Prologue

Tuesday

This story starts at the beginning of a very good month for me, romantically speaking. Although, when the month began, I was still in a 5-month dry spell.

Which was fine, it was tech week, and I was directing my first musical at the Riverplains Community Theater. I was very busy, with hundreds of tiny fires to attempt to put out: Some of the lights we ordered for the show arrived broken and no replacements would be available before showtime; Our bass player got stopped with his 3rd DUI and would not be with us for the show; Two of the costumes ordered from New York arrived in drastically wrong sizes and the costume company wasn’t responding to emails or phone calls; Etc., etc. The point is, I was too exhausted every night to even miss getting laid.

One of the wrong-sized costumes went to Christy, the energetic singer in a supporting role. While she was super slender, the evening gown looked like a minidress on her 5’10” frame. She brought in a bridesmaid’s dress she owned, and while not the ideal color, it worked just fine for the part and looked amazing on her lanky frame. She’s 10 years younger than me, but I was thinking I was going to ask her out after the show was over. She’d been awfully flirty. And I hadn’t dated a college girl in ages.

Ok. I’m 31 and she’s 21, judgy-mcjudgepants. I’m not cradle-robbing. Am I? Well, she had to say ‘yes’ before I’d have to worry about that.

Yeah, I’m 31 and single. Never married. Never even came close, much to several ex-girlfriends’ chagrin. I’ve gone to therapy and understand the root cause of why I’m phobic of the institution, but I’m not going to get into it here. This is a sex story and not an exploration of childhood trauma.

Anyway, so, yeah. Most of my straight friends are married and have kids by now, so I have noticed that my hookup rate has slowed down and my prospects have thinned out as soon as my 20’s were over. So, now I’m eying a lithe college girl and trying to convince myself that I’m not a creepazoid for wanting to ask her out.

I’m not into Tindr or anything like that. I like the courtship and the dating just as much as the bumping and the grinding. And when I’m really desperate for affection, there’s always Jean. She and I have been on-again/off-again friends with benefits. Minus the “friends” part, though. We kind of annoy each other if we’re not in a prone position. It’s been ages since we last hooked up, though. I was seeing someone the last time she texted me, and then she was dating a guy two months later, when I texted her. We find each other attractive enough, and the half-dozen dalliances we’ve shared were largely satisfying and efficient (and twice, too drunk to be counted).

Anyway, I’m getting ahead of myself.

So, it was tech week, like I said, and we had two full dress rehearsals left before the three shows this weekend. Twenty-three cast members, a stage manager, a lighting manager, six (if we can find a replacement bass player before Friday) pit musicians, four stage crew members, a music director, and a propsmaster - all of them looking to me for guidance. No time to be thinking about Christy with her mile-long legs. Gotta put a show on!

The rehearsal went well, if overly long. I ran half the second act three times to work out some kinks. It was 11:30 before I said goodnight and headed home.

I was pulling into my driveway, about ten minutes from the theater, when I realized I had left my phone there. Dammit. Back I go.

11:55 and I’m unlocking the doors to the now-empty and dark theater. I knew where my phone would be, but I had to throw on the lights at the breaker box before I’d be able to see it. If I’d had my phone, I would have used the flashlight. But, I didn’t have my phone, which was the problem.

My phone sat on the armrest of the seat I used most of the night in the third row. I grabbed it and started heading back out the back of the auditorium, when I heard a muffled call coming from the stage.

“Is someone there?” I called out.

More noise. Definitely someone there. I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but they sounded like they needed help.

I jumped onto the stage and headed back toward the prop room and where the sets were built. I immediately saw something quite troubling. Typically, the giant sheets of particle board, the wood used to build sets from, are stacked neatly against the wall and out of the way. Now, a good 20 pieces of wood lay on the ground, and from the muffled cries, it sounded like someone was underneath it all.