Page 8 of Script Swap
I couldn’t stop myself from smiling.Grinning, in fact.
“Oh yes,” Fox said, and their voice echoed my amusement.“Pippi was furious.”
“But it’s her play,” I said.
“She’s the playwright,” Fox said.“Not the director.”
I couldn’t help wondering, though,whyTerrence had cast Jonni as Pippi or Penny or whatever we were calling her.She was too old, for one thing.Older than the real Pippi.And maybe that had been an effort to make her look of an age with Nora, but… I couldn’t put my finger on exactly why, but I doubted it.
It certainly hadn’t been her acting chops.Unlike Nora’s films, which had been a string of critical and box-office successes, Jonni’s work tended toward the, uh, B-list.
“Life in the Endwas good,” I said, and weirdly enough, I felt like I was defending her.
“It was fine,” Fox said.And with a hint of evil glee, they added, “She played a sanitation worker.”
Mousewife, on the other hand, had been…less good.(It was one of those ideas that probably should never have been made into a film, about a housewife who gets turned into a mouse.There was probably some social commentary in there, but it felt like the unholy child ofHoney, I Shrunk the KidsandRatatouille.) AndLosing My Boyfriend II: Losers Take Allwas a guilty pleasure (you’re officially required to watch it after every breakup, or when you’re sad because Life, and Bobby knows you need lots of kisses and one of those three-layer chocolate cakes from the Cakery).
“She played the grandmother,” Fox said, reading my mind again.“The one who rediscovers a love of life through the power of stripping.”
I did kind of remember her now.And I wished I didn’t.
Fortunately, the house lights dimmed, and I was able to pull myself away from that image.The curtain went up, and Vivienne Carver—er, Marienne—came out.
The play actually wasn’t all that bad.(What I could see of it, anyway.The trick with these contacts seemed to be not to blink my eyes too much or too little.)
I mean, it wasn’t great.It had Pippi’s trademark manner of exposition, which came from the “bonk-them-over-the-head” school of writing.For heaven’s sake, Vivienne had two separate soliloquies about why she was going to murder someone for fame and fortune.
But there were some good lines in there, too.And the story was nothing if not compelling—you could see it in the audience.Sure, some of that probably had to do with the fact that this play was about people they knew, and yes, lots of people kept glancing over at me.(“Daniel” made his dramatic entrance by tripping over his own feet.He lost his glasses.Then his pants fell down, and he farted.Which JUST FOR THE RECORD, NEVER HAPPENED.)
Really, though, what kept everyone glued to the stage—even me—was that the actors were so dang good.All of them.Even Kyson.Pippi had clearly written him the part of a buffoon, but he made it into something more—something self-aware and playful andfun.And when he did have serious lines, he delivered them in a way that made you sit up and take note.Jonni clearly knew her role as a character actor, and she managed to bring out the humor in Pippi/Penny’s character without turning the show into a farce.
But the real star was Nora.There wasn’t any question.There wasn’t any doubt.She was good—and not playing-in-the-sticks good.Goodgood.She must have studied Vivienne, because everything about her—the way she moved, the way she stood, the way she talked—was perfect.It was creepy, actually.And not only because of, you know, all that stuff with Vivienne trying to kill me.
The only reason I knew something went wrong was because Pippi had to poke her head out again.
She was staring out onto the stage, her mouth hanging open.
Something triggered in my brain, and I glanced over at where Terrence was sitting.He was staring up at the stage as well, his expression strained.
The seat next to him was empty.
Kyson was speaking.I’d been so caught up in the shock of seeing those reactions that I’d missed the first part of what he’d said.“—know what you did.”He was speaking to Vivienne, but now he turned, his arm moving in a wide arc to take in the audience.“And you won’t get away with it!”
Pippi was clutching the curtain.
Even in the dim lighting, Terrence looked like he’d gone pale.
And then the lights went out, and someone screamed.
Chapter 2
“Nobody died,” I said around my toothbrush.
In the bedroom, Bobby made a sound that wasn’t quite agreement.
To be fair, no deputy would have been thrilled about that night’s chaos.After the lights had gone out—and more importantly, after the scream—the audience had dissolved into a churning, panicked mob.The few still-functioning security lights were the only reason nobody had gotten trampled.(That, and the fact that the people of Hastings Rock were, deep down, good and decent people.Although you might have been hard-pressed to prove that point based on how Mr.Ratcliff had shoved his way past the women and children.)
“Nobody even got hurt,” I said through a mouthful of toothpaste.
