Biting Oz: Biting Love, Book 5 (2 page)

“Steve. Do we have headsets distributed or not? How else am I to make such a large endeavor a brilliant success? Because only Brilliant Successes go to New York.” The director whirled, glared at Takashi. “Turn on your headset.”

Takashi obediently clicked, then surreptitiously clicked again. His set had already been on.

“Good.” The director very deliberately clicked the button on his control set. “Ready? Then—go.” He spun offstage.

We started from the top. My sax was only slightly sharp from jamming the mouthpiece to the hilt. No time to fix it now, not with all my fingers engaged in low B-flats and Cs. Five measures in, I switched to flute. This time the “oohs” of the offstage choir joined us, and when my clarinet solo came, I dropped it in perfectly. (If this sounds like the movie or Royal Shakespeare Company version of
The Wizard of Oz
, well, the instrumentation was the same.
Oz, Wonderful Oz
was a completely new production, but you gotta sound like the movie or patrons get weirded out.)

We segued into “Dorothy’s Got Trouble”, and the house doors opened. A spotlight clicked on, catching traditional ankle socks, gingham and braids.

Our Dorothy. The lynchpin of the show. If she was good, we were headed for New York. If she was bad, we’d be playing dinner theater in What Cheer, Iowa, and then only if we offered free soft-serve.

She glided up the aisle, something furry in her arms, and spoke her first lines. And then suddenly I was
there
, in Kansas, and here was Dorothy worried about her dog and her mean neighbor.

The girl wasn’t simply good. She was stunning.

We went through the plot setup, the wicked old witch neighbor threatening Dorothy’s only friend, Toto. Nobody on the farm seemed to care, too busy with their own work.

Leaving Dorothy to sit on the stoop of her farmhouse and sing her hopefully-soon-to-be-famous lament, “Dreams Beyond the Rainbow”. Hearing her rich voice, filled with longing, I shivered, and I don’t shiver easily.

The girl used the wavering, pouting Judy Garland alto but imbued it with something more, something that made it her own. She took traditional Dorothy and layered it with her own interpretation, making it fresh. I wondered how old the girl was, really.

As she sang, a shadow appeared in the wings. A big shadow with shoulders that brushed the curtain on either side. The
babi
guy. His sapphire eyes were intent on Dorothy.

Another shiver hit me, this one down low, and I missed my changeover. No big loss as all ears were on Dorothy—except for Takashi’s. He gave me a short, meaningful stare. For a grad student, the guy heard everything. Even without this
Oz,
he’d make Broadway someday.

Me, I wouldn’t even make the soft-serve follies unless I got my head out of my panties and focused. I put flute to lip and concentrated on playing the tag, a little triplet fillip. That segued into “Mean Old Nieghbor” (Neighbor to the rest of the world, but Nieghbor on the hand-notated, hand-lettered part. Welcome to the world of pit music). The change to clarinet took my full attention. When I looked up again at the end of a menacing chord, Mr. Babi was gone.

Despite concentrating on the music, I was still shivering. That worried me. I’m a musician but also a businesswoman. Emotions tempered by, as Pop puts it, hard-headed dollars and sense. Ha.

My part had nothing until the tornado, so I had a few scenes to try to figure it out. Did I want to? Hell no. I poked around in my own innards with dread. But the missed cue said it was eating me bad enough to throw me off. I had to poke or potentially screw up this pit gig.

And the gig was bottom-line, underscore-underscore, red ink important.

So. What was throwing me? Being so blasted late? Squirting a clarinet fart in front of the show’s director? Dorothy and her soul-shredding voice?

Surely my shivers weren’t from the gorgeous hunk of sapphire-eyed male who’d watched her.

Not thinking about him. I latched on to my last thought, Dorothy’s voice…yes, that alto certainly was haunting, especially singing about her rainbow dream.

Emotion hit me so hard I gasped. Rainbow dream. That was it.

I’m an only child. Not the doting-parents-smothering-with-money-and-affection kind. The you-have-a-duty kind. I’m rather of proud of that.

Duty to my parents was vital to me. They raised me and gave me food and a roof, not to mention the whole gift-of-life thing. My mother even gave up her career for me (although that’s another issue). They’re older, maybe a decade from retiring, but they can’t because they run their own business and sink every spare
pfennig
into it.

So I help them in the store and I’m glad to do it. I love them; they’re my world.

But sometimes I want…more.

Dorothy’s rainbow dream resonated deep. Like Kansas, my home is small. Meiers Corners is just west of Chicago in miles, but it’s worlds removed in attitude. In some ways, the Corners is even smaller and more black-and-white than Dorothy’s Kansas. I feel trapped in my small backyard, knowing there’s a big, wide, Technicolor world out there, just waiting for me.

New York is my Emerald City. That’s why this pit gig was so important. The director was aiming to do a
Rent
,
go viral and get to Broadway. My friend Nixie, who had recruited the pit orchestra musicians, managed to work an agreement out that if the show went, the Meiers Corners’s musicians would go along.

That was when I signed up. Not only would I get to New York—I’d get there with a job that’d support me
and
have cash left over for my parents.

If the show did well. If I was a professional and could cut the part.

Takashi raised one finger, our cue that the tornado was coming. I checked my music for the proper instrument (pig squeal ain’t nothin’ on honking a flute part out on tenor). I used color highlights to reinforce instrument name, and in this case CLAR was highlighted in blue, like eyes as blue as an Irish sea…

Dammit, I had to concentrate on my part, not blue-eyed hunks. Business Truth #2 was “Focus on the job at hand”. I couldn’t get distracted, not with my dreams so close I could taste them, like tasting beautifully defined lips…crap.

I lifted my clarinet, concentrating on fingering the upcoming tornado, not fingering gorgeous…shizzle. Concentrating on the music, not musical baritones murmuring
babi
sweetly in my…phooey.

This was going to be harder than I thought.

By the time we got our break two hours later, I decided I’d overreacted. The guy couldn’t have been as gorgeous as I thought. I’d been swept off my feet, waking romantic fantasies and understimulated hormones (being the dutiful daughter means I don’t date much).

I’d test his nongorgeousness by giving him another look-see. Snatching up my water bottle, I stood.

Next to me, the woman playing reed one rose too and stretched out her back, throwing her pregnant belly into relief.

Nixie Emerson is the only person in my world smaller than me. At five feet even, wearing clothes bought in the kids’ department at Target before she got pregnant, she could have doubled as a Munchkin—until she opened her mouth. A punk rocker, Nixie could swear like a Marine. When you could understand her. She used a mishmash of cultural metaphors and punkspeak, a kind of a
Star Trek: TNG
“Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra” for the terminally tattooed and pierced.

“Hey, Nixie,” I said. “I’m going to find a water fountain. You want anything?”

“Nah, I’m chill,” Nixie said. “Want some aitch-two, Julian?”

That was to her husband, on her other side, wiping down his cello. Talk about gorgeous—Julian was the original poster boy for Yowsa. He said, “After that first half? Beer, maybe.”

“You talking about rehearsal? Or that thing with Dumbass?”

“Dumbass?” I asked.

She turned to me. “Yeah, Director Dumbass. You know, the guy who dinged Takashi about the headset, then screeched all his directions voice-naked?”

“He was rather colorful.”

“The rehearsal,” Julian said. “Missed light cues, sound cues, lines dropped. Tin Man’s plate sliding off his bony body. Kids behaving like rampaging monkeys. I can’t believe we open in just four days.”

“The stars are exceptional,” I said. “That’ll help.”

“And the pit’s fearsome great.” Nixie grinned and popped another vertebra.

“Maybe, but the rest was a train wreck.” Julian set his cello on its ribs. “All those sugar-rush Munchkins chasing Toto didn’t help. The director’s screeching and cajoling made it worse.”

I shrugged. “It’s the first rehearsal with all the players. Not everyone is professional, and there’s a lot to coordinate.” I reveled in it all, even the flubbed lines. The pulse and thrum of life past the edge was so un-Meiers Corners. “It’ll be miraculously wonderful by Thursday night.”

“It had better be.” Julian’s tone was dark.

“True dat,” Nixie said. “I’m not planning on NYC but I know a lot are.”

“The backer’s not coming until closing night. We have time.” I double-checked my flute and clarinet on their homemade pegs. “At least long enough for me to find some freeway-broad shoulders…I mean water.”

As I set my sax on my chair, flutist Rocky Hrbek leaned up, her wealth of shining chestnut hair falling forward. She pushed it back as if it was an annoyance instead of a hunk-magnet. “Um, Junior…” She shoved at the bridge of her clunky glasses. “Not to be presumptuous or anything. But I could use some water too. Can I go with you?”

I shook my head at her “presumption”. Rocky had been overweight and acne-ridden in high school and still saw herself that way. Though she was slim and gorgeous now, nobody in the Corners had bothered to correct her. She was just as shy and unsure of herself as she’d been in the black cesspool known as seventh grade.

Fortunately it didn’t matter when it came to her playing. Hell on wheels in band, first-chair flute her freshman year, she’d only gotten better.

“Sure. C’mon.”

She grabbed her water bottle, tucked her flute case under her arm and followed me out of the pit. I’d left my flute on its stand, but mine was a thousand-dollar Armstrong and hers was a twenty-thousand-dollar gold Miyazawa. Or maybe she just saw it as one of her few faithful friends.

“Do you know where the water fountain is?” she asked as we hit the aisle.

“Probably near the restrooms. Let’s try the outer lobby.” The PAC had two lobby areas, outer and inner. The building’s main entrance led to the outer lobby, with ticket counters and restrooms. Straight through the outer lobby was a set of doors leading to the inner lobby. The inner lobby had two sets of double doors leading into the audience section of the theater, or the house. As we made our way up the house aisle, a couple of Munchkins zipped past, knocking into me. A harried-looking teenager ran after them. “How’ve you been?”

“Good.” Rocky swayed to avoid the worst of the Munchkin meteors. “How’re things at the sausage store?”

I pushed through the house doors and we schussed over the thick red carpet of the inner lobby. “Working our asses off to make ends meet, but that’s par for a mom-and-pop shop.” I shouldered open the outer lobby doors, revealing two stories of new sage walls, contemporary art and recessed natural light. “Somebody put real money behind this remodeling. You’d never know this used to be a toilet paper factory.”

Rocky slid her glasses up on her nose and looked around. “Mayor Meier did some tax credits and a special loan program at the bank. He’s pushing to get all the city’s empty buildings retenanted. Oh look, there’s the drinking fountain.”

The hiss of water zeroed my attention on the far wall. Dorothy had just bent her beautiful, graceful head to take a drink.

Standing behind her like a personal shield was Mr. Couldn’t-Be-That-Gorgeous. He wasn’t.

He was more.

A glow of sapphire eyes, a flash of dangerous planes, the impression of broad shoulders. Glimpses through lowered house lights and dark wings hadn’t prepared me for seeing him in full light for the first time.

Big became huge, several inches over six feet, deceptive because he was perfectly proportioned, like Tom Cruise in reverse. Broad shoulders were really acres wide, flaring from a narrow, flat waist. He had perfectly chiseled features, his five o’clock shadow emphasizing a honed jaw, his perfect skin taut over sharp bones, his lips masculine yet bold. His black hair gleamed under the lights, thick and lustrous.

Great Braunschweiger, he was beyond gorgeous, as in punch-out-my-heart-and-use-it-to-club-me-senseless stunning.

A sudden, searing need to know his name pushed me toward him.

Rocky’s hand on my shoulder stopped me. “Junior, wait. They’re busy.”

“How do you know?”
And busy doing what?

“Look at her back. It’s bowed. Whatever she’s hearing, she’s not liking it.”

Rocky was right. Shove a trombone up my ass and play “Yankee Doodle”. I’d violated Business Truth #6 of my parents’ Eightfold Business Path—“Keep your eyes open and on the customer”. It told a savvy shopkeeper what the customer was looking for.
And what would Mr. Gorgeous be buying, Junior?
I shook myself.

As if Dorothy had heard our whispers all the way across the lobby, she turned toward us. Without stage lights washing her out, she was as stunning as he was. Her eyes were the bright green of spring leaves, framed by coal-black lashes and filled with intelligence and determination that made them even more striking.