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

baby. Go!”
    When the scene was over, Helene Shaw was as hot as a hod carrier, as limp as an eel. She sat down with her mouth open and her head hanging to one side. She wasn’t in any bottle any more. There wasn’t any bottle to hold her up and keep her safe and clean. The bottle was gone.
    “Do I get the part or don’t I?” Harry snarled at me.
    “You’ll do,” I said.
    “You said a mouthful!” he said. “I’ll be going now.… See you around, Stella,” he said to Helene, and he left. He slammed the door behind him.
    “Helene?” I said. “Miss Shaw?”
    “Mf?” she said.
    “The part of Stella is yours,” I said. “You were great!”
    “I was?” she said.
    “I had no idea you had that much fire in you, dear,” Doris said to her.
    “Fire?” said Helene. She didn’t know if she was afoot or on horseback.
    “Skyrockets! Pinwheels! Roman candles!” said Doris.
    “Mf,” said Helene. And that was all she said. She looked as though she were going to sit in the chair with her mouth open forever.
    “Stella,” I said.
    “Huh?” she said.
    “You have my permission to go.”
    So we started having rehearsals four nights a week on the stage of the Consolidated School. And Harry and Helene set such a pace that everybody in the production was half crazy with excitement and exhaustion before we’d rehearsed four times. Usually a director has to beg people to learn their lines, but I had no such trouble. Harry and Helene were working so well together that everybody else in the cast regarded it as a duty and an honor and a pleasure to support them.
    I was certainly lucky—or thought I was. Things weregoing so well, so hot and heavy, so early in the game that I had to say to Harry and Helene after one love scene, “Hold a little something back for the actual performance, would you please? You’ll burn yourselves out.”
    I said that at the fourth or fifth rehearsal, and Lydia Miller, who was playing Blanche, the faded sister, was sitting next to me in the audience. In real life, she’s the wife of Verne Miller. Verne owns Miller’s Hardware Store. Verne was Harry’s boss.
    “Lydia,” I said to her, “have we got a play or have we got a play?”
    “Yes,” she said, “you’ve got a play, all right.” She made it sound as though I’d committed some kind of crime, done something just terrible. “You should be very proud of yourself.”
    “What do you mean by that?” I said.
    Before Lydia could answer, Harry yelled at me from the stage, asked if I was through with him, asked if he could go home. I told him he could and, still Marlon Brando, he left, kicking furniture out of his way and slamming doors. Helene was left all alone on the stage, sitting on a couch with the same gaga look she’d had after the tryouts. That girl was drained.
    I turned to Lydia again and I said, “Well—until now, I thought I had every reason to be happy and proud. Is there something going on I don’t know about?”
    “Do you know that girl’s in love with Harry?” said Lydia.
    “In the play?” I said.
    “What play?” said Lydia. “There isn’t any play going on now, and look at her up there.” She gave a sad cackle. “You aren’t directing this play.”
    “Who is?” I said.
    “Mother Nature at her worst,” said Lydia. “And think what it’s going to do to that girl when she discovers what Harry really is.” She corrected herself. “What Harry really isn’t,” she said.
    I didn’t do anything about it, because I didn’t figure it wasany of my business. I heard Lydia try to do something about it, but she didn’t get very far.
    “You know,” Lydia said to Helene one night, “I once played Ann Rutledge, and Harry was Abraham Lincoln.”
    Helene clapped her hands. “That must have been heaven!” she said.
    “It was, in a way,” said Lydia. “Sometimes I’d get so worked up, I’d love Harry the way I’d love Abraham Lincoln. I’d have to come back to earth and remind myself that he