“Hit it,” she shouted as she stuck out her bottom for Zorro to bite. The next fifteen minutes defied logic. Sassy gyrated. Zorro gnashed. Roger sang. Zach and I grunted, searching desperately for a noise that sounded like a kidney or a bowel.
As Roger warbled about bloody appendages in an up-tempo jazzy beat, Zorro hopped out of the kiddie pool and darted to the wings. He dragged out a glittering pink pole that he’d clearly stashed as a just in case prop. Straddling the pole, he did a routine that would have made the Goddess blush. Sassy, not to be outdone by her fabulous, bare-assed goat co-star, grabbed her broom and made it an obscene duet.
Roger’s visually disgusting lyrics punctuated by laughing grunts from Zach and me created a shitshow like no other. It was mortifying, hilarious and so very wrong. However, the crowning jewel was when Sassy waved her hands and dressed all of us in matching pink ass-less leather chaps.
“Nope,” Zach yelled, falling over and laughing. “I’m done.”
“Oh my Goddess,” I said, looking over my shoulder at my bare butt. “I don’t think the sheriff would wear something with his ass hanging out.”
“However, the ass is outstanding,” Zach commented as I blushed furiously.
Sassy bounced over and grinned. “I don’t need to send the note,” she told me. “He definitely likes you.”
Waving my hand, I replaced my obscene pants with a rocking Prada mini dress. “Yep. He likes me. No need for the note.”
“I’m just so excited he’s not a hermaphrodite,” she said, hopping onto her broom and flying in tiny circles around the kiddie pool.
“AND CUT. I’m BRILLIANT,” Mae Blockinschlokinberg yelled as her followers applauded with gusto. “That was perfect. Bob, did you get all of that down?”
“For real?” Bob choked out, yanking at the few hairs left in his unibrow.
I was going to have to supply Bob with many unibrows over the next week. He was plucking them off as fast as I was putting them back on.
“Yesssssssss, for real,” Mae Blockinschlokinberg snarled. “What we just observed was utter brilliance from my unparalleled prowess. Nothing like this has ever been performed. It’s genius because of me. I shall be the toast of the community theatre world. I’ll be back tomorrow. We will add the orgy and the grisly death of the sheriff. And fire the costumers. The show shall be done in the nude.”
“What the fuck?” Zach muttered, shaking his head and squinting at all of us in shock.
“Hang on a sec. I’d like to call a quick cast meeting,” I insisted as Mae Blockinschlokinberg stared daggers at me.
“I second that,” Zach said, backing me up.
“And I third it,” Bob added in a defeated tone.
Bob, Roger, Zorro, Sassy, Zach and I huddled together on the stage out of earshot of the insane woman.
“What’s wrong?” Sassy whispered.
“Everything, guurrlfriend,” Zorro said with a chuckle. “While I have no problem sharing my fine tushy with the world. Not sure displaying my Johnson is a good plan in my newly adopted town.”
Roger’s nose twitched and he wrung his hands. “I’m afraid Zorro is correct. Swinging Johnsons and bouncing bosoms don’t really scream family-friendly show.”
The crazed clicking and flashing of phone cameras made me glance to the back of the room.
“Do her minions ever speak?” I asked, watching the little horrors point and take pictures of us while Mae Blockinschlokinberg paced the back of the hall, looking like a bomb about to go off.
“Haven’t heard them utter a word,” Roger said with a shudder.
“They probably speak Nard-Hole-ish,” Sassy informed us, nodding her head seriously. “It’s the language of ass-pipes who have no fashion sense and are addicted to their phones.”
There was a moment of silence after Sassy’s revelation… or it was possible we needed a few seconds to bite back our laughter. Sassy was a font of nonsense, and I liked her more with each bizarre fact.
“I need a clarification,” Bob said, getting back to the matter at hand. “Is there an orgy in Jaws?”
“Not that I recall,” Roger volunteered, scratching his head in confusion.
“No, guurrlfriends and boyfriends,” Zorro said. “There was no orgy in Jaws.”
“And I die a grisly death?” I questioned. “In the movie, Roy Scheider lives.”
“I can’t do this,” Zach said, snapping his fingers and replacing his assless pink chaps with a pair of faded jeans that made my mouth water. “Actually, none of us should do this. We will never live this down.”
“As much as I want to win an award, I have to agree,” Bob said sadly.
Roger shook his head and bounced on his toes. “I concur. We will have to take the financial hit and the insufferable gloating from the Tennessee Man-Titty Thespians. It will be a bitter pill to swallow, but maybe a few years from now, we can redeem our heartbreaking and humiliating failure. We must fire Mae Blockinschlokinberg.”
Bob pulled a plastic baggy of berries from his pocket and swallowed them back like they were antacids. Waving my hand, I supplied everyone with nose plugs. I had no problem with Bob needing his magical berries, I simply didn’t want the stage covered in vomit when he started tooting. We had enough of a mess to deal with as it was.
“I’ll make up the financial loss,” Zach said before I could volunteer. “I would be delighted to cough up my savings to get out of this. How much did you pay Mae Blockinschlokinberg?”
“Two hundred thousand dollars,” Bob whispered, starting to cry as he kept cramming berries into his mouth. “Our investor is likely to be very upset.”
“Understatement,” Roger agreed with agitation.
“Wow,” I muttered, thinking my twenty thousand in the bank wouldn’t even help much. Any time I’d needed money over the years, I’d taught botany in magical schools. As a dryad, it fit my skillset perfec-tree-ly. I’d have to log a heck of a lot of hours in the classroom to help Bob and Roger out. “That’s a lot of money.”
Zorro fainted.
“I can't
