Read Play Dates for Free Online

At least the Houston production.”
    It gets worse. Kathie points out the glorious (and really famous) Gothic–style St. Patrick’s Cathedral (Roman Catholic, on Fifth Avenue at 50th Street, right across from Saks Fifth Avenue—
    another landmark, at least on my version of the tour), referring to the church as the Cathedral of St. John the Divine (Episco-pal, and located on Amsterdam Avenue, just north of 110th Street).
    I grab Gayle’s thermos and empty what’s left of the margarita mixture into my cup.
    We reach 42nd Street. Kathie refers to the location of the main branch of the New York Public Library as having been the site of the former aquarium. “AQUEDUCT,” I shout, trying to be heard above the din and now feeling that it’s my civic duty to set the tourists straight. I begin to wonder if she’s not just making it all up, having a joke on the lot of us. She’s a performer, after all, delivering her lines with earnest cheerfulness, acting as familiar with New York geography as she is with her own name.
    As we get down to 23rd Street where Fifth Avenue and Broadway cross each other at the landmark Flatiron Building, I’m having a hard time containing myself. Kathie points to the Flatiron, New York’s very first skyscraper, then tells the tour, “If you look closely, you can see that this building also has a highly unusual shape. It’s a triangle! It’s a triangle because this building is where that terrible tragedy, the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire took place, burning all those little immigrant seamstresses to death.” Boy, is this girl mixing up her local history! The only thing preventing me from jumping up and grabbing the mike

    28
    Leslie Carroll
    out of Kathie’s hand and strangling her with the cord is that the tequila has shot straight to my brain, and the minute I try to stand up on the moving tour bus my stomach plummets to the floor and my legs feel like barely gelled Mr. Wiggle dessert.
    Nearly five hours later, we’re back where we began, at the Trina’s Tours office. Kathie’s got the gumption to expect tips, thanking everyone for coming, and, with her hand out, in case we miss her point, telling the tourists that she’s “always depended upon the kindness of strangers.” Mia sets the girl straight, telling Kathie that Bubba and Gladys should can her ass for ineptness and send her packing back to Belle Reve.
    I’m seething, too, and I can’t help sharing that with Mia and Gayle. First of all, I feel that Gayle got ripped off by getting a tour of New York that was only about 40 percent accurate. The sightseeing tour was the first thing in ages that I’ve done without Zoë, or that’s not in service of my daughter’s social agenda.
    And I feel gypped. “This is your idea of getting me out of the house?” I ask Mia. I’m mighty cranky.
    Defensively, she puts up her hands. “How was I to know?” she says. “I’m just as pissed off as you are. I thought tour guides had to be licensed.”
    “Maybe she crammed for the test and after she passed, she just forgot most of it,” Gayle volunteers, peering into her empty thermos. “I’m that way with math. They taught me a bunch of stuff in school that all sounds like a foreign language to me now.
    Algebra? Forget it! Co-sign is what you do to a bank check.”
    Mia giggles. Mia rarely giggles . It must be the tequila. “All right, you two,” she says, “I’ll make you a deal. I’ll find out if Happy Chef is giving one of his Chinatown tours before Gayle goes back to Houston. That’ll show you what a good sightseeing trip can be!”
    Happy Chef is Mia’s “requisite gay best friend,” as she likes to put it. He’s a gourmet chef, a “master baker” (more giggles) and a fully credentialed New York City sightseeing guide. Before I PLAY DATES
    29
    dash up to West End Avenue to fetch my daughter from the Silver-Katzes, Mia phones HC and learns that he’d be happy (of course—he’s the Happy Chef) to add us to his roster for