The statement, Donna thought, was sincere in its artlessness. She heard no pride or self-infatuation in it. "That's very generous of you."
The woman shrugged, making her honey-blonde hair bounce healthily. "It's not generosity, I just don't need it… you see," she finished rather lamely, a bit embarrassed, Donna supposed, by her wealth.
"Still…” Donna aligned the resume and references with a sharp rap on the desk top. "I don't see any reason why you couldn't handle the position. Frankly, I think you'd be excellent. So what I'll do now is introduce you to Mr. Steinberg, Mr. Hamilton's manager."
The woman licked her lips nervously. "You mean you, uh, haven't had any other applicants?"
"Actually, we had three in yesterday. Two of them balked at the salary, and the third didn't have the… how shall I put it?" Donna laughed. "She was tastelessly dressed, huge as a cow and reeked of curry."
"Well," said the woman with a wry smile, "I'm glad I used my Scope this morning."
"Come on," Donna said, rising. "Let's go see John. I'm sure he'll love you."
She led the way into Steinberg's office. John was sitting, as usual, behind his desk. His habitual frown vanished as he saw the woman come in behind Donna. So, Donna thought, he's not invulnerable to feminine charms after all. "John," she said, "I'd like you to meet a very qualified applicant for production assistant."
Steinberg rose and came around the side of the desk. "Delighted to meet you, Miss…"
"Mrs." Donna corrected. "Mrs. Deems. Ann Deems."
~* ~
It was unlike Ann Deems to think about money, but earlier that morning, as she stood in the parking lot of the Kirkland Community Building and looked at the massive edifice before her, she had found it impossible not to. She had always felt comfortably well-off, indeed at times even wealthy. Her husband had earned well over a quarter of a million dollars a year from his law practice, and his insurance policies had left her with well over a million dollars, even after Terri's trust fund was established and the taxes and attorneys had supped their fill. Adding to it the money previously inherited from her father, Ann knew she would never have to work a day in her life to live in what most people would consider luxury.
Yet here she stood, ready to go inside this palatial building that Dennis Hamilton had purchased and apply for a no doubt poorly paying job. Her resume, such as it was, was tucked inside a three hundred dollar leather portfolio, as were recommendations from the presidents of the charities and hospitals for which she had done volunteer work for the past two decades.
Ironically, she had Terri to thank for showing her the advertisement. It had been in Backstage, and read:
WANTED: Clerical production assistant for New American Musical Theatre Project. Secretarial skills required. Apply Venetian Theatre, Kirkland Community Building, Kirkland, PA 17571.
"A little something to do in your copious free time," Terri had said offhandedly. "If you think you can keep from attacking the mogul who runs the joint."
Ann had ignored the sarcasm, and had tossed the Backstage onto the coffee table of the den, trying to forget both the ad and Dennis Hamilton. But the sparse words in the tabloid haunted her for the rest of the day, and the following morning she called her colleagues in philanthropy and asked for references, which they were happy to provide, for Ann was unlike most of the society women who offered one or two hours a week to the local hospital or library or children's home. Her interest was heartfelt, and she gave not only of her money but her time. She had never worked less than twenty hours a week at her different charities, and her involvement was deep and often emotionally searing.
For three years she had been a lay counselor at a juvenile hospice, working with dying children for several hours three days a week, playing with them, listening to their fears and concerns, and comforting them as best she could. It was harrowing and rewarding work, and in no time she had earned the respect of both administrators and nurses by not only her emotional involvement, but by her willingness to do even such menial chores as cleaning up the younger children's toilet mishaps.
Besides the hospice, Ann had also volunteered her time to the YWCA, the local Blind Association, and several retirement communities, and had done secretarial work for a farmland conversation group, an act that did nothing to endear her to several of her friends, some of whose husbands happened to be developers.
When she asked herself why, after so many years of volunteer work, she should be considering taking a paying job, she told herself that it was not because the New American Musical Theatre Project had anything to do with Dennis Hamilton. Rather it was because she believed that the goals of the project were worthy. She and Eddie had made innumerable trips into Manhattan to see shows (she preferred plays, while Eddie had liked musicals), and she knew full well that American musical theatre was in the doldrums, if not in its death throes. The good musicals all seemed to be British, and although Ann thought most of the classic American works such as Rodgers and Hammerstein and Lerner and Loewe were often sloppily sentimental, she knew too that they had produced great songs and lasting stories, and she was damned if she could think of a single tune from, say, Sundays in the Park With George, as innovative as it was.
Too, Ann was interested in theatre from backstage. She had worked with her local little theatre group as assistant stage manager, props person, and costume assistant over the years, and had even directed a production of The Importance of Being Earnest in 1982, which was well reviewed in the local paper. The experience, however, had left her shaken, and she had never wanted to direct again. The clash of personalities, as well as the backbiting and pettiness that seemed to be part and parcel of even an amateur group, strengthened her resolve to remain backstage rather than onstage, as far away from the actors as possible.
So, she felt, with her own interest and involvement in theatre and the worthiness of Dennis Hamilton's project, it made sense for her to pursue this new possibility. After all, Kirkland was only forty miles away – an hour's drive at most.
Ann looked at the building again, at the classical fa c ade of light gray limestone. Higher, beneath the roof lines, were ornate moldings of grapevines from which peered faces of mythological deities, and above, the red Roman tiles of the multi-leveled roof on whose corners perched occasional gargoyles, carved in unexpectedly benign and reflective poses. There was money, she thought, and there was money. She had the former, while Dennis Hamilton had the latter. Not for a minute did she begrudge it of him. He had worked hard – that much she had known years before when they had first met – and over those years he had entertained millions, brought a story of love and fidelity and honor into lives that often knew those things in no other way.
No, she thought, Dennis Hamilton deserved his money, his theatre, deserved everything he had. And Ann Deems would have felt that way even if she had not still loved him.
She had taken a deep breath then and started across the parking lot, and now here she was, sitting in the office of John Steinberg, the same man she had seen on Entertainment Tonight only a few weeks before. Donna Franklin had excused herself and left. Steinberg had been, for the last five minutes, looking over her file of papers. At last he glanced up, and Ann was relieved to see that he was smiling.
"This looks very good," he told her, aligning the papers in the same way that Donna Franklin had done before. "Your secretarial skills are certainly up to what we'd need – at least for this job. And you do have some experience in theatre."
" Little theatre," Ann reminded him.