Even though they were facing a long drive, both Brett and Meredith were feeling pretty mellow as he wheeled the van out of Greenville. The beer was part of it, even though they hadn’t had much, but mostly it came from the feeling that Kellye was going to add a lot to the project.

“You get a gold star on that one, Gold Star,” he laughed as they got under way. “I think she’ll do a great job and be a lot of fun to work with.”

“I’m glad I thought of her. I know the two girls in The Odd Couple would normally be thought of as pretty attractive, but I got thinking about how sometimes you see a good-looking girl with a sidekick who isn’t exactly in the same league. I know we can’t do much to the script, but I think we can still play to that angle a little. It’d make the thing seem a little more realistic.”

“Now that you mention it, you might be right. I’ve seen what you’re talking about, and I think it would play real well. The fact that she could fit into some of the other parts is just icing on the cake.”

“Not to mention that it might cut down on the ramen noodles we’d have to eat this summer,” she agreed. “I really wasn’t expecting that.”

“I’ll give you that one, too.”

“I just hope we didn’t leave her with the wrong impression,” she sighed.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, maybe it’s just me, but I wonder if maybe we didn’t come on to her as being a girlfriend and boyfriend. I mean, we looked a little like it tonight, and we were talking about being together, having to get back together.”

Brett thought for a moment. “You might be right,” he said finally. “We didn’t exactly mention that we’re not boyfriend and girlfriend, just friends. Does she know about you being a lesbian?”

“I think so,” she frowned uncertainly. “But that subject never came up either. She might be thinking that I’ve reformed and become a hasbian. Maybe I should have said something.”

“It’ll work out,” he replied. “If she doesn’t know now, she’ll figure it out real quick when we’re all living in the same house. You might have to hit on her a little.”

“I don’t know. Like I said earlier, I’m pretty sure she’s straight. Maybe I should just sort of hint that I’m available if she’s interested and let it go at that. I sure don’t want to push her and get things loused up before we even get going here, but if anyone winds up in bed out of the deal it would be more likely to be you and her.”

“I’m not ruling it out, but I’m not going to push it, and for the same reason. If it happened to work out that way, I don’t think I’d mind. She might not have the body of that tall girl with the fake boobs, but with that personality I’ll bet she’d be fun in bed.”

“I thought the same thing,” she grinned. “And I wouldn’t turn her down if she asked, either. God, that girl you tweaked! Those tits of hers are all out of proportion! They looked like they’d be hard as rocks, too. That’s way overdoing it with the silicone.”

“Yeah, when they did her chest it must have done nice things for the chemical company’s quarterly earnings report,” he laughed. “I mean, being a guy I wouldn’t know, but it strikes me that hooters like that wouldn’t exactly be the most fun things in the world to have to deal with. Have you ever thought about getting a little enhancement like that?”

“Is that hinting that you think mine are a little small?”

“No, just curiosity. Speaking strictly from a male viewpoint, while I think big ones are fine as far as they go, I think it’s less a matter of size than it is of presentation. You do a really imposing job of presenting yours when you want to.”

“It’s amazing how many girls don’t recognize that,” she agreed. “Like miss rock-tits back there. Now Kellye, she’s got a pretty big pair, but they don’t look out of place on her. I have to admit I think they’d be fun to play with.”

“I could handle that. It would be a handful, but a fun one. Now with rock-tits, as you called her, there’d be the risk of a concussion.”

“I wouldn’t mind a little messing with those,” she agreed. “It might be fun to try once. But Brett, do you realize how strange this discussion is?”

“You mean that we’re both talking about making time with the same girl? Yeah, it is a little strange. I might have a discussion like this with another guy if I had a few beers in me, but to be having it with you? About all I can say is that things between us are a little strange, no matter how you look at it.”

“Yeah, and I find that strange, too. There aren’t many guys I’d be willing to talk to like this. Let’s face it, with most guys I’d be on the defensive, thinking that he was trying to talk me out of my gold star. I don’t have that with you. I guess that means that I know you accept me for what I am.”

“I have to accept the reality,” he said across the darkness of the minivan. “Don’t get me wrong, on one level I’d love to try you out. On another level, I realize it would be the wrong thing to do unless you decided it for yourself.”

“Brett, this is a little uncomfortable for me to say, but if I ever decided I want to try on a guy, I think you’re the guy I’d want to try it out with. But I don’t think it’ll happen.”

“That’s what I’ve come to accept. But tell me, have you ever come close to trying?”

“Well, sorta,” she sighed. “One time this girl and I were playing, and she got on top of me and used a strap-on on me. She was really wailing on me, too. I didn’t like it much, although I didn’t mind her using a dildo on me. With the strap-on, it seemed like it was a little too much like it would be with a guy, and it was really uncomfortable.”

“You could have told her to stop.”

“Well, uh, I couldn’t, not exactly,” she laughed. “I mean, I was tied to the bed and had a ball gag in my mouth, so there wasn’t much I could do but take it.”

Brett shook his head and took a deep breath. “Meredith,” he said. “What do they call a cow with two legs missing on the same side?”

“What’s this with the cow joke?”

“You were tweaking me, weren’t you? I mean, trying to get me fired up when you knew I wouldn’t do anything about it.”

“Well,” she laughed. “Maybe a little. I’m sorry, Brett. It’s kind of automatic.”

“Just so you understand. Apology accepted.”

They rode along in silence for a few moments before she spoke up. “All right, Brett, you’ve got me wondering. What do they call a cow with two legs missing on the same side?”

“Lean beef.”

“Christ, that’s bad,” she laughed. “I don’t know why I let myself get caught like that. Look, you really don’t mind that I’m lesbian, do you?”

“Meredith, I’ll tell you the truth. If I’d been born a girl, I think I’d probably be a lesbian too.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because if I was a girl, I don’t think I’d like girls any less. I mean, I can’t project myself into the role of being a girl and having to make it with a guy. Speaking as a guy, I sure as hell can’t imagine making it with a guy.”

“I can’t, either. I really can’t. Sorry, Brett, but that’s the way it is.”

They rode along in silence for quite a ways. Something profound to both of them had just been said and they both knew it, so it was a while before the impact wore off. Finally, Meredith spoke up, and on a totally different, if familiar subject. “Just thinking about it, getting Kellye aboard solves most of the major cast problems for the first part of the season, except for the older guy in the Chubukov and Emerson parts. If we can get Morford, it’d take care of those. Maybe we ought to stay a little loose on the second part of the season for now.”

“While I’m not exactly crazy about Morford, you’re right, assuming we can get locals to do the other parts in Odd Couple. It’d be too late to call him now, but we can call him tomorrow night.”

“So what do we do next?”

“I think we need to spend a little time firming up the budget figures for Marty,” he said. “But that mostly means putting some figures in ink rather than in pencil, so to speak. Why don’t we do that the first thing tomorrow, then spend the rest of the day scrounging up furniture and stuff for the house? We can call Morford tomorrow night, then the next day we can go over to Curlew Creek, present the figures to Marty and Samantha, and then work on the house for a day or two.”

“You’re right, we need to get started on that before things get busier. And while we’re there, we need to get the ball rolling on a casting call for the locals. We won’t need pickups early, but we’re going to want to have a damn good start with them before we get to Odd Couple.”

“My thinking exactly. I mean, if we don’t get any good candidates, or at least not enough of them, for the remaining girl parts in Odd Couple we’ll have to bring in someone from the outside for those.”

“True,” he said, thinking about it before breaking out in laughter.

“What’s this?”

“If we do bring someone in, how about Rock-tits?”

“I don’t think she could act her way out of a wet paper bag.”

“You’re probably right, but think about how she’d feel having to play third banana to Kellye’s lead. And for peanuts.”

“Oh, God!” Meredith laughed. “She would just absolutely shit.”

“I’ll bet it would make Kellye feel pretty good about it, too. I mean, I’d really rather use locals since it’s simpler, but it sure as hell would be fun to watch, wouldn’t it?”

“It sure would,” she replied, continuing to laugh. “It sure would. Brett, we’re going to have some fun this summer.”

With the main pieces nailed down, firming up the rest of the budget figures the next morning didn’t take very long. Meredith suggested making up a clean copy of their shelf-paper worksheet, but Brett told her to just use the one they had – it would show the amount of work they’d gone to.

Finally there wasn’t much more they could do along that line. They spent much of the rest of the day in the Wickwire attic, finding things they could use to fit out the house for the summer. There was even a perfectly usable double bed and mattress up there, which would make for a start on the bed problem. It was clear that it was too big for the van, and they’d have to borrow Brett’s father’s pickup for a trip in the future.

They found other things that would be useful, too. Over the course of the afternoon, they loaded the van with cleaning supplies and some of the things they would use in the house, along with sleeping bags and air mattresses they could use for this stay – they figured they’d only be gone a night or two this time. The van was getting pretty full by the time they figured they had enough of a load.

Late in the afternoon, Brett got on the kitchen phone to call Neil Morford, with Meredith listening in on another phone. After Brett got through with the introductions and commiserating over the problems with the Heatherwood losing their angel donor, they got down to business. “Neil, do you have any acting projects going for the summer?” Brett asked.

“Not since the Heatherwood went down the tubes,” the older man replied.

“I won’t go into all the background right now, but Meredith VanArnhem and I are doing a series of dinner theater plays this summer, and we have a couple parts we thought you might be interested in. You’d be a great fit for them, Chubukov in The Marriage Proposal, and Ralph Waldo Emerson in The Hermit of Walden. They’d be mostly in June. I don’t know what the Heatherwood was going to pay you, but these probably wouldn’t be as liberal. On the other hand, it would be something to do.”

“I’ll tell you what, Brett, I’d like to help you out,” Neil replied. “I always thought Chubukov would be a hell of a fun role to play, and Emerson sounds interesting. But as soon as the Heatherwood went down the tubes my wife started making plans for the summer. She’s got a hell of a list of things for me to do around here, and it’s going to take me all summer. Now she’s also sold me on taking off and traveling around out west in the camper, too. You say this would eat up a month?”

“Probably something around that, counting rehearsals. I think you, Meredith, and I could pick up Marriage Proposal pretty quick since it’s a short one-act. Hermit would be a lot more work, but we can work it up while Marriage Proposal is running.”

“Damn, I’d love to help you out. It sounds a hell of a lot more interesting than painting rooms in the house and stuff like that. But now that my wife has got her list all made and is still adding things to it, it would be tough to do. I’m sorry, Brett. I wish I could help, but my wife would be pissed at me all summer. Tell you what, if you get totally stuck for someone for one of those roles, I’ll fight it out with her, but I’d better not even think about doing both.”

“Well, thanks Neil. We’ll keep it in mind. We’ve still got some time on this, so we can do a little more looking around.”

“Sorry, Brett. It sounds like fun, but things have to be the way they have to be.”

“Thanks anyway,” Brett said. “We’ll catch you the next time.”

“Yeah, keep me in mind if you wind up doing something like this again.”

Both Brett and Meredith hung up the phones. “Well, shit,” Meredith said from the living room.

“Yeah,” Brett agreed. “Neil would have been hard to live with, but he would have been perfect for those roles.”

“So what do we do now?” she replied as she came back out into the kitchen.

“I don’t have any real good ideas,” he replied. “I mean, not as good as Neil would have been. What’s more, I don’t want to start a big search right now with us being gone for the next couple of days. I think about all we can do is go over to Curlew Creek and do what we can there, then come back and start working the phone.”

“Maybe we can think of someone while we’re driving over there, or maybe even turn up someone with the casting call.”

“I’m going to be a little worried if it falls to the second option,” he said. “Chubukov needs to be a little hyper, while Emerson is on the reserved side. I didn’t have any doubt that Neil could handle both of them, but what’s going to happen with someone we don’t know?”

“Maybe not the same person for both parts?” she suggested.

“It’s a possibility,” he agreed. “Push comes to shove, maybe we could get down on our knees and get Neil to do Chubukov while we work with someone else to do Emerson, maybe someone from the casting call since we’d have two more weeks to work with them. There’s not much we can do about it right now, though. It’s a problem, but at least it’s not a problem that can’t be solved.”

They got on the road early the next morning, made the usual stop at Grumpy’s Diner to get their morning blahs lifted by coffee and the flirty waitress, and were at the Curlew Creek Winery by the middle of the morning. The place was not real busy, and they were soon sitting around one of the tables in the tasting room with Samantha and Marty.

“We’ve made a lot of progress in the last few days,” Brett reported, laying the shelf-paper chart out in front of their hosts. “You would not believe how many plays we’ve looked at. We’ve even done readings on some of them. This is what we’ve worked out. The first part of the season is pretty solid. The second part, there’s the possibility of having some changes if we need to. You can see from the chart what we’ve budgeted for talent and royalties. If we have to change something later in the season, about all we can do is try to keep it within the numbers we have here.”

“I’m not very familiar with many of these plays,” Samantha said conversationally.

“With a couple exceptions, they run to light comedy. The ones that aren’t comedy are still pretty lighthearted,” Brett told them. “There aren’t any real heavy head trips here.” One by one, he gave a brief description of each play, answering questions from Marty and Sam as they went along.

“The Man with the Plastic Sandwich sounds like a really stupid title,” Marty protested at one point.

“We don’t disagree,” Brett agreed. “But the play is pretty funny and a little poignant. It took us both a while to buy off on it, but it may be one of the real high points of the summer. We have the script here, and if we need to Meredith and I can do a reading to show you what we mean.”

“I don’t think it’s necessary,” Samantha said. “We’re having to go with your experience on this, after all. If you think it’ll work, that’s all I really need to know.”

A little later they got to Saving Grace. “That’s not like the TV show, is it?”

“No,” Brett said. “The play dates from the eighties, while the TV series is fairly new. That’s a point of concern that Meredith and I had to really talk over. The play is really good for what we want to do, and I almost wish we could change the name. Because of the name issue, it’s one that could still get changed, which is part of the reason it’s down toward the end of the season with Barefoot in the Park. That means we have time to change our minds. Not a lot of time, but time.”

“What’s your problem with Barefoot in the Park?” Samantha wanted to know.

“None whatsoever, except that we think it might be overdoing it to present two Neil Simon plays in the same season, and if you decide you want to do a dinner theater again next year it would probably be the season headliner.”

Not surprisingly, Marty was looking at the numbers. “I see you managed to bring in the budget a little under what you told us the other day,” he commented. “Not a whole lot under, but under.”

“It’s something we can live with,” Brett told him. “As I said earlier, if we wind up changing one of the plays we’ll have to do it within the limits of the budget of the play listed here. There are a couple of outstanding issues on the budget. We’ve come up with another really good actress, and with Meredith, the two of them will cover all the major female roles and some of the minor ones. She’s good and very likable. We would have brought her with us today, but she’s a college student and she’s studying for finals. We hope to use local talent in the other female roles, which are relatively minor. We’ve included stipends for them, but not large ones.”

“How about the other male roles?” Samantha asked.

“We’re still working on them,” Brett admitted. “We had a guy in mind for the two roles we need filled in the first half of the season, but it turns out he’s probably not available. We only found that out last night, so we haven’t been able to do anything further with that yet. The second half of the season is still a little up in the air, but we’ll have some time to work on it and some of the roles can probably be filled with locals working on a stipend. There’s time to work everything out and still keep it within the budget.”

“What’s the problem with this male role in the first part of the season?” Samantha asked. “I would have thought that there would have been a lot of eager young actors available, and that you might know someone.”

“Well, I did know someone, but he’s not available. The problem in there is the word ‘young.’ The Chubukov role in A Marriage Proposal calls for a guy in his seventies. The Emerson role, a guy in his forties. That sort of argues for a guy in his fifties or maybe sixties, and it would be nice if he had a full beard, since both those characters have one. The problem is that there are just not many men like that running around who have the kind of acting experience these roles would take, who would be available and willing to take the time to do these.”

“You know,” Samantha mused. “That sort of sounds like Mike Fowler.”

“Mike? The guy we’re renting the house from?”

“Yes,” she said. “He operates his vineyard only part-time, that’s all he wants from it, but he taught English and drama at the high school level before he retired and did some amateur plays in the past. Or, at least that’s what he said. It was before we came here.”

“When this idea of starting a dinner theater first came up, he was the first person we asked,” Marty added. “He said it sounded interesting, but he didn’t want to take on the job of organizing everything. He said he’d done it enough in the past. But he also said he might be interested in doing a part or two.”

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