Where Valentina Went

Part 4- Jazz

Part Four- Jazz

It was here. Opening night to An American in Paris.

Where was I?

Backstage, arguing with an extra who forgot her point shoes and had to make do with a pair of spare bright yellow ones which stuck out like a traffic cone on an empty highway.

"The entire point of this scene is that Lise and Jerry feel like they're the only ones in the room!" I tell her, "It's hard to do that with a giant glow stick on the stage!"

"Well, it's not my fault! The band broke on my original shoes, would you rather have a barefoot dancer?" She asks me and I sigh in frustration.

"Is that your first scene?" I ask her and she nods. "Run down to West 48th street, next to The Eugene O'Neil Theater is a little hole in the wall place with shoes and stuff. Find Waller, tell him Vallows sent you, and that you need temporary point shoes. Tell him I'll pay him back later, got it?" I tell her and she nods. "Go, quickly!"

She runs off, sprinting through the room and then disappears around the corner. I head into my dressing room and set out all the clothing. We had down three dress rehearsals in total, and some of the costume changes were tough but I was okay. Literally nothing could go wrong here. There was no room for error.

"Valentina? We need help!" I turn around to see Christopher and Cara behind us.

"What happened?" I ask them.

"Magnum is sick!" Magnum played Adam Cook.

"He was fine today at lunch! We literally saw him a few hours ago," I exclaim, panicking and heading his direction.

"Food poisoning, and Carter is nowhere to be found," she says and I swing around.

"Are you fucking kidding me?" I ask them and they shake their head. "We have half an hour until the curtains draw back and we don't have a director, lovely."

"I know, things are kind of freaking out," Chris says and I sigh.

"Chris, you go get Magnum's understudy and get him prepped. Kara, you go make sure Magnum's okay and then head to props to make sure everything is set there. They had a problem with some stuff earlier." I instruct them and they nod, heading in opposite directions.

"Wait!" Kara says, "Where are you going?"

I yell back, "We need a director!"

~_~

"Thought I'd find you up here," I climb the steps up the top of the backstage control panel. They controlled the lights and you could see the whole theater from there. "it's filling up. There's plenty of people."

"What's going on down there?" He asks and I shrug.

"Chaos. We have neon shoes, and a sick Adam. We're calling in the understudy now and I sent the extra to Waller's."

"Nice work," he says to me and I hand up a tiny bottle in my robe pocket that I was wearing over Lise's costume.

"You're gonna need this," I hand him the tiny Tequila bottle and he nods in thanks, unscrewing it and downing it in a sip and then coughing.

"I needed that, thank you," he grins at me and we look over the railing. People were finding their seats in the theater as it filled up slowly. "Oh god, this is going to be a disaster."

"It's not, we have the situation under control."

"We don't have an Adam."

"We have an understudy. That's good enough, it's opening night and we have a full house. We'll be fine," I tell him and he sighs.