The World is a Stage (7 page)

Michael stopped. Acting? Understudy? He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been so thoroughly taken in by a woman he wasn’t either sleeping with or hoping to sleep with within the week.

“Peterson promised me no tights.”

Molly let out a gurgled laugh. It was amazing to think she was related to Rachel. The only reason that woman would gurgle was if she was brushing her teeth—or if Michael gave in to temptation and tossed her into the nearest creek.

“You’re a really great guy, you know that? Not many people would do all this just to help a friend out.”

Michael let out a theatrical sigh. “I know. Put me in a diaper and give me a crossbow, and I’m the baddest-ass cupid on the block.”

She punched him playfully in the arm. “I’m serious. Thanks for this. Things haven’t been great for me in a long time. And Eric—he’s kind of great.”

From across the room, Peterson came into view, looking, Michael had to admit, happier than he’d been in a long time. Even his dragon looked like it was smiling.

“He’s not half bad,” Michael agreed.

“I just wish there was a way to get Rachel to see him like you and I do,” Molly said wistfully. “We need to stage an intervention or something.”

“A stop-acting-like-a-royal-bitch intervention? You can count me out of that one.”

She gave a soft laugh and shook her head. “No. A relax-and-give-people-a-chance intervention.”

“Where I come from, we call that a party.”

“Rachel doesn’t party. She broods.”

Michael laughed. That sounded about right. “That’s probably because she’s never been to a party at Casa O’Leary.”

Molly’s eyes lit up, and no amount of playing dumb would give Michael the out he needed to pretend he didn’t catch her meaning. Her hands came together and she hopped up and down. “Would you…?”

He tried to be strong. He tried to resist.

He failed.

Closing his eyes, Michael did what he always did when faced with someone who needed his help.

He said yes.

“One party, O’Leary-style, coming right up. I think if we do it Tuesday, Peterson can even bring the Two Terrors. Has your sister met them yet?”

Molly let out a squeal and reached up to peck him on the cheek, almost bringing a damn blush to his face. At least it was getting easier to see what Peterson saw in this chick. Such easy adoration had its charm.

“That would be so awesome of you, Michael. You’re the best! It’ll be so great for her to see you guys in, you know, your natural element.”

Michael smiled. Seeing as how their natural element was closer to being half-wasted on Red Bull and Jaeger shots and decked out in full Highland gear, underwear optional, he doubted Rachel was ready for the full effect of the Peterson-Michael-Julian tornado.

No woman was.

“But, um, there’s just one thing.”

Michael kept the smile going strong, his jaw fixed. “Oh?” he managed.

“She won’t come unless you hide the invitation.”

“Hide it?”

“Yeah. You know, make her an offer she can’t refuse? She won’t want to come, but if you can just get her there, she won’t actually up and leave. She’s too polite for that. Well, maybe not polite—but she’ll do anything to avoid making herself look like she’s not on top of everything. She hates being made to look like a fool. You can always count on that.”

Alarm bells sounded in every nerve ending of Michael’s body. He couldn’t think of a single thing that existed on earth that Rachel wouldn’t have been happy to refuse. Denying other people pleasure seemed to make her as content as a pig rolling in its own shit.

But he let none of his hesitation show—he didn’t have the heart to crush Molly’s wide-eyed hope like that. “What sort of offer were you thinking of?”

“Um…I don’t know. I’m sure you can think of something. I don’t know why, but you’re ten times better at handling her than I’ve ever been in my whole life.”

And that was it. The clincher. The sealing of the deal. The superglue between the ass cheeks. Molly thought he could tame her sister.

Molly thought he could win.

“No problem. I’ll figure it out.”

Molly gave him another peck before running off to tell Peterson the good news. Her enthusiasm was infectious only in a roughly five-foot radius around her, because as Peterson flashed him a hearty thumbs up, Michael realized with a heaviness that he was in this for the long haul.

All he needed was to find something Rachel wanted enough to get her to agree to come.

Other than offering up his own body, dead and prostrate at her feet, he had no idea what he was going to come up with.

Rachel heard her mother’s voice long before she saw her appear in the auditorium. Once a great actress in her own right, she had the kind of voice that carried over audiences with clarity and panache.

That was, her voice used to have clarity and panache. These days, it was mostly loud and obnoxious, the consonants slurred together in a way that was recognizable to just about everyone.

“I’ve come to see my daughters,” her mother announced to no one in particular. “They do a sex show here.”

That sex show of yours
. Since the day they’d signed on to be a part of this, that was what their mother had insisted on calling it. Never mind that her mother had been on the chorus line of a traditional burlesque back in her heyday. Never mind that Shakespeare After Dark played to sold-out audiences and there was even talk of one or two Broadway reviewers showing up to the opening night of
Antony and Cleopatra
. To their mother, it would never be more than a sex show, and her daughters would never be more than pseudo-literary strippers.

Molly, who had been just about to do her reading for the part of Octavia, glanced immediately at Rachel, their eyes meeting over the top of several heads all turned in the direction of the disturbance.

That was all their mother was anymore. A disturbance.

It bothered Molly a lot more than it did Rachel. Molly believed their mother had good intentions, believed that the sixth in a long line of embarrassingly public divorces was going to be the last, and that she’d stay home long enough to actually have a stake in her children’s lives this time.

Rachel had long since given up on the woman, and the only emotion she felt at seeing her here was irritation. Irritation and an overwhelming urge to get her out of here before Molly broke down in tears. Molly wasn’t strong like she was. Molly still cared.

It was her job to protect her sister. It always had been.

“Darlings!” Their mother stumbled onto the aisle and beamed up at them, her arms spread wide. She’d done a fairly good job dressing herself that morning, although she’d chosen a dangerously high pair of heels and had lipstick smudged a good half an inch beyond her lip line. Divorce always did that to her. The second she met a potential husband, she was a teetotaler, giving up all substances except the heady rush of new love. But the second the charm wore away and the ring was on her finger, it was back to the booze. That was always the beginning of the end.
 

What they were looking at right now was something closer to the finish line.

“I’m early, aren’t I? How shameful. One ought never be too early to the theater. It isn’t done.”

Rachel hopped down from the stage, avoiding the curious stares. Those who knew her family history looked politely away. Those who didn’t know the history invariably recognized the slightly puffy face of Indira Hewitt (née Longfellow), and gave audible gasps of delight.

“You aren’t dressed as a prostitute!” her mother called by way of greeting, taking in Rachel’s striped boatneck tee and slacks with a frown, her brow puckered as she tried to work it out. “Haven’t you got a part in tonight’s performance?”

“First of all, it’s eleven o’clock in the morning,” Rachel said coolly, taking her mother by the arm and trying to swivel her on the tips of her heels in the opposite direction. “Second of all, there is no show tonight. It’s a weekday and we’re in auditions.”

“Auditions? But I came to see my girls perform. I took a taxi all this way—and you know how I feel about public transportation.”

“Taxis are not public transportation, Mother,” Rachel said through her teeth, though she was grateful to hear that she hadn’t attempted driving herself. “And I’ll be happy to take you home.”

“Nonsense!” With a surprising burst of agility, her mother twisted loose and ducked right under her arm, wobbling quickly to the stage and trying, unsuccessfully, to climb up it. “Help me up, young man, will you?”

Larson, the most useless security personnel on the face of the planet, obeyed, his eyes wide as Rachel’s mother grunted her way to two feet.

“Who’s in charge here?” she demanded.

By now, even the most adoring Indira Longfellow fans had taken her measure. Molly was nowhere to be seen, and Rachel could only assume she was off pouring her heart into her boyfriend’s shoulder.
 

For once, Rachel was grateful to him. Getting rid of a post-divorce decaying actress returned to the scene of her former glory wasn’t going to be pretty.

Her mother had somehow leeched herself onto Dominic’s arm and was peering into his too-close-together eyes as if to take the measure of his soul. That was what she’d always taught them growing up, in place of more worthy conversations regarding birds, bees and the propagation thereof.

“A man’s worth lies not in his heart or in his pants,” she would announce. “It’s in his eyes.”

Which meant, of course, that she pressed her face up against the nose of every man she ever met, reading his irises like they were folio paper. As a Tony Award winning actress, it had been a quirk, an eccentricity. Charming, even. As a poorly aging divorcee with breath this side of Hades, it was only the good manners of the men she met that kept them from vomiting onto her shoes.

“I think I like you, young man,” she announced some awful minutes later. “All right. I’ll do it. I’ll be in your show.”

Rachel rushed forward and disentangled her mother, doing her best not to meet Dominic’s eyes. Could there be anything worse for their show than Indira Longfellow’s bosoms on display, crinkled with age and hanging to her waist?

“I’m so sorry, Dominic. I’ll just need about an hour to get her home and get her quiet. I promise this will never happen again.”

Behind her and to the right, someone laughed. A few feet farther to the left, another person started whispering. Without even turning around, Rachel could place each voice, envision the clusters of people talking and pointing and seeing so much more of her life than they should.

No, not just people. Her
peers
. These were the people she worked with every single day of her life. They looked up to her. Respected her.

Okay, maybe not respect. That was hard when they’d all seen each other practically naked. But
still
.

“No, Poppy.”

The use of Rachel’s childhood nickname, infantile and flimsy just like the bright red flower, only infuriated her more. Her mother knew how much Rachel hated that name. “I
am
going to do it, and you can’t stop me. It’s like being alive again. It’s like being young again!”

Her mother twirled in circles, her arms opened wide, embracing her audience.

Except her audience feared for their safety.
 

People dove out of the way, one woman even tucking and rolling toward the wings. Rachel, on the other hand, couldn’t move. She could only watch, frozen like one of those women in a horror flick who fail to see the gun lying just within arm’s reach.

Her mother lost her balance and careered toward the end of the stage. Rachel sprang forward, but she was too late. Indira’s heel caught on the edge of the floorboards and she dove, headfirst, toward the auditorium floor.

“Whoa, there.”

As if out of nowhere, Michael grabbed hold of her mother and pulled her back to safety, lifting her as if she weighed no more than a child.

Indira wasn’t even fazed. She immediately looked up into the face of her rescuer and started to read his eyes.

Oh, dear God. Not that man.
 

Finally moved to action, Rachel ran over and pulled the two of them apart, as much as a five-foot-nine, one-hundred-fifty-pound woman could move a man made of obstinate stone.

He put Indira on her feet, steadying her with one of his giant man hands while holding Rachel back with the other. “She’s all right. Just give her a moment to get her balance.”

Rachel’s jaw went tight. He had to be the only man on the face of the planet not able to recognize a woman who was drunk off her ass. He probably preferred them that way.

“She’s not all right, but it’s not really any of your damn business, is it?”

“Nope. It’s not. My apologies.” He backed away.

Finally.
At last, he was reading her cues in the manner in which they were intended.
Go away. Not interested. In fact, annoyed beyond all recognition.

“C’mon, Mom,” Rachel said, quieter this time. “Let’s go home.”