“That’s good, dear. Did you feel anything binding on you?”
The seamstress looked to be older than Aunt Susan, Marla thought, maybe even as old as her grandmother. She’d let her get away with “dear,” but if she started using the down-time equivalent of “Hon,” things would commence to get fractious, as Aunt Susan used to say.
“I think I did,” Marla said in response to the question. She moved her left hand and arm in a somewhat contorted gesture. “It felt tight in the shoulder right…” She stopped in mid-movement. “…there.”
“Hold there, please.”
The seamstress stepped up close and peered at the fabric of the costume, running her fingers up and down the seams.
“Ah,” she said. “I see the problem. It will be easy to fix. Thank you, dear, you can take that one off now.” She turned away and called to another woman, “Frau Ballauf.”
Marla stepped behind the partition screen with alacrity as the other two women bent their heads in conversation over a clipboard. That was the last costume she had to try on. It had been a long morning, and she was ready to get back into her jeans and sweater.
Amber Higham had mobilized the production dressers for the costume fitting. Marla turned her back to the other young woman, who began unbuttoning the buttons down the back of the costume. After a moment, Marla was able to shuck the top of the costume forward and begin loosening the waistband of the skirt. Another few moments, and she was free of all that cloth, skinning her way back into soft worn denim and her favorite bulky yellow sweater.
“Thanks, Sophie,” she said as her head popped through the top of the sweater. “I think we’re going to need all the practice we can get dealing with this stuff. The costume changes are going to be fun,” she rolled her eyes to match her sarcastic tone, “especially the two in the third act.”
The dresser smiled as she gathered up the skirt to clip it onto the special hanger made for it. “You will do fine, Marla.”
“That’s we, partner,” Marla replied as she ran her fingers through her long hair, fluffing it out a bit. No pony-tail today; she wasn’t in the mood for it for some reason. “I won’t be able to do it without you.”
* * *
“Schardius, your time is coming, and that, soon,” Georg Schmidt snarled, slipping as he ducked into an alley. It took him a moment to regain his balance; then he went on, unaware that he had been overheard.
* * *
Marla gave a quick wave to the dresser and stepped out into the main room again. She spotted Amber standing by the door and headed that way.
“Hey, Amber.”
“Marla.”
She settled in beside the director and leaned back against the wall.
“So how’s it going?”
Amber grunted. “You tell me. Can you live with the costumes?”
“Yep.” Marla grinned. “They’re actually not too bad. I was afraid they’d be skin-tight or something, and these folks have never heard of Spandex.”
“Good.” The woman that the seamstress had talked to came up to them, carrying her clipboard. She nodded to Marla, and Amber said, “Sorry, I should have introduced you. Frau Ballauf, this is Marla Linder. Marla, this is Frau Frontilia Ballauf. She’s my new administrative assistant and stage-manager-in-training. I borrowed her from Lady Beth Haygood at the school.”
“Stole, actually, after I had only been there two days,” Frau Ballauf said dryly. “Frau Haygood felt she had been—how did she put it—strong-armed after your conversation.”
“She’ll get over it.” Amber waved a hand in a pooh-pooh gesture. The two women had a quick conversation about a couple of the items on the clipboard, then Frau Ballauf nodded to Marla again and turned back to the controlled chaos in the room.
“Frontilia?” Marla whispered with a giggle. “That sounds like something out of a bad Star Trek movie. Can’t be from any part of Germany I’ve ever heard of.”
“She’s actually from the Vogtland.”
Marla tilted her head at that.
“Southwest of Dresden,” Amber clarified.
“Ah.” Dresden, Marla had heard of. Anyone in Germany who possessed a spark of awareness had some idea of where Dresden was. The siege of that city by a Swedish army was, after all, one of the top three topics of conversation/arguments/disagreements in Magdeburg. “So what’s she doing here?”
“Her husband had a distant relative who owned property rights of some kind in Magdeburg. It took a while after the sack in 1631 for him to hear that his relative had died in the sack, and that due to the deaths of some other kinsmen elsewhere, he was probably the heir. She said he dithered about it for quite some time, but he finally decided to come to Magdeburg to claim the property.”