The three of them killed the bottle of wine that evening, and each went to their own beds feeling mellow indeed. They had spent much of the evening just bringing Kellye up to date on what was happening with the production, and what would be coming up soon.

Brett felt he was lucky to get up the next morning and not have much of a hangover – but then, they hadn’t drunk that much. Still, the first thing he did was get the coffeepot going, then turned to the breakfast cereal and milk. It wasn’t quite what he wanted for breakfast, but the alternative was Mom’s Diner, not that it was much of an alternative.

He was munching away and not enjoying it very much when Kellye came out of the bathroom wearing a housecoat and what looked like pajamas. “So how are you today?” he asked.

“Better than I thought I was going to be,” she replied sleepily. “I mean, considering a strange bed and all.” She looked at what he was eating and said, “Is that all you’re having for breakfast?”

“It’s about all there is, unless I wanted to open a can of soup or something. The alternative is to go out for breakfast. At the nearest place, the food is worse and it costs more.”

“I don’t know how you do it,” she sighed. “I’m going to have to do something about that.”

“You’re welcome to try, and I’m sure Meredith will join me in kicking in our fair share.”

“All right,” she said. “I see I’ll have to do a grocery run today. Where’s a good grocery store around here?”

“Beats the hell out of me. I’m almost as much of a stranger around here as you. You’ll have to ask Samantha. I know you haven’t met her yet, but we’ll introduce you this morning.”

“Well, I can survive cold cereal and milk one morning, if you don’t mind my getting into your supply.”

“Fine with me.”

She started toward the refrigerator for some milk, and didn’t find much else there except some sodas and another bottle of wine. “Wow, not much here,” she commented as she got out the milk.

“I think I told you that Meredith and I aren’t much on cooking. We’d survive if we had to, but the last week or so has been pretty heavy on the cans. At least we can eat.”

“I should actually try to hold it down some, and really, I have been since I got rid of Darrin. But I’m one of those people who likes a good breakfast to start the day.”

“I like one too, but that leaves out the diner I just told you about. I can get along, I guess. Who’s this Darrin?”

“My ex-husband,” she replied as she sat down at the table with the milk, the cereal, a bowl, and a spoon. “Boy, you can sure make some stupid mistakes when you’re eighteen and will do just about anything to get out of the house.”

“I made a couple myself,” he sighed. “To tell you the truth, getting involved with the theater may have been one of them. So what was the deal with him?”

“The short answer is that he was gay, or at least bi, and I didn’t realize it at the time,” she sighed. “Maybe he didn’t fully realize it either. Like I said, I wanted to get out of the house real bad. I mean, I was grown up at eighteen and wanted to make my own life, right? I was never one of the popular kids in school, never got asked out much, and you can guess why. Darrin, well, he was interested, and his folks were pushing him a little to settle down. I have to admit that I pushed him a little, too. So, rather than go to college like I should have done, we got married, and I got a job at Wally World. Boy, that sucked! The pay was lousy, they never put me on full time, but they always worked my ass off.”

“I have heard that story before. There are other reasons why I don’t shop at Wal-Mart unless I have to, but those are good reasons, too. So what happened?”

“Oh, Darrin and I struggled along for a while, neither of us very happy, until we finally reached the mutual decision to just hang it up. I mean, it wasn’t like it was a fight or anything, we just came to our senses. He’s living with some guy the last I heard, and you can guess just exactly what that means. Honestly, I hope he’s happy. He wasn’t a bad guy, but he wasn’t the right guy, either, at least not for me.”

“That’s good, I guess,” he shrugged. “I mean, you hear stories about couples breaking up when each of them is ready to shoot the other.”

“Yeah, there’s that, I guess. Anyway, once we broke up, I didn’t have much choice but to move back in with my parents, and you can guess how well that went over. Right about then I decided I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life getting shit on by the management at Wally World, so I decided to go to college.”

“Majoring in drama?”

“Oh, hell no. I know better than that, though I’ve taken some drama classes when I needed some electives. No, I’m mostly concentrating on business management.”

“So how did you get involved with theater?”

“Back in high school,” she shrugged. “God knows why, but the third year I did the all-school play, and they cast me as Ado Annie in Oklahoma! I was pretty good at it, but the hell of it is that it was the best role I ever had. After I got married, I got involved with the Grant. They never gave me much in the way of roles, but I enjoyed it. I got a few minor roles in college, too, and I like to think I did pretty well with them. I’ll tell you what, though, I just about shit my britches when Meredith suggested that I could do Florence in The Odd Couple.”

“Do you have any doubt you can handle it?” Brett asked, a little concerned. In spite of how well she’d done on the reading for them down at the Green Room, Kellye’s experience was apparently a little thinner than he’d been led to believe, and Florence was easily the most important role he and Meredith had in mind for her. Things wouldn’t work out well if she muffed it. On the other hand, he thought, people have to get into the big time sometime.

“Not in the slightest,” she smiled. “The same night you and Meredith talked to me, I went home and ordered a copy of the script. I started working on it as soon as my finals were out of the way, and that’s about all I did while I was watching my brother’s kids. I think I’m off the book with it already, but I need to work with someone to be sure. I’ll keep working on it, though.”

“Maybe you and Meredith can go through it sometime, but right now it’s not the priority. The first role we have in mind for you is in Hermit, but it’s not a real big part, and it’s still almost a month before we start in on it.”

Her spoon clattered in her now-empty cereal bowl. “Have you got a copy of the script? I’d like to read it.”

“I don’t have a printer here, but I’ll put it on a thumb drive. I can have Samantha run it off on the printer down at the winery, maybe today.”

“That’ll be fine. I just want to get a feel for it right now, not exactly study it yet.”

“Fine with me. You might as well be familiar with it. If you like, you can read through Plastic Sandwich, so you’ll at least know what’s coming. The rest of the season is a little loose, and we haven’t firmed up on it yet. I mean, it’s still far enough off that it doesn’t quite seem real.”

“You have enough to do now without worrying about the rest yet,” she smiled. “I understand how that works.”

“That’s about the size of it. Actually, things are a little on the slow side right now. They’ll perk up when we hold the casting call for the minor parts, but that’s a few days off. Who we come up with from that will determine how hard we have to work on The Odd Couple.”

“Well, whoever it is, I’ll try to set a good example. I’m really excited about that play and I think Meredith and I can do a great job with it. I’m really looking forward to working with the two of you. I think you can teach me a lot.”

“I hope so,” he smiled. “With that attitude, everything should work out just fine. Is Meredith’s, uh, sexual orientation going to be a problem?”

“No, I think we settled that last night. I’m pretty straight in that department, so it won’t be a problem unless she wants to make it one. I do have to say that I was a little surprised that the two of you weren’t a couple. You sure looked like it when I met you down at the Green Room.”

“In a sense we are a couple. At least, we’ve played one often enough that we sort of fall into the roles when we have to, and there was no reason not to down there. Don’t get me wrong. I really like Meredith, we’re very good friends, and so long as you leave sex out of it, we have sort of been a couple the last few weeks while we’ve been pulling this together. I think having you here may upset that balance a little, not that it’s a bad thing. It does get a little awkward when people look at us as a couple, especially as close as we’ve been recently.”

“I can see how I could make the mistake.”

“Don’t get me wrong. If things were a little different with her I could see something happening, but I gave up wishing for it long ago. Actually, I’m almost of the opinion that if she did guys it still wouldn’t be a good idea to get serious with her. When we’re not dealing with theater we strike sparks. We pick at each other a lot, and we tease each other a lot. You’ll see us doing it. Part of that is because we really are friends, but I think both of us do it because it keeps us from getting closer together and most likely screwing things up in the process.”

“I have to ask if you’re serious about anyone.”

“No,” he shrugged. “In fact, I’ve tried to avoid it. I’m not really close with any girl except Meredith, and we hadn’t seen each other for a while before this project came up. I asked her in on it because I really respect her professionally, and the lesbian angle didn’t enter into it. But the whole venture has meant that we’ve been thrown together a lot the last few weeks.”

“Why have you tried to avoid getting together with anyone?”

“It’s not easy to say,” he sighed. “Look, Kellye, I really enjoy acting and the theater. It’s what I really want to do, but the last few years I’ve only been able to do it by working other jobs, and I’m starting to get to an age when I have to admit it’s a pipe dream and start doing something real. If I was to get serious about anyone, I feel like I would need to offer them at least some stability, which is something I can’t do right now. I keep telling myself my time will come but that hasn’t happened yet. This summer ought to be fun, but I don’t see it solving anything in the long run.”

“Things might go your way.”

“I can hope,” he replied, getting tired of the personal nature of the conversation. It was heading into areas he didn’t like to think about. “And this summer might turn into a final fling, too, so I want to wring everything out of it I can. So what are you going to do after this summer?”

“Go back to school. I have one more year left, and then maybe I can look for a real job. I mean, I’d love to do something in the theater, but after the track record I had at the Grant, I doubt I’ll ever even be a headliner there. So this summer might be the final fling for me, too.”

“You never know,” he smiled. “But if it is a final fling I want to go out in a blaze of glory. Maybe it will be small potatoes glory but at least I’ll get to feel good about it. Tell you what: why don’t you go up, kick Meredith out of bed, and then change clothes. We can sit here, sip coffee and bullshit while she’s getting her act together.”

Kellye’s exuberant, enthusiastic nature won Samantha and Marty over right from the first meeting. Other than the set work and getting the stage area ready, there really wasn’t much going on for the next few days. Once they got that done, Brett and Meredith started going over Same Time Next Year. They hadn’t done it for a while, so were rusty and occasionally uncertain of their lines, but having Kellye right there to prompt them simplified things a lot. Soon they were back in the swing of things, but agreed they’d have to do some more serious staging and working on the nuances once the dates of the show got closer and they could dress the set for the play.

As the days went by they started getting calls in response to the newspaper stories about the upcoming casting call, but it wasn’t until it got close that they worked out how they were going to handle it. From the little bit Brett knew, it looked like they were going to have several candidates for the remaining minor roles, so that was a bit of a relief.

Mike proved to be available on the Saturday they’d set for the casting call, so they decided to have him sit in on the affair along with Kellye. Mike knew several of the applicants, but told Brett right straight out that while he might have advice, he didn’t want to be the one to make the decisions – that was up to Brett and Meredith.

The four of them had been through innumerable casting calls and tryouts over the years, so they knew the drill. However, Brett decided that with all the available time they could take a little closer look than was usually done.

Brett made up several packages of short sections of scripts to test people for their ability to pick up on them, the way he had done with Kellye – except that Mike or Kellye would feed the applicants their lines while Brett and Meredith watched closely. They felt that would winnow the field down a little before they had to make a final decision.

As it was, a dozen people showed up, ranging from high school age up through fortyish – it was a little hard to tell and Brett didn’t ask. As things got under way, Brett made introductions and gave a brief explanation of what the project was all about. “We are not going to need a great many people,” he explained. “This is not like a high school play where everyone who shows up gets a role. We will want to select the best people for each role, and one person may not always be ideal from one play to the next. We will require those selected to work hard at their roles and try to keep up with the rest of us. We expect that we’ll have to put in a lot of work, but there should be some fun along the way, too.”

Brett decided to start with the men, mostly since there were only three of them. He and Meredith were able to reject one of the men early on – he could only read the lines haltingly and didn’t seem to understand acting them. The other two looked acceptable and had had some experience, mostly in high school, but it seemed like they could do the job; they were asked to stick around or come back after lunch, whichever worked for them. That worked fine as far as Brett was concerned; he needed one guy for Hermit and two for The Odd Couple, though if he had to he could have done one of the latter roles himself. The other open male roles came later in the summer, and he decided he’d worry about them as the time got closer.

The women were a little tougher. Two of them were older, and he told them flat out that there wouldn’t be any roles for older women until later in the summer, but that they might as well go through the tryouts now so he’d have some idea of who to call when the time came.

Three of those remaining didn’t have much obvious acting ability, though one of them seemed incensed that she hadn’t been given the lead role in whatever play they were talking about without question. He and Meredith agreed in whispers that she reminded them of Andrea – “Rock-tits” – down in Greenville. The girl was not long out of high school. Brett surmised without asking that she’d been given the lead role in whatever production she had been in mostly because she’d been a popular socialite who was expected to be the most important person in everything, be it a play or whatever. He was just as glad he hadn’t seen the production.

The rest of the women made it through the first round adequately, though to him only barely so in a couple of cases. In his own mind, the best of the bunch was a tall twentyish girl with curly red hair and not much of a shape; on his work sheet, he noticed that she had an odd name: Lu Ty. He wondered a little about that, but decided to ask about it later.

After they’d gotten through the first round, he asked the six remaining women to come back after lunch. When they did, along with the two guys from earlier, Brett dug out some of the encore plays that he and Meredith had downloaded, paired the applicants off and gave them the scripts to read for a few minutes, then asked them to do the plays as a dramatic reading.

That was fun to watch. Some of them did well, others didn’t, but by the end of the exercise a couple hours later it was pretty obvious who would be asked to do which roles. Both of the men had done adequately; he asked one of them, David Harbaugh, to do the role in Hermit opposite Kellye mostly because he had a beard that would fit the period. Harbaugh, and the other man, Jay Watson, would work well for The Odd Couple, which would mean that Brett wouldn’t have to direct their major play of the early part of the season and act in it as well.

The women weren’t quite as easy. Although Lu (or was it Ty?) wasn’t a real good physical fit for one of the open roles in The Odd Couple, her ability made her a shoe-in for the part. Everyone already knew the two older women wouldn’t be needed until later in the season, so they were automatically cut for the early season. After some discussion, and some input from Mike, Brett and Meredith settled on a rather giddy blonde girl named Sharon Meister for the other secondary role in The Odd Couple. The other two roles were bit parts, and he selected two girls named Wendy Tuckerman and Jody Feldkamp for them. It was kind of a tossup, but a somewhat older woman named Rachelle Leighton was selected as first alternate and backup for all four of the roles, as well as getting the “berry picker” role in Hermit.

“I want to thank everyone for coming out today,” Brett said as they wrapped up for the afternoon. “I’ve really only been thinking about the first half of the season and there’s a chance we may need all of you in the second half. If something comes up that you’re not going to be available, such as being gone on vacation, please let me know as soon as possible so we can make alternate arrangements. I hope to be finalizing everything for the second half of the season by the end of next month, so we should be able to let everyone know in plenty of time. I’m sorry there aren’t roles for everyone at this time, but this project was designed to have only a limited cast. If we wind up doing it another year, things could be a lot different then.”

Brett had everyone left gather around a table in the banquet hall, and passed out glasses of wine. “I think we all need this after today,” he said. “So this is a little celebration for getting this far. Now, I’m going to be passing out copies of The Odd Couple for all of you, and Hermit for David and Rachelle. Read through your roles and get familiar with them. I know it’s still a ways in the future, but let’s get together next Saturday morning for a read-through so we can get familiar with the play. This one is big enough that I don’t think we want to try to rush through rehearsals in two weeks, so we might as well get started early and do it right. Hermit is a little shorter play with more focus on the main characters, so the minor characters should be simpler. Now, are there any questions?”

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