On the morning after the dress rehearsal of Barefoot in the Park Brett received an e-mail from Meredith:

I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to write to you but I’ve been busy. I got here all right, though it’s a long drive. Janine’s apartment is smaller than I had imagined, but I think it will be all right for the two of us, at least for a while. I went over to see about Chocolate, Roses and Sex today. Marco’s friend who will be directing it seems to think that I never heard about the play and don’t have any idea how to play the role. I don’t know if it’s just tweaking a newbie or if he’s really that much of an asshole. Marco set him straight but who knows how long that will last. Everything seems good for now, though we’ll have to see. Good luck with Barefoot in the Park. In a way I wish I could be there to see how well Kellye does with it, but right now I’m where I want to be, with who I want to be with, and doing what I want to be doing. So break a leg you two! Best of luck!

After Brett read the message, he showed it to Kellye. After reading it, she said, “Looks like everything isn’t sweetness and light with Chocolate.”

“Yeah, Meredith may be finding the road not quite as smooth as she hoped. It may be just a case of this joker being a New Yorker who’s absolutely sure he knows everything because he’s in New York, and of course no one from outside of New York can know anything. But when you get right down to it, it’s not up to us to worry about it anymore.”

“Well, I hope for her sake it will blow over and everything works out fine.”

“I do, too,” he agreed. “I still think she and Janine are going to have more trouble than they expect working things out between them, but that’s not any of our business, either. If this theater thing doesn’t work out for her, then it doesn’t work out. If it doesn’t, then Meredith will have to find something else to do.”

Kellye broke out laughing. “If all else fails, she’d make a hell of a barista.”

“Yeah,” Brett joined in laughing. “I’ll bet she wouldn’t do it wearing stiletto heels though.”

“Who knows? Maybe they do in New York, but you wouldn’t catch me in them. I can’t imagine how bad her feet would hurt if she had to wear those things all day, not that she wore them that much, either. She used to take them off while she was off-stage, just for a break.”

“I never knew that, but it doesn’t surprise me. We just have to wait and see how things work out for her.” He changed the subject and continued, “So are you ready for tonight?”

“I can’t see how I could be much more ready. I know I’ll have a little of the opening-night jitters, but as well as the dress rehearsal went last night, they’re not as bad as usual. I mean, nothing like I had for The Odd Couple.”

“Well, good. I feel pretty good about it too, except for the fact that it’s the opening night of the last show of the season. The ball is coming to an end, Princess, and our coaches are going to turn back into pumpkins. There’s going to be a scullery to clean, cows to milk, and school to go to.”

“Yeah, but we still get to hang out around the ball for a while. That’s going to give us some good memories to get us through the winter.”

Amazingly enough, both Kellye and Brett managed to avoid cases of the opening-night jitters that evening, even when they arrived at the theater to discover the parking lot getting full early. When they checked in with Samantha, they found that the last few tickets had been sold to people without reservations, so they had another sellout. It wasn’t surprising with the popular Neil Simon play, but it wasn’t much of an increase of pressure on them, either. After all, they’d played to full houses before, even Kellye.

The performance showed that all the work that had been put in over the past weeks had paid off big time. While Kellye especially had been handed a big and unexpected job, she had learned and practiced the part to perfection. Brett never noticed a fluff, and in some respects he thought Kellye did a better job with Corie than Meredith would have done. Kellye wasn’t a slender, ephemeral ingénue, after all; there was a hint of being a real person about her that somehow got across to the crowd, who could imagine themselves in her position a little more easily.

In any case, it was a huge relief to be through the opening night of the show. There had been questions in everyone’s mind after Meredith had announced she had to leave about how well the show was going to go with Kellye in the lead role; now there could be no more questions. Kellye had nailed it; it was as simple as that.

After Brett and Kellye got to bed that night, they proved to each other that the tension was off, as well. Now, they could just enjoy their last nights of the season, even though there was a finality about it looming over them.

The Saturday night show also went well, and also to a sell-out crowd, and then the Sunday matinee did just as well. If the season was ending, at least it was ending in style.

When the two of them woke up in Monday morning, they felt a little bit at a loss for something to do. After all, there were no new shows to prepare for, no sets to dress, nothing to look forward to after the next weekend except a separation neither of them wanted. For lack of something to do, they decided to get in the van and take a ride over to the diner Brett had found near Centerton way back in the spring; he hadn’t been there since. They wound up having a long, lazy breakfast, during which Kellye raised a topic both of them had been thinking about but neither dared ask: “Brett, have you ever heard anything about that school job over in Oxford?” It was a stupid question; if he had, she would have been the first to know, either way.

“No,” he sighed. “My thought is they must have found someone else. Hell, school starts a week from tomorrow, so it would be a hell of a hassle to have to walk in there cold.” It was just grousing; she knew as well as he did that he’d have gone over there on a moment’s notice.

“Well, maybe something will come up. You never know.”

For lack of anything better to do, they decided to stop off at the winery on their way back to the house and see what Marty and Samantha were up to.

It turned out the two were in the tasting room, drinking coffee. “I was wondering what happened to you kids,” Marty said when they walked in. “It seemed quiet around here all of a sudden.”

“We have Barefoot pretty well down and there’s nothing to prepare for,” Brett shrugged.

“Yeah, that could have something to do with it,” Marty agreed. “Look, Samantha and I were just talking. We have a long waiting list of people who want to see Barefoot, but there are no tickets left. What would the two of you think of doing another show, either a Saturday matinee or Sunday evening? It would mean two shows in the same day, but it would only happen the once.”

“Maybe both,” Samantha added. “There are that many requests. I don’t know that we’d sell out the extra shows, but I’d bet we’d sell a lot of tickets, and maybe more if people had options.”

“It’s fine with me, either way or both ways,” Brett replied. “If we have to go out, we might as well go out in a blaze of glory. What do you think, Kellye?”

“I feel pretty much the same way,” she nodded. “It would be a little tiring, but if you can sell the tickets, then I can handle doing the show.”

“Great!” Samantha said. “That’s going to sell us some wine, too. I guess I’d better go start working the phones.”

“Not quite yet,” Marty said. “I want you in on this, too. Look, kids, I’ve been going over the balance sheet, and while all the numbers aren’t in yet, things look pretty darn good. We hit some rough spots in the early part of the season, but enough people got used to the idea of our dinner theater that I’ve been giving some thought to what comes next.”

“I know you’ve been thinking about another season,” Brett replied. “At this distance, I can’t promise whether Kellye and I could be available for it or not. That’s a long way in the future, and a lot could happen.”

“I know,” Marty nodded. “And that’s a concern. You really don’t have much of anything planned for the winter, do you?”

“No change. Substitute milking and substitute teaching, while Kellye is back in school in Greenville.”

“I’ve been thinking about that, too,” Marty went on. “I know you’ve been hanging a little loose, waiting to see if the job came through over in Oxford.”

“Kellye and I were talking about it at breakfast. I can’t believe they wouldn’t have come to some decision by now, with school starting a week from tomorrow. Since I haven’t heard anything, I doubt that I have the job.”

“Well, that’s a shame,” he said. “But it doesn’t have to be a disaster for you. Look, what I’m thinking is that now that we’ve gotten people used to the idea of a dinner theater out here, maybe it would be a good idea to keep reminding them about it. I was thinking of doing a production maybe at the rate of once a month, maybe one weekend, maybe two.”

“To be honest, it sounds like a good idea on the surface,” Brett told him. “But honestly, I can’t afford to stay around here if I’m doing only one production a month, maybe four shows. I’m not sure you can afford to pay me enough to justify my doing it.”

“That’s my concern, and what I’ve been kicking around this morning,” Marty replied. “I think you’re right, we can’t keep up the rate of productions we’ve had all summer. In fact, I’m thinking another year we might want to cut back a couple on the number of productions and run them more weekends.”

“I really haven’t been keeping an eye on where the customers have been coming from, but some of them I see seem pretty familiar.”

“Oh, we’ve got a core of regulars, there’s no doubt about it. I think it’s logical that a lot of the tourist traffic is going to be missing in the winter, but there should be enough of the regulars left over to make things interesting. It helps that they buy a lot of wine, too.”

“You’d know more about that than I would.”

“We keep a pretty good eye on that part of it,” Marty grinned. “Now, what I was thinking was that we keep the shows toward the end of the month. I’d just as soon we didn’t do one in September because toward the end of the month and into October we’re up to our asses in grapes and don’t need the extra confusion.”

“That’s probably good, since I don’t think I’d want to try to pull a production together that quickly anyway, at least not without Kellye and Meredith around to help me.”

“I figured that, too. So I’d kind of thought something spooky or Halloweeny for October, no ideas for November, and then something related to Christmas in December. January and February don’t really matter what kind of show since people get so bored in the winter they’ll come out for anything.”

“You could be right,” Brett agreed. “But it comes down to the fact that one production a month would be pretty much a part-time job for me. I’m pretty sure your balance sheet would tell you it wouldn’t be worth it to you to have me on full time.”

“Oh, there’s no question about that,” Marty smiled. “Look, I dreamed this up when I thought there was a good chance you’d be getting that job over at the school, and pulling plays together here would be a nice extra piece of change. But since it looks like it’s not going to happen now, there are some alternatives.”

“What kind of alternatives?”

“A number of things. Like I just said, in September, especially late September, we get up to our asses in grapes, especially if there’s a frost warning. I can use all the extra hands I can get at that time. Then, there’s all the winemaking that goes on for the next couple months, and I can use some extra hands on that. You’re a farm boy, after all, and you have some sort of idea what that kind of production is all about.”

“As much time as I’ve spent around here all summer, I’m afraid I still don’t know anything about making wine.”

“No, but you can learn, and you could take some of the heavy work off of Chuck, too. Then, well, like I said it gets slow in the winter, and what’s more, it gets cold. When Samantha and I bought this place it was partly because we didn’t want to spend the rest of our lives playing golf, but a couple of weeks of it in the winter in some place like Florida or Arizona gets to sounding pretty appealing along about January.”

“I’ll give you that,” Brett snickered. “I never learned to play golf and it seems pretty appealing to me, too.”

“Right, and we’d need someone to watch the shop while we’re gone. What I’m saying is that I think I can put together a few little odds and ends of jobs to add up to another part-time job on top of developing plays. I suppose if you have any time left over, you could do some substitute teaching or substitute milking. I don’t doubt that Mike knows someone who could use a substitute milker. And, of course, while you’re doing all that, you could be getting set for whatever plays you’d be doing next summer. So what do you think?”

“Frankly, it sounds pretty good,” Brett replied. “I had hopes the job at the school would come through, but when you put it together that way it sounds a little better than hanging around home all winter and doing nothing but substitute milking and teaching. My only concern is that it’s quite a bit farther between here and Greenville than it is between home and Greenville. That would make it a pain in the ass for Kellye and me to get together over the winter.”

“It sounds pretty good to me,” Kellye said. “Granted, we’d have a problem getting together, but I think we could stick it out for eight months or so on weekends and the holiday break. That way we’d be sure of being here next summer. But it would mean that I probably wouldn’t be able to help you out much on the winter productions. Maybe we could rehearse on weekends, and then wing it a little if I can arrange my schedule or otherwise cut classes on the right days.”

“I suppose we could do that,” Brett agreed. “It does beat nothing. Marty, I’m not going to give you an absolute yes on it right now, I think Kellye and I need to talk it over a little and work out a few of the details. I’d have to say it’s a tentative yes, at least for the next few days.”

“Good,” Marty said. “I guess I can’t ask for much more than that right now.”

The four of them sat there in the tasting room for a while, exploring some of the ramifications. One of the things Brett had a concern about was how much David and Lu would want to work over the winter – they were his main go-to actors among the locals, but perhaps now that the summer was over with it would be worth holding another casting call. On top of that, if he were a little careful about selecting the plays, it wasn’t impossible that Kellye could carry a lot of the female lead roles by commuting in on the weekends. It would be a hassle, but it might be something that could be done, and he was fairly sure she could do it. But it might also cut into her studies, and for now, they were really more important.

They were on about their third refills of coffee when the front door opened, and Mike walked in. “There you are,” he said. “Brett, don’t you ever turn your cell phone on?”

“I usually have it on but sometimes the battery runs out,” he replied, pulling it out of his pocket. He glanced at it, and sure enough, the battery was dead. “Guess this is one of those times,” he added. “So what’s up?”

“The superintendent over in Oxford called me up and asked if I could track you down,” Mike said. “He’s been wrestling around with this English and drama teacher position for days, and he finally came to the conclusion that he can’t fill it from out of his own staff. So he wants you to give him a call to arrange the details of going to work over there.”

“Hell, yes,” Brett replied. “I was just saying a few minutes ago that I figured they’d have filled the position somehow and I was out of luck. This changes everything. Can I still rent your house for the winter?”

“That’s something we need to talk about. Maybe not right this minute, though. I’d just as soon have this damn thing out of my hair.”

“All right, I’ll go call him in a minute,” Brett agreed, and turned to Marty. “That means I’m not going to be available for all those little odd jobs we were just talking about.”

“That’s fine,” Marty nodded. “It was just something I came up with as a fall-back position, anyway, just to give you something that would make it possible to keep you around for the winter. The deal at the school would be a lot better all the way around.”

“Good, I’m glad to know that.”

“Marty,” Kellye spoke up, “your little part-time jobs, dealing with grapes, helping Chuck with the wine-making and watching the store. You still are going to need help with that, aren’t you?”

“Yeah, it’s an issue,” he agreed. “I really hadn’t thought it through all the way.”

“Could I do it? I’ll admit, I’m not much of a farm girl but I’m no weakling, and I learn fast.”

“I’d love to have you, and I think you’d work out at it very well. But I thought you were going to go back to school.”

“I still want to go back to school, but there’s a state university about forty miles from here. I did a little nosing around their website last week just out of curiosity when the possibility of Brett’s getting the school job came up. I probably wouldn’t be able to transfer and finish my degree this year if I’m working here part-time, but I could probably manage both and still be able to be in the plays.”

“Kellye,” Brett said, “are you sure you want to do it that way?”

“It seems like a pretty good idea to me,” she smiled. “Let’s face it, I didn’t want to go back to Greenville to live with my family, go to school, and be apart from you any more than you wanted to go back home and go back to milking cows. It’s just that we couldn’t think of any way to make it work.”

“I’ll tell you what, Kellye, I didn’t want to be apart from you any more than you wanted to be away from me.”

“Then this is going to work out,” she smiled. “This way we can be together and be doing something we both love.”

“All right, it’s fine with me,” he grinned. “Like I said, this changes everything, and better than I could have hoped. And even better, there isn’t a cow involved in the deal.”

The plays discussed in some detail here, Same Time Next Year by Bernard Slade, The Man with the Plastic Sandwich by Roger Karshner, Saving Grace by Jack Sharkey, The Fourposter by Jan DeHartog, and The Odd Couple – The Female Version and Barefoot in the Park by Neil Simon are all real plays licensed by Samuel French, Inc., 45 West 25th Street, New York, NY 10010, who is the holder of all performance rights. Such quotations used here are under “fair use” principles.

The play A Marriage Proposal by Anton Chekhov is in the public domain.

The plays Sunrise on 44th Street, Chocolate, Roses and Sex, The Hermit of Walden, and The Back Table are totally fictional and were created by the author.

Several other plays are mentioned in passing by their titles. Some are real, including The Glass Menagerie and A Streetcar Named Desire, both by Tennessee Williams; Mark Twain Tonight by Hal Holbrook, Arsenic and Old Lace by Joseph Kesselring, The Mousetrap by Agatha Christie, Phantom of the Opera by John Kenley, David Gooding, Robert Thomas Noll, Cats by Andrew Lloyd Webber, Give ’Em Hell, Harry by Samuel Gallu, The Night Thoreau Spent In Jail by Robert Edwin Lee and Jerome Lawrence, Harvey by Mary Chase, and Oklahoma! by Richard Rogers and Oscar Hammerstein.

Others are just titles created by the author and used to further the story, including The House by the Graveyard, Beacon Street Blues, The Outermost House, and Fair Exchange.

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