Chapter 1: Private Lives I. part 1

Chapter One: Private Lives

I.

When the second season of the near-science fiction TV series The Coldest Equations completed filming, the cast and crew had a wrap party, and then went their separate ways. 

Like most series filmed for syndication, the episodes were completed several months before they were to be aired, so no one would know for some time to come if the new season would be a success or failure (the definition of success being that the series would be renewed for a third season. The definition of failure - that it wouldn't be.)

For the last three months, therefore, the cast and crew had been on pins and needles, even as they continued with other work.

Tracy Karlovassi, the star of The Coldest Equations, was cast in a three-month run of the classic Noel Coward comedy, Private Lives, which was to be produced off Broadway. In a piece of stunt casting, her co-star was also her co-star from The Coldest Equations, Nick Belfour.

                

In the series the two characters were deadly enemies. As the producers of the play had expected, fans of the series flocked to the show to see the two actors now playing lovers – albeit arguing, at-each-other’s-throats lovers.

Tracy and Nick had become good friends during the filming of both the first and second seasons of The Coldest Equations. Their friendship had deepened during Private Lives, so much so that they decided that when the run of the play ended and they returned to Hollywood, they would move in together. 

The second season of The Coldest Equations was to be aired in the same time-slot as the first season had been – Mondays at 9 pm. 

Mondays were also the one day that stage actors had off.

And so it was that on the Monday that the first episode of the second season of The Coldest Equations was to make its debut, there was no performance of Private Lives.   

The network had such expectations for the second season that they had bumped up the showing of the first episode by a week, and had requested that Nick and Tracy fly back to Los Angeles to appear at a a sort of opening night party. Both Nick and Tracy had refused.
 

Nick Belfour had been a fan of old-time radio since he was a little kid, when his father had introduced him to the sepulchral voice of The Shadow. As a matter of fact, it had been listening to these old shows that had ignited his interest in acting.

He had attended a few of these OTR conventions in the past, as a spectator rather than as a participant, and was good friends with the organizers who knew of his love for OTR.This year, they had asked if he would appear in a couple of re-enactments of some classic science fiction radio episodes, and he had agreed.

The convention had publicized his appearance and had informed him that ticket sales had increased by more than a third over their previous best attendance record. Nick had pointed all of this out to h is producers and said that he could not let the convention organizers or his fans down, and they had grudgingly agreed. They had tried to get Tracy to come to LA on her own, but she had stood her ground as well.

And so it was that Nick and Tracy drove into Maryland on Monday morning to attend the 25th annual Theatre of the Mind Old Time Radio Convention.

 

Nick owned a cherry red 1966 Corvette, which he drove when he wanted to be Seen. When he was “in mufti,” he drove a 1989 bronze Camry. And it was in the Camry that he drove to the Waverly Hotel in Frederick, Maryland, which had been the site of the annual Old Time Radio Convention for over 20 years.

Nick was six feet tall, and weighed 190 muscular pounds. His black hair was cut short, his features were blunt but handsome. He wore a blue short-sleeved dress shirt which showed off well-muscled arms, and black slacks.

Tracy Karlovassi sat in the passenger seat. She was four inches shorter than Nick, at 5 ft 8, but 40 pounds lighter. Although she had small, pert breasts, narrow hips and the musculature of a life-long athlete (biking, swimming and tennis being sports she'd embraced since she was a teenager) none of this was evident. Instead, she had hidden her shoulder-length auburn hair under a dirty-blond wig,  and she wore a padded t-shirt and sweatpants that added a hundred pounds to her frame.

This was a habit of hers that Nick had learned to accept.

She wasn’t trying to hide from her public – indeed, she loved meeting her public. But what she liked more than that was to test her skills as an actress, and have some fun doing it. So whenever she and Nick went out in public – to a restaurant, a ballgame, a movie and so on, she would typically don a wig, a fat suit if she felt like it, and an accent that she had specially worked up for the occasion. 

She’d never been recognized yet, and Nick was getting a reputation as quite a lady’s man, which he bore with stoic fortitude.

Tracy tapped a pen against her white teeth. She was working her way through a book of Master Class Crossword Puzzles.