First Hit of the Season by Jane Dentinger

Author:Jane Dentinger [Dentinger, Jane]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-4804-3688-6
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 2013-06-28T16:20:00+00:00

CHAPTER XVIII

“DESPITE ITS COMMON USAGE in the English language, I don’t think I’ve ever, in all my years of vast and varied experience, actually seen someone cry into their beer … before now,” Frederick Revere observed mildly, seated across from a soggy Jocelyn in the barroom of the Players Club. “I think you’d better have another. That one’s going to be too salty to finish.”

With the barest nod of his silver-maned head he signaled the bartender to bring another round to their table, while Jocelyn attempted to salvage her face with a cocktail napkin.

“Oh lord, I’m sorry, Freddie,” she sniffed, dabbing ineffectually but with firm determination. “I didn’t mean to get all messy. I hope they don’t rescind the new rule about letting ladies into the bar because of this.”

“Nonsense—it’s the most excitement we’ve had down here in ages, my dear. Old Phelps just lost his first billiard game in six months because he was so engrossed in our little scene here. Hopefully, he’ll start a rumor that I’ve toyed with your affections and destroyed your young life. Then, maybe, I’ll start getting some respect around this place.”

Her old friend’s wry flippancy succeeded in getting a smile out of Jocelyn. A transplanted Britisher who, in a long and successful career, had garnered both celebrity and the deep admiration of his fellow actors, Revere was a jewel set in the crown of the Players Club, where deference had long since developed into barely concealed adoration. Jocelyn herself had adored him from the first time she saw him onstage. She was still, despite a long acquaintanceship, amazed and grateful that her devotion was returned. Like all the best things in her life, it had come to her freely, without effort. In their first meeting they had discovered a mutual love of Shakespeare, which was Revere’s forte, and limericks, which were Jocelyn’s. Challenged to come up with a nasty rhyme about Titus Andronicus, Jocelyn had unthinkingly spouted, “Lavinia, daughter of Titus/Has a bark as bad as her bite is/From the forest she’s flung/Sans two hands and a tongue/Still she’ll write in the sand just to spite us!” Revere had riposted with two lines of Pope’s—“Men, some to business, some to pleasure take; But every woman is at heart a rake,” and an unbreakable bond was formed.

Jocelyn took a sip of her fresh draft and asked, “Now that the worst of it’s over … how bad was I? Incoherently hysterical or just whining with self-pity?”

“Neither,” Revere said, lighting a long, expensive Cuban cigar, which his doctor expressly forbade him; “For an actor, you have a refreshing fear of bathos. You’re just very hurt and that’s hard on you. I was like that at your age—could tear a passion to tatters on stage but avoided them like the plague in my personal life—until I married Lydia, of course. There’s no such thing as aesthetic distance when you love someone, my dear.”

“Frederick, I know that! But this isn’t just love. It’s Phillip’s work I’ve been meddling

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