"Huh?" The woman almost collided with Temple, then eyed her costume in confusion. "Wrong? Hell, yes. You're all dressed and ready to go. Oh, what am I gonna do? There's no time."
Temple resisted the temptation to hunt for a rabbit hole. "What's wrong?"
"One of the boys--the contestants--he--oh, my--split out his costume and we have to start the rehearsal in a couple minutes and he's on first!"
"Isn't there an emergency-fix basket in the dressing room?"
"Huh?" Brown eyes set in maroon bezels of fatigue blinked dolefully. "We're not using the regular dressing rooms."
"Where is the side-splitting hunk?"
The woman gestured wildly toward the opposite wings. Temple took off in that direction, long brocade skirts swishing. Behind her came the bunny-trail thump-thumps of the hapless Wardrobe Witch.
"We're all assigned certain contestants to dress," the woman behind Temple chattered in breathless relief now that she had found a partner in panic. "We're responsible. It's not as if this is the actual pageant, but Mr. Dove demands promptness, and poor Lance is competing for the first time and so nervous. If he misses his cue, or worse, looks laughable, it will simply shatter his confidence for the actual pageant. Poor fellow--"
"Listen. If I can find that basket, and I know there's one somewhere, everything will be fine."
The object of their concern came into view like a lachrymose landmark: a tall young man wearing a white, full-sleeved shirt open to the navel. He was standing in pale relief against the backdrop, watching for his wardrobe witch like some Romeo aching for a glimpse of Juliet. He hardly glanced at Temple, which, given her lusty wench's getup, was a testimony either to his anxiety-level, or his sexual preferences.
"Follow me," Temple said briskly, passing him without a pause to snatch her duffel bag from the floor and continue offstage. Now the clump-clump of boots trailed the sneaker-muted thump-thumps of the Wardrobe Witch.
What a parade they must make! The Wench, the Witch and the Wardrobe. And the luckless Wearer of the torn-asunder Wardrobe.
Temple pattered down the concrete stairs to the basement and dashed into the Four Queens'
dressing room. Last night she had automatically noticed just what they needed.
In the corner where dressing tables and mirrors met sat an innocuous basket overflowing with odds and ends--extra false eyelashes and fingernails, glue, safety and bobby pins, spare feathers and. . .
viola, as we say in freshman French! A tidy sewing kit with scissors, needles and a rainbow variety of threads.
"Here!" She grabbed the kit and held it out to. .. "What's your name?" she asked the Wardrobe Witch.
"Mary Lou. And this is Lance." The hunk waited diffidently at the dressing-room door, head hung.
Temple nodded, thrusting the show-saving kit at Mary Lou, whose hands, even now wringing before the prancing unicorn on her sweatshirt, abruptly vanished behind her back.
"Oh, no. No, I couldn't," she demurred, bit her lip and backed away as if Temple was proffering Cleopatra's asp. "I can't . . . sew.
Mary Lou almost looked embarrassed, as well she should--a woman her age afraid of a little needle and thread.
Exasperated, Temple turned to Lance, getting a better gander at the hapless hunk. He was the usual good-looks-gifted, weight-lifted he-man hero with thick, wavy, coffee-colored shoulder-length hair Cher would envy. And, at a raw twenty-one or -two, he was one of the youngest contestants.
Mary Lou was backing all the way out of the room now. "I'll wait. Outside." She eyed a big-dialed watch whose pink plastic strap cut into her chubby wrist. "Hurry! Lance is due onstage in only a couple of minutes."
"So am I!" Temple said.
And she did loathe late entrances, for rehearsals, and especially for dress rehearsals, even when she loathed the forthcoming onstage follies even more.
No time to wonder why the Wardrobe Witch had deserted her post. The show must go on! Temple pulled her glasses from the case in her duffel bag.
"Where's the problem?" she asked Lance, selecting a needle with a large, easily penetrated eye and hunting for white thread.
His odd silence in a crisis made her look up.
Lance was looking down.
Temple looked down.
Oh.
She began looking for black thread, and lots of it.
A seam in Lance's black leather like pants had split open. Temple could see why, now that his nether regions were no longer lost against the black backdrop of a curtain. The skin-tight legs laced up open sides. Apparently an enthusiastic, or nervous, lacer--like Mary Lou--had overtightened the lacing.
Something had to give, and had, in the most unfortunate location: a seven-inch seam along the front fly.
"I can take 'em off," Lance suggested lamely, eyeing Temple's glasses with visible doubt.
"No time." But he knew that already, else why would he be so pale and wan, prithee? "Stand here."
The overhead light was thinner than chicken consumme, and theatrical makeup lights didn't shine past the dressing table edge. So Temple backed him tight against the table, knotted her double thread-end four secure times and went to her beskirted knees. At least the yardage cushioned the hard floor.
Needle poised to strike, she analyzed the truly prodigious problem. The needle had to pierce the fabric at an angle in order to suture the seam shut. Given the nature of the costume and the site of the split, any too-vigorous thrust ran the risk of spearing the wearer rather than the wearing apparel, and in a place best left unstimulated in any way, pleasant or painful.
Temple sighed. Lance said nothing.
Like national disasters, theatrical crises bring out the best in people, a neighborly no-nonsense coping. Each participant braced to ignore the task's inescapably delicate nature.
Lance gazed around the dressing room, his eyes on everything but the site of the tragedy and Temple's needle.
Temple concentrated on the task at hand, rather than its social ramifications. She had to draw the straining fabric closer, then quickly slice the needle through one side and out the other before tension sprung it apart again.
If the material hadn't been a somewhat sleazy leather substitute, she couldn't have done it at all. Still, the fabric was tough enough to resist the needle point.
"Two minutes, folks!" boomed Danny Dove's brisk, martinet voice from the dressing-room speaker set high on the wall. He meant it.
They both jumped, then froze.
Temple drove the needle into the next stitch, trying not to grunt and grit her teeth as she forced the tip through the resistant fabric. Grunting might make the guy nervous.
She couldn't help speculating idly as she struggled to close the gap in the rended seam. Rock stars were known to bolster their crotches with socks, just as women had used handkerchiefs in their bras long before the lingerie industry had thoughtfully provided the proper inflationary devices.
Did Incredible Hunk candidates resort to such cheesy stratagems? If so, dumping any stuffing would make her task much easier, and swifter to accomplish. Surely Lance would have thought of that, and suggested any sacrificeable flotsam to throw overboard in an emergency like this. Then again, Temple would hardly toss her Wonderbra at a male tailor were the situation reversed, so she could only . . . er, wonder.
And if this was not a case of artificial amplification, the interesting question became just how well-endowed Incredible Hunks were. Certainly considering the conundrum in long, Latinate words kept the speculations on a disinterested, academic plane. Plane ... or fancy.
Temple's needle plunged on. She also explored black thoughts about amateur dressers who are not professional enough to perform awkward but necessary theatrical tasks. Grandmothers who were far better equipped than she to deal dispassionately with strange young men--rather, young men who were strangers--and the more private parts of their anatomy. Grandmothers who had diapered and potty-trained and done heaven-knows-what-else and should be as asexual as amoebas by now.