“Sorry, Peggy,” Mal said, “but this one really makes the most sense.”
“I suppose it does,” she agreed, “but I just hate to be so useless at an important time like this.”
“Maybe you’ll be useless,” Mal answered, “but I’m going to see to it that you won’t be idle. Since we don’t want anything to slip up, and since Paula hasn’t been looking well lately, I want you to understudy her part for this audition. Amy will understudy you, Greta. Some of the other actors who aren’t on in that scene will back up other parts. Nobody’s going to be left out of the preparation, even if everyone isn’t actually used. In that way, the whole cast can get a chance to see how I go about developing a complete scene, and maybe that will keep us from throwing the development of the play off balance, which is what I’m worried about.”
“It might even help,” Randy said hopefully.
“It might,” Mal said, looking completely unconvinced.
“Before you sink into that swamp of gloom again,” Peggy said with a laugh, “I think that we’d better get going. Do you realize that it’s almost one in the morning, and tomorrow I have a nine-o’clock class in TV acting techniques? If I don’t get some sleep I’m going to be the only out-of-focus actress in the picture!”
Quickly finishing their coffee, the girls put on their coats once more and said good night to Randy and Mal. Mal, always thoughtful, insisted on coming downstairs and seeing them into a taxi, so they wouldn’t have to make their way home alone at that late hour.
“There’s only one thing now that worries me,” Peggy said to Amy and Greta as they were being driven to the Gramercy Arms.
“What’s that?” Amy asked.
“The rest of the cast,” she answered. “We promised a lot of cooperation from them, and the fact is that we hardly know them at all. I just hope we were right!”