here I’ve found the right place.”

“Oh, yeah, this is it,” Brett replied. “We weren’t expecting you for a few days.”

“Nothing to do but sit around home and listen to my folks gripe about me trying to find a real job for the summer,” she said. “So I decided I could sit on my ass here just as well as I could there, and it might be more fun.”

“There’s plenty to do,” Brett told her. “If you’re ready, let’s get your stuff inside. We’ve got a bed and dresser in your bedroom, but there isn’t much else.”

“That beats sleeping on the floor. Not all of it will go up to my room, though. I brought some cooking stuff that goes in the kitchen.”

Each of them got an armload and started for the house. “It looks a little rough and ready,” Kellye commented when they got inside. “But it’ll be nice to be sort of on my own again instead of having to live around my folks.”

Meredith led the way to the upstairs bedrooms. “You’re going to be in here,” she explained. “I’m across the hall, and Brett is downstairs.”

Kellye set her armload of stuff down on the bed and said, “I thought the two of you would be sleeping together.”

“Oh, no,” Meredith said. “You didn’t know about that?”

“About what?”

“That I’m a lesbian. Brett is a nice guy. We’re friends and we’ve been friends for a long time, and we’re working together on this. But just because we’re friends and working together doesn’t mean we’re sleeping together.”

“Oh,” Kellye replied, “I guess I knew you were a lesbian, but when I saw you down in Greenville … well, it didn’t look that way.”

“Brett and I are close, but we’re not close like that,” Meredith explained. “He understands, and it’s not an issue between us. I hope it won’t be an issue between you and me.”

“I guess not,” Kellye shook her head. “Just so you understand that I’m pretty straight, and I, uh, I don’t play that game.”

“I understand,” Meredith replied. “Look, it’s like this. If you ever want to try it out, ask me, and I might be willing. Or I might not be. If you don’t want to play the game, just don’t ask. I won’t ask you. Is that fair?”

“Sure, I can go along with that.”

“Good,” Brett said from behind her. “Now that you’ve got that settled, how about moving out of the doorway before my arms fall off?”

“Oh. Jeez. I’m sorry!” Kellye said as she stepped to one side. “I wasn’t thinking.”

Brett dumped his load on the bed, then said, “OK, now that you’ve got that settled, Kellye, Meredith and I may bat for different teams but we play by the same rules. If you’re interested, ask. If you’re not interested, don’t ask. I’ll do the same thing with you. If we respect everyone else’s wishes we ought to get along just fine.”

“I’m glad to have that settled right up front,” Kellye replied. “It was something I was wondering about.”

“Let’s just not let it be a problem on anyone’s part,” Brett said. “Now, let’s go get another load or we’re going to be all night.”

With the three of them working, it didn’t take much time to get Kellye’s car unloaded. Even without the things for the kitchen, her room seemed pretty full, but with Meredith helping as Brett looked on from the doorway, soon it was in order. “Let’s go downstairs and celebrate the fact you’re here,” he said once they were finished. “And in fact, I’ve got the perfect thing to celebrate it with.”

Back on the day when Brett had first met the Ammermans, they’d given him a half case of what he now realized was pretty good wine. At the time he’d made up his mind to save it for a cast party at the Heatherwood, but this was the perfect time to dip into it. Having Kellye present was, in some way, an indication that things were moving along and that the season was really going to happen.

One of the things he’d brought along with him was a corkscrew, and it was needed for the Curlew Creek wines. “Wow,” he heard Kellye say, “that looks like good wine.”

“I’ve come to believe that it is,” he replied. “Kellye, one thing you ought to be aware of. By the time you get through this summer, you’re going to either be a wino or a wine snob. I don’t want to say that we’re afloat on a sea of wine here, but there always seems to be some around.”

Soon Brett had filled their wine glasses – Samantha had given them a few – and he passed them around. “Well, here’s to the Curlew Creek Ensemble Theater,” he said. “Full houses!”

They all took sips of their wine – it wasn’t exactly something to toss down. “Hey, that’s really good wine,” Kellye said. “I’m not exactly a wine snob, but I can tell it’s not the stuff you’d find on the bargain shelf at the supermarket, either. So is the ensemble going to be just the three of us?”

“There’s one more,” Meredith explained. “He’s an older guy, Mike Fowler. He’s a local and he’s renting this house to us. He directed school plays and did some other acting. He’s really pretty cool and I think you’ll like him. The four of us will be the regulars.”

“God, I am so looking forward to this,” Kellye smiled. “You remember back when you guys met with me about this down in Greenville? Well, that Andrea you put down just spread it all over the Grant. She was just so damn indignant that I could get a lead role and she got nothing but ignored. It was really funny!”

“There was something about her that made me think I wouldn’t have asked her even if I’d known she was going to be available,” Brett said. “She wouldn’t have been a fit at all for most of the roles we need, but I think you’re going to work out just fine.”

“I hope so, Brett. I don’t know if I’ll ever work in the Grant again, but I wouldn’t be surprised if someone from there makes it over here this summer to see a play or two. If and when they do, I sure want them to see that I’m a lot better actress than they seemed to think I was.”

“Well, you’ll have your chance,” Brett smiled. “I think you’re going to do just fine, but you’re going to have to work to do it.”

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