You and the Night and the Music

Not a Star, Not a Rose: Episode 3

- Cranberry juice.

- Uh oh.

- I’m just in the mood for it.

- Obviously, but I don’t need details.

- Ack! You!

- Here you go. . . . So. How is he, anyway?

- How is who?

- You can’t even remember their names now?

- Huh?

- How many is this, Kalmia — what number are you on?

- Oh. This again.

- Or did you get back together with the last one?

- I see there’s a live band tonight, Deke.

- Very good.

- Are they?

- No.

- Well, whatever — I think I’ll go sit closer to them.

- Don’t. It’s not your thing.

- Why do you say that?

- Listen to what she’s opening with.

- Oh . . . Send in the Clowns.

- Exactly.

- Yeah, you’re right. I hate that song.

- I bet you don’t know who sang it originally.

- Who?

- Glynis Johns — the mother in Mary Poppins? The one you kind of look like, and that’s why you love her?

- Oh, yeah! Her . . .

- Only when you put your hair up. When you leave it down you look like Bernadette Peters.

- If that’s a compliment, I’ll take it.

- Don’t expect another this year.

- Whatever. . . . Anyway, I really hate clowns.

- Of course you do.

- I have good reasons!

- Oh, here we go. Which of your many, many fiancés was a clown?

- I’ll get to that. But it started way earlier.

- Hold on, I have to check on that glaring woman over there, be right back. . . . Okay, so you were engaged to a clown . . .

- You weren’t listening! I was going to say, it all started at the Del Mar Fair. There was this funhouse . . . God. You know what? Never mind.

- No, go on, I’m listening.

- Yeah, well, the entrance was through this big, scary, red barrel which was supposed to be the mouth of this evil clown that was painted on the funhouse wall. Totally freaked me out.

- When was this — last summer?

- No! I was three!

- Okay. Okay, that’s actually understandable. I wouldn’t have liked that at age three, either. But . . . I’d have gotten over it by now.

- Oh yeah? Were you ever stalked by a clown?

- Ah, now we get to one of your ex-fiancés.

- Ugh! I wouldn’t date him, let alone marry him!

- You don’t seem to marry anyone, you know — you just get engaged all the time.

- Let me tell my story.

- I’m trying to work.

- This is part of your job.

- Fine. Tell me about your stalker clown.

- You know what he did?

- I’m waiting.

- Okay. So I met him in college, right, in the theatre department, back when I thought I might major in that . . . he was taking this Writing and Directing class, and they were doing a production at the end of the semester . . . so all year he kept asking me out and I kept saying no . . . so then he cast me as the female lead in his play and cast himself opposite just so he could kiss me.

- I assume you didn’t know he was going to do this when you tried out?

- Of course not! Ew.

- But you took the role, it sounds like . . .

- Well, yeah. But then I quit.

- Before or after the kiss?

- Thirty seconds after. Because he didn’t do it like a stage kiss, and it was gross.

- You got his clown makeup all over your face?

- He wasn’t . . . ugh. He only wore it at birthday parties and in parades and stuff.

- So you let some creepy part-time clown ruin a great song like Send in the Clowns for you. How sad. You let him win.

- You’re a guy. You don’t know how women —

- You wanna play the victim, that’s your choice, I guess.

- I’m not — what is your problem tonight?

- It’s not part of my job to talk about those things.

- But I’m your —

- Why don’t you go and sit by the band like you were going to? You might end up liking them. And it’d give you something to write about. Have you even written in that journal yet?

- I don’t —

- Go on.

- You are such a . . .

- Bye!

Continued in Episode 4: If I Should Lose You