Amy hated technical rehearsals. They were slow and they were tedious. Every five minutes the director would yell "STOP!" and everything would grind to a halt while Harry or Harold or whatever the slimy little idiot who operated the lights' name was scampered up a ladder and yanked one of the lights three millimetres to the left.
Tonight was no different. Amy and the rest of the cast of 'Earthly Delights' stood on the stage, grumbling to themselves, as the director shouted "bit more... bit more... bit more... too far!" up the ladder at Whatshisname. Amy's best friend, Shona, sidled up beside her and flicked at the antennae that Amy was forced to wear on her head and laughingly call a costume.
"Not very busy, are we, Bee?" smirked Shona. Amy simply cast her friend a stern, withering look and wondered why she'd decided to do the production this year. The play, 'Earthly Delights', was an epic voyage through the wonders our own, little planet has to offer. It had been penned by one Cecil Winstock, the local Drama teacher and self-appointed director of this, the local amateur dramatics company. Amy, for her sins, had been cast as the narrator. The narrator, she was depressed to learn, happened to be a bee. Why? Who knows…
Amy stared at Whatshisname grappling with one of the spotlights and sighed. "We go through this charade every single year. You'd think someone would have the sense to come in here the night before and set the lights out the way they're needed."
"You'd think so, wouldn't you?" agreed Shona. The two girls watched apathetically as Whatshisname lost his balance and nearly plummeted to the floor, saving himself only by grabbing onto the spotlight and hanging on for dear life. Cecil Winstock yelped like a girl as a dropped blue gel skirted inches past his face and old Mrs. Brady, the piano player, nearly fainted at the clatter it made when it hit the wood floor. "Still," continued Shona. "It is fairly entertaining."
Amy grunted her agreement as Cecil tried to stop the ladder toppling over. "At least you don't need to worry about getting your lines right."
"Excuse me," said Shona, indignantly. "I'll have you know that I'm under a considerable amount of pressure to get my lines spot-on!"
Amy looked at her friend, incredulously. "You've only got three lines! And one of those is just a sneeze!"
"A sneeze that, if snorted out at the wrong moment, could completely throw the entire production into disarray!"
Amy turned back to see if Whatshisname had fallen from the lighting rig yet. He hadn't. "I'm sure we'd cope with a misplaced cough," she said.
"Sneeze, if you please," retorted Shona. "But you're probably right, although you would have imagined that the Queen of Sheba would have had more than two lines and a bless you, ma'am."
"I certainly would have," said Amy, as she stared into space and wished she was someplace else. Quite why the Queen of Sheba had been written into the play nobody could fathom. It had something to do with representing the beauty of the East, Amy reckoned, but her two lines of "Once there was a land," and "To free me is to love me," followed by a sneeze had everyone perplexed. Nobody dared ask Cecil to explain, though. Or, rather, nobody cared what the explanation was so nobody bothered to ask.
As Cecil tried to position the ladder back underneath Whatshisname, to stop the boy from plunging to the floor once he lost his grip on the spotlight, Shona sighed. "Come on," she whispered to Amy. "This is going to take ages."
Shona sneaked off the stage. Amy glanced out to see if Cecil was watching and quickly followed her friend through the green room and into their dressing room.
Once inside the small box room, Amy closed the door and Shona turned on the little, portable CD player they always brought with them to rehearsals. "Why do we keep doing this?" sighed Amy, as she plonked herself down onto a seat that was swathed in discarded clothes. "Four years we've been doing this now! Four years! And we only started it because Cecil needed two girls to be his fairy twins in… what was the name of that play?"
Shona answered through a mouth full of apple she was now munching on. "The Pixies of Providence Place."
"That's the one." Amy shook her head, remembering the embarrassment of having her friends and family watch her and Shona dance across the stage in lycra body suits two sizes too small. Her and Shona had both been sixteen at the time and Cecil, their drama tutor, had promised them high marks if they agreed to join the company. They'd joined the company, did his stupid pixie play and received their generously high marks. For some reason, though, they'd decided to return the next year, and the next, and the next. 'The Pixies of Providence Place'... 'Scintillating Seymour'... 'Saddamned If We Don't' (in a surprisingly political outing for the company)... and now 'Earthly Delights', undoubtedly the most hideous, stomach-churning epic of them all.
Shona swallowed her bite of apple and turned to the mirror behind her to check her make-up. Amy searched for a magazine through the pile of clothes on the table. Shona frowned at her reflection. "Hey," she said, thoughtfully. "Do you think I look like Julia Roberts?"
Amy looked at her friend. True, Shona shared Julia's flowling, brown locks and dazzling smile, but the superstar's long legs, sparkling eyes and inch perfect body were nowhere to be seen. Not that Shona was unattractive. Far from it, in fact. One of Shona's favourite pastimes was flirting, and she was an expert in the field to be feared and respected.
Amy shrugged her shoulders. "Sure, why not?"
Shona beamed. "Really? You really think?"
"Of course... assuming Julia Roberts bares an uncanny resemblance to Glenn Close."
Shona glanced at Amy then back to her reflection. "Yeah, she's a babe, too, isn't she?"
Amy gave up searching for a magazine and glanced at herself in the mirror beside her chair. Shona had once told her that ugly people have ugly friends and beautiful people have beautiful friends. "And baby," Shona had said, "I'm gorgeous!" Temporarily disabling all modesty, Amy knew she was a looker. Her hair wasn't as long as Shona's but it was the same shade of brown. Her eyes were a crystal blue and she spent so long brushing her gleaming white teeth each day she was surprised they weren't getting smaller. She was happy with the length of her legs and didn't mind her curvy hips, although she was constantly depressed by the size of her breasts. Shona had been blessed with a handsome sized bosom but Amy, despite all the wishing in the world, was no bigger now than she had been when she was a pixie on Providence Place. The sheer number of boys she'd caught gazing at Shona's chest were enough to convince her that size did matter. Glancing at the low-cut dress Shona had to wear, Amy suddenly realised why her friend had been given the nod as the Queen of Sheba.
"Oh, shit!" hissed Shona, snapping Amy from her little trance. "The back's split, hasn't it?"
Amy stood up to examine the back of the Queen of Sheba's dress. The fastener at the top had indeed split. "Yup. Nice one, Queenie," quipped Amy.
"There's a safety pin in my bag. Be a dear, eh?"
Amy went into Shona's bag and fished out a safety pin. "Hair," she said and Shona lifted her hair up out of the way. Amy gripped the two loose sides together. "It's tight, isn't it?"
"You callin' me fat?"
"Big-boned, sweetheart," chuckled Amy as she tried to pin the two sides together. She fumbled the safety pin and it dropped down inside Shona's dress. "Oops."
Shona flinched as the cold metal of the pin slid down the nape of her back. "Oh, nice one!"
"Relax," said Amy. "I'll get another one."
"You will not, you clumsy cow," snapped Shona. "You'll get that one out of there before it spears me!"
"I'm not going in there!" protested Amy. "I don't know where you've been!"
Shona used one hand to flick at Amy's antennae. "You lost it, you find it."
Amy sighed. "If it's between your ass cheeks you can forget it."
"Oh, come on," said Shona, "I'm a clean girl. Although, I did have a curry for dinner..."
"Yeah, yeah," Amy said, lifting the sleeve of her yellow and black bee sweater. "Very funny."
Amy pulled the remainder of the zip down, past the strap of Shona's bra, so she could snake her hand in to retrieve the pin. Shona gasped slightly. "Hey, Eskimo hands – gently."
"Sorry," apologised Amy. "I had no idea you were so sensitive." Amy felt around the back of Shona's dress. The pin seemed to have vanished. Despite trying to concentrate on finding the rogue pin, Amy couldn't help noticing the smoothness of Shona's skin. Her fingers lightly passed over Shona's back, gently searching.
"I think it's lower," whispered Shona and Amy immediately felt a hot flush wash through her entire body, as if the room temperature had just risen sharply. The dress was tighter the lower it got and Amy found her hand pressing harder and harder against Shona's skin. Her fingers touched fabric and Amy realised it was Shona's panties.
Amy swallowed and tried to sound as nonchalant as possible. "I don't think it went in there," she said, hoarsely.
"It's got to be somewhere," said Shona and Amy thought she could sense a nervousness in Shona's voice, also. Was she nervous about the intimate physical contact? Or, perhaps she felt something as Amy was touching… no, it was the intimate nature of the situation that was making her uncomfortable. That had to be it.
"Where the fuck is it?" said Amy, in a thinly-veiled attempt to dismiss the predicament. Consciously, she groped around Shona's back with as much lack of gentleness as she could muster. She didn't want to be doing this, she had decided. Her finger passed over metal and she made a grab for the pin.
"Careful," pleaded Shona, as Amy balanced the pin on the tip of her finger and lifted it up and out of the dress. Shona cleared her throat, perhaps involuntarily. "'Bout time, too," she said, not entirely convincingly.
Amy pulled up the broken zipper as far as it would go and pinned the top of the dress together. "There," she said, brushing her hands together as if she just got them dirty. "That should hold for the time being. You should get Margaret to fix it before tomorrow."
