I’d love to meet her. And she should totally bring the baby,

His body was, well, as expected for a 30-something married father of a newborn.

ABOUT NOTHING BY ALYSSA DIPIERRO 34THPARALLEL MAGAZINE ISSUE 109

And so, because it was the middle of July and just after noon and there wasn’t a cloud in the Midwestern sky, and they were in an open field and were setting up tents for their first matinee performance, and it was sweaty work and had to be at least 95 degrees in the shade, and because all the men discarded their T-shirts to reveal drivers’ tans and sunscreen-streaked necks, 17-year-old Beth thought of removing her shirt as well.

“It’s so fucking hot,” she said to Julie, one of her cast-mates who Beth knew would sympathize the most. Julie was playing Beatrice in Raven Rock Shakespeare Company’s production of Much Ado About Nothing (Beth was Hero, the mostly silent ingenue, but at least she got to wear a fun wedding dress). They’d become close over the last two months of rehearsals, bonding over Jason Robert Brown musicals and Frappuccino’s.

Ju…