Hi, friends! Happy New Year!! I hope it’s wonderful for you! For those following along, here is Chapter Two (along with Chapter One) of my novel, “Evercreek Falls” – where all is not quite as it appears at a quaint little dinner theater by the sea. The full book will be available for free on July 17th, but I’ll drop a chapter every other week or so right here on my Facebook page and on my website. (Chapter Three on January 19!) If weekend festivities are boring you, then maybe this book will help put you to sleep. 🙃 Thank you so much for the love and support you’ve shown me over this last year or two. I love you all. ❤️  

(A Note: The odd-numbered chapters are written in first person from the viewpoint of Joe Celladoro. The even numbered chapters are written in the 3rd-person perspective of Mark Offerman, Evercreek Falls’ police chief. … Please excuse improper indenting of text in web form.) And, here is …  

 “Evercreek Falls”

Chapter One

My late brother had some good advice on the eve of his wedding: 

“You can’t live with `em, if you can’t live without `em.”  

Now, this could be taken to mean a great variety of things, chief among them nonsense, but I found the wisdom in the words. If a man is so crazy over a woman that he can’t function in her absence, that kind of passion or neediness will ensure the relationship to fail. Good advice. And, like most advice with a nice ring to it, it would go unheeded on my part. But, not for a lack of trying. 

As for my brother, it turned out he could indeed live without `em, but that’s another story. 

And, in both our defenses, he never met Kate.  

I was raised in Revere, where crowded post-War Capes looked like garishly colored boxcars of a train that had circled and crashed back into itself. Revere was – and still is – a working class suburb of Boston. I have one older brother whose advice I shared, a sister who was stillborn, and a father who died shortly after my own arrival into the world. My mother, neurotic enough to have filled my head with all the insecurities a lifetime can provide, never stood in the way of what I wanted to do.  

I am an actor. 

I consider it to be my avocation and profession, although I have neither the widespread accolades nor generous pay stubs to prove it in a court of my peers. Instead, I have moved from one community theater gig to the next, occasionally scoring smaller Equity roles in Boston, and even receiving scant praise for my work along the way. But, as any professional actor will tell you, it’s all about the agent. And, although I was now pushing thirty, I rationalized – naively perhaps, that I was doing the important work of building a resume. Whether Worcester or on the White Way, a credit was a credit and a good role was one more notch under my belt in my attempt to make a name.  

That name is Joe Celladoro. 

Italian, as you might have guessed. Irish on my mother’s side. The blend worked well, as I had two things on my side in my formative years. Early on, my ashen blonde hair and unusually long eyelashes were the envy of my mother’s hairdressers. Adults made it known I was easy on the eyes. You’d think this all would have led to a comfortably inflated ego on my part. In my teens, my hair naturally darkened and as my features chiseled, a few girls – as well as the occasional boy – suggested I might actually be attractive, at least superficially so. And even I, with all my insecurities and doubt, realized this could be a lucky talisman to get me in the door with people. My challenge would lie in remaining in the door once inside. Low self-esteem diminishes any God-given talents, and if I had scored a plum role for every moment of disappointed realization in a girl’s eyes that I was not the confident player behind the pretty mask, I would be a star by now.

In my earliest years I was a frail and favorite host to all sorts of childhood diseases from asthma to shingles – the latter disease almost unheard of in young children, but I was proving to buck trends from the start. This, coupled with the fact I had no one to teach me how to throw a baseball – although I’m not sure it would have helped much, set the stage early for teasing and ostracizing. By the time I began to develop any sense of myself as a teenager, my image as an outcast had far over shadowed my ability to conquer my image as a loser of sorts, albeit a pretty loser.  

I continued to do what I had done as a child. I would spend time alone, dreaming up imaginary plays in which I was both star and romantic lead to a wonderful girl who lived only in the settings and narratives of my mind. I didn’t know it then, but this somewhat sad way of life was unintentionally serving as a primer for a career as an actor.

And, when I gathered every bit of strength inside me to audition for the high school play in my sophomore year, I stood trembling and nauseated before a throng of unfriendly faces, reciting a bit I pulled out of a book called, “100 Monologues for Young Actors.”  The monologue was about a misfit named Bernard who’d wished to change his name to Spike. I performed it with a lilt in my voice, and plenty of gusto.  

The laughs trickled then poured in. The cold and apathetic faces were now howling and applauding me as I went back to my seat, my head bowed, but beaming.  

I flew through the heavy doors of the school on that fall afternoon, and ran home with a joy I had never known – a joy that turned to warm tears pressed hard against my face by an unusually cold wind, and accompanied by an overwhelming anticipation to share the news with anyone who would care to listen.  

My life had changed in that moment and, although there would be plenty of failure to come, the next ten years would invariably be consumed by all sorts of forays into stage and local television.  It never provided enough money on which to live, but it was where I lived.  

My deepest joy – in addition to any girlfriends and pals – sprang from this community made up of, to varying degrees, fellow outsiders.  And, although my acting work remained steady but mostly unchanged, menial jobs I had taken to support myself eventually snowballed into a day job as a “project analyst” for an Internet company.  I took some comfort that I had developed some other skills should acting not work out, but always thought of the hours I spent from nine to five as a penance for my craft.  And only in the most despairing of moments did I entertain the possibility that the stage would not eventually embrace me completely. 

My thirtieth birthday was not the only event on the calendar. There was also a new millennium on the way. Even in the most ordinary sounding of new years, people set small to grandiose promises to transform their lives. Whether these promises are carried out is another thing. Here was a year on the horizon unlike any other: Two thousand. The sound of it had weight and gravitas. No dancing alliterated syllables as you’ll hear in nineteen ninety-nine. This was a bam and a thump year. The goal number at the end of a long count by a child playing hide-and-go-seek that is spoken much louder than the other numbers, and followed by a, “Ready of not, here I come!”  

All my notions of my future, however, would be put to the test during my days in Evercreek Falls.  They would be days when my life was spent on a stage, but, I will concede that, if the stage is the ultimate pedestal, my life these days, or lack thereof, is spent beneath it.  I could blame Evercreek Falls for that. But why be bitter? And why get ahead of myself, for that matter.

What is important is that I still believed in the open road during my days at Crocetti’s.  I felt talented, attractive and funny, receiving that validation from all around me. My formerly frail physique had been transformed through months of pumping iron at the local Y. Probably coming as no surprise to you already, I was even a bit cocky despite my insecurities, or perhaps because of them.  

Of course, nothing was perfect.  And, I still didn’t know how to throw a baseball.    

*****

Evercreek Falls sits unassumingly on the north shore of Massachusetts, by the mouth of the Merrimack River. Her people are comfortable – upper middle-class, mostly white. And her population, although not large enough to classify as a city, is sizable enough to allow people to go about their business without significant gossip flowing like the river at her side. That is, at least beyond its theater doors.  

Evercreek Falls’ inland is defined by winding roads that reveal colonial garrisons and sprawling strip malls in haphazard fashion. The coastline is dotted mostly with early twentieth-century cottages – summer retreats when Evercreek Falls still had more people than automobiles (these are now year-round homes), less than a handful of what were once plentiful saloons, and Crocetti’s Eat and Play: Evercreek Falls’ only amateur dinner theater today or “back in the day.” And, yes, that’s theater with an e-r, not an r-e. And for good reason.

It was late summer, and I was sharing an apartment in Lowell, a former mill city that had revitalized itself after some less than stellar years by the nineteen nineties, and is situated about thirty miles southeast of Evercreek Falls. I was rooming with two college students in their early twenties and having a miserable time of it. Although I often indulged in their religious routine of drinking cheap beer, and engaging in video games that starred animated steroid addicts, I felt like an aging pseudo-Fonz holding court with his adolescent Ralph and Potsie. I held this temporary allure as someone who had achieved a bit of cool by going his own way, but upon closer look, these were boys who would outgrow their beautiful young hedonistic ways and move on to be professionals in society. I would always be a hedonist of sorts, and no promises awaited me. Only hope. Anyhow, I knew I wanted out of this particular arrangement, as I preferred to be the youngest guy in the room, not the oldest, and I was sure I would have been gone already had I not been so damned lazy.  

One of the boys (I don’t remember which; I think it was Ralph) told me about an audition for the original Rodgers and Hammerstein version of “Cinderella” in Evercreek Falls at a place called Crocetti’s Eat and Play.  I knew the play, and I’d vaguely heard of the town, and I remember saying, “No, really…?” a few times to my roommate – thinking he must have made up the place’s ludicrous name.  

I should have dismissed the idea immediately. After all, I had done a handful of musicals, but singing was not my strong suit, and the thought of performing in any theater with the word “Eat” in the title was about as appealing as downing a box of laxatives while simultaneously nursing a bout of hemorrhoids. But, the truth of the matter was I hadn’t performed anywhere for three months and, although depression was only an arm’s length away even in the best of times, I had now drifted into the epicenter of a massive, gray funk.

When I wasn’t in my dark room each night, listening to sad Neil Diamond songs and drinking beer, I was with the Arnolds’ gang in the next room, listening to downright debilitating Nirvana songs. And drinking beer.  I knew I had to make a move for the sake of moving.  In that light, Crocetti’s didn’t sound so bad and, as someone famous once said, “The play is the thing.” And, as I said before, a credit is a credit. If I landed a part, Cinderella just might provide the romantic escapism I was lacking in my life. At the very least, it sounded like I could get a free meal or two out of the deal.

*****

The driving directions, which I downloaded from the Internet, seemed easy enough. Jump on Route 97 North, and drive for what looked to be a solid two hours. It was. Kept company only by the AM radio of my ’75 Buick Apollo (an embarrassment of a vehicle which made dark sunglasses and a baseball cap traveling requirements) and the constant faint smell of gas and smoke, my nerves grew more on end with each passing mile. As much as I loved acting, I equally despised auditioning – but, it was a necessary evil in a business I otherwise adored. After all, I had disciplined myself to take on no new debts – and that even included a reliable vehicle – in order to devote myself as much as possible to acting until the break came along. It should come as little surprise I also hadn’t had a date in three months. A cheap, aspiring actor and his pal, Chokey the Asphyxiating Tank Engine, somehow didn’t have the appeal of a doctor or a politician. 

The three-lane route gave way to one lane, and the formerly congested throughway became a solitary path through forest. This made me apprehensive, as my green Army tank of a car had been known to conveniently break down when sensing she was outside the borders of civilization.  

I felt lost, and, by this time, I was squirming out of my skin with nervousness and a great need to piss. Some relief came with the thought of turning the boat around, hitting the gas station I saw about a mile back for a restroom break and six-pack, and shrugging off the whole excursion with a cheery, “We’ll get `em next time!” chant. But, changing course on what had become more of a thin, gravelly trail than a U.S. highway would have required a 12-point turn, or a swift U-ey using the woods – and, possibly taking out a Bambi or Thumper in the deal. And, while debating my choices, the maple trees on my left gave way to an open field, revealing a placid river shimmering in majestic tones of blue. It was somehow comforting to be reminded what a beautiful late summer day this was, and how the sun and sky couldn’t give two damns about my audition or bladder.

As I drove on, I was greeted by an obese scarecrow in a New England Patriots sweatshirt – wearing a Fedora hat of the style Sinatra might have worn in the late nineteen fifties, and corncob pipe that appeared to be scotch-taped to its face of hay.  This sports-loving, tobacco-chomping crooner was posed in a wheelbarrow at the edge of the road, bearing a cardboard sign, declaring: 

CROCETTI’S LITTLE TREASURES AND KNICK-KNACKS AUCTION ON 

THE BAR FLOOR, ALL-DAY, EVERY SUNDAY

I don’t know if he scared the crows, but it was enough to scare the shit out of me.  I veered into the dirt lot to get a look at the place, and dropped like a plane in turbulence into what felt like a three-foot pothole. After cursing and praying I hadn’t lost my muffler, I navigated the old beast in dainty figure eights around the sandy landmine terrain Crocetti’s called its parking lot. There were quite a few cars and, although there could be no spray-painted lines delineating parking spaces, the patrons had intuitively created deep rows in the sand. I could only hope they were mostly treasure hunters searching for their Lost Minnie Mouse Lamp of the Covenant, and not actors. As a rule in acting, there is no shame to win roles by default. If the other team doesn’t show up to play, a W is a W. And, you can always proceed to lie to your friends later and say the place was packed.  

To my surprise, the building itself was somewhat attractive, looking like a long ranch-style house with a miniature square turret on the side facing the street, and appearing more like a rustic and welcoming respite than a lowbrow tavern with a stage show. But, in retrospect, I think I looked at Crocetti’s – and its cast of characters – through a too generous lens. Many people would later remind me what a shit hole it was, and I often wondered why I couldn’t ever see it that way.  

I made my way up a wooden ramp, where, above my head, white cursive letters proudly spelled out the Crocetti surname against a shade of pale blue that painted the rest of the building. Submerged into thick smells of tobacco smoke, pine, and popcorn I entered, my eyes forced to readjust to the darkness of the tavern. For reasons of which I’m not particularly sure, these kinds of scents brought me comfort and, perhaps due to the cumulative years I had spent in my own darkened room, I preferred such dimly lit spaces.  

“Move it or lose it!” a throaty, high voice didn’t say, but sang. He was alarmingly tall, and a long frayed ponytail down his back was perhaps the unsuccessfully attempted compensation for his vastly receded hairline. His right arm was suspending a tray of dirty dishes. I stepped back, and he moved closer, looking me up and down.  

“Are you an actor, barfly, or both?” he asked in such a manner that I assumed it was a line he had used on the last ten people before me, and said with a puckish smirk of which I didn’t know quite what to make.

“I’m an actor in need of a bathroom.”  

“Hm!” he said, followed by an equally staccato sigh, or perhaps a gasp. “I’m Michael. Remember that name. It’s the most important one you’ll hear here. Are you ready?”  

I was speechless. His left hand had moved to his hip, completing his big tableaux of a little teapot. He was smirking and waiting for my reply, of which I had none, and not knowing the guy for more than a minute, I already guessed that he got off on exactly that kind of reaction.    

In a grand, overly theatrical way, he pointed in different directions as he called out, “Barroom! Restaurant! Theater! Crapper!” He pointed to the men’s room when calling out theater, and down a set of narrow stairs on crapper.  

“Oops!  My bad!” he squealed, then reversed his points.  

“I call `em as I see `em,” he said.    

 It was helpful. The mirrored bar to my right looked inviting – lit only by humming neon signs for cheap beer, and empty with the exception of a bartender and what looked to be a large cop standing at the edge. But, I always had a rule about drinking before auditions, and the rule was “Don’t.”

“Well, thanks,” I said (I thought genuinely), and moved toward the peeling paint of the bathroom door.  

Michael marched his one-man parade back toward the restaurant, and didn’t turn his head when he said, “Don’t suck,” adding, “Unless you like to.” His giggles faded into the noise of clanking dishes and muffled conversations.

After using the commode I followed the sign’s advice and took the downward staircase. At its bottom a wall of cast pictures from previous productions greeted me.  I spent a moment observing the photographic capture of what were mostly pretty young girls and middle-aged men in varied costumes and sequences.  

The familiar thrill of performing was upon me again. But, when I turned the corner, I was jolted to see a dinner theater filled to capacity with bustling actors, young and old alike, where I’d hoped to find a half-empty space. One teenage girl sitting at a table with her peers swung her neck around to survey me, with her long blonde hair following shortly thereafter. A graying but youthful-faced man at another table looked through his eyeglasses at me and folded his arms against his crisply ironed shirt. At the front of the house, facing the empty stage, sat a young man, an older woman, and another young man with quite a head of hair, all of whom I immediately knew to be the director, assistant, and musical director – although I couldn’t be sure which was which. They turned to eye me. The excited decibels of volume actually dropped a few levels upon my entrance.

They were all looking at me and I was ashamed to feel fear and an overwhelming desire to escape. I understood I should expect to find this quantity of competition in New York, but in Evercreek Falls, Massachusetts? Just how majestic is this industry that I should expect to sweat out an open call before two hundred people, for an almost non-paying community theater gig three hundred miles from the “City?” 

I would be better served devoting my soul to my Internet job with the rest of that chain gang, and forget all this acting foolishness forevermore. Of course, these insecure pangs and doubts occurred in the space of a second or two, but I was ashamed to feel them at all.

“Are you here to audition?” the woman asked loudly from her table across the room, thereby directing the one remaining pair of crowd dweller’s eyes that hadn’t already been focused on my response.

“I was hoping you’d just give me the part.”

A handful of cute girls laughed, and for a moment in my terror I thought about getting laid.

“Fill this out.”  

She handed me a sheet of paper and a whittled down pencil. She was not amused, but she seemed someone too stressed to be amused. She must have been the assistant director.

I found a place at the edge of their table, and leaned over to fill out the sheet which asked the usual basic questions: name, role auditioning for (of which I usually replied, “Any”), and the infamous, if not cast, will you help with tech? (of which I always replied, quite insincerely, “Possibly”).  The thirty-something man with the big hair gave me a warm, agenda-less smile. From the pile of sheet music before him, he was obviously the musical director. The director, whom I’d pegged by process of elimination, kept his head bowed and appeared to be drawing tiny circles on a notepad with his skinny hand. I passed the paper in his direction, and the assistant rapidly intercepted it.

“Find a seat,” she said. I wondered why some people who seem so basically unhappy with life bother to show up at all. I was including myself in the sample, of course. I took a seat in the back corner of the room so I’d have the best look at the plethora of actors, and the noise level dropped once again as the group spied the entrance of a nervous-looking young man in glasses. The dour assistant asked the same question in the same tone and at that moment I realized I hadn’t been so special.

Within minutes the process of summoning actors in twos began, leaving them to audition before a crowd perhaps more sizable than the actual show itself would draw. I knew my turn would come, and I focused on my breathing, trying in vain now to relax. The director and assistant whispered inaudibly to each other like a game show contestant pair deciding on an answer to the sixty-four thousand dollar question. 

The assistant then stood, fumbled with numerous papers, and asked unconfidently, if not timidly, “Harold Dubinsky and Kate Richards?” upon which time two bodies stood and navigated the best route to the stage.  

And, that’s when it happened, with me caught completely unawares as is often the case with these things, I imagine. If life is to be thought of linearly as a series of moments which are mostly forgotten, there is, if only once in a lifetime, a transcendent one that sends a dagger splittingly between everything past and everything future; a moment caught in the rocks on the river of time, replaying itself endlessly for one’s eternal consideration.  

The moment I first saw Kate – her gigantic blue eyes, her foppish red curls, her petite vibrant body that didn’t walk but danced her way to where she needed to go, all illuminated by the spots and gels – is a moment that has never ended for me.  It perpetually plays, even now, as if defying life to have the gall to dare move forward after witnessing the warmth of her particular beauty. Not only did my past not matter but it along with my future ceased to exist, all in a moment. I had in that moment stepped outside what I now know as a false linear idea of time. I was in love, and in love at first sight, dispelling the notion that neither existed in a single wonderful swoop.

Kate read for the part of Cinderella, as well as the stepsisters. She created definite delineations in her approaches to each character, but they all shared a bursting enthusiasm and lightness that was Kate’s alone. The musical director with the big hair, who introduced himself as Arnie, but whom I had already coined as ‘Beethoven’ during my ice-breaking conversations in the back of the house, had her sing a few bars from the score. She stood center stage, sheet music in hand, dressed in a sweater and corduroy pants, her hair pulled back to reveal every pore of her pristine face. Her voice was confident and pure. And high notes that most any other vocalist would be forced to sing falsetto, Kate belted out with supreme gusto, as if the ghost of Ethel Merman were guiding her. My motivation to score a role was considerably heightened, as I knew this would be my only opportunity to get to know her.   

“Joe Celladoro?” the assistant asked.

It was the first of many turns for me that day. I had read for every male character imaginable in the early stages, but as the day wore on and I was continually paired up with various actresses, I was reading only for the role of the Prince – and I took this to be a good sign. The other two gentlemen who were reading for the part didn’t seem to possess the same energy, or create opportunities for themselves to invent or even find humor with the role. I did okay with the song I had prepared, “Follow That Dream,” which was an old Elvis Presley travelogue movie tune. It wasn’t exactly a brilliant choice of song. No Broadway showstopper, but I knew it was a simple song I sang adequately, and my gyrating hips diverted some attention away from what was happening upstairs. After what must have been three hours of trips to the stage, the moment I had hoped for and feared all afternoon came to pass.

“Kate and Joe. …”

I had developed a slight following by this point so that when my name was called there was a detectable bustle of anticipation as to what I would do next, after having succeeded in breaking the crowd into laughter through my choices with the material or my own self-deprecating remarks in the previous outings. I might have imagined that. It didn’t matter. I tripped up the stairs to the stage, and that indeed garnered some good-natured chuckles. I recovered and walked tall and confidently to Kate and extended my hand.

“Hi, I’m Joe.”  

“I’m Kate.” 

She took my hand and smiled, her generous lips parting to reveal two rows of rather large, well-shaped teeth. In fact, most of her features seemed to be at least slightly exaggerated, and – oh! – it certainly worked for her. It worked for me, I should say. I was somewhat taller, standing at six feet, and as she looked up at me I appreciated the soft curve of her neck and alabaster skin that was even more wonderful under closer scrutiny.   

Up close she was shy, and up close she was even younger than I had thought.  A warm, sultry blanket covered me as I looked into her eyes and held her hand, my temples burning, my forehead moist.  

“Have you done plays here before?” I asked.

“Yes.”

Now in patches of awkwardness so elongated they became the new normal, I glanced over at the director and assistant to receive some sort of cue. They both looked as grim and preoccupied as ever.

“Are they always so miserable, you think?” I said under my breath.

“The director’s my brother,” she said. Leave it to me, I thought, to have to insert damage control only one minute into a conversation with a beautiful girl.  

“I just mean they seem so serious, about everything,” I said. It was weak, but I couldn’t think of anything else to say.

“Randall takes directing very seriously,” she said in a formal tone, and I couldn’t tell if I had offended her.  

“And, things have been different since Beth,” she added.

“Who’s Beth?”

“She’s a girl who’s done a lot of plays here. She disappeared a few weeks ago.  I saw you looking at the pictures on the wall. She’s in some of them.”  

Some girl had vanished, and all I could think about was the idea that Kate was watching me when I came in.

“That’s terrible. Do the police have any idea where she is?” I asked.

“No. They’re still looking. Some people think she ran away. She had a lot of problems. I hope that’s what it is, … but I don’t think so.” She abruptly seemed too preoccupied to continue the conversation, but I partially attributed it to anticipation of the task before us.

“Well, … I’m really sorry,” I said. She just looked away and my fleeting cockiness limped then morphed into the more familiar sensations of ineffectiveness and stupidity.

“Where are you from?” she suddenly asked.

“Revere. Lowell now.” I was good at the easy questions.

“Why don’t you say Re-veah?”  

It’s well accepted in New England that if you were to somehow literally drive into the center of its infamously grating accent you would be pah-king ya cah in Re-veah. I laughed, but she was straight-faced, as if this were not friendly banter, but more along the lines of suspicious questioning. 

“I lost the accent when I went to acting school on the West coast,” I said.

“Oh. … You’re funny,” she said straight-faced. My discomfort had become a contagion. 

“Thank you,” I said.

“Well, he looks like a prince to me!” Beethoven was smiling, and I imagined he was himself uncomfortable to be quarantined with Randall and his assistant, and was reaching out to form friendly alliances with the cast hopefuls.

My successive readings with Kate were exhilaratingly easy, which came as a great relief. If I hadn’t known it already, I was better with a script and by this time I knew the text by heart after having performed the same material earlier with the other actresses, none of whom struck fear in me. All I had to do was look into Kate’s almost baleful eyes, and my reactions were organic. I was certain I was experiencing the same dizzying emotions the prince felt for Cinderella.

Kate and I were the last to read. Randall had uttered numerous okays to signal starts and finishes to readings, and the occasional thank you, and those were the only words that seemingly left his mouth.

“There is a phone number posted in the lobby. Call it after eight o’ clock tonight to receive the cast list. And, thank you to all of you. You were all wonderful,” the assistant lied. “If your name’s not on the list, but you’d like to help with tech, please leave a message on the machine.” People were already headed to the exit. 

I tried to follow Kate on her way out the door, for the chance of talking with her some more, but she was gone by the time I arrived in the parking lot. With the exception of a somewhat rotund man with whom I had read during the audition, most everyone had entered their vehicles. I attempted to put a positive spin on that.  The action of fifty cars simultaneously leaving the lot created a sandstorm that provided the perfect camouflage to hide the sight of my getting into Chokey, of whom I was perpetually embarrassed.  

The drive home was short and delightful, as I relished images of Kate and myself, princess and prince, and charmingly prayed to an external, angry god in urging it to be. I played video games with Potsie and Ralph that evening while constantly glancing at the Pabst Blue Ribbon clock above the gas stove. At 8:08 p.m., I made the call to discover I would indeed be holding the slipper that belonged to Kate’s foot. With six-pack in hand, I went victoriously to my bedroom, where I closed the door, turned off the lights, and replaced Neil Diamond with the Beatles. I replayed the events of the day in my head as if it were a Hollywood movie; the comments that resulted in chuckles from the crowd and validation for myself, and all the successful trips to the stage. Most of all I thought of the girl I’d met that day. Ultimately all my self-indulgent fantasies gave way to imagining a different way of life; one filled with wonder. Absent of self-imposed exile and nights spent alone in a dark room drinking cheap beer.  

*From “Evercreek Falls,” a novel by Todd DeMartinis. Copyright © 2020. All Rights Reserved.  

Chapter Two

Mark Offerman wanted to be a cop since his earliest memories of living on the top floor of a gutted out tenement in hardscrabble Lawrence, Massachusetts. At night he would climb into an attic space closet to admire his late father’s uniform that hung protected beneath a sleeve of transparent plastic in reverential awe.

Daddy was a good man, he had been told, who would never be coming home.  “Daddy was kilt cuz he was trying to stop a bad man from robbing a likker store,” he would tell the people who asked and anyone who would listen.  From here, childhood was synonymous with loneliness as he traveled from state to state to anyplace his mother could find work, and spending a good deal of time in Louisiana where he discovered a love for Cajun food and his sexual identity. Mark ultimately returned to Massachusetts for reasons of which he was never quite sure, and realized his dream to join the brotherhood of the police force – first as a Lawrence, then Evercreek Falls, cop. And by the age of forty-nine, his quiet determination and warm affability had propelled him to the title of this town’s first black Chief of Police. He was also – most likely – Evercreek Falls’s first gay police chief, but only a few citizens were aware of that, and barely a few more suspected.  

If Mohammed Ali’s face was the most recognizable in the world in 1999, Mark Offerman’s was the most identifiable in Evercreek Falls, his easy way and familiar bearing creating an unassuming presence; at least, as unassuming as a solid black man standing six-foot-six could be in a mostly white suburb. Of the many stereotypes he sheared in his tenure as chief, perhaps the greatest was the idea that a man in uniform was to be feared. If you weren’t doing anything terribly wrong, there was certainly no reason to be agitated in his presence.  

It was not unusual to see him assisting the elderly across Evercreek Falls’ busier thoroughfares or working the tables at Jim’s Diner on Sunday mornings with his tired G-rated jokes – ones that caused him to belly laugh every time nonetheless. He also knew most patrons by first name, asking the kind of friendly questions that made you know he remembered you from your last conversation, even if it were ages ago. His favorite pastime, though, was the theatre. And, every four weeks when a new show premiered at Crocetti’s Eat and Play, Chief Offerman was there with that warm laugh, his head awkwardly propped a mile higher than the other patrons, sometimes occluding the path of the spotlight aimed from the back of the house. And if internally tortured by countless demons and the degenerated discs in his back, Evercreek Falls always saw a kind, caring, and good man. And by all accounts he was. 

“There’s a bustle in the air, Otis!” Mark’s bass voice melodically bellowed above an almost inaudible gasp of pain as he shifted his torso in his chair. His smile quickly and inevitably returned. “There’s certainly a bustle in the air.”

He usually sat on the last stool at the end of the bar. On days like today when what felt like lightning bolts were piercing his backside, he sat at the closest neighboring chair, his right leg extended, touching the foot rail of the bar and revealing two muscular tree trunks for thighs. “Chief, the only thing in the air is the smell of rancid meat,” Otis said, at a conveniently loud enough volume to reach Omar’s ears in the neighboring kitchen, to which unintelligible curses resulted from behind the perpetually swinging doors.  

Otis had a mange of feathered and prematurely white hair that often drooped past the forehead of his sixty-something face, and a slight build. But due to his boisterous personality, he usually loomed larger in one’s recollections.

“Oh, my,” Mark laughed, as he shook his head and admired the throng of hopeful actors making their way down the staircase to the theater below.  

His thoughts these days were most often with Beth DeAngelis, a local actor and receptionist who had gone missing three weeks earlier. After having questioned her friends, family, and an ex-boyfriend in New Hampshire, the force was already running out of leads. But Mark had the talent of keeping his ears open to multiple conversations around him, and he was always alert to any talk of Beth that might prove helpful. In his heart, the children of Evercreek Falls were his children. And one of them had disappeared.

Otis stepped out from behind the bar, which was always a rarity, to place a cold mug of Moxie and the few drops remaining in the dirty orange can at Mark’s table. He knew he was hurting.

“On the house, Chief.”

“Thank you, sir,” Mark smiled. “I do believe today is my lucky day.”

“You’re the only one who drinks the stuff.”

“Well, nonetheless.” He gritted his teeth as an icy fist wrapped around his lower spine. He needed to stand, and the simulated pine table rattled under his weight as he used it to elevate his body. He took his Moxie and moved in stiff fashion to the bar where he leaned himself. “What show are they auditioning for today?”

“’Cinderella’,” Otis said, with more than a trace of disdain, as he continued his constant ritual of washing and wiping the same bar glasses with more energy than even Ophelia could ever muster.

“That’s a fine show. I’ll sure be looking forward to that one. Where’s old Mr. Crocetti today?” Mark asked.

“Haven’t seen him today. Probably home nursing his bones.”

“Arthritis seems to hit him hard before autumn comes. And, where’s his lovely daughter?”

“Linda’s downstairs helping Randall with the auditions.”

“Oh, Randall is directing, is he? He does fine work. So you’re running the show up here by your lonesome, Otis?”

“It’s the only time things get done right, Chief.”

It seemed to Mark that more people than usual were showing up for this production in particular, and he spotted Michael, Crocetti’s headwaiter, greeting a handsome young actor in the lobby, which unexpectedly sent memories rushing of someone he had once known. “I see quite a few new faces for this play, Otis.”

“Well, when you put out a call for ‘Cinderella’ all the fairy godmothers come flying in,” he said, wiping.  

Mark howled in laughter, but Michael had drifted back to the bar area just in time to have heard Otis’s insult. “It must feel like a homecoming for you,” he said to Otis.

“Calm your hormones,” Otis said, deflecting Michael’s excitement, which was even more heightened than usual. “Even if there are a few gay ones, I doubt they go for old ‘Peter, Paul and Mary’ look-alikes.”

Michael stopped so suddenly his ponytail bounced against his shoulder, and he stared Otis down with what was a genuinely cold look – even with one eyebrow raised and a trace of a grin.  

“Oh, my!  Oh, my!” Mark’s laugh alone could diffuse tension wherever it was to be found, and Otis had seen this standoff gesture from Michael before. It was the one way you knew you had gotten to him. He stared back for a moment, but looked down at his bar glasses and smiled.  

“Don’t worry, Michael. You’re still my type,” Otis said.

After a brief pause, Michael gasped his trademark “Hm!” and marched to the kitchen, adding, “I’ll be sure to tell your wife.”

“That mouth is going to get you into a heap of trouble one of these days,” Mark laughed.

“I gotta be me, Chief!”

“Amen,” Mark said, and perhaps due to the respect he had earned from others, that word brought finality to most conversational debates, and a pause would follow whenever he uttered it.  

Above the rattle of silverware and unintelligible banter from the restaurant, the bellow of an auctioneer could be heard from the adjoining function room. It was a common occurrence, and didn’t warrant any comments from the men.  

“Ya know, I’ve been thinking about that Beth girl, Chief.”

Mark grimaced as he delicately maneuvered his sturdy behind onto the bar stool, grasping his holster case so firmly the skin beneath his fingernails shone bright pink and white. “What have you been thinking?”

Otis placed his rag over the sink faucet and leaned in closely to Mark, as if to signal what he had to disclose would be of great importance. “Ya know, about three weeks before she disappeared, she was hanging around with some guy named Chip.  He’s one of the tech kids, helps on some shows here and there. Well, I tell ya, I never trusted the guy from the minute I first saw him. You know the kid with the long hair and the nose earring?”

“Nose ring, sure.” Mark nodded earnestly.

“Whatever the hell you call those things. Walking around with freakin’ staples in his face, for Chrissake. Well, those two got a thing going between `em.  One night I closed up and as I go out to the parking lot I see a Chevy Impala rocking up and down and there’s Beth’s bare little ass poking up against the rear window.  I’m no voyeur or nothin’, but I was watchin’ ‘em close and I knocked on the window and told `em to move it out of there before your boys pinched the place.”

“I don’t think we ever closed a place due to young love in a Chevy,” Mark laughed.

“Yeah, well don’t get me wrong.  I thought Beth was a sweet girl. Still do. I hope it’s what people say, and she just took off. Everyone knows she could be a little flaky.” He paused. “I’d talk to that Chip kid. I got a gut feeling he’s trouble.”

“I’ll take it under advice, Otis.  I certainly will.”

Mark had already questioned Chip Skelly and, although his story of being in Philadelphia with his stepmother the weekend of Beth’s disappearance turned out, he had his doubts. The kid had a record for petty theft and some minor public disturbance charges, and Mark shared Otis’s gut feeling. But the idea of forming groundless hypotheses or, in this case, trash talking, was not an avenue on which he wished to continue.

“You know I’m just trying to help, Chief. If a man has something to say that could be helpful, I think he should say it.”

“Amen,” Mark said. 

And that was that.

Mark’s eyes stared at the television screen that was showing the Patriots’ greatest ever quarterback, Drew Bledsoe, marching down the field in a preseason jaunt, but he saw none of it. He drifted to isolated islands of memories, each one harboring at least a few seconds of a conversation, a laugh, or an onstage moment of Beth.  

But he had nothing. So he decided he would start back at the beginning and question Beth’s family and friends and acquaintances, digging deeper this time. He thought of the Crocetti’s cast of characters, most of whom he’d come to know so well over the years, some he’d watched grow into adults before his eyes, especially Randall, and his sister, Kate. He would talk with all of them again, not so much to search for mendacities, but to gain any insight in a case otherwise devoid of leads.

“You headed home, Chief?”

“I believe so.  Thanks for the hospitality, Otis,” he said as he stood and wrapped his obtuse hands around a wooden ceiling beam, pulling gently in a vain attempt to stretch the pain away.

“You gotta get that looked at,” Otis said, wiping his bar glasses.

“I know.” He gently bowed his head to exit through the pine door, and proceeded down the ramp to the parking lot where the pebbles crunched under his feet.

*****

Lenny Abernathy had an old dishtowel in his hand and he was fiercely eradicating a fresh white terd from Mark’s windshield that was most likely discarded by one of many seagulls that flew upstream over the Merrimack from the Atlantic. It was a typical gesture from a generous man, Mark thought.  

Lenny was the one who’d replace your spare before you knew it was flat, or offer you a twenty spot if he thought you needed it, even though he hardly had any financial security of his own on which to rely. Mark had seen this behavior for himself many times, and on one other occasion he never cared to recount.

For the better part of the past two decades, Lenny had been the heart of Crocetti’s productions, if not the soul. He could single-handedly build a stage set with such ease and expertise that those around him might often feel so inferior as to wonder if this were a skill they should have also picked up around the time they were potty trained. His craftsmanship with drills and saws extended to equal dexterity with piano keys, where his musical mind and dexterous fingers combined to provide compositions for the original holiday shows at Crocetti’s that truly rivaled – if not surpassed – the pastiches for which they paid royalties.

“Even nature makes little boo-boos,” Lenny said in a bright and lyrical way, as he gathered most of the waste in the towel.

“Lenny, how do you know I don’t like terd on my windshield?” Mark mused.

“You’re a snappy dresser. It’s a dead giveaway that you’re anally retentive.”

Mark’s rich laugh sent a couple of squirrels scurrying across the expanse, but then popping their heads back to get a look at the source of the warm horn. Lenny in comparison had a high raspy tenor that didn’t quite seem to fit his corpulent physique. In addition to his thick black hair and blue eyes, he kept a highly maintained moustache that made him look like the Frito-Lay man, Mark thought. 

“Aren’t you involved with that Cinderella show?  Why aren’t you down there?” Mark asked.

“I’m letting go of the musical reins for this one,” Lenny said.  “But, I auditioned for a role.”  

Lenny had served as the musical director of the last few musicals Crocetti’s had staged, mostly for the reason that it paid, whereas acting did not.  

“Randall gave me the signal that he was all set with me,” he added.

“So, you’re a shoe-in, are you?”

“I’m a known entity, Chief.”

“I see.”  

Mark glanced downward and traced a short line in the sand with his foot. He was aware some of the so-called regulars believed themselves to be above the fray of the occasional newcomers, and as each regular took a turn at directing, he or she would cast the same tired alumnae of actors who ranged from good to, at times, abysmal.   

“It’s always good to get new blood involved.”  

Lenny tugged at his worn and shrunken “A Little Night Music” T-shirt, pulling it over his extended hairy stomach. “What’s the point if they just end up leaving?” This was bordering on territory Mark did not wish to travel.

Once there had been an actor by the name of Walter Harmon who had been a Crocetti’s regular and a particularly good friend of Lenny’s. The two often worked in tandem, creating memorable original musical productions, and it was widely accepted they were also romantically involved, although neither of the pair openly advertised it – at least consciously.   

Walter suffered a heart attack and died on the Crocetti’s stage during a performance of Neil Simon’s “Chapter Two.” Mark was there. Burned in his memory was the recollection of a paramedic crew and stretcher in the theater, the shock and confusion of the half-empty house, and Lenny, sitting in an armchair onstage, wan and expressionless, patiently waiting for Walter to retake the stage and finish their performance as George and Leo.

Lenny befriended another middle-aged actor years later – this time a platonic relationship by the looks of it – by the name of Paul DeCrosta, who went on to find some moderate success in independent films in Toronto. Lenny was a conspicuous no-show at Paul’s farewell party. The man just could not handle good-byes in whatever form they took, Mark had realized. And maybe this was why he now protected himself within an inner circle of amateur actors who would never leave Crocetti’s – and who presumably had regular cardiovascular checkups.  

“Well, Randall’s a talented kid.  I’ll sure be looking forward to this one,” Mark said.

“You say that with every show! When are you going to mean it?”

Mark laughed. “I mean it every time, Lenny. Otherwise, I wouldn’t keep coming.”

“Ooo!  Ooo!” Lenny cried with the excitement of a child. “I know what you have to do!”

“What’s that?”

“Quit your job as Chief, and review all our shows for the Gazette!”

“You are a character, Lenny. You are indeed a character,” he said as he slowly lowered himself into his cruiser. “Maybe that’ll be my next job, hm? It certainly would be a nice change of pace. You know I’m jealous of all you folks,” he added. “Having fun in a wonderful imaginary world.”

Lenny tugged at his arm. “Quick!  They’re still auditioning!”

Mark was an immovable force. “Maybe in my next life,” he said. “That would be a nice life.”

He put the car in reverse, which initiated the automatic headlights. He pulled away to view an illuminated, shrinking Lenny silhouetted against the stucco façade of the western side of the building, and through the theatrical wide screen perspective of his now-terdless windshield.

“Chief,” Lenny called. “When are you gonna bring a girlfriend to one of the shows?”  

Mark summoned his old standby response with no effort of thought. “I suppose when I meet the right one, Lenny. You take care now.”

He backed up his cruiser alongside the jigsaw puzzle of rocks that led to the Merrimack where the garish string of colored lights that hung from Crocetti’s reflected serenely in the water. Actors, mostly in groups, were now stomping the ramp and Mark absorbed the thrilled collective tones. His eyes moistened as he surveyed the tract of land. On the old ramp he had proposed to Meg years before. Over there, on the sandlot he had first seen Josh, the young man overtaken with laughter while caught in a monsoon outside the locked pine doors. And, by the scarecrow in a wheelbarrow facing the road, Mark had held his own young boy as he died in his arms.

*From “Evercreek Falls,” a novel by Todd DeMartinis. Copyright © 2020. All Rights Reserved.