But when it came time to leave, and when the car was once more purring along the road, the thousand-mile distance shrank to its true proportions of perhaps thirty-five miles. And every mile they drove brought them closer again to the busy, theatrical city, where even Randy’s good-night kiss at the doorstep could not remove from Peggy’s mind a sense of tension and trouble to come.
What the trouble might be, she could not say. What the tension’s cause was, she did not know. But surely at the center of it was the pale and sensitive face of Paula Andrews.
VIII
Curtain Fall
“No, not that way, Greta,” Mal called from his seat in the orchestra. “Don’t sit down as if you knew the chair was there and as if you knew exactly what kind of a chair it was. I want you to give the impression of being unsure of yourself and your surroundings. Before you sit, look behind you quickly—maybe even touch the top of the chair—then sit down.”
“But, Mal,” Greta said, coming to the apron of the stage to talk to him, “I’ve already used this chair earlier in the act, and I should be familiar with it by now. If I do it this way, isn’t it just going to look like an awkward piece of acting?”
“No,” Mal said. “When you used it before, it was when you were in a different personality mood, remember? This little difference will help to establish the change in your personality. It’s a small thing, and the audience may not even be aware of it consciously, but it’ll help to form the impression I want them to get. Try it, anyway, and I’ll see how it looks from out front.”
Greta agreed, and returned to the wings to pick up her entrance cue again. This time, when she entered, it was as if she had not been on stage before at all. She crossed unsurely to stage center to exchange a few lines with Alan Douglas and, when she was asked to sit down, turned a little, as Mal had told her, reached out a tentative hand to touch the back of the chair—but withdrew it before she touched it, and then swiftly sat down.
“Like that?” she asked Mal.
“Just like that,” he answered with satisfaction. “That chair bit is the give-away, and it’s perfect. I like your not quite touching it. Keep it in! Now let’s take it from there, Alan.”
Peggy waited in the wings for her own entrance cue. This time she was to come on aggressively, as the pampered ex-child movie star, to play against Greta’s shy confusion. In their previous exchange, Peggy had been quiet, well-mannered, even subservient in her character of plain-Jane secretary, for Greta had been acting the crisp, assured businesswoman.