“Then why’d we come here?” I asked.
“First, some friends of Frank’s own the place and even at the busy times we get a private place to eat, and second, they got the best anchovy pizza in town.”
Tree had been silent through all of this. He’d been watching Ruthy throughout, hanging on her every word, savoring everything about her with that special fatherly sort of lust that gives incest a bad name.
And she was a fine-looking girt. She had a lot going for her besides her chest, too. There was a fascinating mouth on the child, a fascination having nothing at all to do with the words that came out of said mouth. Puffy, pouty lips and little white teeth. It was easy to imagine that mouth doing things other than eating an anchovy pizza.
But watching her eat the pizza, once it came, wasn’t especially fascinating. She wolfed it down and kept up her chatter as she did, which was impressive in its way, but a sexy girl eating with her mouth open is just as obnoxious as if it were you or me.
Between bites of rigatoni I asked her how she and Lucille met.
“We got together down in Florida,” Ruthy said. “We lived in the same apartment building. I was working a dinner theater down there. I was there a year. You should’ve seen my tan. But I got a chance a couple years ago to move back to Des Moines and work the Candle Lite, and Des Moines is sort of home to me, since I went to college here, before I dropped out, so I was glad to come back… even if it meant kissing my year-round tan goodbye.”
Tree finally decided to join the conversation. “The nice thing about the Candle Lite, for Ruthy,” he said, “is she gets to work other places, too. The Candle Lite is linked with a number of other dinner theaters in the Midwest, and in many of them she gets to appear with name actors. Just last March she was in Milwaukee in The Seven Year Itch with one of the actors from Gilligan’s Island.”
“It usually keeps me out of the hard work,” Ruthy said, feigning sheepishness. “This is actually the first time I’ve had to help strike a set since I came to the Candle Lite… which is why I’m working so hard at it. The rest of the company thinks I’m going to loaf my way through it, and I’m going to show ’em.”
“Not to change the subject,” Lu said, apparently a bit bored with Ruthy’s show biz patter, “but Jack here’s been looking for work for the past week or so and hasn’t had much luck. Jack has better manners than to bring it up now, but I’m not a shy type. Think you might have something for him at the Barn?”
“What line are you in, Jack?” Tree said. Nothing in his voice, but a little something in his eyes.
“I’m a salesman. I used to sell ladies underwear, but you can see how much the girls here care about that.”
The air was chill in there and four nice nipples were standing out and we all laughed a little.
“Well, I know what kind of poker player you are. And I’m thinking of replacing one of my dealers. Interested?”
“Very.’’
“Come around and play some cards tomorrow night… and try not to win too much more of my money… and stay and talk to me after closing.”
“Fine.”
Just as we’d prearranged.
Then I asked Ruthy how exactly “striking a set” was accomplished, and she told us. Tree and I listened intently. Lu had a couple of Bloody Marys and stared off someplace.
27
On the stage was an antique oak bed, a post rising from each corner to support a lace-trimmed, blue satin canopy. There were several other pieces of antique-looking furniture, a chair, table, trunk; another chair, and all of them, including the bed, were pushed forward, almost to the edge of the stage, as Ruthy and another member of the repertory company, a lumpish female in curlers and workshirt and rolled-up jeans, painted the light blue “walls” of the set, which had a doorway off to the left and a window to the right.
It was mid-morning and the front doors of the Candle Lite Playhouse had been open. I walked up the short flight of stairs onto the stage, where day before yesterday I had filled a plate with food, and my footsteps clumped hollowly on the floor of the stage.
Ruthy, on her hands and knees painting, turned and looked up at me and said, “Hi! Where’s Lucille?”
“The apartment,” I said. “She kicked me out. She had a bunch of cleaning to do.”
(Which made it convenient for both of us, as I could go do the snooping I needed to, and Lu could continue her surveillance of Tree, without either of us getting in the other’s way. And since I knew Frank Tree would not be leaving his apartment before nightfall and the Barn, and would in fact be spending the day in front of his television with a revolver in his lap-with time out only for bodily functions and perhaps the preparation and consumption of a TV dinner-I had few worries about what might happen while I was out.)
Ruthy was, like her lumpy companion, wearing jeans and a workshirt. Ruthy’s jeans, however, were tourniquet tight, and her workshirt knotted into a halter, leaving a succulent tummy, complete with navel, exposed, the buttons at the top open and giving me a skyscraper look down her impressive cleavage. It was a view she was aware of, and even exploited. Whether she was just a cock-tease in general, or had something in mind for me specifically, was, like my teased cock, up in the air.
She gave me a sly look that I had seen before (in her performance Sunday) and said, “Sure she isn’t cheating on you? It wouldn’t take twenty minutes to clean that place of hers stem to stern.”
I squatted down to talk with her and look her in the eye and not the gland.
“Lu’s like anybody else,” I said. “She’s just got to have a little privacy sometimes, and she’s got a right to it. It’s her apartment. I’m just a guest.”
“Well, if I had a guest at home like you, I wouldn’t send you out in the cold.”
“It’s not so cold. In fact the sun’s out for a change. Kind of a nice day out there. Too bad you’re stuck in here working.”
“Oh I don’t mind. It’s all a part of theater. It’s just as exciting to me to be backstage as center-stage.”
The lumpish girl, standing, stroking with a paint brush, rolled her eyes, without Ruthy seeing.
“Did you tell Lucille you were gonna stop by and see me?”
“No,” I said.
“I’m gonna be busy all day, Jack.”
“I figured you might be. I’ll tell you why I stopped by. I noticed in your program, Sunday, that there’s something called Candle Lite Productions, that does advertising work, locally. TV and radio spots, that sort of thing.”
“That’s right. This place used to be a church that did its own radio shows here. There’s a studio set-up on the second floor, where we do the recording. Why?”
“I thought maybe I could pick up some extra work. I thought your production company might be able to use a salesman, part-time, maybe?”
“Well, Jack, it’s not my production company, but I sure can talk to the boss lady for you. She’s here, now, if you want to see if you can see her.”
“That’d be great.”
“I’ll go get her for you. Give me about fifteen minutes. She’s probably just finishing her breakfast about now, and might not be dressed yet.”
“She lives here?”
“Sure. So do I. There’s four apartments here. She uses one, her ex-husband who manages the place has another, and me and another permanent member of the troupe use the other two. When I say I live in the theater, I ain’t kidding, booby. Be back in a flash. A fifteen-minute flash, that is.”
She stood up. Her jeans were so tight they were sucked up into her pubis. It was a wonder she could walk in the damn things, but she did, and then I was alone with her stocky coworker, who put down her paint brush and said, “Buy you a cup of coffee, friend?”
I took her up on it, and soon we were sitting at a ringside table, drinking instant coffee. Her name was Martha and she had pretty features buried in a pale round face and smoked two Camels in rapid succession as we
