Chapter Four
Chapter Four
When Trixi arrived at the ref. room, she found John sitting with a book of Oscar Wilde’s plays an inch from his nose.
“John?” she ventured.
John started violently and shrieked, “They couldn’t find me here I did all I could to hide! HAHAHAHA!” He cackled in that insane manner so famously spotlighted on the train in A Hard Day's Night and jumped behind the couch. Trixi merely crossed her arms and attempted to look stern and unamused, while doing all she could to keep herself from collapsing.
Several seconds later a pair of glasses and mischevious eyes emerged from beneath a window.
“Have they gone?” John asked.
“It’s just me here, John,” said Trixi, trying to stifle a fit of giggles.
“Oh,” said John, looking crestfallen. “Well,” he waggled his eyebrows, “in that case. . . .” He jumped back over the couch and swept Trixi into his arms.
“Stop that!” laughed Trixi, smiling broadly. “Really!” John raised his eyebrows at her: a look that said it all.
“No? Oh, what a pity.” He turned to look at her, still with his arms around her waist.
Trixi pretended to swoon. “How now?” she gasped. “Even so quickly may one catch the plague?” She smiled.
“Now don’t you go Shakespearianating at me, young lady!” chided John, finally letting her go and sitting on the sofa. He grabbed Trixi’s arm, pulling her down to sit beside him.
“I thought you didn’t like Shakespeare,” she said.
“Ah yes. But that was because they were stuffing it down me throat, y’see. Got on me wick ‘til I wasn’t having any of it. All that crap about ‘im being a good influence. But he wasn’t writing songs, now was he? Wasn’t very useful t’ us. If y’see what I mean.”
“Ah.”
John shrugged absentmindedly and pulled out a pack of cigarettes. As he was about to light one, Trixi noticed.
“You can’t smoke in here you know,” she said. “Theatre regulations. No smoking in, around, or relatively near to the building.”
“Fuck a pig.”
“Swearing, however, is allowed. Sorry.”
John gave her a piercing look. “And what may that mean?”
Trixi folded her hands behind her head and leaned back against the sofa. “Just that, if you’re out to shock and amaze, you won’t do it by swearing. At least, not with this company!”
“Ah.” John tried to light his cigarette again. Trixi took it from him, broke it in half, and threw the rest of the pack out the window and into the alley below.
“Still no smoking!” she said cheerfully and walked out.
John glanced out the window. Apparently, someone had already come by and
picked up his cigarettes. “Ah,” said John, resuming with his plays. Someone
was about to smoke away a fortune.