LITMIR.BIZ

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hours later, Maggie was exhausted.

      And Matt was silent in the car on the way home. It wasn’t until an hour later that he turned from staring out the office window to say, “Have you come across blueprints and specs for the construction of the plant?”

      “I just saw them.” Maggie dug through the piles of papers and files, and found the thick three-ringed binder. She hefted the blueprints onto the table. “What do we need these for?”

      “Hmm,” Matt said. He punched the speaker phone and dialed. “Hey, Steve, it’s Matthew Stone.”

      Steve? As in Stevie? As in her brother? She hadn’t thought Matt was serious about…

      “Yo, Matthew Stone.” It was indeed Stevie. “’Sup, my man?”

      “How are you at Internet research?”

      “I think I once surfed around looking for historical information on the Ramones,” Stevie said. “Why?”

      Maggie rolled her eyes. “He got 1520 on his SATs.”

      “Hush there, Mags,” Stevie said. “If you say that too loudly, you’ll ruin my rep. Chicks don’t dig the brainiacs.”

      “You want to bet?” Maggie countered.

      “Steve, you want to earn twenty bucks an hour?” Matt asked.

      “Tell me who to kill,” her brother said. “I’ll ask no questions.”

      “Consider yourself hired,” Matt said.

      “When do I start?”

      “Now. I need you to get me all the information you can find about… got a pencil?”

      “No,” Stevie said, “but for twenty bucks an hour, I’ll open a vein and write with my own blood.”

      “Get a pencil,” Matt said. He looked up at Maggie and smiled. “I think I can improve this company.”

      “Okay, boys and girls.” Dan Fowler raised his voice and the actors immediately fell silent. “Break’s over. We’ve got mucho work to do tonight, so don’t turn off your brains yet. Let’s walk through the blocking for the opening number. Places on stage!”

      The cast scrambled for their spots.

      Maggie moved center stage. So far Dan’s storm-trooper attitude was working. He was among the most efficient directors she’d ever worked with.

      “Okay,” Dan called. “Lucy is center. Spot comes up on her. The stage is dark and misty. Creepy crawly things start moving behind her….”

      As he spoke, the cast walked through their on-stage movements.

      “Lucy says, Stop, and the creepy things scramble away. Lights come up. Out from the wings come my men in top hats and tails. They pick her up and carry her around….”

      Maggie looked nervously at the eight men who would be hoisting her onto their shoulders in this part of the opening number. They didn’t lift her now, since it was only a walkthrough, but they were going to spend a great deal of time rehearsing this particular move, to make it look effortless.

      “On comes the full chorus, including all four secondary leads. We talk, talk, talk, sing, sing, sing. The stage is packed but the crowd parts as Cody enters upstage center.”

      This was as far as they’d got before the break.

      “Okay, Cody,” Dan ordered Matt. “You come directly downstage to Lucy. You sing your bit of the song and then you talk. Lucy, don’t back away, I want you directly center stage for the kiss that’s coming.”

      Maggie nodded, glancing up at Matt, who was making notes on his script.

      “This kiss has to be very 1940s Hollywood,” Dan continued. “Very big screen passionate. The music underneath swells, so you’ve got to time it just right. I think you’ve got eight bars of music to fill. Rhonda, dear, play it for them, would you?”

      The accompanist played as Maggie and Matt listened. God, eight bars was an awfully long time.

      “Try it with the music,” Dan ordered. “Whenever you’re ready.”

      Matt tossed down his script and positioned himself next to Maggie. “Your last line is what? So go away,” he remembered. “You should turn your back to me, as if you’re going to walk away, stage left. I’m going to grab you by the arm and swing you back around toward me, okay?”

      Maggie nodded, suddenly frightfully nervous.

      “Give us about four measures before the kiss,” Matt called to Rhonda, who began to play.

      Maggie listened for the musical cue, then turned away from Matt. He pulled her hard toward him, and she slammed into his chest. As Matt’s lips met hers, she couldn’t keep from giggling.

      “Wrong!” Dan’s nasal voice interrupted. “Stanton, you’re as stiff as a board. Get into character! Think about your motivation! This is one of Lucy’s fantasies, and she’s as hot as hell for Cody, even though she won’t admit it. Come on, people, what happened to that chemistry I saw at your audition? I want steam! I want pheromones! Try it again.”

      Once again the music started. Matt pulled her toward him, more gently this time, but she knew she was still too tense.

      “I’m sorry,” she said, pulling away before he kissed her.

      “Can we take a few minutes?” Matt called to Dan.

      “Not right now,” Dan’s bored voice intoned. “Work on it at home. We’ve got to move on.”

      “I couldn’t get into character tonight,” Maggie said in the car on the way home from rehearsal. “What’s wrong with me?”

      Matt glanced at her. Her expression in the dim reflection from the dashboard light was woeful. She was stuck inside of her own head, that’s what was wrong.

      He spun the steering wheel hard to the right, pulling into a side street. Maneuvering the car to the side of the road, he cut the engines and the lights, and they were plunged into total darkness.

      “Matt—”

      He grabbed her and kissed her.

      “There,” he said as he let her go. God, he didn’t want to let her go. But that was probably why she was freaking out about kissing him in the first place. “That’s how long those eight bars of music are. That wasn’t so terrible was it?”

      “No,” she said faintly.

      “Good,” he said as matter-of-factly as he could manage. He started the car and did a one-eighty to get them back to the main road, glad that the car was too dark for her to see his face, because his eyes surely would have betrayed him.

      Ten

      Maggie read another selection from the endless pile of business reports as she ate a bowl of oatmeal. Matt sat across from her with a giant bowl of fruit.

      She glanced up at him, and he smiled.

      “Don’t you ever eat anything but fruit for breakfast?” she asked.

      Matt laughed. “Wow, we wouldn’t do too well on the Newlywed Game, would we? No. The only thing I eat before noon is fruit.”

      “Why?”

      “Because it makes me feel healthier.”

      Maggie gazed across the table at him, wishing he’d tell her why he’d been in the hospital three years ago. But whenever she brought the topic of conversation even vaguely in that direction, he changed the subject. Like right now.

      “Speaking of newlyweds, your mother left a message on the answering machine. She wants us to come for Sunday dinner sometime next month. Talk about advance notice—I guess she figures this way we can’t make up an excuse.”

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