The Case of the Vanishing Hardware

Ah, show business! That incomparable reservoir of surprises! The fickle Lady Thespis seems to have thrown me a curve, ladies and gents! As you already know if you read my March 7 blog entry, I was just beginning to roll out my mammoth promotional campaign for my illustrated reading of The Swimmer With a Rope In His Teeth, heretofore earmarked for a debut on March 18 at the Topia Arts Center in Adams. It’s not going to happen for a while, however, due to the mysterious disappearance of the cafe’s projection equipment, which came to light within the last 24 hours. Now "heist" may be an overly dramatic term to apply. Caryn and Nana have done a lot of packing and unpacking in the course of relocating from New York setting up and renovating their Park Street performing center in Adams these last two years. If that process was anything like Eddie’s and my far less demanding three-block move from Union Street into our present home, I can sympathize with the difficulty of keeping track of everything. In other words, the projector may simply be lurking in an unpacked crate or corner somewhere. Or it may have been "pinched." I like the frisson of declaring this to be a good, healthy, non-violent heist, whether it really is or not. I’m allowed to relish the film noirishness of the disappearance, it not being my projector that’s being a no-show. I don’t get to be a part of that many crime dramas and they are all the rage on TV. (I almost picked up the phone to summon Jessica Fletcher, but then I remembered that Angela Lansbury only does murders. The show ain’t named Burglary, She Wrote!) And murder, this isn’t. No lives have been lost at the Topia Cafe, only a preliminary timetable for the unveiling of my Swimmer slideshow. My show will keep. It’s been in the works for a while and this was an under-the-radar tryout rather than a Broadway premier. I’ll let you know when this project resurfaces.