by Gigi Blume
“Did you not hear what I’ve been telling you?” I cried. “There’s no more than what’s on the surface. He’s a surface kind of guy. He’s… shallow.”
“What makes you think that? You don’t even know him.”
She leveled her gaze to stare me down behind those thick-rimmed glasses. “He’s not Brett, you know.”
I snorted, trying to find the words to support my argument and also a little miffed that Charlotte didn’t seem to be on my side. Did she have to bring up Brett? My ex might have been a ruthless, Hollywood, social climber, but he was small beans compared to Will.
“He’s obviously shallow,” I replied. “Look at the movies he makes.”
I had a more profound basis for my interpretation, but I couldn’t put it into words. Loathing Will Darcy was an intangible feeling. It was there, but the justification was just out of reach. That didn’t make it less credible though.
“Let me ask you something,” she said. “If you were offered ten million dollars to make a sell-out movie, would you do it?”
I thought about it for a half second before answering. “Would there be nudity?”
“Um, maybe just your bootay.”
I knew where she was going with this. I wasn’t a shallow person. I considered myself a serious actor. I was committed to my craft. But I was broke. And truth be told, I couldn’t say with one hundred percent certainty I would turn down an offer like that. Actually, I’m sure I wouldn't be able to resist it. And did she just use the word bootay?
“So…” I croaked. “Does Darcy bare his—ahem—derrière in his movies?”
“Oh, yeah,” she said with a little too much enthusiasm.
Ewww!
I was so glad I’d never seen any of his movies. I wouldn’t be able to look at him with a straight face if I’d seen him in the buff. Geez, if I were to ever go nude in a movie, there’s no way I could let Mom and Dad watch it. Fortunately, that was rarely a problem in the world of musical theatre.
“I’d request a body double,” I decided. “IF… and that’s with capital letters, I was offered ten million dollars.”
Charlotte didn’t have to look so smug. But at least she didn’t say anything more. She made her point. I didn’t have to agree with her, but she felt satisfied to leave it there. It was all hypothetical anyway. The principles that applied to me certainly were different for a guy like Will. I knew I was right about him because, frankly, I was never wrong.
All I had to do was get through with this show and take every opportunity to avoid contact with him. For the most part, especially while we were only rehearsing music, it didn’t take much effort. It was a rather unfortunate impasse. I wanted with all my heart for this experience to be all I had ever dreamt. No, I wasn’t on Broadway—yet—but performing at the Gardiner was a giant step in my career. I wanted to love every second of it, savor each moment, make important connections and post about it on Instagram. Instead, I dreaded rehearsals, dragged my feet every time I walked through the door, and couldn’t wait for the run to be over. All because of one man. One infuriatingly chauvinistic, egotistical, arrogant, pretentious (albeit hunky) man. I hated that perfectly symmetrical, esthetically pleasing, phony smile; the way he would soft-soap Stella Gardiner, the way he beguiled the directors in his favor, but especially how he influenced his friend Bing. It was a mystery to me how a sweet-tempered guy like Bing and a grump like Will could be friends. Sure, Will had all the right connections, but Bing didn’t strike me as the worshipful barnacle type. The only thing Bing seemed to worship was the ground on which Jane walked on. He followed her around like a puppy dog. Over the course of the week, I couldn’t help but steal a glance at Will every now and then just to see the look on his face when Bing favored Jane’s company over his. A couple of those times, however, I caught him glancing my way instead. What was he trying to prove by giving me the stink eye? I felt like I was in high school all over again. I was the band geek and for some unknown reason, the football star shot eye daggers at me while Caroline, the flossy cheerleader, clung to him like—well, like a worshipful barnacle. At least it was finally Friday, and rehearsal was ending.
“Caroline might not be the sharpest tool in the shed, but she’s definitely the hoe.”
I practically choked on my own spit before I turned around to see Lydia making tawdry jokes.
“What did you say?” I managed to squeak.
She was right behind me, conspiring with Holly, another soprano in the chorus, who laughed so hard, I was afraid I’d have to employ CPR on the poor girl. But Lydia didn’t let up.
“Seriously. Her hoo-ha has more users than Twitter.”
Lydia had most likely been at it a while, because Holly seemed to be hyperventilating. In a fun way, I guess.
“I mean, she was craving Five Guys before it was a restaurant.”
Holly doubled over, practically in tears and turning bright red. “Oh my gosh, stop!”
Those girls! I was certainly not a fan of Caroline, but I wasn’t so low to resort to hoe jokes. I did, however, agree with them on one thing. She wasn’t the sharpest tool in the shed if she was at all attracted to Will Darcy. But then again, maybe they deserved each other.
“Hey, I’ve got one,” I said. “She’s so fake, Barbie is jealous.”
Crickets. Clearly, I didn’t have the talent for juvenile insults. Lydia and Holly shook their heads and offered me a consolatory pat on the back in a nice try but no cigar sort of way. Then they abandoned me.
It was the end of a truly horrible day. My old Volvo broke down on the way to rehearsal, and I had to run the rest of the way.
Let me repeat that. I had to run in Los Angeles.
It was like my car waited until my AAA membership expired. I was grubby, tired, hangry, and I had to work the closing shift at the lodge. Most of the cast had cleared out of the rehearsal studio, and I needed to find Jane to ask for a ride because Holly and Lydia had already gone out for drinks. I was just on my way to search for Jane when I was stopped in the hallway by the theatre’s chief costume designer. I knew her name was Ari—I’d met her when we were sent to her costume shop in the bowels of the theatre to have our measurements taken. I remember her chiding me for sucking in. I argued that I’d be wearing a corset, but she won me over by telling me a funny story about a costume malfunction in Tartuffe. Plus, I liked her blue hair.
“Would you do me a huge favor?” she said to me a little out of breath. She had a bolt of brocade satin in her arms and a huge bag slung over her shoulder. “I’m late for an appointment but I can’t leave this lying about.”
It took me a moment to register what she was saying. My brain was still clearing out the bad hoe puns. And so I stared at her for a few seconds longer than was socially acceptable. Derp. Yo speako English.
“Would you be a dear?” she pleaded, offering the bolt of fabric to me.
“Oh!” I said with a jolt. “Do you want me to take that down for you?”
She most likely thought I was a ninny. I took the fabric and smiled, nodding like a clod, and she gave me a big hug, bidding her appreciation and before running toward the door, called over her shoulder, “Just put it on the cutting table and shut the door on your way out. It will automatically lock.”
And then she was gone like the enigma she was. A little bit of an odd birdy, that one. It was a small wonder she wasn’t completely nutso with a workshop so many flights of stairs below the theatre.
Down in the bowels of the theatre.
I amused myself by singing as I navigated my way down, down, down those narrow stairs. The air became cooler the further my descent into the dungeon of black despair, my geeky musical theatre brain just an endless loop of songs on repeat.
As I continued through my repertoire, I found myself testing the echo in that long stairwell with an eerie reverberation reminding myself to keep my hands at the level of my eyes.
I must have spooked myself out because I thought I heard footsteps behind me, masked in the ec
ho of my voice.
I realized in that moment that although I was most likely perfectly safe, it would have given me more peace of mind if I had only waited to find Jane before taking this endeavor all alone. A faint light at the end of the corridor like a beacon in the darkness peered through the costume shop door and as I reached it, I could hear music coming from inside. That scatterbrained woman left her music player on. I thwacked the bolt of fabric on the cutting table and went in search of the offending music.
Three things happened at once.
One. I found the source of the music. It was a small Bluetooth speaker.
Two. The music shut off, but I wasn’t the one to do it.
Three. The figures of two people moved in the shadows.
I was already spooked from the creepy dungeonous stairwell and the freaky echoes reminiscent of the secret passageways to the fifth cellar. To say I was startled would be an understatement. I screamed. Reality dawning, my addled brain devised it could either be A) a deformed man obsessed with a soprano or B) a rat catcher. This is what happens when you’re tired, haven’t eaten much, and allow yourself to get worked up over an ominous yet harmless stairwell.
In the half second after my B-movie scream, I sobered to the vision before me. Jane and Bing were shuffling apart with guilty faces. They were totally smooching. I was equal parts embarrassed, delighted, and furious. The two of them likely felt the same way, but not in the same order.
For the next few moments that felt like ten minutes but was probably only three seconds, we had a staring contest. I stared at them eyes wide, mouth open. They stared at me, cheeks flushed, hair askew. I opened my mouth wider to say something, but nothing came out. So many thoughts ran through my head at once, I couldn’t figure out which to give voice to. Apologize? Give them high fives? Yell at Jane for sneaking off?
To my chagrin, I was spared the effort because the bustle of heavy footfall exploded into the room and the imposing, shark-like form of Will Darcy appeared, followed closely by his very own remora fish—Caroline.
“What’s going on?” he said rather threateningly. I nodded in agreement, deciding that’s exactly what I would have said had I been given the chance—if he hadn’t barged in or, more accurately, if I’d remembered how to use the faculties of my mouth. It seemed to be contagious because neither Jane nor Bing could remember how to use their mouths either, other than opening and closing them like fishies gasping for air—fishies about to be eaten by a great, big Darcy shark.
“Uhh, uhh…” was all Bing could manage to say before a shrill scream came from the direction of Caroline.
“What is it with the screaming?” growled the Darcy shark.
Caroline danced like a leprechaun on hot coals, shrieking, “Spider! Spider!”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” cried Will. “Step on it.”
At that moment, my animal activist roommate suddenly remembered how to speak and shouted, “No, don’t kill it.”
It seemed to happen in slow motion like I was a distant spectator to the most ridiculous scene: Caroline shrinking away from a spider, Jane rushing to save it, Bing looking for something to humanely capture it, and Will staring everyone down like they had gone insane. I didn’t watch sports, but I imagine that was what the instant replays must look like. Then, as the crazy town scrimmage played out, Caroline swung her leg in one swift motion and kicked the spider like a football through a field goal—the goal posts being the threshold of the costume shop door which she quickly and abruptly shut.
A robust “Noooooo!” resounded from the remaining four occupants of the room because we knew—we knew what Caroline obviously was too dumb and self-absorbed to realize—the door locked from the outside.
5
It's Hard to Be the Bard (or MacGyver)
Will
What sort of moronic architect would design a door to lock from the outside? Unless guarding a bank vault or sensitive government documents, there was no reason for a door to have a Fort Knox security system like the one currently employed by the costume shop in the Gardiner Theatre. I would have felt inclined to credit the idea to that crazy woman who ran it. But I knew that door had been there many years before Ari became the wardrobe director. How did I know this? Because I’d been locked in before.
The Stella Gardiner Theatre was my playground when I was a kid. My father, the most excellent actor I’d ever known, enjoyed taking a break from filming his blockbusters to perform in a summer-stock show at the Gardiner. He would often bring me to his rehearsals, and since there were no other boys my age to play with, I would wander backstage, in the catwalks, and through catacombs for hours. I knew every single crevice of this theatre better than my own home. One day in particular, for a reason I no longer remember, I hid in the costume shop and closed the door which locked me in. I was rescued within twenty minutes, but to me, it seemed an eternity. To this day, I never close a door without checking the knob first.
Therefore, when Caroline dislodged the doorstop in the surprisingly impressive soccer play with a spider, my instinct was to dive for the door, but my body felt like it was swimming in glue. I couldn’t get there fast enough. Furthermore, if Caroline spent more time learning to read rather than watching makeup tutorials on YouTube, she would have seen the bright-red warning sign on the door. That sign must have been put there by Ari. That woman might have been nutty as a fruitcake, but she did make a point to warn the actors about that door when they came in for fittings. I imagine Caroline was too busy taking selfies to pay attention.
To compound my frustration, she had no business following me down there. She had no idea what I was doing. I could have taken advantage of her if it suited me. She certainly was willing enough. As hot as she was, all I wanted to do was shake her off, but she was gum on my shoe—irremediably stuck to me.
To some extent, I was used to the attention from women, but that lifestyle got old very quickly. Oh, I was a firm believer in fun, but I liked to think I was more selective than girls like Caroline took me for. Plus, she’d been grating on my nerves all day. If it wasn't a jibe against other cast members spewing from her mouth, it was the conditions of our contract, or a complaint about the facilities, or bragging about her film work. But her crowning sauciness was her barefaced, unequivocal contempt for Beth.
Honestly, I couldn't care less about that pixie. As far as I was concerned, Beth was just a pretty little girl in over her head in professional theatre. She was rarely prepared for rehearsals, always seemed to be frazzled, and would oftentimes arrive at the theatre a hot mess. Emphasis on hot. And I couldn’t keep my eyes off her. What was it about her? She was… scrappy. The way she looked in those clingy yoga pants she wore, or how her fandom t-shirts stretched tightly over her chest and exposed just a tiny bit of skin at her waist when she moved the right way. I didn’t have to particularly like the girl to appreciate her at a distance.
Woah! Hold it right there. I certainly did not like the girl. But I didn’t hate her the way Caroline was determined to.
Beth had been a half hour late for rehearsal that morning, blaming her tardiness to car trouble. Her arms and face were smudged in grease, and her hair was all over the place. She looked flushed and radiant. It was hot. But Caroline wouldn’t shut up about it.
“Did you see her pants?” she sneered when Beth left to clean up in the bathroom. “Looks like she wiped her hands all over them.”
Oh, I had most certainly noticed that.
She went on. “What was she doing? Trying to fix her own car? Is she a hillbilly? And so sweaty!”
When I didn’t indulge her rants, she pressed me for my opinion.
“And did you notice the dark circles under her eyes?” she mocked. “Not that you can see much of them under layers of dirt and sweat.”
“I wasn’t looking at her eyes,” I said more to myself than to her, and then to shake off the effect the vision had on me, I stood and spent the remainder of rehearsal by the piano.
At lunch, Caroline cl
imbed into the passenger seat of my car and insisted I take her to Whole Foods. Since I hadn’t yet decided what I wanted to eat, I acquiesced. All the rest of the day, I would catch her eyeballing me. Once rehearsal was dismissed and Bing was missing in action, she followed me when I went in search of him. Subsequently, by the turn of events that ensued, she trapped us in the costume shop. And who just happened to be there? The very woman I was trying to forget: Elizabeth Bennet. I was cursed.
At present, however, it wasn’t the arousing yet vexing presence of Beth in the room, or that Caroline had shut us all in together indefinitely that upset me. Those things were enough on their own. What irked me the most, and after all my admonishments to him, was that Bing got us into this situation because of some girl. It was written all over his dopey face. I didn’t blame him for wagging all over Jane; she was gorgeous—blonde hair, blue eyes, and legs for days. But Bing wasn’t the kind of guy to differentiate hook-ups from serious girls. He wasn’t a player, and he was falling fast and hard. I warned him not to get distracted by a woman. He needed to think of his career first, and he wasn’t following any of my advice. It infuriated me.
Also, my brain was a muddled mess with Beth so nearby. I needed to think of a way to get us out before we all murdered each other.
Four sets of eyes incredulously stared at the door as though staring at it with a Jedi mind trick, it would open and grant us passage. Then the same four sets of eyes turned to Caroline, and I don’t know about the others, but mine were set on kill mode. I might have strangled her if Beth hadn’t spoken up.
“Dddd-did you just…” she stuttered. “Did you just… slam the door to keep a spider out?
Caroline didn’t respond.
“You slammed the door to keep a SPIDER out?” she repeated with more of an edge.
