The Phantom of Oz, Installment #19
Plus Shakespeare's twin thang
Hello! As most of you know, I’m serializing The Phantom of Oz here in a bit of an experiment. Once a month, you’ll still receive the “regular” Slightly Silly News. If you missed earlier chapters of Phantom, you can find links to all of the earlier installments here.
If you’ve been reading Phantom, you’ll know that Ivy is in a production of Twelfth* Night. The play follows the story of Viola, who has been separated from her twin brother by a shipwreck.
Shakespeare had a fascination with twins, which makes for great comedy and drama— and problematic casting. Imagine trying to cast Comedy of Errors with two sets of identical twins. It’s not so bad with fraternal twins, like Twelfth Night’s Viola and Sebastian, which was lucky for me and Chris Daly. Even with a kinda dorky dark brown wig, I looked nothing like the lean, brown-eyed actor playing my twin brother:
I thought the slightly cheesy back-to-back pose was a bit dated, until I saw the promo pic for Utah Shakespeare Festival’s upcoming Twelfth Night:
There’s a fascinating post accompanying this new photo about Shakespeare’s twins. I knew that he had twins, Hamnet and Judith. You might know it, too, given that the movie Hamnet is up for an Oscar on Sunday (great book, haven’t seen the movie yet). What I didn’t know is that Shakespeare was very forward thinking in his treatment of twins. In his day, “twins were unnatural and deviant, born out of unnatural desires in the mother.” His twins are typical people, though clever and attractive, of course.
Enough about twins, but *one last thought: It bugs me beyond reason that “twelfth” is spelled with an F. Anyone else?
Happy reading!
Chapter 14
I Shall Save Her
“I don’t know what to do!” I wailed over the phone. I’d stepped outside the backstage door of the black box theater, hoping for a private talk with Matt before I had to go onstage. The air still smelled like the cigarettes a couple of the techies smoked right before the show. “I’m all messed up over these accidents and Babette the she-devil and whatever is wrong with Candy and why she didn’t tell me she’s dating Arrestadt Giry—”
“Really? Arrestadt Giry?” said Matt.
“And curtain is in fifteen minutes. What do I do?”
“You know what to do. You go onstage and inhabit the character of Viola. You do that magical thing you do.” Matt was always amazed that I could believe I was someone else, even for a short while. “Then you drive over here, where we’ll sit on my patio and drink beer and look at the stars. Then I’ll take you to bed and...”
“La la la,” I sang-said. “I can’t hear what happens next or I will never be able to inhabit Viola because I will be distractedly overheated. Or overheatedly distracted. You know. But go on.” Matt always had a calming effect on me.
“Right. Then after...you know...we’ll sleep like the dead and then we’ll get up tomorrow morning and have coffee and French toast—”
“And bacon.” I was feeling decidedly better.
“And bacon. Then you can look up those pills you found on the internet.”
“Duh. Of course I can. Is one site better than another?” Matt was a social worker with the county.
“Probably the one from the National Library of Medicine.”
“Cool. I’ll check out the pill and then see what I can find out about the accidents.”
“Exactly.”
“But what about Candy?”
“Ivy.” Matt sighed. “You know you can’t help what Candy does. You can’t control whether she tells the truth, or takes pills, or signs away hersoul to the devil.”
“I know, but...”
“I know. It hurts.”
Oh. Yeah. Matt did know how it felt to be dumped by Candy. I suddenly felt weird talking to him about her. But only for a second, because then he said exactly the right thing. “I love you. Go be the amazing Ivy Meadows. And break a leg.”
I felt much better the next morning after coffee and bacon and Matt. So good that I didn’t mind going into Duda Detectives on a Saturday. It didn’t hurt that one of my favorite people in the world was there. I kissed my uncle on his stubbly cheek after I walked in. “Wasn’t expecting you,” hesaid. “But if you want some work to do...”
“I already have some, thanks.” I planned to go to the National Library of Medicine site first, then...“How would I go about investigating an accident?”
“Well, you’d get ahold of any official reports, like police or OSHA.”
“Great. How do I do that?” I sat down at my desk and booted up my computer.
“They’re usually available after a month, maybe two.”
I shook my head. “I can’t wait that long. How about insurance companies?”
“They usually take longer and probably won’t give you the info without a subpoena. The only other thing you can do is talk to the people involved and take a look at the accident site.”
“I can do the talking bit. Not sure I’d know what to look for at the scene.”
“You’re a detective. Look for whatever seems out of place.”
A detective. I loved it when Uncle Bob called me that. I pulled up the National Library of Medicine pill finder site and plugged in the tinynumber inscribed on the pill. “Bette still coming in tonight?” I really liked my uncle’s girlfriend. A lot of people did—she was famous in sort of the opposite way from Babette: known for her hard work, intelligence, and integrity, but virtually unknown in person since she did most of her work undercover.
“Yep. You got our tickets, right?” Bob and Bette and Matt were coming to closing night of Twelfth Night tonight. Cody and his girlfriend Sarah had already seen the play.
“Best seats in the house.” The theater was only one hundred and fifty seats, so all the seats were good, but I did ask for the best.
I went back to my computer screen. Huh. The numbers I’d entered didn’t match any medications. I found another pill identifier siteand plugged in my info. “Are you two coming to the cast party with me and Matt?” Part of me hoped they would so they could have a peekinto my world. Part of me hoped they wouldn’t. Cast parties could get pretty rowdy
“We’ll see. I was thinking about taking her out for a late-night drink somewhere kind of romantic. Like that restaurant that spins.”
“Really? The one on top of the Hyatt?” My uncle’s usual type of bar had peanut shells underfoot. “I think they might have a dress code.”
“Ties look good with Hawaiian shirts.”
I thought about it for a moment while my computer program continued searching. “Wouldn’t know. I’ve never seen that combination before. I wonder if a bolo tie would count.”
Uncle Bob grinned and slapped his desk. “You’re a genius. I’m sure it would work. It is the official neckwear of Arizona, you know.”
Huh. No matches with this program either. “Have you ever used one of these pill identifier sites?” I held up the mystery drug. “I can’t seem to find a match for this pill.”
Uncle Bob ambled over and picked it up. “Doesn’t look familiar. Is it yours?”
“Candy’s.”
He gave the pill back to me. “And she doesn’t know what it is?”
I answered the question he was really asking. “She, uh, doesn’t know I have it.” I slid the pill back into my pocket.
“Olive.” My uncle looked as stern as a man wearing a shirt with monkeys on it could. “Did you steal that?”
“I borrowed it. I just want to know what’s going on with Candy.”
“Have you talked to her?”
“Yeah. She babbles about stupid stuff and lies about real things. That’s why I need to look out for her.”
My uncle pulled his wheelie chair over to where I was and sat down. He looked me in the eyes, his frown lines morphing into a worry wrinkle between his eyes. “Hon. You know those cop shows we watch?”
I nodded. We’d started out with NYPD Blue years ago and devoured every decent cop show since.
“Think about it: when someone gets too personally involved with a case, they take him off it, usually saying something like he’s too emotionally involved to be objective. It’s no different with PIs. Investigating your friend is never a good idea.”
I nodded again, but my mind was on those cop shows. Sure, the higher-ups usually took the guy off the case. And then he would ignore them and keep investigating, saving his friend in the nick of time.
Watch next week for Installment #20, Chapter 15: “It Was an…Accident…a Sad…a Very Sad…Accident”
And if you haven’t read the first four books in the Agatha-nominated series:
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