Marcia Talley - This Enemy Town

She nodded. “They’re not supposed to ask, of course, but if they do, none of this honesty bullshit for me. I’ll lie through my teeth if I have to. Make ’em prove it.” She threw both hands in the air. “Isn’t it stupid ?”

I had to agree. The military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, Don’t Pursue” policy had to be the most wrong-headed compromise in the annals of legislation, and that was saying something.

Emma looked at me with wide, honest eyes. “If I can hold on, tough it out, maybe they’ll change that ridiculous law.”

I knew where that was coming from. Where there’s life, there’s hope. How many of my desperately ill friends had felt that way? If I can just hold on-one day, one week, one month at a time-perhaps they’ll find a cure before my time runs out.

“I understand, Emma,” I said. “And if there’s anything I can do…”

Emma reached out and squeezed my hand. “Oh, Hannah, I feel so comfortable talking to you. Sometimes I think you’re the only person I can trust.”

She was right to trust me; I hadn’t even told Paul. I knew I could keep Emma’s secret. But, I wondered, could she?

Over the course of the next week I saw Emmaevery day, quite literally, in passing. I’d wave cheerily while on my way to or from the set shop in nearby Alumni Hall or we’d exchange pleasantries when I happened to run into her-surrounded by several dozen of her cast mates-in the dressing room.

On Saturday afternoon I paused in the hallway of Mahan, paint bucket in hand, to watch as Emma, dressed like a Victorian bag lady, perfected her timing, a complicated choreography made considerably more difficult by the demands of her bulky costume: a tattered shawl pinned over a tightly laced bodice, a red bonnet sporting a nosegay of wilted pansies, and skirt upon skirt upon layers of petticoats over the most extraordinary pair of hot pink pantaloons Victorian London had ever seen.

The midshipman playing Judge Turpin was stalking the hallways, too, flinging his judicial robes about like a latter day Dracula, dropping to his knees again and again to recite mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa for a pivotal but disturbing scene that had been cut-for obvious reasons, it seemed to me-from the original Broadway production. As I watched, fascinated, Turpin clutched a Bible and sang about his obsession for Johanna, his teenage ward, then produced a whip from his sleeve and began flailing himself: God! Deliver me! Filth! Leave me!

All activity in the hallway ground to a halt. Actors, tech crew, and midshipmen simply passing through on their way to athletic practice were sucked into Turpin’s orbit. Eyes closed, accompanied by music nobody else heard, Turpin sang a cappella with unrestrained passion and an intensity that was almost scary. Soft. White. Cool. Virgin. Palms. His final E-flat faded into several seconds of palpable silence, followed by the echoing patter of spontaneous and enthusiastic applause.

Whatever one might think about the propriety of a self-flagellation scene in a college production, one thing was certain-the audience would be mesmerized.

Turpin shook himself out of his trance, adjusted his silver wig-which had slipped crookedly over his left eye-bowed deeply to his impromptu audience, and gave a high five to the midshipman playing Beadle Bamford, who’d been standing nearby with the script open, following along.

“Whoa!” The comment came from a midshipman who was lounging against the wall directly behind me.

“Whoa, indeed,” I agreed, glancing at the young man over my shoulder.

Without his mad scientist disguise, I hardly recognized the kid, but it was definitely Kevin, I decided: tall-at least six-foot-two-with blue eyes, fair freckled skin, and a fuzz of reddish hair cut “high and tight,” like the U.S. Marine his mother told me he aspired to be. “That’ll give some old admiral a coronary,” Kevin chuckled.

“I daresay you’re right.” I eased into a vacant spot next to him and leaned back against the cold stone wall. “And how about that block of tickets reserved for Manresa?” I wondered aloud, referring to the upscale assisted living center, a former Jesuit retreat, built high on the banks of the Severn River, just opposite the Academy.

Kevin jerked his head to the left. “Emma’s bit is going to give the blue hairs apoplexy, too, I’ll bet.”

I followed his gaze. Emma was working on her number, the center of attention once again, now that Judge Turpin had swanned off, cape tails flapping. “‘Hey! Hoy! Sailor boy! Want it snugly harbored?’” She sashayed across the marble floor, flipped up her skirts and aimed a couple of pelvic thrusts-half taunting, half teasing-at the Beadle. “‘Open me gate, but dock it straight, I see it lists to starboard!’” she sang. Then, just as quickly, she switched off the beggar woman and became Emma again, bending at the waist to adjust the laces on her high-buttoned shoes, revealing yards of frothy petticoats.

Quite frankly, I was surprised. Emma had to know that Kevin was watching. And he was, too, a goofy grin splitting his face. What was Emma thinking? Didn’t she know he’d take it as a sign of encouragement? I’d have to speak to that girl. But before I could corner her for a motherly word, Emma had snatched the bonnet off her counterfeit ringlets and scampered down the stairs in the general direction of the dressing rooms.

“’Scuse me, ma’am.” Kevin pushed away from the wall and bounded down the stairs after her. “Emma, wait up!”

“Don’t mind me,” I grumped to his departing back. I fought back the urge to run after the pair. But Emma was a big girl, I told myself. Time she learned to deal with the consequences of her complicated love life without any assistance from me. Besides, I needed to get busy on Mrs. Lovett’s oven.

My project, the oven, was actually well underway and, like every prop in Sweeney Todd, was intended to be oversized, exaggerated in scale, not only so that it’d be more menacing, but for a more practical reason: so it could be seen from every corner of the theater.

The size and shape of your average refrigerator, the oven was built out of quarter-inch plywood. A thin sheet of metal covered the door, which opened with a downward tug on a large iron handle. On top, we’d installed a squat chimney stack. I say “we” because I’d had the assistance of a pro, Midshipman First Class Bennett Small, who had turned up backstage in the tech room one day, tossed two quarters into a can on top of the minifridge, helped himself to a Coke, and cheerfully introduced himself as my assistant.

“Help yourself,” he invited, indicating the fridge. He stretched out full-length on the ratty sofa and propped his feet up on the arm. “Anything that doesn’t have a label on it is fair game.”

I opened the fridge and peered in. Cokes, Diet Cokes, Sprites, a few Gatorades, some with labels and some without, were stacked neatly inside like cordwood. I selected an unlabeled Coca-Cola and, following Midshipman Small’s example, fished a couple of quarters out of my purse and tossed them into the coffee can.

Midshipman Small took a long swig from his soda. “Don’t touch the Dr Pepper, though, or Adam will go ballistic.”

“Adam?” I popped the top on my soda.

“Adam Monroe. The mid playing Beadle Bamford.”

“No chance of that,” I told my assistant. “Can’t stand the stuff. Way too sweet.”

Bennett Small, I soon learned, was called Gadget. The nickname was apt. He could turn nuts and bolts, odd scraps of metal and miscellaneous gizmos from Radio Shack, into inventions as diverse as a receiver that could pick up signals from Voyager One or, in a recent more down-to-earth effort, a high-tech, radio-controlled miniature robot known in collegiate circles as a BattleBot. That fall, he’d entered the competitive BattleBot arena with a lightweight ’Bot he’d named Skeezicks. Skeezicks successfully evaded killer saws, pulverizers, and the dreaded vortex before reaching out its skinny metal arms and short-circuiting its opponent for the well-deserved win.