The Phantom of Oz, Installment #23
And These Are a Few of my Favorite Things
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.
My Favorite Things*
A writing tip I once read: Include your favorite things in your writing. Enjoy a wintry retreat? Set your book at a mountain lodge. Fascinated by twins (like Shakespeare)? Throw ‘em in! Love strawberries? Include the memory of your mother’s strawberry shortcake, the act of eating a strawberry from a lover’s hand, or the delighted face of a two-year-old tasting his first one fresh from the garden. You get the idea.
I do this naturally, as I suspect most writers do. It’s just fun. And every so often, I’ll re-read a passage and think, “Wow! I really threw in the kitchen sink there.” The Phantom of Oz is full of my favorites, including old theaters, gothic tropes, and old-fashioned ghost stories. The installment today contains even more things I love. In just a couple of pages, I manage to fit in:
Hawaiian shirts and bolo ties as formal wear.
coffee and donuts.
my favorite film (Casablanca).
puns.
kids telling silly jokes.
an actor’s love of free food (legendary).
1920’s style.
and some of my favorite food and drink, including champagne, cheese, and petit fours.
In real life, I got to do another favorite thing this week: talk about books with readers and writers. No, Echoes of the Lost hasn’t come out yet (you can preorder :), but my publisher sent me to the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association’s Spring event, where I got to hang out with authors and indie bookstore folks.
I was having such a good time I couldn’t keep my eyes open.
Now, on to Phantom!
*I once played Liesl in The Sound of Music. Now I can’t even write “my favorite things” without the song playing in my head. Bet it’s playing in yours now, too.
Chapter 17 (Part One)
On the Famous Night of the Gala
By the time I could park and get out of my truck, Candy was gone. I got back in and drove around for about ten minutes but didn’t see her. I knew she’d have to be at the theater pretty soon, but so did I. In fact, I only had twenty minutes before call for Twelfth Night.
I scarfed down my now-cold Big Mac as I drove and got to the theater in time to put on my makeup. I sat in front of the mirror for a moment and thought about my fight with Candy. She was right—I should be happy for her. And I was right—she seemed dangerously unhealthy. We needed to talk. But we also needed to get into character for our shows, so our talk would have to wait. I needed to think and feel and react as Viola, Candy as Glinda. There was no place for our personal lives onstage. Tomorrow, though, I could catch Candy after her matinee. I could show up at the Grand Phoenician, take her someplace quiet, and get this thing worked through. That’s what I would do. I placed my fight with Candy into a little box in my mind, closed it up, and pushed it off to the side. The problem wasn’t gone, just waiting for a better time to think about it.
I kept the “Candy box” shut all through the play, and afterward when I hugged Bette and Uncle Bob (who looked dashing in a turquoise Hawaiian shirt and copper bolo tie) and kissed Matt (who looked positively edible in a gray button-down that matched his eyes and jeans I made him buy because they showed off his butt). I almost opened the box at the cast party when someone asked me about Candy and Babette but quickly decided against it. I wanted to enjoy the final hours with my Twelfth Night family.
I also almost told Matt about the fight with Candy the next morning but decided not to spoil the coffee and donuts and contentment. So by the time I arrived at the Grand Phoenician that afternoon, I didn’t really know what I was going to say. I had calmed down, though, which seemed a better starting place for the conversation we needed to have.
I got to the theater ten minutes after the matinee had ended. The lobby was packed with people—some sort of party going on? I hesitated outside the theater, but someone knocked on the window from the inside. Arrestadt. He waved me in. “Ivy,” he said over the tops of several gray heads. “Thanks for picking up Candace yesterday.”
“Is she here?”
“Probably be down in a minute. In the meantime, have something to eat and drink.” He waved at the back of the lobby, at white-skirted folding tables laden with food. “A reception for the Friends of the Grand Phoenician. Enjoy yourself.”
He turned back to the little circle surrounding him. “My favorite film? Casablanca. Such a great love story…oh, you mean my favorite of my films?” He laughed and popped a cookie in his mouth. “Wow. Well, Larry Poppins has always been one of my favorites, and Bar Wars had such a great cast. But there’s also—” Arrestadt looked up and stopped. His eyes got big and his face turned red. “Lady...” he choked out, then began coughing. I followed his gaze up to a wrought-iron walkway above the lobby. There were several ladies there.
“You okay?” A man next to Arrestadt pounded him on the back.
Arrestadt coughed a few more times. “Yeah. That...ladyfinger just went down the wrong way.” He regained his composure, but his eyes searched the walkway. “I’m fine. Really. Now what were we talking about? Oh, my movies.” He smiled charmingly at the little group, though his eyes flitted up to the walkway.
What was that about? A couple of tall men in suits walked by, cutting me off from Arrestadt. Should I keep an eye on him? Nah. He seemed okay, and I really wanted to find Candy. And the food.
A few minutes later, I was surrounded by munchkins and cheese. It wasn’t a bad thing. The cheese was pretty good for being free, and the munchkins were telling bad jokes, which I was saving up for Uncle Bob. He loved groaners. “What’s a monster’s favorite play?” asked one of the girl munchkins.
“I don’t know.” I nibbled on a Brie-topped cracker. “What is a monster’s favorite play?”
“Romeo and Ghouliet.” The munchkins all laughed, as did a few people who overheard the joke. The lobby was at full capacity, filled with older people in suits and pearls, ushers in their black and white outfits, and lots of young women and children. I suspected the last two groups had wrangled invitations in order to get close to Babette, who was holding court near the dessert table. I really wanted her to move so I could grab a petit four without her seeing me. Yes, okay, I still wanted her to see me, just not getting a dessert. Anyone who did so risked a Babette-style tongue-lashing. She’d already renamed Dorothy “Brownie Butt.” I gave up on the petit fours for the time being and snagged a glass of champagne from a waiter’s tray instead.
“Why didn’t the skeleton cross the road?” asked a munchkin boy. I sipped from my plastic tumbler.
“I don’t know. Why?”
“Because he didn’t have the guts!”
I was beginning to think the same thing about Candy, who was the only cast member who hadn’t appeared. Had she heard I was there and was avoiding me?
My stomach growled, interrupting my train of thought. I’d already sampled all the cheese, so I surveyed the other offerings. There were crudités and mini spring rolls and little quiches, but it was as if a filmmaker in my brain had decided there was only one thing in the room worth focusing on: the petit fours glowed as if under a spotlight, their pastel colors winking at me. Oh. Someone else was winking at me too; a silver-haired gent who stood near the sweets, maybe mistaking my petit four longing for something else. I gave him a little “I see you, but I’m not interested” wave. He looked old enough to have been a babe in arms at the Grand Phoenician’s original opening. That would’ve been something. I could almost see the crowd as it would have looked in 1925: the men in tailcoats, the women in beaded gowns, standing underneath the stained glass windows, next to the drinking fountains shaped like seashells, some of them laughing as they wandered up the gilded spiral stairway that led to the balcony, or drinking champagne beneath the enormous 1920s-era portrait of a dashing fellow wearing an eyepatch, a patron of the theater, I guessed. I could even see the Lady in White drifting through the crowd, her gauzy scarf...wait, was that the Lady?
Watch next week for a “regular” edition of The Slightly Silly Newsletter. The next installment of The Phantom of Oz will be back the week afterward!
And if you haven’t read the first four books in the Agatha-nominated series:
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I was just notified by Bookshop.org that my copy of Echoes of the Lost has shipped!!