Free Sweet Valley Confidential: Ten Years Later by Francine Pascal Page A

up, and walked out into the lobby. Rich Meaninfeld, an assistant stage manager, was there.
    “What was that about?” Elizabeth asked him.
    “It’s an unwritten rule: Only the director talks to the actors. If a producer or a writer has something to say, he’s got to send Ross a note. If Ross thinks it’s valid, he talks to the actor himself.”
    “That seems like a long way around. I mean, Connolly is the writer.”
    “Yeah, but that’s the way it is.”
    “So what’s going to happen?”
    “Bala or somebody will talk to Will. And then it won’t happen again.”
    “I don’t know; Connolly is pretty strong.”
    “So are Sondheim and Herman and Mamet.…”
    “Mamet sends notes?”
    “Right.”
    This was the real theater, not her little spring break experience. And it could be hard. Even brutal.
    “So when is this going to happen? The talking-to?” she asked.
    “Pretty soon.”
    “Where?”
    “I don’t know. Maybe in the bar across the street. Don’t worry; they’ll find him.”
    “Thanks. See ya!” And out she went, straight to the Wicked Teapot, the Irish bar facing the theater, happily enjoying the warmth of about twenty seconds of sunshine before she was back in another dim, chilly place.
    Connolly was there. At the bar, in front of an empty martini glass, which rested next to a full one. Quietly, Elizabeth took a seat a couple stools over from him. His head was down, studying the script on his lap, his fingers pushing the pages, fast and angry. If he looked up he would see her in the mirror behind the bottles, but he didn’t, not even when he took great gulps of the second martini.
    Now he was making notes, scrawling words over pages. Elizabeth could see from his hand motions that he was making lots of exclamation marks, punctuating the script with dots that hit almost hard enough to break a pen point or at least tear the page. He was obviously furious.
    The bartender, a young Irishman who was so incredibly handsome that Elizabeth almost forgot why she was there, asked for her order in that soft, gentle-on-the-ears Irish accent.
    “A dirty martini,” she said.
    “On the rocks?”
    “No, straight up.”
    He hesitated for that nanosecond that spoke of more than bartending interest. But gorgeous as he was, he wasn’t Elizabeth’s type. Now Jessica … she’d have gone nuts for him. No matter who he was with, she’d have scooped him up in a minute. She always had a thing for dark hair and blue eyes. Black Irish, she called them.
    In fact, the bartender was undeniably the best-looking man Elizabeth had seen in New York. Movie-star material, probably an aspiring actor. It looked like all waiters and waitresses in New York really were out-of-work actors.
    Elizabeth remembered a cartoon of a couple sitting in a restaurant in New York: The man wants to call the waiter, who is across the room. He lifts his hand and calls out, “Actor! Actor!”
    Elizabeth watched the bartender pour a healthy portion of Stolichnaya vodka and just the tiniest splash of olive juice into a glass of ice and stir, eyes fixed on her all the while, mixing the drink by feel. Even without the alcohol, she was beginning to cheer up, though he was definitely wasting his time on her.
    “Olive?” he asked, pouring the chilled liquid into a martini glass and making the single word sound positively loving, flashing a dimple that was almost overkill.
    If he wasn’t an actor he should have been, especially the way he was playing this scene. She had to ask.
    “Just curious: Are you an actor?”
    “How’d you guess? Are you?” he asked, snapping out of romantic lead and right into hungry actor.
    “No. I’m a writer.”
    If he loved her before, he loved her even more now.
    “A playwright?” he asked, pressing his luck.
    “No, reporter.”
    Elizabeth was beginning to enjoy the afternoon. If only she didn’t have to deal with Connolly, who at his best was hostile, now probably psychopathic.
    “What paper?” the