Read Online The Hamlet Trap by Kate Wilhelm - Free Book Online Page B

could.”
    â€œYeah. Well, remember you promised me New Year’s Eve. And the whole week starting on the seventh.”
    â€œI didn’t either,” she said indignantly.
    â€œI know, but you will. Wait and see. I’ll be back on the thirtieth. Take care of yourself. Get some rest, okay?”
    â€œI’ll be at the airport. Be careful driving. There’s new snow on the pass.”
    He nodded and kissed her and left. Before his car was out of her driveway, she was back at work, humming softly to herself the Moritat from The Threepenny Opera : “When the shark has had his dinner/ There is blood upon his fins./ But Macheath he has his gloves on:/ They say nothing of his sins…”
    Ginnie saw Laura and Gray at a party now and then over the holidays, but she did not go to many, and did not stay long when she did, and they did not mention Sunshine, or the rift she had caused briefly. Ginnie knew that Gray was as busy right now as she was; they were the two busiest people of the theater group at the moment. He had all the plays to update, alter, shorten or lengthen, whatever, and she had her preliminary drawings to get done by the first of the year. As soon as he handed copies over to Anna Kaminsky she would hurl herself into work, too, on the costumes, but for now Anna was free, as were most of the others.
    Sunshine was going to William’s house every day to keep Shannon company. She had decided that she could cure Shannon’s defective heart with her herbs and a regimen of vitamins and fruit juices. Shannon, William reported, was thriving on the treatment.
    Laura was terrified of Shannon. She had met her only once and made excuses to avoid seeing her again. The only way Shannon could get William’s attention even momentarily, she believed, was through illness, and it was frightening to her that a woman would prefer that to being alone. When she mentioned her theory to Gray he looked at her as if she had committed a particularly nasty blasphemy.
    For the most part she stayed home and stared at the small Christmas tree she had decorated, did a little work for her employer, who had gone to Indiana for the holidays, and waited for Gray to come home, or for Gray to finish what he was doing and talk to her, or for Gray to get ready to go out to dinner or to a movie with her. Waiting, waiting, she thought, that was her life here in ash land.
    Gray had told her about the big fight with Ginnie and Ro over Sunshine, and she often found herself praying that Sunshine’s play would be so bad, that she would make such a nuisance of herself, that Gray would get in such trouble over her that Ro would simply fire him and they could go back home and life would be as it had been.
    The day after Christmas Ginnie told her uncle that she had given Peter the model for the production of Major Barbara .
    â€œYou gave it away?” He tried belatedly to keep the surprise and shock out of his voice.
    â€œFor Christmas. He really liked that one.”
    â€œGinnie, those models, they aren’t for things like that. They belong in the archives, in a collection.”
    She was sitting in the yellow chair, he was on the couch facing her. She had given him eggnog and cookies, her contribution to the holiday spirit. Slowly she said, “They’re mine, Uncle Ro, not theater property. Like my sketches, my notes.”
    â€œNo, you’re wrong. They belong to the theater, not to you, or me, to the theater.”
    â€œIt’s not a body that can own anything. It’s a building where we make things happen, but it’s nothing in and of itself,” she said emphatically.
    He shook his head. “That’s what it was when I first came to Ashland, a shell, abandoned, in disrepair, ready for the wreckers, but now… I hope you’ll come to know it’s more than that. It really is more than that, Ginnie, or it wouldn’t matter about the models. I’d see it burned to the