Description: With her acting instructor out for an indefinite amount of time, Eve waits in the hotel room anxiously with Mr. Sabine's creepy assistant, rehearsing a scene that she was neither prepared for nor expecting. Will Glenn return to stop this nut job from going any further?
The Miss Teenager Pageant. PART 29.
Having discovered that her dashing and ridiculously handsome mentor, Glenn Sabine, was away from the hotel room where she was supposed to meet him, Eve wanted nothing more than to hightail it out of there faster than she could say “Romeo, Wherefore art thou?”
The assistant Pike Setter had said Glenn was on his way. It wouldn’t be long. He said he would entertain her until Glenn returned. Maybe she should have left the room right then and there. Maybe she should have been braver and walked away. But if she left, wouldn’t she be risking missing Glenn’s return by minutes – seconds even?
Waiting for Glenn had been excruciatingly uncomfortable, to say the least. Mr. Setter was sitting on the bed, smoking and staring at her with those eyes. Then he suggested that they rehearse lines from a play she had never heard of. Something about an ape.
As they stood to rehearse the scene, he explained that the story involved a high-society girl (played by Eve) who was somehow attracted to a worker on the engineer deck of a cruise ship (played by Mr. Pike Setter). Eve didn’t like where this was going. Why hadn’t she heard of this play? Then, supposedly “in character,” Mr. Setter wrapped his arms around Eve and pulled her close.
Eve was petrified. She figured there were only two options at this point: scream or knee him where it counts. If this wasn’t sexual harassment, she didn’t know what was! Oh, where in the world was Glenn?
Just then a key sounded at the door and before Mr. Setter could make a further move, Eve’s knight in shining suit-and-tie-combo was standing in the doorway.
Glenn was watching Mr. Setter with silent distaste. There were no words exchanged, only silence and waiting for a reason.
“Hi, Glenn,” Mr. Setter bumbled, turning toward Mr. Sabine with his arms still wrapped around Eve. “Just filling our little star in on some acting details.”
“Thanks, Pike,” Glenn replied, his voice low and gruff. Mr. Sabine’s eyes narrowed, firing a stern warning across the room at his assistant like an arrow at an archery contest.
Finally, the brute let her go, and Eve could breathe again, thankful that Glenn had arrived when he did.
As his assistant toddled away, meandering across the floor to the other side of the studio-style hotel room, Glenn turned to him sharply. “I’ll handle the acting assignment after this.” His voice returned to a softer tone as he spoke to Eve. “Now then, Eve, didn’t we have a few business details to clear up first?”
Finally! This was what she’d been waiting for! Suddenly, the memory of what had just transpired with Mr. Setter sizzled away like a raw onion on a frying pan. There was no way she would forget why she had come. This was her dream on the line. And no hairy ape was going to steal that from her, no matter how thoughtful he believed he was being by helping her rehearse a scene.
“That’s why I came, Mr. Sabine!” Eve declared, holding up one hundred dollars in cold hard cash. “Here’s the down payment.”
“Pike,” ordered Glenn, “take care of this matter, will you?”
