.
of a young Jim Nabors.
As Liza kept wandering over to the set painting to try to be near Roland Spring, the Mastodon looked at Liza’s orange spandex pants and halter top and thought she saw a friend. Nobody had ever gone out of their way to befriend Liza so sweetly: “You sing real nice. I wish I could sing pretty like you,” the Mastodon shyly confessed to Liza.
“What were you in juvie for?” Liza replied, asking the one question about Misty-Dawn she had any interest in, and cringing internally at the inevitable coldness she was going to have to employ to freeze the Mastodon’s unwanted friendship like a growing wart.
The Mastodon recited her oft-told tale in a run-on sentence of select highlights:
“Me and my ex-boyfriend stole my stepdaddy’s Trans Am and took it to Oxnard and when they pulled us over there was two Walther PPKs in the trunk but they didn’t belong to us they belonged to my step-daddy but they put Thumper on trial as an adult coz he had a juvenile record for possession and I was strip-searched twice.”
“Your boyfriend’s name was Thumper?” asked Liza, when she was really wondering, You call your mom’s husband your stepdaddy?
“He’s Mexican,” said the Mastodon, by way of explanation. “Do you like REO Speedwagon?”
“No,” said Liza.
Ned, in the meantime, found he liked welding even more than glass-blowing. He loved the welding pit, the smithy, all the macho rudiments of hard matter. The chemicals and tools possessed superhero qualities—a hydrogen flame was invisible, an oxyacetylene cutting torch could slice steel —yet they were controllable, if one was careful and had the know-how. He fancied himself a Hephaestus-like figure: soot blackened, a little tragic—fatness and a lazy eye having the same alienation quotient as a clubfoot among teenagers and show people, who always demand perfect beauty from their ranks. Escape from the feathery, jealous, and fickle world of the theatre was a great relief.
Peppy had her work cut out for her as the “black sheep of the nunnery.” She obtained, from the Montgomery Ward’s catalog, some rather shapeless dresses, but she -immediately browbeat one of the sewing moms into giving them plunging, cleavage-fructuous necklines.
The wig she chose, one of the more conservative hair-mounds from the Eva Gabor Collection, was a short platinum flip with spit curls and a row of plastic daisies stapled behind the bangs. Behind the daisies, the hair boosted upward in an aggressively teased look, which required that the nun’s wimple be bobby-pinned precariously on top. It made Peppy’s head look curiously oblong, but she liked that it added considerable height.
Since Liza’s tiny role as Brigitta Von Trapp was dumb and thankless, she concentrated mainly on perfecting her High School of the Performing Arts audition piece, deciding on a bossa nova version (with Lalo’s taped accompaniment) of “Climb Every Mountain.” Barbette gave up trying to get her to do a ballet piece and decided to work with Liza’s natural movement abilities, which fell somewhere between modern jazz, dodgeball, and stripping. Neville backed out of coaching Liza, citing his numerous directorial responsibilities.
“Just sell it, honey, sell it” was his only contribution.
The play began to take shape, as plays miraculously do over a period of weeks, like a poster of chaotic squiggles that eventually reveals to the viewer, due to some trick of depth, color, and cross-eyedness, a 3D rabbit on a unicycle.
At first, Neville had been sweating bullets, trying to figure out how to make Peppy, with her cigarette-trashed voice, seem like a plausible nun.
“I can’t seem to stop singing wherever I am!” Peppy-Maria complained, in her 3 a.m. Reno rasp.
“Could you do that line, maybe, a little more falsetto?” asked Neville.
“It is what it is, fancypants,” said Peppy, irked.
Neville eventually gave up. “You can’t rebuild virginity with a vinyl repair kit.” He sighed.
Peppy had always considered herself musical, but she was actually tone-deaf and incapable of hearing musical cues such as the beginnings and endings of choruses or bridges. Forgoing melody completely, she would shout out lyrics tunelessly, and in a random tempo, but with knee-slapping, beer-stein-waving enthusiasm:
I HAVE CON-FI-DENCE IN CONFIDENCE ALONE! I HAVE CONFIDENCE IN ME-E-E!
Lalo, the first time he heard it, turned visibly pale. Neville was open-mouthed.
“You might try doing the song that same way every time, at least,” suggested Neville.
“Talent is consistent, genius is inconsistent,” argued Peppy (who heard Neville say that once). “And by the way, I think I could be juggling in this number.”
Neville spluttered. “You’re a NUN! What are you going to be juggling? Bowling pins?”
“What about crucifixes?” asked Peppy, innocently.
Neville looked at her for a moment as if the top of her skull had swung open on a metal hinge, and a metallic claw holding a live eyeball had craned out and stared at him.
“Woman, if you can juggle four crucifixes, what kind of fool director would I be if I tried to stop you?”
“Meu deus,” moaned Lalo, clutching his head.
Lalo’s heavy drinking began to infuriate Neville.
“Lalo! If you’re going to wear those horrible sandals at least don’t shuffle across the stage like you’re going to vomit all over Gretl.”
Lalo exploded, finally. “Fock you, man! You are not arteest! You are not a men! You wear the dress for nuns and these faggot theeng on you pents!” (He was referring to Neville’s controversial codpiece.)
“Lalo, if you’re too stewed to act professionally—”
“You don’t look at me!” Lalo stuck an outstretched finger threateningly close to Neville’s eye. “You are s-s-some kind flat worm that suck blood out of shit!’
“Go to bed! If you ever come to rehearsal drunk again you’re out of the production!”
“A puta que pariul”
“Heeeey!” shouted Peppy, establishing the theatre hierarchy with a mighty bray.
“You can work with this?” screeched Neville, pointing a shaky finger at Lalo, who was hiding behind Peppy, grabbing his pants-crotch and jiggling his privates toward Neville in an offensive manner.
Peppy thought the whole thing was outrageously funny.
“OK, we’ll stop for today,” she snorted, advancing to her nylon cigarette pouch.
“You guys don’t get it! This scene is a mess!”
“Quit worrying,” Peppy said, grabbing Neville’s lapel. “We’re all going to go upstairs and have a nice little drink, smoke some herb, whatever, and make nice. I know my lines.”
“He doesn’t!” Neville shrieked.
Lalo wagged a long red tongue at Neville.
“He’s a natural.” Peppy beamed, looking lovingly upon the booze-flushed Lalo as he lurched upstairs, cursing and swinging his arms at invisible gnats.
Forty-five minutes later, the three could be heard singing “My Favorite Things” with filthy lyrics in Peppy’s kitchen.
The Whelan-Zedd Agency notified Peppy of as many as two “cattle call” auditions a week. Liza would groom herself outrageously beforehand, spending hours with her crimping iron, Aqua Net, and eye shadow palette, always hoping to emerge from her room and totter down the theatre stairs at the serendipitous moment when Roland would happen to be walking by. When he saw her Olivia Newton-John-in-Grease-like transformation from Mere Young Girl to Ravishingly Sophisticated Woman, Liza knew that Roland’s jaw would drop and their