Since the concert was still weeks away, I gave myself body and soul to Pygmalion. Naturally, this helped to ease the deep pain inside me about the break-up. It also won me points with Mrs Baggoli. She’d already congratulated me on how hard I was working. “I always knew you were right for Eliza,” she’d said, “but I have to admit that you’ve immersed yourself in the part beyond even my expectations.” The only thing it didn’t do was shut Carla Santini up.
“It really is a problem,” Carla Santini was saying to Colonel Pickering and the Parlourmaid. “I mean, what does one wear to a party like this? There are going to be so many fantastically famous people there dressing down…” She glanced in my direction. “And so many hangers-on trying to dress up…” Her sigh was like the sound of a nearly-empty aerosol can. “I mean, I’m going to meet Stu Wolff, guaranteed. I want to make the right impression.”
Stu Wolff and Carla Santini, guaranteed. I looked towards the door, hoping to see Mrs Baggoli hurrying in with the cup of coffee she’d gone to get. The doorway was empty.
The Parlourmaid giggled. “I wish I had problems like that.”
Colonel Pickering, who was obviously as tired of hearing about Carla’s dress dilemma as I was, mumbled something about going over his lines again before the break was over, and drifted away.
“I was thinking I might just wear my Calvins and a silk shirt,” Carla went on to the Parlourmaid without missing a beat, “but Daddy thinks I should wear a dress. You know, because so many of these people are clients or potential clients. We do have an image to maintain.” She smiled coyly. “Of course, Daddy will buy me something new. He doesn’t expect me to go in just any old rags…”
Heaven forbid.
I tried to shut out the sound of her voice, as annoying as the sound of a mosquito in the middle of the night. I started thinking about how unfair life is. Why should some people have so much, and others so little? Why should some people have so many teeth, expensive clothes, mobile phones and guaranteed introductions to Stu Wolff, while others sleep on the porch, have to use the family phone, and have no guarantee that they won’t be arrested trying to meet Stu Wolff?
I became so involved in the incredible unfairness of it all, that I didn’t realize Mrs Baggoli was back until she clapped her hands for silence.
I looked up.
“All right everyone,” shouted Mrs Baggoli. “Break’s over. Let’s take it from the top again. Andy and Jon, take your places.” She looked over to where Carla was standing with her face to the wall, going over her lines in a whisper that could be heard in Arkansas. “Carla!” called Mrs Baggoli. “Carla, please get on stage.”
Carla raised her chin. She tilted her head. She told Henry Higgins to behave himself.
“Mrs Higgins!” screamed Mrs Baggoli. “Mrs Higgins, will you please take your place on stage!”
Carla turned around, her beautiful face flushed with embarrassment and confusion. “Oh, I’m so sorry, Mrs Baggoli,” she gushed. “I didn’t hear you. I was so wrapped up in perfecting my tone.”
Although Carla acted as though this announcement was something worthy of the evening news, Mrs Baggoli took the information in her stride. Carla was still constantly perfecting something at rehearsals. If it wasn’t her tone, or her accent, or her motivation, it was someone else’s. Professor Higgins walked out once because Carla suggested that he didn’t understand his own character. Personally, if she didn’t stop trying to help me with my performance I was going to have to kill her.
“Try perfecting your tone on stage,” said Mrs Baggoli. She looked over at me as I got into position in the wings. “No script today, Lola?”
I shook my head. “I think I know it cold.” I should have. I’d been doing nothing else every night for weeks. If I hesitated over a line for a nanosecond, Carla would start hissing it at me.
Mrs Baggoli smiled.
Carla gave me a scornful look, threw her script on a chair, and climbed up on the stage.
We were going through Act Five, where Henry Higgins goes to his mother’s house after Eliza leaves him and discovers that she’s there.
Mrs Baggoli took a seat in the front row. “All right,” she called. “Let’s start where Mrs Higgins tells Henry and Pickering why Eliza left.”
Carla started off. Even I had to admit that she was a good Mrs Higgins. Probably because they were both used to bossing the servants around. Jon started to come in too soon and cut Carla off in mid-sentence. She sighed and gave Mrs Baggoli a look filled with patient suffering. Mrs Baggoli told her to start again.
Carla started again but stopped almost immediately. She had a question about Mrs Higgins’s feelings. Mrs Baggoli told her to trust her instincts. This time both Jon and Andy got a few lines in before Carla had a question about Henry Higgins’s character. I relaxed. This was Carla’s big scene. It would take hours.
I drifted off again, thinking about the concert. I had everything more or less worked out. Ella and I had agreed to tell our mothers that we were spending the night with each other. I know a lot about celebrity parties, and they never end till eight in the morning. That meant we could go straight to the station after the party, and be back in Dellwood in time for lunch. Simple but foolproof. Getting into the show wasn’t a big deal. It would wipe out my personal savings, but I figured I had enough for a ticket from a tout, the train fare, cabs and necessary nourishment. But I hadn’t done much thinking about clothes, which, as Carla had been pointing out ad nauseam, were particularly important. Should I look elegant and sophisticated like the models and movie stars Stu Wolff usually hangs out with? Or should I look natural and unpretentious but unique, so he’d know right away that I was different to other girls? I was still mulling this over when I realized that Mrs Baggoli was calling me.
“Lola! Lola!”
I looked over. Everyone was staring at me, but the only one who wasn’t smiling was Mrs Baggoli. “Lola!” she repeated. “That was your cue!”
“Maybe you shouldn’t put your script away just yet,” advised Carla.