“Years from now. You know, when I learn every pipe and joint and grid in the city.”
“Have you mastered the plumbing in Bella Vista yet? We have a problem over on Montrose you need to address,” Nicky complained. “They’ve been digging trenches for months. And we’ve had some backup in the basement. I should know. That’s where my room is. Maybe you can come over and do some pumping.”
Calla laughed. “He’s not a plumber.”
“But he probably has a snake. You have a snake, Frank?”
“Sure.”
Nicky looked at Calla. “See? He has a snake.”
“We get it. He has a snake.” Peachy pinched Nicky to get him off the subject. Nicky had no instincts when it came to knowing the difference between important people and regular people, and what’s appropriate to say to one group as opposed to the other. Frank Arrigo obviously was on his way to being important, but Nicky would be the last person to figure that out. It was one of the little things about her fiancé that annoyed her, but Peachy was confident she could fix his poor social instincts after the wedding.
Nicky was sizing up Frank Arrigo, like an older brother might have if Calla had one. Frank seemed all right. Calla’s feelings toward Frank, however, were hard to read, and Nicky wondered if she knew something he didn’t.
*
Frank Arrigo sat on the worktable in the costume shop at Borelli’s as Calla prepped and organized a few pieces for the next day’s performance. Frank fiddled with the dial on the freestanding radio until he found a clear station playing Perry Como.
The costume shop was a large room in the basement of the theater, as much a museum of memorabilia of past shows as it was a factory for the important work of the designer and her crew.
A large flat table surrounded by metal stools took up the center of the room. There was a bin with large bolts of plain beige muslin, next to another filled with bolts of cotton cloth in shades of turquoise, yellow, orange, and deepest blue. Shelves were stacked with sheaths of fabric remnants, and boxes marked buttons, zippers, and thread. The walls were decorated with photographs of actors in all manner of Elizabethan costumes.
A floor-to-ceiling corkboard held the sketches of the costume designs for the current production. Next to the sketches, Bonnie had posted a list of the stock pieces from the inventory closet including gowns, tunics, cassocks, skirts, and knickers used in Twelfth Night.
A large round clock with a constant tick hung over a three-way mirror and standing stool. There were clocks in every workroom in the theater to encourage the crew to press through to hit their deadlines, or perhaps because a wealthy patron had died and left all her clocks to Borelli’s, and Sam’s philosophy was anything donated was used.
Frank picked up a cloth tomato stuffed with fitting pins and examined it. “Do you do everything around here?”
“Sometimes I have to. Don’t get me wrong, I have a lot of help. But things have changed. We used to have big crews, but not anymore.” Calla turned a velvet tunic inside out and placed it on the worktable, smoothing it flat. She misted it with a solution before hanging, tagging, and placing it on a rack marked “Chorus.”
“Do you do this every night?”
“Once a week. The actors are great about taking care of their costumes. But we can’t afford to send them out to be dry-cleaned until the end of a run, so we maintain them ourselves.” Calla shook the glass bottle with a mister nozzle on the end. “Vodka.”
“Usually on a date, the vodka’s in the lady’s cocktail I’ve bought her. She isn’t spraying it on costumes.”
Calla laughed. “Sorry, Frank. Welcome to the theater. This is an old trick my mom taught me.” Calla turned Viola’s finale costume, a sumptuous purple silk taffeta gown with a train and gold Edwardian braiding, inside out. She gently laid the garment on the table. “This costume has been used in our shows for as long as I can remember. Every leading lady has worn it. Every Luciana and Desdemona and Ophelia. We change the trim or add a different collar or a new sleeve. The audience is never the wiser.” Calla carefully misted the lining without making the fabric too damp.
“You know I don’t know anything about theater.”
“Would you like to learn?”
“Do I have to?”
Calla laughed. “That’s honest.”
“But I am interested in you.”
Calla blushed. “How could you be interested in me and not what I do?”
“Do you like cleaning septic tanks?”
“No.”
“And I wouldn’t expect you to—but it’s part of my job.”
“Fair enough.”
“We have enough in common to keep us interested in one another.”
“You think so?”
“I’m sure of it. See, you have exactly three freckles on your perfect nose.” Frank jumped off the table and, catching Calla off guard, swept her into his arms. “My folks fell in love at the Saint Donato Dance in 1917 before my dad went to fight in the Great War. Do you dance?”
Before Calla could answer, Frank spun her around the costume shop, accidentally stepping on her toes.
“Was that lead foot mine or yours?”
“It’s your fault. You were leading.”
“I was not!”
“It couldn’t have been me. I took lessons,” Frank said proudly.
“You should ask for your money back.”
“No refunds.”
“That’s unfortunate for your bank account and my feet.” Calla curtsied and went back to working on the costume.
“How old are you, Calla?”
“Twenty-four. How old are you?”
“Thirty-three.”
Calla whistled.
“Too old for you?”
“No. That’s the age my dad was when he took over the theater.”
“And he retired from here?”
“He worked here all his life.”
“How did it make it?”
“There were times when we didn’t have a lot. A flop can set a family back. But Dad would figure out how to turn it around. Usually it involved mounting a comedy.”
“People like to laugh.”
“They do. And they used to go to the theater.”
“I just bought a television set.”
“Really?” Calla was intrigued. “What’s it like?”
“I’ll have to show you sometime. It’s fascinating. Now, maybe that’s because it’s a new gizmo. But you can see Martin and Lewis and all sorts of entertainers that you’d have to wait to see in a club or in the movies—but now you can sit at home and see them. I’m thinking it could take off.”
“I was hoping it would fail.”
“So your business would pick up?”
“So the world wouldn’t change so fast.”
“What’s wrong with change?”
Calla shrugged. “What’s wrong with holding on to a ritual that’s been around as long as people? There’s something sacred about an audience coming to see actors tell a story. It used to be enough just to tell the story well. But audiences want more. I wish I knew how to bring audiences in to see the shows. I think if they saw one, they’d want to come all the time.”
“Maybe the theater is too old-fashioned,” Frank suggested.