Nick faced Troy again. “Spare me your righteous racial indignation. This is not a question of prejudice or lies. It’s money, pure and simple. My lending you money is fucking up our friendship.” Troy started to speak but Nick waved him off. “Now it’s been a long day. And a fascinating one at that. I’ve said all I want to say on the subject of the loan and I consider the issue finished.”
Nick picked up his bag, said good night, and left the Florida Queen. Troy went behind the canopy to organize the diving gear. About ten minutes later, just as he was finishing, he heard someone calling his name. “Troy… Troy, is that you?” an accented voice said.
Troy leaned around the canopy and saw Greta standing on the jetty under the fluorescent light. Even though there was now a slight chill in the air, she was wearing her usual skimpy bikini that showed off her marvelous physique. Troy broke into a grand smile, “Well, well, if it isn’t superkraut! How the hell are you? I can see you’re still taking care of that wondrous body.”
Greta managed the beginnings of a smile. “Homer and Ellen and I are having a small party tonight. We noticed that you were working late and thought that maybe you’d like to join us when you’re done.”
“Just might do that,” Troy said, nodding his head up and down. “Just might do that.”
9
“OH, God, can’t we stop now? Finally? Please let us. It’s so quiet here, now.” She was speaking to the stars and the sky. The old man’s head slumped forward in the wheelchair as he drew his last breath. Hannah Jelkes knelt beside him to see if he was indeed gone and then, after kissing him on the crown of the head, she looked up again with a peaceful smile. The curtain fell and rose again in a few seconds. The cast assembled quickly on stage.
“Okay, that’s it for tonight, good job.” The director, a man in his early sixties, gray hair thinning on the top, approached the stage with a bounce. “Great performance, Henrietta, try to can that one for the opening tomorrow night. Just the right combination of strength and vulnerability.” Melvin Burton nimbly jumped up on the stage. “And you, Jessie, if you make Maxine any lustier they’ll close us down.” He spun around with a flourish and laughed along with two other people at the front of the theater.
“Okay, gang,” Melvin turned back to address the cast, “now go home and get lots of rest. It was better tonight, looked good Oh, Commander, can you and Tiffani stay around for a moment after you change? I have a couple more pointers for you.”
He jumped back down from the stage and walked back to the fourth row of the theater where his two associates were sitting. One was a woman, even older than Melvin but with twinkling green eyes behind her granny glasses. She was wearing a bright print dress full of spring colors. The other person was a man, about forty, with a studious face and a warm, open manner. Melvin fretted as he sat down beside them. “I worried when we picked Night of the Iquana that it might be too difficult for Key West. It’s not as well known as Streetcar or Glass Menagerie. And in some ways the characters are just as foreign as those in Suddenly, Last Summer. But it looks almost okay. If we can just fix the scenes between Shannon and Charlotte.”
“Are you sorry now you added the prologue?” the woman asked. Amanda Winchester was an institution in Key West. Among other things, she was the doyenne of the theatrical entrepreneurs in the revitalized city. She owned two of the new theaters near the marina and had been responsible for the formation of at least three different local repertory groups. She loved plays and theater people. And Melvin Burton was her favorite director.
“No, I’m not, Amanda. It clearly adds to the play to get some kind of initial feeling for how frustrating it would be to lead a group of Baptist women on a tour of Mexico in the summer. And without the sex scene between Charlotte and Shannon in that small, stuffy hotel room, I’m not sure their affair is believable to the audience.” He paused a moment, reflecting. “Huston did the same thing with the movie.”
“Right now that sex scene doesn’t play at all,” the other man said. “In fact it’s almost comical. The hugs they exchange are like the ones my brother gives his daughters.”
“Patience, Marc,” Melvin answered.
“Something has to be done or we should take the prologue out altogether,” Amanda agreed. “Marc’s right, the scene tonight was almost comical. Part of the problem is that Charlotte looks like a child in that scene.” She paused a moment before continuing. “You know, the girl has gorgeous long hair and we have it stacked on top of her head to look prim and proper. Clearly she wouldn’t wear it down all day in the heat of a Mexican summer. But what if she took it down when she went to Shannon’s room?”
“That’s a great idea, Amanda. As I have often said, you would have made a fabulous director.” Melvin looked at Marc and they exchanged a warm smile. Then the director settled back in his seat and started thinking about what he was going to tell his two cast members in a few moments.
Melvin Burton was a happy man. He lived with his room-mate of fifteen years, Marc Adler, in a beach house on Sugarloaf Key, about ten miles east of Key West. Melvin had directed plays on Broadway for almost a decade and had been associated with the theater in one capacity or another since the mid-fifties. Always careful with his money, Melvin had managed to save an impressive amount by 1979. Worried about the impact of inflation on his savings, Melvin had sought advice from an accountant who was a friend of a close associate. It was almost love at first sight. Marc was twenty-eight at the time, shy, lonely, unsure of himself in the maelstrom of New York City. Melvin’s savoir faire and theatrical panache opened Marc up to aspects of life that he had never known.
As the stock market ratcheted upward in the mid-eighties, Melvin watched his net worth near a million dollars. But other factors in his life were not so bullish. The AIDS epidemic hit the theatrical community in New York with a vengeance and both Melvin and Marc lost many of their lifelong friends. And Melvin’s career seemed to have peaked; he was no longer in demand as one of the premier directors.
One night on his way home from the theater, Marc was mugged by a group of teenagers. They beat him up, stole his watch and wallet, and left him bleeding in the street. As a saddened Melvin ministered to his friend’s wounds, he made a major decision. They would leave New York. He would sell his stocks and convert his fortune to fixed income investments. They would buy a home where it was warm and safe, where they could relax and read and swim together. Maybe they would do some community theater work if it was available, but that was not the most important thing. What was important was that they share Melvin’s remaining years.
Melvin ran into Amanda Winchester one day while he and Marc were on vacation in Key West. They had worked together briefly on a project that had never panned out twenty years before. Amanda told him that she had just formed a local amateur repettory group to do two Tennessee Williams plays a year. Would he be interested in directing them?
Melvin and Marc moved to Key West and started to build their house on Sugarloaf Key. Both of them thoroughly enjoyed their work with the Key West Players. The actors were everyday people, dedicated and earnest. Some had had a little acting experience. But for the most part, the secretaries, housewives, and retail clerks, plus officers and enlisted men from the U.S. Naval Air Station, were all novices with one thing in common. Each of them viewed his few days on the stage as his moment of glory, and he wanted to make the best of it.