Chapter 1

STORY TAKES PLACE: 2015
SETTING: Santa Fe, New Mexico
CHARACTERS:
CAROL KNIGHT
RANDALL KNIGHT

My Carol has the most Beautiful Blue Eyes.

She’s nineteen, with warm red hair that goes to below her knees and she has the most beautiful blue eyes you’ve ever seen. I’ve absolutely no idea what her body measurements are or how much she weighs – I don’t really care. She is gorgeous with a Capital G.

My name is Randall Knight, known as Rann to my Carol. I call her C a lot of the time, sometimes ‘Blue Eyes.’ There are three problems as I see things:

First, I’m 27 and she’s 19.
Second, I’ve fallen in love with her.
Third, We’re brother and sister?

We have two other siblings, Nancy, 21 and John, 23. They are both off at college together, and not really part of this situation between Carol and me. Maybe, sometime in the future? Theirs is just as good a story, from what I can glean?

Back when I was twenty-one and Blue Eyes was just about to turn thirteen, I realized that Carol was going to be ... an absolute babe when she got older. At fourteen, she was already over five feet tall and all legs and hair. She hasn’t cut her hair since she was probably seven, maybe eight years old.

Now, I was something of a puzzlement growing up. By the time I was a freshman in High School, while all my friends were jocks and were into girls ... I liked to sing and dance.

And I wasn’t gay!

I was always watching movie musicals on TV, the movie theatre, or the local community theatre. I’d even pretend I was starring in them. I was always singing out loud around the house, usually something written by Rodgers and Hammerstein or Stephen Sondheim, maybe Andrew Lloyd Weber.

I was a true tenor as a young teenager, although I’ve developed into what would now be called a ‘bari-tenor’, meaning ‘a baritone singing voice with virtually a tenor range’. I get a special kick singing anything from OKLAHOMA, CAROUSEL, or JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR.

My dream of singing, acting, and dancing, came true by way of attending Santa Fe University of Art and Design about 20 miles north of where we all lived in La Cienega, New Mexico ... which is only 90 miles south of the New Mexico, Colorado borders.

I was something of a natural I was told, and got double Bachelors of Arts Degrees in Theatre Design as well as Theatre Performance. After getting these degrees, I stayed on and got myself a paid job working in and around the University Theatre System, allowing me to occasionally be in shows as I wished.

I got leads in several musicals along the way, including the role of Jesus in JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR, and I got to play the role of ‘Billy Bigelow’ in CAROUSEL.

My all-time favorite song is ‘The Soliloquy’ from CAROUSEL, a beautiful, but rather lengthy song. In the world of theatre music, love songs tend to be 2.5 to 4 minutes long. At the time, Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein were the Kings of Broadway and could write anything they wanted and it was loved immediately by the masses. ‘Soliloquy’ was seven minutes and fifty-one seconds long.

Besides everything else, time seems to pass along faster while I’m singing it.

It’s also my sister’s favorite song ... because I sang it to her.

There’s a section of the song that goes,

“My little girl, pink and white,
as peaches and cream is she
My little girl, is half again as bright,
as girls are meant to be.”

Whenever I got to that portion of the song, Carol’s ears would perk up and she would hum along with me, until the end of the song.

As she grew up, besides becoming the strikingly beautiful girl I had expected of her, she also started singing. Sometimes along with me, and sometimes she would start singing all by herself.

Her favorite song is ‘I Feel Pretty’ from WEST SIDE STORY because she sang it all the time or hums it, when doing things around the house.

Carol ended up finally getting into theatre at her high school as a sophomore. She was quite good, usually playing featured performers. she rarely got any ‘good’ parts because of the ‘class system’ of high school theatre.

That is where upper classmen get all the best roles, simply because they’re the Junior and Seniors, while the Sophomores are left waiting to get to the top of the proverbial ‘food chain’.

As a senior, she performed many juicy roles, including Anne Egerman in A LITTLE NIGHT MUSIC, Louise in GYPSY and Dorothy in THE WIZARD OF OZ. She was an untapped talent. I was certainly hoping I could talk her into coming to SFU. I also dreamed of tapping her!

Fate takes a hand sometimes.

Santa Fe University Theatre was putting on its production of WEST SIDE STORY and Carol auditioned amongst forty or so college actresses, including seniors, and got the plum part of Maria, while I was the Assistant Stage Manager of the show.

A very lucky young man, nineteen-year-old freshman Mark Wilson, got the role of Tony and everything was moving along quite well, until the unexpected happened ... His parents, while on vacation in Rome, Italy, were involved in a boat accident that put them both into the hospital.

This happened only seven days before the opening of the show. Director Marcus Diamond was going crazy, due to Mark’s family tragedy. Mark wanted to go to Rome to see his parents, and Marcus insisted he stay, because “The Show Must Go On.”

I came up with what I thought was a ‘creative’ solution. I had suggested to Marcus that I take over the role of Tony for the opening weekend of the show, and Mark would pick it back up, in a week, when he got back.

Marcus looked at me kind of funny, and reminded me that Maria and Tony were lovers. How ... would I deal with that?

Marcus told Mark to go and get back as soon as he could.

I told Marcus I would talk to Carol, and see if she’d be OK with me taking over the part, for the first weekend of performances.