The pace began to perk up after that weekend. Up till then they’d been pretty casual about what they were doing, since they felt they had time to get everything accomplished. But as the days went onward, the pressure of the calendar dates started to have an effect on them.

As always, Brett and Meredith were not concerned about doing Same Time Next Year. In fact, if they were concerned with anything about it, they feared it was that they might not be taking it seriously enough due to their familiarity with it. Now that the performance was drawing closer, it was time to be getting serious.

In the first few days of the next week, they dressed the set with the minimal furnishings needed for the play; some details would be added later. One afternoon they darkened the theater and turned on the lights to give them more of a sense of it being an actual performance, though Kellye was their only audience. She sat at a table with a copy of the script and didn’t hesitate to yell at them if she thought they were acting out of character or screwing things up. Although she wasn’t exactly a director, Brett and Meredith realized that Kellye wasn’t going to let them get away with sloppy work.

After that they did a run-through about every third day, trying to sharpen things up; they resolved to do it very seriously just before the opening, but both Brett and Meredith felt that this time they might be able to give the best performance of the play they’d ever done. “There’s no such thing as good enough in this business,” Brett conceded at one point. “There’s always room to do things better.”

Other plays further down the schedule got attention, too. The first two weekends in June were scheduled for the two shorter plays, Chocolate, Roses and Sex and A Marriage Proposal. Meredith worked with Kellye or Brett – and sometimes both – getting off the book with Chocolate, though they decided to hold off seriously with rehearsing it until Same Time Next Year had at least completed its first weekend.

Because of Mike’s limited availability, they had to restrict rehearsals of A Marriage Proposal to the evenings; it was coming along well. Brett wasn’t concerned about the play, mostly because he felt the characters were easy: they were all excitable to the point of being nuts. It was one play where over-acting was probably better than under-acting. Mike was off the book with it now; he picked up lines about as easily as Brett, Meredith, and Kellye, mostly because he knew how to do it. Again, like Chocolate, they decided to hold off doing the final rehearsals until at least after the first weekend of Same Time Next Year.

Although it complicated things for them a little, at least mentally, they decided they had to get rolling on The Hermit of Walden. It was not an easy play even though it was on the short side compared to other plays scheduled for the summer. Most of the play rode on the conversations between Thoreau and Emerson, which meant that both Brett and Mike had a lot of lines to learn. They did a couple of read-throughs early on with Kellye, David, and Lu present, just to get a feeling for the play and the roles; if nothing else, it helped them set the play in their minds and memorize their lines.

Work also continued on The Odd Couple – The Female Version. This was further off yet, but with the bigger cast and the availability of some of the cast members limited to evenings and weekends they couldn’t work on it as much as they would have liked. That was probably just as well, at least at this distance, because they had other things to be working on, too. Things would have to get more serious as the play got closer.

Thanks to everything else, they hadn’t done much more than a single read-through of The Man with the Plastic Sandwich. It looked to be fairly easy, and again, they had other things to worry about before it came along.

Marty and Samantha were monitoring progress right along, and seemed pleased with what was being accomplished. Of course, they couldn’t see everything that was going on, mostly because a lot took place down at the house such as read-throughs and drilling on lines, although they knew it was going on. Every now and then Brett checked in with the two to find out how things were going with the ticket sales and other details they were handling.

Ticket sales, Brett was told, were going good for the four performances of the first weekend. At this point the Ammermans didn’t think that they were going to be anywhere near a full house, though there was the prospect of some ticket sales at the door. Sales for the second weekend were also good; Samantha theorized that some of the regulars who might be expected to see the play were going to be out of town over the Memorial Day weekend, but at least they had the second weekend to see it. She also was hoping for good word-of-mouth from the first weekend to help sales on the second weekend.

Going back to a suggestion made the first time Brett met the Ammermans, Samantha canvassed some art galleries in Coopersport, and managed to get several paintings hung around the walls of the theater, on consignment from the dealers. While Brett was knowledgeable about the theater, he was less so about paintings, and said right out some of them that were totally beyond his understanding. But, he added, if people liked them, they had a right to what they liked and he couldn’t complain about their taste or lack thereof.

There were plenty of other little details, some of which Brett had to help with, and others which he didn’t. He had to help Marty develop a brief program for Same Time Next Year, which featured a listing of each act, and one-sentence bios of Meredith and him, along with some other promotional material.

One of the things that Marty concentrated on was the development of a wine sales and tasting bar near the main door to the theater room. He and Samantha felt – and Brett had to agree – that not reminding customers of their product line would cut into the wine sales, which were still the bottom line for the whole project in the first place.

After some discussion among the five of them, it was suggested that a couple of wine waitresses be added to the staff, just to keep the fermented grape juice rolling and the credit card machine heated up. Samantha said she wasn’t sure where she’d find someone to take on those jobs; Brett suggested asking a couple of the girls who were acting in The Odd Couple. He thought they wouldn’t mind making a few extra bucks, and so it proved.

While this was to be a dinner theater, dealing with the food service was one thing Brett and the rest of them didn’t have much to do with. Brett, Meredith and Kellye were fine with that; they had enough to do as it was. About all they knew was that sometime over the course of the project after the decision had been made to do it, Marty and Samantha had worked out a deal with a local woman who did catering. She had given them a good price, at least according to Marty, and the deal they had worked out was that they would pay for the needed food. She would make the actual purchases and cook the meals in the banquet hall’s kitchen to be sure it was warm and fresh. The meals would be served buffet style at one end of the hall, and she would come up with a couple of servers to help out. It sounded to Brett like it would work, even though he didn’t concern himself with the details.

In the last couple of days before the Memorial Day weekend there were all sorts of little details that had to be worked out. None of them were major and some were little more than nervous fiddling. Brett had been through it before in preparation for opening nights; everyone was edgy and wanting to get on with the show.

The evening before opening night, they gave the set the final dressing and did a full dress rehearsal with only a handful of people in the audience – Marty and Samantha, of course, but Mike, Kellye, Lu, and most of the rest of the cast from The Odd Couple were also there. Their audience sat around a couple of the tables close to the stage, with wine glasses, naturally. Kellye handled the lights, such as was actually needed, which wasn’t much.

It all went pretty well. There were a couple minor hitches, nothing outlandish, but at least enough to tell both Brett and Meredith there was still room for improvement. They only took a brief break between the two acts, just enough for a bathroom break, then went ahead and finished the play.

Once Kellye dimmed the lights for the final time and brought the house lights up, Brett and Meredith joined their friends around the two tables. “So how do you think it went?” he asked.

“I thought it went very well,” Samantha said. “I think people are going to be impressed with it tomorrow night, and getting off to a good start will mean a lot.”

“Well, I hope so,” Brett replied. “After all, we decided to start with this play since we knew we could bring it off. It ought to give people a good impression and bring them back for some other shows.”

The next day Brett and Meredith were confident they could do a good job with the play; they’d done it before and weren’t nervous about it. Still, they decided to not bust their tails on other things all day, but to take it easy and try to keep their focus on the play. Still, they couldn’t help but be nervous as they peeked at the gathering crowd in the theater; they knew a few of the people there, but not many. Just looking at the tables that had been set up and how they were filled, it looked like a good crowd. If they could do this well with every play and every performance throughout the summer, Brett doubted that Marty and Samantha would have much to complain about.

Finally, it was time for the play. Marty got up on the low stage in front of the crowd, thanked everyone for coming to the opening night of the Curlew Creek Dinner Theater season, said that he hoped everyone would have a good time and that there was wine available for those who were interested. He finished up by saying, “But that’s enough from me. Let’s enjoy the show.”

As Marty left the stage, Kellye took the house lights down, and in the dimness of the room the two of them moved as quietly as they could onto the stage and took their positions. Strangely enough for the two of them, they were in a bed in a cozy guest room. Brett didn’t even think about the fact that the only time he’d been in bed with her was on stage; for now, they weren’t Brett and Meredith, but George and Doris.

George got out of bed and slowly began to dress, thinking that Doris wasn’t watching him; but she was. “That’s a real sharp looking outfit,” she began, trying to overcome some shyness.

“Hello,” he replied sheepishly.

The play went on from there, and it went pretty well, everything considered. They didn’t even have the minor fluffs from their rehearsal of the night before. George and Doris played their parts well, first justifying their once-a-year annual affair, then enjoying it. In some dim corner of their minds they could tell the crowd was enjoying the show, but that wasn’t what their attention was on. As Shakespeare said, the play was the thing.

The play moved along smoothly through three different scenes, corresponding to different years in George and Doris’ annual trysts. There were only brief pauses between the scenes, when Kellye brought the lights down just long enough for the two on stage to make the brief costume modifications needed for the next scene.

Finally they reached the end of the first act. Once again Kellye brought the stage lights down, but left the house lights down for a long moment to give George and Doris – well, Brett and Meredith now – enough time to get to the makeshift dressing room on the far side of the kitchen. They wanted to keep their heads in their characters during the break, so it had been decided they’d just have a quick dinner in back, and not interact with the crowd during the intermission.

The plan was for dinner to be served during the intermission, and they hoped that it would only take half an hour to forty-five minutes – an uncomfortably long intermission for Brett and Meredith, although it was unavoidable. It was just hoped that everything would go smoothly, but as he got near the kitchen Brett noticed that nothing had been set up on the serving line. It was obvious that something wasn’t on schedule.

Brett followed Meredith through the kitchen doors, and from a quick glance could see that not only was the food not ready to go out on the serving line, nobody back there seemed to be working very actively toward getting it ready. Apparently Meredith noticed it too, because he could hear her say, “Oh, shit! This is really going to fuck things up!”

“No shit!” Brett agreed. “I wonder if Marty and Samantha know about this.”

“If they did they’d be back here raising hell. Maybe we’d better go let them know.”

“I couldn’t agree more.”

They turned around in their tracks and headed back out into the theater, going straight to the wine tasting bar where Marty and Samantha were getting ready for the intermission rush of wine sales. Brett bent down to Marty and said in a low voice, “Marty, we’ve got a problem. The food is nowhere near ready to go.”

“What?” Marty frowned. “They were supposed to have it on the serving line as soon as the house lights came up. That was supposed to be about five minutes ago. You ran a little long.”

“They aren’t even close to being ready,” Meredith confirmed.

“Well, Christ almighty,” Marty said, getting out from behind the counter. “What the hell is this shit?”

Meredith and Brett were left well in Marty’s wake as he charged into the kitchen. “Come on,” he yelled to the fat, middle-aged cook and her two helpers as soon as he was in the door. “You’re supposed to have the serving line up by now.”

“We ain’t ready yet,” the cook sneered. “You’re just gonna have to wait.”

“We can’t wait,” Marty said. “Everything has to be ready on time.”

“We ain’t ready yet,” she repeated.

“You should have been,” Marty stormed. “You’ve had all damn day to get ready, and you knew the meal was going to have to be served right about now.”

“Hey, the damn meal will be ready when it’s ready,” the cook replied angrily. “You ain’t paying us enough to have us run around like chickens with our heads cut off.”

“You quoted me a price and I agreed to it,” he replied, obviously mad now. “I’m keeping up my end of the deal, and you’re not keeping up yours.”

“I gave you a good price, but it ain’t enough if you’re going to want us to be up to your fucking schedule. It’s going to cost you more if you do.”

By now Brett was getting a little worried about Marty’s blood pressure as he watched the older man yell, “So what you’re telling me is that you low-balled me, and now you think you’ve got me over a barrel. You’re not getting a fucking cent extra, and you’re going to get a deduction for not having the meal ready when it had to be.”

“I don’t have to take that shit from you,” the cook sneered. “Come on girls, the hell with this place. We’re out of here.” In seconds, the cook and her two helpers were heading out the back door of the kitchen.”

“Well, shit,” Marty said as he watched them go. “Just when everything was going so well. Now what the fuck do we do?” He glanced around the kitchen. “Even I can tell that nothing is ready. I really can’t ask Samantha to help since it’s going to take both of us on the wine bar.”

“Go get Kellye,” Brett said to Meredith, loud enough that Marty could hear him. “I know she’s been around cooking for some banquets and stuff.”

She quickly turned and headed for the main room as Marty continued to rant. “Jesus Christ, I don’t know what the hell it is with that woman. I know she’s a cook over at the elementary school in Oxford, she ought to know what the hell it is to have a meal ready on time. We really didn’t need this shit dropped on us at the last second, and it’s going to be a cold day in hell before she gets a cent out of me after pulling this shit. What the hell do we do now?”

In moments Meredith was back with Kellye. “What’s the problem?” she asked.

“The goddamn meal isn’t even half fucking ready and we’ve got people ready to be served,” Marty replied furiously. He stopped, took a couple of deep breaths to try and get his anger under control a little, then went on. “Kellye, Brett said you knew something about banquet cooking. Is there anything you can do to dig us out? I don’t know who else I can turn to after getting this shit dropped on me this late.”

“Let me see where we’re at,” she replied. She spent perhaps half a minute working her way around the kitchen, looking into pots and the like, getting an increasingly dismayed look with every place she stopped. Finally, she turned back to Marty, Brett and Meredith and said, “That’s not the only problem we have, Marty.”

“Now what?” Marty said in dismay.

“I haven’t counted the house but there have to be close to a hundred people out there.”

“We sold seventy-eight tickets but there are some freebies, like the regular cast members. She was supposed to have enough to serve a hundred people.”

“There isn’t enough food here for regular meals for a hundred people,” Kellye replied flatly. “Maybe fifty, maybe a little more.”

“Shit!” Marty yelled. “She fucking low-balled me on that, too! Now what the hell do we do?”

“We do the best we can,” Kellye told him. “Look, Marty, the first thing you have to do is calm down. Then, go back out front, tell people that plans have changed a little, and we’ll serve the meal after the show. Maybe you can discount the wine price a little to ease things. Meredith, go find Lu, Rachelle, and maybe some more of the other cast members to help me out. Then, start the second act as soon as you can. With a little bit of luck, maybe we can have everything ready by the final curtain.”

“Do you think you can make it work?”

“There’s no real choice but to try. The big item is the prime rib, and there just isn’t enough of it for a hundred people. Maybe we can make do for seventy-eight if we slice it real thin, but it’s going to be a reach and it will use up everything. We’ve got food here for the whole weekend, right?”

“As far as I know, but I’ll bet we don’t. If that bitch is used to cooking for elementary school kids she probably under-ordered everything. I wouldn’t put it past her to have skimmed a little, too.”

“Let’s not worry about that right now,” Kellye said, trying to calm him down a bit. “I’ll just have to dig into the stuff for the rest of the weekend and see what I can do to fill things out. I can tell you right now it’s not going to be the meal we hoped it would be, but at least it will be a meal.”

“Well, shit,” Marty sighed. “Kellye, I really hate to have to ask you to do this but right now it looks like you’re the only game in town. I’m really glad you’re here.”

“You can thank me later,” she said. “Look, tell the cast members and anyone else you think you can ask to stay away from the food line until we’ve served the paying customers. That’ll help stretch things and might be enough.”

“Maybe I can order some pizzas and have them delivered for the gang afterwards,” Marty suggested, showing that he was coming to grips and starting to deal with the problem.

“Sounds good if you can get them to deliver this far out.”

“I know a place that would deliver to Timbuktu if I ordered enough pizza and gave them a big enough tip. I’ll get going on that as soon as we get the second act under way.”

“Good,” she smiled. “Now take a couple deep breaths, get your temper back under control, and go out and tell people what has happened.”

“I can do that,” he said. “In fact, I know something else I have to do.”

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