Love Comes Calling (3 page)

I closed my eyes.

There wasn't anything else to do, and I really didn't want to see where I was headed.

M
y landing wasn't quite what I'd expected. It was much softer, and it was also accompanied by a grunt. A very masculine grunt. Which was followed by a laugh and the scent of black licorice. “Fancy seeing you here, Ellis.”

I'd shut my eyes up so tight it took me a moment to open them. And another long moment to believe what they insisted on telling me. Apparently, my attempt at escape had been spotted, and when I'd fallen it had been straight into the arms of Griffin Phillips.

He was staring down at me, his blond hair flopping forward into those gorgeous blue eyes he had. “Are you all right?”

Someone started up a Harvard fight song, and all the fraternity brothers joined in.

Griff slung me over his shoulder as if I were some damsel in distress and ran several yards down the grass before stopping and setting me carefully down on the ground. Everyone cheered as if he'd just scored another touchdown.

Rah-rah. Sis-boom-bah.

I pushed through the boys and headed out toward the street.

Griff jogged to catch up with me. “Hey—you headed to the theater? Can I come with you?”

“Sure.” Why not? I would have done better just to have opened the front door to him in the first place, but that's about the way things had been going this term, and there was no reason to think they might change now.

We walked together, Griff whistling the way he usually did and me wishing I were anywhere but there. He shot a glance over at me. “What were you doing on that gutter anyway?”

“I was trying to leave.”

He squinted at me. “Wasn't the front door working?”

“I wanted to make a quick getaway.”

He smiled that old Griff smile, which always made me want to smile too. So I did. And then I started to laugh.

“That's what I like about you, Ellis. You're always doing things no one else would ever think of.”

Then he was the only one who liked that about me. But that's exactly why I liked him too. He'd never once, in all the time I'd known him, said, “Oh, Ellis!” or shaken his head over some dumb thing I'd done . . . or tried to do.

He slanted a look over at me. “There's something I've been meaning to ask you.”

Oh, crumb. “And there's something I've wanted to ask you too.”

“Then go ahead. Please. You first.”

I knew I could count on him to be a gentleman!

“So . . . what was it?”

Oh. Well, now I had to think of something to say. “I was wondering . . . wanting to know . . . what do you think about . . . ?” What? What would make him go on and on long enough to
make him forget about his fraternity pin? And me. Harvard? No. Bad idea. That would just make him think about his fraternity again. Football? No, the season was long over. Baseball! “What do you think about Roy Powell?”

“You mean about the trade?”

“You can't really call it a trade if he refused to be traded.” That's what my brother Lawrence had taken to saying.

“Well, now . . . I don't know if I agree with that.” He talked up and down and around both sides of the issue until we reached the theater, just as I'd known he would. He was studying to be a lawyer, after all.

I ran up the steps ahead of him and opened the door. “Thanks for walking me over. There sure is lots to do to get ready. . . .”

He caught up with me and took hold of the door, pulling it open wider. “But I wanted to ask you if—”

One of the freshman girls came toward us. “There you are! One of the curtains won't work, and I can't find the flashlight and—”

“The curtain always catches. You just have to know how to pull it the right way.” I sent a glance back over my shoulder at Griff as I gave a shrug. “Come with me, and I'll show you.”

After I'd taught her how to coax the curtain open and closed, I went on a search for the missing flashlight. Without it, the props girl would never be able to see in the dim light backstage. There were always a million things to do the afternoon of a performance, and they kept me busy enough to avoid Griff, who finally decided to change into his costume and then take a seat out in the auditorium to wait.

About forty-five minutes before show time, my assistant
walked up as she consulted a clipboard. “Everyone is here except for two of the trolls, the maid, and the queen.”

The queen: Irene. I could have torn my hair out. This play was mine. I'd written it for my English 47 class; my professor had let me direct it, and I was also acting in it. Lots of the girls had wanted to play the queen, but I'd chosen Irene because she was the person I'd imagined as I wrote the part back at the beginning of the year. Since I'd cast her, however, she'd been nothing but trouble.

I told her to send someone over to the dormitory to look for Irene.

As she left by way of the stage, I saw Griff back in the far corner of the theater, talking to a man with hair so slick it might have been patent leather. Though he was too old to be a student, he looked too young to be a parent. As I watched, he laid a hand on Griff's arm.

Griff shrugged it off and turned away, walking down the theater toward me.

The man darted in front of him, putting a hand to Griff's chest. “It's not like we're asking for the whole season. Just one game. A couple of plays. That's all.”

Sidestepping the man, Griff continued on toward me.

“Tell me you'll at least think about it! He won't take no for an answer.”

“I already told you: I can't.”

“You mean you won't, that's all!” The man turned on his heel, jammed his hat on his head, and stormed away.

“What did he want?”

Griff shrugged. “He just wanted to talk about football.”

Football! That's all anyone ever seemed to talk about.
Another reason to be glad I wouldn't be here in September. “Forget about football.” I pulled him over to the props table and . . . was that the flashlight? Squinting, I grabbed at it. It was! I switched it on.

Unfortunately, it was pointed right at Griff.

He put a hand up in front of his eyes. “Watch it!”

I swung the light toward the table as I switched it off. “Sorry.” I grabbed his crown and stood on tiptoe to set it on his head. Then I pressed a mustache to his upper lip. Pulling his cape from a chair, I handed it to him. “Could you put this on?”

A growing murmur from the other side of the curtain told me the audience was starting to arrive.

“Do I have to?”

“You're the king. Of course you have to.”

He grimaced. “I'm only doing this because you asked me to.”

Oysters and clambakes! You'd think I'd asked him to fly to the moon and back instead of giving him the starring role in my play. “Do you remember your lines?”

“Of course I remember my lines!” He scowled and walked off, muttering to himself.

Normally, Griff wasn't involved with theater, but I'd begged him to do my play. If truth be told, he wasn't very good at acting in general, but I knew he'd be terrific in this part because all he had to do was be himself: strong, kind, smart, loyal, handsome, steadfast, resolute, considerate, and . . . well . . . perfect.

I went and put my costume on. I was the court jester, providing the comic relief for the tragedy through a running gag and a series of misunderstandings. It wasn't a big part,
but it was important, and it left me free most of the time to supervise. When I returned to the props table, my assistant was standing there with Irene, clutching the clipboard to her chest.

“Have you seen the trolls and the maid yet?”

“They're in the washroom, changing.”

Good. I opened the curtains and took a peek. People were starting to come in, although my parents weren't yet among them. I looked the scenery over. One of the trees had a precarious tilt. I sent a stagehand out to fix it. Then I found the prompter's copy of the play, sent the actors for the first scene out, and made sure the props girl stood at her station beside the table. I checked my watch, signaled the boy in charge of the lights, and . . . the lights dimmed.

I held my breath as the curtain opened without a hitch and the play began.

At the end of the first act, I came off the stage to the applause of the crowd and then, backstage, to the applause of the girls. Most of them, anyway. All of them except for Irene. She was scowling. “It's easy to act when you're not really acting.”

Not acting! I'd given everything I had to be a perfect—if silly—jester. And at least I was making people laugh. When she was on stage she just sat on her throne, looking as if she'd rather be somewhere,
anywhere
, else. “You should know. You hardly bothered to show up to half the practices. Why did you accept the part if you didn't want to play it?”

“To keep you from making a complete fool of yourself. Only it hasn't worked, has it?”

“What is it with you? Why are you being like this?”

“I could have a perfect life, too, if I had parents like yours
and money coming out of my ears and—and an adoring boyfriend. You're just so—so—
good
sometimes. I could just about scream!”

Good? Me?

“Not all of us are as lucky as you. Sometimes you have to figure out what it takes to get ahead and then just do it. Sometimes you have to put your inhibitions aside.”

What was she talking about?

“Don't you ever get tired of doing the right thing all the time?”

“I'm not like you think I am, Irene! I mean—”

“Just let me be.”

A hand on my shoulder stopped me when I would have replied. As she turned away, Griff pulled me to his side and gave my shoulder a squeeze. “Don't let her get to you. She's just jealous.”

“Of . . . me?”

“Who wouldn't be?”

Who wouldn't be? Who
would
be was the better question.

“Besides, it takes someone really smart to pretend to be so stupid.”

I didn't have time to respond because one of the trolls needed a costume repair. I sent him to the costumes girl to have it patched, then helped the stagehands move the scenery. Once everything was in place, I put the actors and actresses in their positions. But then Griff came up to me, his mustache dangling.

I swiped the jar of spirit gum from the props table and applied some more to the dent above his lip. “Don't breathe so hard! You're making the mustache move.”

His nose had wrinkled. “That smells terrible!”

Over to my left, one of Griff's fraternity brothers was pacing behind the curtain, out of glimpse of the audience.

“Stage right is actually to the left only when you're looking up at the stage. Remember?”

“What?” Griff was looking down his nose at me.

“Not you. I'm talking to Richard.” I pressed my finger to Griff's lip and motioned for his fraternity brother to go across to the other side. To the real stage right. How on earth did any of them ever catch a football if they couldn't be in the right place at the right time?

Beside us, another of his fraternity brothers had been reciting his lines.

I kicked at what I hoped were his shins as I applied some more spirit gum to Griff's mustache.

“Ow! What'd you do that for?”

“You have the emphasis on the wrong word. Put it on the last one, not the first one.”

He repeated it. “Like that?”

“Right.”

I glanced up at Griff. He seemed so stiff all of a sudden. His face had gone red. Had he been holding his breath that whole time?

“I didn't mean for you to go all purple. Just . . . don't exhale quite so strongly.”

He let out his pent-up breath with a whoosh of licorice-scented air.

I sighed as his mustache lifted up and flapped free.

“Just . . .” I took his hand and lifted it to his lip. “Just hold it there for a while. It should set before you have to go on.”

As I'd been gluing Griff's mustache, Irene had peeked out around the edge of the curtain. Now she turned to me, eyes wide. “I have to go.”

“Not yet. You don't go on until midway through the scene.” I recited her cue.

She'd put the crepe-papered whisk she was using as a scepter down on the props table and shrugged out of her fur-tipped cloak. “I mean I have to leave.”

“Leave?
Now
? But—but you can't!”

She'd found her cloche hat and pocketbook and was touching up her lipstick by the illumination of the flashlight. She regarded herself in the mirror, rubbing her lips together and smiling into her compact mirror. Then she snapped it shut. “It can't be helped. You'll have to do without me.”

“You can't just leave!” But apparently, she could. I watched as, out behind the audience, she joined a tall beanpole of a man dressed in black tie. She sent one last look over her shoulder toward the stage as he grabbed at her hand and pulled her away.

“Where'd Irene go?” The props girl was standing there holding Irene's scepter.

“She's . . . gone.”

“Gone where?”

“I don't know.” It didn't matter. We still had half the play left, and I had to figure out how to make the show go on without her.