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for remembering to check out my props before each act?”
    Marian murmured sympathetically. Kelly practiced the line until she could say it without stumbling, beaming broadly the whole time. An intercom on the wall announced Miss Ingram was wanted on stage “immejutly.”
    â€œWhat about you?” Kelly asked as they left the dressing room. “Working on a big case?”
    â€œJust wrapping one up. I made the arrest yesterday.”
    â€œOh … was it a murder?”
    Marian nodded.
    Immediately Kelly looked stricken. “That means you’re in one of your notorious blue funks! Oh, I’m sorry, Marian! Here I’ve been rattling on about my own problems while you—”
    â€œIt’s all right,” Marian stopped her. And, strangely enough, it was; Kelly always managed to cheer her up, even when she didn’t know she was doing it. “I’m feeling better already. You’re such a good distraction.”
    Kelly laughed. “I’m going to give that the best possible interpretation I can. Do you want to watch from back here? Or from out front?”
    â€œBack here, I think.”
    â€œOkay. I’ve got to go on.”
    Marian watched as Kelly took her place on the stage as the rehearsal started. Her friend didn’t seem nervous, and when the scene started she was quite good at pitching her voice so it could be heard at the rear of the auditorium without benefit of a microphone.
    Marian noticed Ian Cavanaugh waiting for his entrance cue. Since he didn’t seem to be doing anything Stanislavskian to get himself into the proper mood, she went up and spoke to him. “I wonder if you would tell me something. Truthfully.”
    He smiled, a little. “I wonder too.”
    â€œKelly’s been saying she’s going to ruin this play.”
    â€œOh, tush. She exaggerates.”
    Marian let out a sigh of relief. “That’s the truth? I thought she might be overstating, but since this is her first venture in live theater—”
    â€œShe’s about as insecure as all television actors are their first time on the legitimate stage. No more, no less. Kelly has spurts of brilliance, times when she shows enormous stage presence. Her problem is that she has difficulty sustaining it.”
    â€œNerves?”
    â€œMore likely it’s that she’s used to working in shorter units of time. Television scenes run only fifteen lines or so, and here of course we go on much longer than that. What Kelly needs is an audience. Once she starts getting feedback from the people watching, she’ll find it easier to sustain.”
    â€œYou sound very sure.”
    â€œI’ve seen this happen a dozen times, Sergeant. Kelly has the talent. She’ll know how to use it better once she has some live-performance experience under her belt. Now if you’ll excuse me, my cue is coming up.”
    Marian stepped back to let him concentrate.
    The Apostrophe Thief seemed to be about a widower (Cavanaugh) who was possibly undermining a generations-old family business; Kelly played his sister-in-law, who suspected him of taking kickbacks and skimming off the top. The main conflict was between those two, with Kelly trying to convince the other characters of what he was up to. Those other characters turned out to be “prizes” the two antagonists contended for as they struggled to line up allies, the duel stirring up all sorts of long-dormant feelings that had been kept suppressed for the sake of amity. It was hard to tell from just one scene, but it seemed to Marian that Cavanaugh’s alleged cupidity was just the excuse, that the battle was really about something else. In the scene then being rehearsed, Cavanaugh was working on Kelly’s younger sister—the “Xandria” who’d evoked such scorn (and fear?) in Kelly. Marian still couldn’t figure out what the title meant.
    â€œPeople mean no more to you than a watch