Shortly after the meeting with Marty and Samantha Brett, Kellye, and Meredith walked back to the house. On the way, Kellye spoke up. “You know, the way he was talking it sounds like he’s serious about having the theater again next summer.”

“The subject has come up a few times in the past,” Brett agreed, “and he seemed pretty positive about it. I don’t think it’s a done deal by any means, though. It’s going to depend on how the rest of the season goes. I’m guessing Marty will take a look at his balance sheet after the last show and make up his mind then. And realistically, wine sales are going to mean as much as anything else.”

“I get the impression that the wine sales are going well.”

“I think so too. But I don’t think next season is a for sure yet.”

“If he decides to do it another season, do you think he’ll want you back to run it?”

“Could be,” Brett shrugged. “It’d depend on whether I’m available, of course. Let’s face it, now that we’ve got things organized, there’s no reason Mike couldn’t run it if he wanted to. Whether he wants to is a different story. I wouldn’t be here this year if he’d been willing to do it. It’s all a long damn way in the future and there’s no telling what will happen between now and then.”

Meredith spoke up. “If he does decide to do it another season, my guess is that I won’t be here.”

“You think you’re going to be in New York, huh?” Kellye smiled.

“Let’s say I hope I’m going to New York. I can’t see Janine giving up a good job there to come out here and play pick up pennies with me.”

“It’s going that well?”

“It looks like it. Janine and I e-mail and text back and forth a lot. We get on the phone now and then to hear each other’s voices, but it goes pretty slow sometimes. God, I miss her, and it hasn’t been that long. Right now she’s thinking about coming back out here for the opening of The Odd Couple. It’s a long weekend, so we’d have four days together.”

“That would beat hell out of nothing,” Kellye commented.

“Yeah, it would. I don’t want to push her too hard on it since whether she’ll make it depends on other things, but right now it looks like it’s going to happen. She’s still planning to be here for the full run of Back Table. She’s real excited about that.”

“I would be if I were in her shoes,” Brett grinned. “We’ve got to start thinking about that, but there’s no point in working on it until we get done with Hermit. I’m looking forward to having that one over with. If I am here another year, I’ll know better than to make that mistake again.”

As Brett and Kellye were in bed that evening, they fell to talking about it again. “Brett, if it works out that Marty wants you to come back here another year, are we talking about having me with you again?”

“As far as I know,” he told her. “It’ll be up to you if you want to be. But there’s no way of telling what’ll happen. It’s like I said before, if we decide we want to stay together, I don’t know if I’ll be available. I know I ought to be working on getting a real job. I don’t think it’s fair to you to keep dragging you around to something as marginal as this.”

“I don’t want to say that I don’t mind, because I do. But there are some other things to consider, too. I’m enjoying what we’re doing just as much as you are, I think, and I’m reluctant to give it up. I guess what I’m saying is that I’m willing to put up with marginal for a while longer.”

“It’s not fair to you,” he protested.

“Like I said, I enjoy what I’m doing. Look, assuming I go back and finish up my degree, things would still be unsettled next spring, wouldn’t they? What the hell difference would another three or four months next summer make?”

“Not much,” he agreed. “It’d mean that we’d have to be apart a lot during the winter, since I’d probably be doing the whole substitute thing again, and we’d be running back and forth on the weekends. But I could do it if I had to. Hell, I’ve done it for years now.”

“That’s my point. It won’t matter for next summer. Now, after that we might want to stop and reevaluate, but at least we’d have it worked out that far.”

“Well, all right, I can give you that, but it doesn’t mean that I shouldn’t be keeping my eyes open for something more permanent. I keep thinking that if I could come up with a teaching job, it would still leave my summer open for gigs like this.”

“What are the chances of your finding a teaching job?”

“No better than they’ve always been, but no worse, either. Let’s face it, I’d have to be an English teacher, or at least something to do with liberal arts, history, or something. I don’t want to deal with elementary kids, and I’m not certified for them anyway. But I’ll tell you there aren’t many jobs open in that field and there’s a long line of people who want them. I’ve been looking for years and never have turned up very much.”

“Maybe something will turn up,” she said. “There has to be something out there. Even when I get my degree, there’s no guarantee that there will be a good job along with it, but there’s at least a chance. Maybe we could make something out of it.”

“Kellye, while I love you, I hate to drag you into what my future could mean. I don’t want to subject you to the uncertainties.”

“I don’t think I mind.” She sighed and kissed him before continuing, “I love you too, Brett, and if that’s the price I have to pay, then I have to pay it. Look, for what it means, I’ve been there before. Darrin and I, well, I never felt the way about him the way I feel about you. I think it’s worth the risk. Maybe I have the advantage of you on that, since I have been there before, and you haven’t. You’ve never been serious about a girl before, have you?”

“Well, no,” he admitted. “Unless you count Meredith, and I always knew that was a non-starter. Don’t get me wrong, I love Meredith in some ways, but even if she’d decided to turn straight I don’t think I could have built a life with her. If nothing else, having both of us being wandering theater junkies would have made it almost impossible. Now that Janine has entered the picture, it really is a non-issue.”

“Do you think that’s really going to work?”

“I hope so, for her sake. Meredith has always needed someone, and she’s never really had it. Janine, well, she changes things. I can see plenty of potential for trouble for them, but if it crops up they have to work it out.”

“Sometimes I think I’m taking you away from Meredith.”

“You aren’t. Like I said, she and I were never fated to go any further than we’ve already managed. I’ll always love Meredith in a way, but there are limits to how far it can go, and we’d already reached them before you even came on the scene. You and me, that’s something else, it’s totally different. You and Meredith aren’t competing with each other, because you already mean something to me that she never could.”

“Brett, I don’t want to say that we should just enjoy the present and let the future take care of itself, but I think that for the next couple of months, that’s just what we should do. God, I love you, and it’s only been since I’ve been with you that I realized just what that means. But I can’t help but wonder if Meredith even understands what she’s lost.”

“Not lost,” he said softly. “Just given up for a prospect she thinks is better for her. And, considering who she is, I think it is.”

“Her loss, my gain,” she said, rolling to kiss him again.

The evenings that week were mostly taken up with preparations for The Odd Couple, which was now getting close. Rehearsals were going well, and everyone was looking forward to having Hermit over with so the stage could be changed for the final rehearsals. At the moment, The Odd Couple looked like it was going to be the big play of the season, especially since it still seemed like Barefoot in the Park was still a long way off – and it was; there was a lot to do before they got to it.

Their show after The Odd Couple would be The Man with the Plastic Sandwich. During that week, Brett, Kellye, Meredith, and Mike did a couple of readings of it, just to start readying themselves for it. Preparations for it would be considerably different than The Odd Couple, mostly because of the smaller cast, which used only experienced players. Again, Brett would have the most lines to learn, but he was already close to being off the book with them, and the others were as well. They would be getting serious about it as soon as Hermit was over with, and Brett found himself looking forward to being done with the Thoreau play that he’d once had such hopes for.

Even so, they still had one more weekend of Hermit to go. While no one was exactly looking forward to it with enthusiasm, they still worked at it, trying to make it enjoyable for the audience. On Friday night they were surprised to discover that they had a bigger audience than the weekend before; apparently the word had gotten out about it, and there were at least some people there who appreciated it. Saturday’s show was even better, although only slightly, and the Sunday matinee went well.

After the audience had left following the final show on Sunday, Brett, Kellye, Mike, and Meredith gathered over glasses of wine with Marty and Samantha. “When everything is said and done,” Marty summarized, “It wasn’t all that bad, but it wasn’t as good as I’d hoped for. I think we’ll wind up in the black on it, although wine sales were down some, too.”

“Let’s face it,” Brett agreed, “people drink more when they’re laughing. That play gets people thinking more than drinking.”

“Yeah, you’re right on that. Let’s try to keep that in mind when we’re choosing plays for next year.”

Neither Brett nor anyone else wanted to comment that Marty appeared to be even more positive about next year. There was still a lot of the season left – they weren’t even halfway done yet – and the biggest shows of the season were yet to come. But, in talking about it while cuddled together in bed that night, Brett and Kellye agreed that it was beginning to look more and more like there would be another season, although neither of them could say yet whether they would be a part of it.

With Hermit out of the way, good or bad, they could get down to final preparations for The Odd Couple. The next morning, Brett, Kellye, and Meredith tore down the set for Hermit and started on the one for the new play. It would be the most elaborate and detailed set they were planning on using all year, and it required a lot in the way of furniture and props. Most of them had been collected and stashed in a back room in the mill, but even with that it took them a couple of days to get everything in place to everyone’s satisfaction.

It was good to be able to move the rehearsals onto the stage. The actual set meant that there would have to be some modifications to stage directions they hadn’t foreseen, and some changes made. The full cast had to be on hand every night of the week for rehearsals, although Kellye and Meredith would bear the brunt of the show. At least it was something of a break for Brett, since after the complicated lines of Hermit, The Odd Couple was the only play of the season he wouldn’t be appearing in. That let him sit back and direct, and for any number of reasons he wanted things to go as well as he could make them.

On Thursday night the dress rehearsal for the play went very well; all the time they’d put into preparation had paid off. There were a couple of lines muffed, but nothing very important, and the players managed to recover seamlessly, so no one would have been the wiser.

Anticipation built all that week toward Friday, and not only because of the play. Brett was surprised at how much Meredith was looking forward to seeing Janine again; she seemed almost desperate about it. He thought he could understand it a little, since he knew that Meredith had been hoping to find someone she could love in her own way at least as long as he’d known her. Now that she’d found what she’d been looking for it was obvious that she didn’t want to let go.

It turned out that Janine had been able to massage her vacation schedule enough to take Friday off, so she would be arriving at the airport around the middle of the day. Rather than go through the hassle of the rental car again – compounded by the fact that Janine was not an experienced driver – Meredith offered to pick her up at the airport, which was a couple hours away.

Brett was worried about that, since Meredith had to be back in plenty of time for the show, and he even thought about offering to take Meredith to the airport in his minivan to pick up Janine. He gave it serious consideration until he remembered that the minivan still had his makeshift bunk in it. He realized it was all too likely that his attention would be drawn to the scene in his rear view mirror, rather than the highway. It seemed to him like a sure recipe for an accident, so he reluctantly decided there was no reason Meredith couldn’t make the trip by herself. Maybe – or at least he hoped – Meredith would be able to keep her eyes on the road.

Needless to say, he was very happy to see Meredith drive her battered old convertible into the driveway at the house. She and Janine were very clingy when they came inside, and they disappeared upstairs carrying Janine’s luggage. Not to his surprise, they were a while coming back down, still clingy but appearing very relaxed indeed.

His attention was not entirely on Meredith and Janine, though. Even though Kellye had prepared long and hard for her role as Florence, she still had some opening night jitters. It was understandable; it would be the biggest role she’d ever had in any production, and a lot of how the summer went would depend on how well she did with it. While Brett thought she had the role pretty well nailed, she wasn’t so sure. Besides, she knew that there would be a couple of people she’d worked with at the Grant theater company in Greenville present, and she wanted to show them just how good a job she could do.

For that matter, how she did would be in great part up to her. There wasn’t much more Brett could do to influence the production; all he would be able to do would be sit in the back of the audience with a wine glass close by and hope that his faith in his lover hadn’t been misplaced. But, unless the jitters got to her, he didn’t expect anything to go wrong.

The four of them got over to the theater in plenty of time, if for no more reason than there was no point in sitting around the house any longer. They’d known from reservations and advance ticket sales that they were going to have close to a full audience, and when Brett checked in with Samantha they found that they’d had to turn away some walk-ins. That meant a sellout, the first one they’d had at the Curlew Creek Theater! Brett decided to keep that news from Kellye, just to keep her jitters from increasing.

Finally, there was nothing he could do but join Janine at the table in the back of the room. “I know we haven’t had much chance to talk,” he said, “but I take it you’re glad to be here.”

“I am,” she replied, sparing of her words as always. “I’ve m-m-missed M-M-Meredith so much! It’s hurt t-to b-be without her.”

“If it helps any, I know she’s missed you a lot, too,” he reassured her. “She’s been counting the days until you got here. She really likes you, Janine. I’ve known her for quite a while, but I’ve never seen her act like this before. I think the two of you are good for each other.”

“I th-think so,” she replied. “I’ve n-never f-felt th-this way b-before, either.”

There were still a few minutes before the show was to begin, but they really dragged out. Brett was nervous himself, so he helped pass the time by continuing to talk with Janine. In the course of the discussion he confirmed that Janine had finished the editing she’d wanted to do on Back Table, and had even brought several printed copies of it with her. There might be a few more changes made, but the script was now pretty solid, good enough to start rehearsing. That was good, since it was the next show to get into rehearsals; they would probably start on it the first of the week.

Finally, Marty got up on the stage and welcomed everyone as he usually did, adding a pitch for buying wine, of course. As always, the house lights dimmed, and Brett could make out the dark forms of the four actresses who would begin the play filing onto the stage and taking their places. Then the stage lights came up, and the four started on their Trivial Pursuit game, along with all the by-play that went along with it. Then, Olive joined the four, and the game was interrupted by a phone call telling of Florence’s difficulties with her husband.

It was a while before Florence made it onto the stage, but now that the play was under way, he could see that Kellye was handling the role about as well as could be expected. The tension between the slovenly, happy-go-lucky Olive and the compulsively neat Florence provided a lot of laughs just as was intended. Brett knew that in real life the situation was a little reversed, especially the last few weeks – Meredith had been becoming increasingly uptight, mostly about her lover, but now that Janine was back the easy-going Meredith seemed to have returned.

The play rolled onward and got good reactions and a lot of laughs from the audience. As far as Brett could tell, Kellye was handling Florence perfectly; if there were any fluffs he didn’t notice them. As a result he was very relieved when the first act came to an end, and Marty got up on the stage to organize the serving line.

Given the record number of people in attendance, it took longer than normal to do the serving, which meant a longer wait than normal for the players. While they were waiting for their chance to eat, Brett and Janine went back to the dressing room, where both Meredith and Kellye seemed relaxed and normal. “You two are nailing it,” he told them. “All I can say is keep it up.”

Keep it up they did, all through the last half of the show, which went wonderfully, resulting in a standing ovation at the end. After the dessert had been served, Meredith and Kellye did a brief encore, one of Janine’s short pieces that hadn’t made it into Back Table. They’d only worked it up in the last few days, and if Janine had known it was coming she hadn’t made any sign of it to Brett.

As always, the cast stood by the doorway to greet the customers as they left and thank them for coming. Afterwards, they had a quick meeting with Marty, who told them that he thought things had gone about as well as they could have possibly hoped.

The four of them were feeling very good as a result as they walked back down the road to the house. Not surprisingly, Meredith and Janine didn’t waste any time climbing the stairs; Brett and Kellye shared a final glass of wine to celebrate. “I have to admit I was nervous before the show got going,” Kellye told him. “But once it got under way everything fell into place.”

“I knew you could do it,” Brett told her. “Now, all you have to do is do it again. I didn’t see any of your buddies from the Grant, but if any were here, I think you showed them that you have it where it counts.”

This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.