P.S. Liverpool will be lucky to win the match this week let alone anything else.
I checked my watch, still a couple of minutes to go. I wandered over to Vince’s cubby hole. The make-up team each had one. It was our workspace and consisted of a shelving area, a long work bench and a chair, along with a small chest of drawers.
‘Hi Vince,’ I said pointedly when he didn’t look up.
‘Oh, hi,’ he said, all smiles and fake bright eyes, as he finally lifted his head, as if he’d had no idea I was there.
I sighed. ‘Will you wish me luck?’
Vince’s mouth pulled down at either corner. ‘Glad it’s you and not me.’
‘Yeah, he’s too bloody good looking for his own good,’ I said dispiritedly.
‘Lordy girly, are we talking about the same man. Good looking?’
‘Yes, don’t you think so?’
‘You need to get some new glasses. He’s not a patch on Felix.’ Vince sounded quite aggrieved.
‘I’m not planning to be unfaithful or anything, I just noticed he was,’ I shrugged, ‘you know, rather easy on the eye.’
‘Average, darling. Average.’ Vince turned up his nose but kept his eyes down, his fingers nimbly plaiting an intricate hairpiece. ‘Unless you like that sort of thing, I guess.’ Through his strategically ripped jeans, his knee was jumping up and down with the frantic energy of teeth chattering. ‘Shouldn’t you be leaving?’
‘Are you alright Vince?’
‘Fine, why?’ he snapped.
‘Got anything nice planned this weekend? What are you up to tonight?’ I was half hoping that he might be free. With an early finish, I didn’t fancy being on my own in the flat again.
‘I’m going away.’
‘You didn’t say anything about that before.’
Vince pouted. ‘What? Now you’re like the social life police? I don’t have to tell you everything. It’s called a private life for a reason.’
I took a step back.
Vince shared anything and everything about his vibrant social life.
I put my hands up in defence, said ‘Sorry’ and got the hell out of Dodge.
Making a strategic retreat, I realised that now I was going to be late.
I skidded to a halt in the doorway to find Marcus ready and waiting, not quite drumming his fingers on his desk. There were, however, two mugs of coffee sitting there.
‘Here you go.’
I inhaled the delicious scent as he pushed one towards me.
He’d definitely earned a brownie point or two with his coffee. ‘Sorry I’m late.’
‘I expected it. I guess I should be grateful you turned up at all.’ The rueful shrug accompanying his words robbed them of any malice. A simple statement of fact which irked me even more.
‘I do have a job of my own.’
‘I know, so I’ll try and be quick today. And this will help make that job easier so that you’ll have more time. Ready for your first lesson?’
‘Not really. But in for a penny in for a pound.’
His green eyes danced with sudden amusement, transforming his face which made my body go into silly mode with my hormones hijacking any common sense and sending my pulse into overdrive. Bloody hormones. What did they know? I didn’t even like him that much.
Although I had to admit, it struck me how healthy and wholesome he looked. I might have likened him to the Prince of Darkness but he was clearly a damn sight more used to sunshine than I was. It struck me that I spent too much time with either stick thin dancers or singers with healthy diaphragms and sturdy chests and people whose working hours were principally after dark. The LMOC was my whole world and what a world it was. Most of my friends worked here. Jeanie had worked in theatre for years and had a million and one amazing stories. She’d worked with everyone who was anyone. Vince had come from provincial theatre and had less experience but had lived and breathed theatre life, so had a huge acquaintance of set designers, sound engineers and props people. My friends in the orchestra, Philippe, Guillaume, Karla and Angela had lived all over the world and came from different countries and cultures and Leonie and Sasha from the wardrobe department were slightly alternative and very bohemian. It was easy for us all to stick together because not only did we have the theatre in common, we all worked similar shift patterns.
‘Have a seat.’ He pointed to the one next to him and I realised he changed the configuration of his desk so that we could now share his monitor, with me sitting at the end of his desk. ‘You never know you might learn something.’
I sank into the chair with all the petulance of a teenager. I didn’t like the way he wrong-footed me. It made me feel out of place. This was my world. My place. I hated feeling like this. It made me act even more childishly.
‘I do know. I won’t learn anything useful because it’s not necessary.’
He leaned back and folded his arms and lifted one eyebrow in a superior fashion. I felt about five.
‘OK, how about you teach me some things?’
That sounded a bit wanky management approach to me, i.e. he was trying to butter me up. I wasn’t completely stupid.
‘Like what?’
‘How many wigs do you have in the department?’
I shrugged. ‘No idea.’
‘OK, how many in the current production of Don Giovanni?’
‘I’m impressed, you know what’s on.’ My barb struck and I saw a tiny twitch in his eye. It made me feel a bit better and then I felt ashamed that I felt like that. It was mean and uncharitable. He was new in the job. ‘There are eight main roles, the men have several wigs each, and the women have hair pieces. And some of the chorus have a wig. For this particular production, I guess we have seventeen for the principals, plus a few spares in case they get a bit untidy and we haven’t got time to redo them.’
‘What about Romeo and Juliet?’
‘You have been doing your homework. We have five for Juliet, for the principal ballerina and her understudy, thirty-five hair pieces for the corps de ballet. Wigs for the older male parts and the nurse. I think by the time we finish, we’ll have around fifty.’
‘And do you keep a record of what you’ve got? Do you keep them all? Use them again?’
‘We used to take Polaroids of everything and then file them. That was the easiest way, although a lot of the time there’ll be some one who will remember a production from way back. In that case, we’ll go and look through the old Polaroids and then look in the storeroom. Unfortunately,
