There was a tense standoff while C.J. was afraid that the bum might try to attack her person or her purse. She tried to look confident, hoping the man didn’t smell her fear. But after about half a minute, the panhandler lost interest and slunk away down the street and out of sight. C.J. watched his retreating figure until he turned a corner.
Back to the playhouse door. She was losing time. C.J. jiggled the well-worn iron handle. No luck. She looked up to see if there was another way. A sliver of light emanated from an upstairs room. Someone had left a window open on the second floor.
If at first you don’t succeed . . .
Mercifully, no one noticed the slender brunette giving her best shot at impersonating a Flying Wallenda, trying to climb the rusty, dangling fire escape ladder. Did it count as breaking-and-entering if you didn’t break anything as you ent—oops! Losing her footing, C.J. slid down a couple of rungs, scraping the length of her right leg. Dots of blood stippling her thigh and calf seeped through her pants, freckling the fabric. In about another five minutes, the long pink scratches on her pale skin would metamorphose into a red weltlike ribbon. Fighting the stinging pain, she repeated her climb.
Goddamn! Decades of paint layers on an already rotting window sash made it nearly immovable. Her hands hurt from trying to force the window open.
Flattening herself like a cockroach, C.J. wriggled through the open window, landing on the linoleum in a makeshift handstand. Her shoulder bag went skidding across the floor.
Who ever thought this little caper would be easy? C.J. asked herself as she slumped against the wall to catch her breath. After cleaning her cuts with some warm soapy water, the next goal was to get into her new loaner costume and go downstairs to the stage so she could try to get back to 1801.
She removed the blue sarcenet gown from the rolling costume rack, donned it, surveyed her image in the full-length mirror, and did a quick sartorial inventory. Underwear, petticoat, dress, hose, shoes, bonnet, gloves, reticule . . . carpetbag. C.J. placed the numerous medicine envelopes into the period prop bag, covered them with a folded blue velvet spencer, and raced downstairs to the set.
Shit! Since she’d left the theatre just a few hours earlier, the stage had been altered. It now looked as if a wrecking crew had enjoyed a field day. Set units had been turned around or moved off their tape marks. The Austens’ parlor in Steventon was once again a work in progress. The door was gone. Her door—the one that had transported her across the centuries and back—had been moved from its position as the gateway to C.J.’s other life.
She found the unit on its side, minus the wooden shims that enabled it to stand freely when secured by sandbags from the backstage side. Nothing remained of the upstage-left exit area except four small Ls made with red gaffer’s tape, marking the proper angle and placement of the door frame.
C.J. regarded the disassembled set pieces, tapped into all of her emotions, and re-created the staging for the end of the act that Beth had given her during the audition process—this time with the addition of the carpetbag—walking through the spot on the floor delineated by the red Ls.
After another maddeningly unsuccessful attempt, it was abundantly clear that C.J. was not going to be able to travel anywhere but the backstage area of the Bedford Street Playhouse. Exhausted both mentally and physically, she shuffled off to the green room, collapsed on the sofa, and fell asleep.
AFTER AWAKENING in a wrinkled dress with a stiff neck and a few abrasions from the itchy Betsie at her throat, her hand in a cramp from clutching the handle of the carpetbag as she slept, C.J. showered in her dressing room, ironed the blue sarcenet dress, and, after donning it again, debated what to do next. Ralph would have to arrive at the theatre well before today’s first rehearsal to finish putting the set back together—unless, to her horror, Beth just wanted to sit around a table for a read-through of the script. That was the customary way with first rehearsals, although her experiences with By a Lady had so far been anything but ordinary.
At half past nine, the production staff began to straggle in, provisioned with coffee, bagels, and Krispy Kreme doughnuts. Sweating like a wrestler and swigging water from a plastic sport flask, Ralph entered the building, hefting his enormous metal toolbox, which he refused to leave in the space overnight.
The designer looked at C.J., then at his watch. “Rehearsal doesn’t start for half an hour.”
“I know. I thought I might as well get into costume. Save some time.”
Ralph mopped his brow with what appeared to have been a royal blue washcloth in another life. “Don’t see why you needed to.” He gestured to the mess onstage. “I’ve got all this to deal with and get out of the way before we start,” he added, visibly stressed.
“Do you think the door will be put back, because . . . ?”
“Everything will be put back exactly the way it was when you saw it yesterday. I was trying to fix some things—like the shims on the stage-left door and the ones on the fireplace unit—and there’s a loose leg on the sofa that has me nervous. I expected to get everything done last night, but then I got a migraine in the middle of using the electric drill, and Beth suggested I give it
