Marcia Talley: This Enemy Town

“Yes, sir. With the senior Marine, sir.”

“And then you came back to the Hall and shaved your head.”

The midshipman playing the Beadle shrugged. “It seemed like a good idea at the time, sir.”

Professor Black sighed. “Never mind, we’ll work around it.” He waved an arm. “Continue!”

Beadle Bamford’s parlor song was interrupted once again by the arrival of box dinners. Rehearsal ground to a halt while the midshipmen launched a full-frontal assault on the food tables. Dorothy and I decided to avoid the stampede and wait until after the midshipmen had eaten before picking up our boxes.

In the meantime, Dorothy invited me up on the stage, where she spread out the sketches the set designer had made on top of Mrs. Lovett’s pie-making table and discussed with me what still needed to be done. “A lot will be taken care of by the backdrop we’re renting,” Dorothy said, to my great relief. “How would you like to be in charge of the barbershop?”

I turned and tipped my head back to get a better look at the structure. From where I stood, perhaps a dozen steps led up to the platform that would eventually be transformed into Sweeney Todd’s place of business. There was a back wall-wallpaper would cover that-but other than that, the room was open on three sides, nothing to keep me from tripping and tumbling ass over teacup onto the stage eight or nine feet below.

I shook my head. “I don’t do heights,” I explained. “I went to Paris once. At the top of the Eiffel Tower there are iron girders that still carry the impression of my fingernails.”

In the end, I volunteered to construct the oven, while Dorothy would work upstairs, concentrating on making Sweeney’s diabolical barber chair-also rented-function properly.

Suddenly I grew light-headed, whether from hunger or from the stage lights raining relentlessly down on us, it was hard to tell. Sweat prickled my scalp and gathered under the sweatshirt I wore, running down my back and between my breasts.

Dorothy noticed, and tugged at her wig. “Are you hot, too, Hannah, or is it just me?”

I managed a laugh. “My late mother always said, ‘I don’t have hot flashes. I have short, private vacations in the tropics!’” I gathered up my bag. “Let’s get out from under these lights.”

We moved to the edge of the stage, where the lighting was less ferocious, and sat down, side by side, dangling our legs over the lip. “Remember when you said you wanted me for a role model?”

Dorothy wiped her forehead with the tail end of her shirt. “Yeah.”

“Well, I hope you don’t mind, but I’ve brought you something.” I set the bag I’d been carrying on her lap. “Open it.”

Dorothy grabbed the handles of my duffel and pulled them apart. She peered into the bag, and I watched a smile spread slowly across her face. “Hats!”

“Friends gave them to me,” I confided, “more than I could ever use. I don’t need them anymore, thank goodness. I thought you might find wearing a hat more comfortable than a wig, at least while you’re working. I know I did.”

Dorothy pulled out a blue canvas hat with Sea Song embroidered on it in white script. “ Sea Song is my sister-in-law’s sailboat,” I told her. “We should go sailing sometime.”

The next hat out of the bag was one decorated with red, white, and blue sequins. Dorothy settled it over her wig. “This seems appropriate,” she announced, turning her head from side to side as if examining herself in an imaginary mirror. “How do I look?”

“Patriotic. When you get home, you can experiment with wearing it without the wig.”

Dorothy’s smile faded. She removed the bespangled hat and placed it, along with the blue canvas one, in the bag with the others. “I’ll have to think about it,” she said. “I’m not sure that Ted…” She clutched the duffel bag to her chest. “Let’s say I’ll take them home. And, thanks, Hannah. Thanks a lot. I really appreciate it.”

Kevin appeared-without being asked, he had fetched box dinners for his mother and me-then just as quickly, he disappeared. Dorothy and I ate passable ham and cheese sandwiches in companionable silence, cardboard boxes balanced smartly on our knees.

After rehearsal ended, Dorothy dragged me into the hallway, where the lumber, Sheetrock, and power tools were being temporarily stored. I gasped. There was enough material in the hallway to build a home for Habitat for Humanity. Maybe two or three of them.

“Let’s go,” I said with a smile. “I hope we’re not going to need all this material! Way too depressing! I’ll deal with it tomorrow.”

“Need a ride?”

It was after eight o’clock, but I wanted to walk. “No, that’s okay, Dorothy. Prince George is one way, so you’d have to drive the long way around. It’s shorter for me to go on foot. Really,” I added when she looked doubtful. “But I’ll walk you to your car. Where is it?”

“Out front.”

On our way to the parking lot, we noticed Kevin and Emma standing next to one of the empty coatracks at the end of the hallway. Dorothy opened her mouth to call out to her son, but I threw out an arm to restrain her. “It looks like a private conversation,” I warned.

Whatever the two young people had been discussing, the conversation was clearly over. “I’m really sorry, Kevin,” Emma was saying, her voice small and tight. “But I’m not going to do it. I’m just not !” She hoisted her book bag over one shoulder and hurried down the staircase that led to the exit on the lower level. Kevin stood in stunned silence for a moment, then ran after her, his words echoing hollowly off the marble walls. “Emma! Wait up!”

“Oh, dear, I hope there’s nothing wrong,” Kevin’s mother said, her brows drawn together in a frown. “I think he has a bit of a crush on that girl.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Well, you know what they say?”

“What’s that?”

“The course of true love never runs smooth.”

“So they say.”

The fact was, in the course of the past two years I had grown to know Emma Kirby fairly well. Kevin might be standing on the platform, but that train was not coming into the station for him.

Seeing me at the musical rehearsal had apparentlypegged Emma’s guilt-o-meter, too, because when I got home that evening, Paul told me she had called.

“She leave a message?”

Paul looked up from the crossword puzzle he was working. “She apologized profusely for ignoring us and asked that you call her back. She left a number. I think it’s her cell.”

I returned Emma’s call at once, because I wanted to see her. I was keen to find out why she had returned to the Academy. The last time we talked, she had been planning to call it quits.

Emma and I arranged to meet before rehearsal the following day in the Hart Room of Mahan Hall, which had been, until Nimitz opened in 1972, the main reading room of the Naval Academy library. In the years since then, the Hart Room had been used for everything from wedding receptions to spare office space, but had recently been converted into an elegant student lounge. When the cappuccino bar went in, I rejoiced, and occasionally met Paul there for coffee.

Flags representing each of the fifty states flanked the marble staircases that led from the center of Mahan lobby up to the Hart Room. Because the cappuccino bar was on the south side of the building, I chose the staircase to the left. As I climbed to the second floor past Ohio, Iowa, and Indiana, I wondered what Emma wanted to talk to me about, and if it had anything to do with why she’d returned to the Academy, or what I’d overheard of her conversation with Kevin the night before.