Page 83

“Oh my God!”I said.“Who names their child Davitt?”
Christine’s sharp—and lethal—“Be!Quiet!”echoed up from the stage.
Not that anybody was paying attention to me.Or, for that matter, to her.At that moment, Ryan and Paul, who had been cast as sheep, had apparently gotten into some kind of squabble and were now headbutting each other.
The star, of course, was Millie, who delivered her lines with an enormous smile and ear-shattering enthusiasm and almost immediately went off script and got into a tiff with one of the angels.
It was glorious.Christine looked like she was about to have a stroke.
At some point—right around when Millie told the angel shewasn’tgoing to flee to Egypt because she wasn’t going to let King Herod kill all those babies—I decided maybe I did have a religious side after all.And also that I wanted some popcorn.And would a soft drink be too much to ask?
That’s when I heard the voices behind me.
Three Barbara Bush types in sequined pants, sitting just past the Archer clan, were clucking their complaints to each other.
“Not very demure.”
“Too modern.”
“Whoisshe?”
I thought of how Millie had described her dream character:She’s tough and brave, and she doesn’t take crap from anybody.It made me smile because we all did it to some extent.We all wanted to read about the people we wished we could be.The people just a little better than who we really were.The people we were trying to become.
I couldn’t help myself.As Millie got a hold of the angel’s wing to give him a shake, I leaned back and pitched my voice to carry.“That,” I said, “is Jinx St.James.”