Welcome to the Monkey House: The Special Edition Read Online Free PDF Page A

drunk and faded Southern belle.
    And then, while Doris and I were getting over our emotional experiences, like people coming out from under ether, Harry put down the playbook, put on his coat and tie, and turned into the pale hardware-store clerk again.
    “Was—was that all right?” he said, and he seemed pretty sure he wouldn’t get the part.
    “Well,” I said, “for a first reading, that wasn’t too bad.”
    “Is there a chance I’ll get the part?” he said. I don’t know why he always had to pretend there was some doubt about his getting a part, but he did.
    “I think we can safely say we’re leaning powerfully in your direction,” I told him.
    He was very pleased. “Thanks! Thanks a lot!” he said, and he shook my hand.
    “Is there a pretty new girl downstairs?” I said, meaning Helene Shaw.
    “I didn’t notice,” said Harry.
    It turned out that Helene Shaw
had
come for the tryouts, and Doris and I had our hearts broken. We thought the North Crawford Mask and Wig Club was finally going to put a really good-looking, really young girl on stage, instead of one of the beat-up forty-year-old women we generally have to palm off as girls.
    But Helene Shaw couldn’t act for sour apples. No matter what we gave her to read, she was the same girl with the same smile for anybody who had a complaint about his phone bill.
    Doris tried to coach her some, to make her understand that Stella in the play was a very passionate girl who loved a gorilla because she needed a gorilla. But Helene just read the lines the same way again. I don’t think a volcano could have stirred her up enough to say, “Oo.”
    “Dear,” said Doris, “I’m going to ask you a personal question.”
    “All right,” said Helene.
    “Have you ever been in love?” said Doris. “The reason I ask,” she said, “remembering some old love might help you put more warmth in your acting.”
    Helene frowned and thought hard. “Well,” she said, “I travel a lot, you know. And practically all the men in the differentcompanies I visit are married and I never stay anyplace long enough to know many people who aren’t.”
    “What about school?” said Doris. “What about puppy love and all the other kinds of love in school?”
    So Helene thought hard about that, and then she said, “Even in school I was always moving around a lot. My father was a construction worker, following jobs around, so I was always saying hello or good-by to someplace, without anything in between.”
    “Um,” said Doris.
    “Would movie stars count?” said Helene. “I don’t mean in real life. I never knew any. I just mean up on the screen.”
    Doris looked at me and rolled her eyes. “I guess that’s love of a kind,” she said.
    And then Helene got a little enthusiastic. “I used to sit through movies over and over again,” she said, “and pretend I was married to whoever the man movie star was. They were the only people who came with us. No matter where we moved, movie stars were there.”
    “Uh huh,” said Doris.
    “Well, thank you, Miss Shaw,” I said. “You go downstairs and wait with the rest. We’ll let you know.”
    So we tried to find another Stella. And there just wasn’t one, not one woman in the club with the dew still on her. “All we’ve got are Blanches,” I said, meaning all we had were faded women who could play the part of Blanche, Stella’s faded sister. “That’s life, I guess—twenty Blanches to one Stella.”
    “And when you find a Stella,” said Doris, “it turns out she doesn’t know what love is.”
    Doris and I decided there was one last thing we could try. We could get Harry Nash to play a scene along with Helene. “He just might make her bubble the least little bit,” I said.
    “That girl hasn’t got a bubble in her,” said Doris.
    So we called down the stairs for Helene to come back on up, and we told somebody to go find Harry. Harry never sat with the rest of the people at tryouts—or at rehearsals