As You Like It was a dumb play, even in English. Spoken in Spanish by people not too familiar with the language, it was grotesque.
The Divine Rowena wasn’t performing that evening for the public, but the company was rehearsing down the street from the hotel and Captain Gringo had tagged along with one of the actors he’d met in the dining room.
As he sat in the front row of the empty theater, watching through the fumes of a Claro, he was glad he hadn’t bought a ticket. It seemed sort of rude to leave after being invited to sit in and, what the hell, the cigar the manager had offered him was a good one.
He didn’t try to follow the plot. He’d never been sure there was one. The Bard of Avon had apparently tossed off As You Like It on the back of the menu from the Mermaid one evening, when he was drunk and in a hurry.
But even a drunken Shakespeare had to have gotten off a few good lines. The Divine Rowena was murdering all of them. He found it less painful if he ignored her and watched Theresa. None of them were in costume, of course, and the theater was stuffy with the doors all closed. So Theresa wore a print Mother Hubbard that would have looked shapeless on most women. When Theresa moved he could see a very nice little shape indeed. She didn’t seem to be wearing much under the cotton smock.
Theresa was tiny, but was one of those girls people tend to call “bubbles.” It wasn’t just the way she moved her perky body. She wasn’t at all fat. He judged her waistline at about twenty-two inches. But she seemed made out of perfect hemispheres, like God had blown her with a soap bubble pipe. From behind, her derriere was formed by two edible-looking orbs of firm but soft looking flesh. From the front she looked like she had cut a honeydew melon in two and pasted each half to her chest. Despite the slender waist, certain movements revealed a round little tummy dimpled by a deep naval depression. Her rib cage, shoulders, upper thighs – all rounded softly the same way. His pornographic dream hadn’t done her justice, he knew. His subconscious had just filled in the blanks with ordinary good stuff, as it had half hidden her face. Now that he could see it without the dumb veil, the face was nicer than he’d expected, too. It wasn’t rounded like the rest of her. It was heart-shaped, with a little Cupid’s-bow mouth and big intelligent eyes. He was a sucker for eyes like that. No matter what the body was like, eye contact with another human being you could respect added immensely to the other enjoyments. The only trouble with bright-looking girls was that they tended to laugh at the usual approaches. He knew she’d probably sneer if he asked her if she’d heard that the new two-step was invented by a pacifist, since it was a navel engagement without the loss of semen by either side.
He didn’t think he’d better try and kid with her and he doubted she’d come at him with a rose between her teeth. He was still officially “married” to the missing Liza and, though nobody had asked about her yet, it was going to take some delicate explaining indeed.
The Divine Rowena fluffed another line and swore at her leading man as if he’d done it. The prompter sighed and said, “All right, let’s take it from the top, page seventeen, shall we?”
The Divine Rowena shook her head and said, “No, I can’t go on with it anymore tonight. We have to go back to the hotel and change. You principals are expected to join me tonight at the embassy party I told you about and it’s getting late.”
There was a collective sigh of relief the star chose to ignore. As Captain Gringo got to his feet, she glanced his way and said, “You and your wife are invited, too, Mr. MacUlrich. You may find it interesting for your paper.”
He found it interesting indeed, but said, “I’m afraid my wife won’t be joining us, ma’am. She had to go back to the coast. Uh, altitude sickness.”
The Divine Rowena shrugged and said, “Pity. But in that case you can escort my protegee, Miss Marvin, here. You know one another, of course?”
He bowed politely as the girl nodded and looked embarrassed. He couldn’t have asked for a better opening, but what was the old bitch trying to pull?