Echo After Echo

by Amy Rose Capetta

  “I like you, little fish,” Enna says, curling a smile. She hasn’t used these muscles in a while.

  She heads down the hall, beckoning for Zara to follow.

  “Where are we going?” she asks.

  “Our dressing room,” Enna says.

  They take the elevator down. Enna knows that you have to stab at the ground floor button three times before it will light. The dressing rooms are off the same hall as the greenroom. That knowledge is less like a map in Enna’s mind than the feeling of her own body when she wakes up in the morning. The backstage, the studios, these are her muscles and bones and blood. The stage is her beating heart.

  She leads Zara through the women’s dressing area and opens a door.

  The mirror with its bright round bulbs welcomes her. Her hairpins sit in a row under yellowing snippets of her best reviews. There is a picture taken after opening night as Ophelia — laughing and bright and painfully young — tacked to one corner of the mirror.

  This was Enna’s sanctuary. A place to laugh and cry and be alone with men when plain old alone wouldn’t do. But a few seasons ago, Leopold informed her that it was time to be generous. Five or six ingenues have shared the space with her by now. Most have stared at Enna like she is a vintage curiosity.

  She knows the truth. They are afraid of her. Of becoming her.

  “Now,” Enna says, patting the single chair until Zara sits down. “Tell me about your time at the Aurelia thus far.”

  Zara tells a perfect little story about winning her dream role. It spikes Enna’s worries, like a shot of whiskey poured into a drink that was plenty strong to begin with. “Has anything happened that you haven’t . . . expected?” Enna asks the ingenue. Most people would have asked if she’d been made to feel uncomfortable, but Enna knows there is no such thing as comfortable at the Aurelia.

  Zara’s voice wobbles for the first time, as if she’s standing on tiptoes, reaching for a difficult truth. “You mean Roscoe dying?”

  Enna doesn’t. She was so steeped in her own memories that she hadn’t even thought of Roscoe. The sadness in this theater is so thick, she thinks, like perfume, or smoke. A person could choke on it. “I need to know if anyone has talked to you in a way that worried you. Hurt you in any way.”

  “No,” Zara says, but it comes out slowly.

  Enna nods slowly in return. She’s given the girl a chance to tell her. And now she’ll keep an eye on things.

  “You’re . . . different than I thought,” Zara says.

  Enna bursts out with a laugh that surprises both of them. She knows what that means. “Yes, well. I kept your expectations low. Everyone here thinks I’m a drunk and that I have to take fourteen different kinds of pills to stand up in the morning. Do you know why?”

  Zara shakes her head.

  “Because I was a drunk. I took the pills. Now when I pull something decent out of my sleeve, it’s a surprise. Everyone gets to love me again.” The smile that she gives is a showy flourish — a card player flashing a winning hand. “That sort of thing won’t work for you. You started at the top. It’s a long way to fall.”

  Enna shouldn’t have been so honest. It makes the ingenue grip the arms of her chair, looking sickly. “So,” Enna says. “Advice. Don’t leave. No matter what, don’t leave. That is letting them win. And don’t let them see you crack. Crack if you must. But choose the people you cry in front of more carefully than the people you screw.” She expects the girl to startle, but the ingenue keeps her wide-wide eyes on Enna. “Oh, and don’t fall in love with anyone in the theater. Another piece of my own advice that I forgot to take.”

  A battle plays out on Zara’s face, between curiosity and politeness.

  Enna shed her politeness when this girl was still learning how to walk. “Carl and I were married once. You wouldn’t know that. It was a long time ago.” It doesn’t feel so very long, though. Enna has to staunch memories of the marriage like blood from a fresh cut. The way Carl used to look at her, the way they used to kiss. One time, she tried to scramble eggs and turned them a frightful brown. Carl laughed as he dragged her away from the stove, into their bedroom, and hours later he made her perfect eggs for dinner. Sometimes Enna remembers this story and she is useless for a whole week.

  She can’t afford that now. The ingenue needs her.

  “All right,” Enna says, her voice cheerful on top, strained underneath. “That’s enough chitchat for today.”

  Zara gets up to leave, but she spins around in the doorway. “Why are you being nice to me?”

  Enna’s smile feels broken. “That’s what theater people do, little fish. We look out for each other.”

  The next morning, Zara waits until Kestrel has used the bathroom, and then she subjects her body to the hottest shower it can stand. Her brain thickens with steam. She stays in there forever, telling herself that she just needs to warm up — that winter got too cold too fast.

  But when her mind wanders, it goes straight to the Aurelia. And she knows that she’s standing here, pulling in breath after breath of steam, because she’s afraid to go back. She doesn’t want to face Leopold.

  Zara gets out of the shower and throws on her rehearsal clothes, which, as Enna pointed out, are flimsy and ridiculous. Old yoga pants. A T-shirt that she loved to death. Socks that she hopes don’t smell, since she hasn’t quite figured out the laundry situation in Kestrel’s building. None of it is good enough for the Aurelia, but this is what Zara owns. She tells herself that she’ll buy new clothes as soon as she gets her first paycheck. She’s actually getting paid to do this — to stand on a stage and be Echo.

  This is the dream. Zara has to make it work, no matter what.

  Enna told her not to leave. Not to let them win.

  When she opens the door, Kestrel’s settled in on the couch. Waiting. “Hi, roomie.” She picks up a tall glass filled with bright-green sludge. “Do you have Thanksgiving plans?” Kestrel asks, brandishing a smoothie at her.

  Zara takes the glass. The green liquid inside smells like rotting innards. “I’m going home,” she says. As much as she didn’t want to leave after the audition, that’s how much she’s craving home right now. She’d put up with any amount of dry turkey and college talk just to sit there with her parents. Her mom will end up talking about boyfriends, like they’re nice and somehow inevitable, and even that seems worth putting up with. “What about you?”

  Kestrel shrugs one shoulder. “Mama and Alec have been in Europe so long they forget Thanksgiving even happens. I usually have plans with Carl. But he’s been acting distant.”

  “I didn’t know you two were close,” Zara says.

  Kestrel puts a hand to her collarbone in fake shock. “I don’t see how you could have missed it.” Zara doesn’t bring up the fact that she’s been a little busy. “Carl is more of my father than my father is. Or my stepfather. Or Alec. Anyway, Carl is the one who actually cares about me.”

  Zara thinks about what Enna said, about theater people taking care of each other. That’s part of what pulled Zara into this world in the first place. “What about Enna? Are you close to her, too?”

  Kestrel sips at her smoothie. “They had what’s known in the parlance as a bad divorce. I didn’t spend much time with Enna after that. She was too busy entertaining gentlemen callers.” Kestrel tilts her head, as if she can see her memories better from this angle. “Actually, that started before they got divorced. It was hard to stay close to both of them after the shit hit that particular fan. But I never could get myself to hate her. Not like Carl did.”

  Zara sits down on the couch and tests her drink. It leaves a cold, bitter trail all the way to her stomach.

  She goes to put down her glass, but the table is filled with a spread-eagled newspaper, a pot of glue, and jars of paint. “What’s this?” she asks. But Kestrel doesn’t need to answer, because as soon as Zara drinks in the details, she knows what this is. Roscoe’s face stares up at her from the thin white page.

  “They intervi
ewed me!” Kestrel says brightly. “I’m putting it into my collage.”

  “You have a collage of Roscoe?” Zara asks, more than slightly unsettled.

  “Of course not,” Kestrel says. “It’s for anytime my name or likeness is in the papers. Mama says I should keep one. To look back at when I’m older.”

  Zara picks up the paper and, against her better judgment, starts to read. It’s a tabloid article about Roscoe’s fall, plumped out by information about Echo and Ariston. They would have stopped reporting a normal accident weeks ago, but this death is connected to Leopold’s play. The press loves Leopold Henneman.

  “I had to talk to them,” Kestrel says, voice glistening with pride. “I didn’t feel like it was right to keep information to myself if it had anything to do with Roscoe’s death.” Kestrel gets up and heads for the kitchen to pour out the dregs of her glass in the sink. “Besides, if it really is the curse, it’s going to happen again.”

  Zara goes back to the page in front of her, looking for the first place where the curse is mentioned, where Kestrel is quoted. The curse is almost as old as the Aurelia. It started with a production of the Scottish play in 1912. There are undeniable patterns. It always ends on opening night.

  Kestrel picks up the bottle brush next to the sink and attacks her glass. Zara goes back to the article. “It always comes in threes.” She looks up at Kestrel. “You think two other people are going to die?”

  Kestrel shrugs, like that isn’t up to her.

  Like that’s up to the curse.

  “Can I keep this?” Zara asks, getting up. Her hand, which was clean only a minute ago, is already turning gray and tacky from the newsprint. She must be sweating. She must be nervous.

  “That was my copy.” Kestrel narrows her eyes until they look as thin and blue as the sky between window blinds. “What do you need it for?”

  Zara wants to show this to Eli. She has no idea if Eli believes in the Aurelia’s curse. What she does know is that Eli is still thinking about Roscoe. At the Met, Zara could feel how hard it was for Eli not to talk about him. Like he was right there among the statues and they were both ignoring his presence.

  She asks herself:

  Do you really think this will help Eli?

  Or are you just looking for an excuse to talk to her again?

  Apparently Zara has been sitting there with her mouth slightly open and nothing coming out of it for too long, because Kestrel’s face sours. “Oh,” she says. “I get it. You’re too important to tell me things. Because you’re Echo.”

  “No.” Zara leaves the paper on the table. She’ll find a newsstand, even if it makes her late for rehearsal. She abandons her smoothie, ignores her usual yogurt, and heads for the front door. “I don’t think I’m better than you. You know that, right?” She slips on her shoes and her coat, her mind sliding back to rehearsals, to how Leopold always seems to want something other than her. Something more. Self-doubt hits again, so hard that she can barely stand. “You probably would have made a better Echo.”

  Zara grabs her purse and leaves. She’s almost to the elevator when a voice shreds the quiet. It’s Kestrel, screaming. The hallway seems longer on the way back. Zara can’t find her keys, and then she can’t remember which one fits in which lock. By the time Zara has it sorted out, the screaming has stopped. Zara opens the door. Kestrel is sitting cross-legged in the middle of the living room, breathing deeply. If Zara hadn’t heard the sounds, if she wasn’t absolutely sure that Kestrel had been the one making them, she would say that Kestrel looks calm.

  “Are you all right?” Zara asks.

  Kestrel looks up at her, red hair bright and eyes unblinking. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  Zara Evans is distracted. (Adrian can tell.) He sees it in the way that she keeps forgetting to blink. He can feel it, too. Standing with her in the hallway outside the rehearsal space is like hanging out with half a person.

  “You good?” Adrian asks, touching Zara’s arm. (Girls love it when he touches their arms.)

  “Yeah,” Zara says, still looking completely distracted. “Good.”

  Meg, the director’s PA, walks toward them down the hall. Her honey-blond hair is slick in the lights. Her pretty face almost makes up for the khakis and standard-issue cardigan. Each step is more brisk and pissed off than the last.

  She holds out a box. Plain cardboard, nothing inside.

  “This is for your clothes,” Meg says.

  “Are my pants really that bad?” Zara asks, looking down. Adrian doesn’t say anything. (Because, yeah, they are.)

  But he doesn’t want Zara to be embarrassed. He wants this rehearsal to go well. And if that means taking off his clothes, he’s not going to ask questions. He moves fast, a whirlwind of fabric, until he’s down to his boxers. “You can stop there,” Meg says, shifting her eyes away.

  “Oh,” he says, leaving his fingers hooked in the elastic waistband. “Cool, cool.”

  Zara Evans stares at Adrian like he isn’t real. (He’s pretty much used to this by now.) It’s true his muscles aren’t exactly a natural asset. He works out twenty hours a week, sometimes more. People want these muscles when he takes off his shirt. People expect them.

  Meg shakes the box in Zara’s direction. “What is this for?” Zara asks.

  Bad move, Zara Evans. “Just go with it,” Adrian says. It’s easier that way. And it makes directors want to hire you again.

  “This is for act three, scene two,” Meg says evenly.

  “That’s not one of the love scenes,” Zara says. “In act three, scene two, Echo and Ariston have just met.”

  “This is a rehearsal technique,” Meg says. “It goes back to the method acting studios of the 1960s. Actually, in that case the actors were fully nude.” Meg’s eyes go to Zara and stay there. “Leopold thinks the two of you need to work on intimacy.”

  Yes, Adrian thinks. This is what he can offer the play. This is why they cast him.

  Zara twitches a look up and down the hall. “Where is Leopold?”

  “Not feeling well,” Meg says. “He needed to lie down.” Adrian remembers the vision that hit Leopold in prop storage and adds it to what Meg just told him. It doesn’t take much work to find the connection.

  Zara peels off her shirt, and all of a sudden Adrian is looking at her bra. It’s black. Her underwear, on the other hand, is bright pink and cuts into the skin at her hips. She seems aware of it in a painful sort of way.

  Adrian covers his eyes and puts out his hand. He lets Zara lead him into the studio. Her hand is warm in his and — can a hand be grateful? Her hand feels grateful. Meg must be staying outside because he hears the lock clunk behind them.

  “Ummm,” Adrian says, opening his eyes slowly. “This is embarrassing.”

  “At least you have that body to be embarrassed in,” Zara says.

  Adrian had already forgotten about being semi-naked. “Yeah, what I meant is . . . I’m still not really off book. It’s hard enough with movies, when I only have to remember lines for the day. I memorize them when I’m sitting in makeup.”

  “Really?” Zara asks with a nervous laugh. “I memorized these when I was twelve.”

  What does she want from him — an award? It’s not that easy for everyone.

  “So how do you do it? For the movies?” she asks.

  “I think the ritual is what makes it work,” he says, thinking it through one step at a time. “I can remember a line because it matches up with the way a brush hits my cheek. Or that tugging feeling of an eyebrow pencil. But this play is made up of monologues. Long ones.” He goes to put his hands in his pockets and then remembers that his thighs are bare. “You can only put on so much makeup, even in theater.”

  Zara Evans is frowning. “When do you think you’ll be off book?” she asks.

  “I’m working on it,” he says with his best apology smile. He’s lucky that Leopold isn’t here. Although it’s possible it wouldn’t even matter. Adrian is famous enough to get a ce
rtain number of passes.

  Zara is looking at him like she knows that.

  She holds her arms around her middle. It’s hard to tell if Zara is shy or self-conscious or just freezing. The studio has an old heater and icy wooden floors. “I have Ariston’s lines memorized, too,” she says. “Maybe I can feed them to you for today.”

  “Hey,” Adrian says, ignoring the bitter hint in Zara’s voice. “You know this play backwards and forwards and inside out, right? Maybe you can do more than just feed me the lines. You can help me learn them.” He has a dialogue coach that he meets with on a weekly basis, but that’s not enough. Dyslexia, ADHD, a bad breakup, and a dead Greek playwright have combined forces to ruin Adrian’s life. “I’ll help you, too. With — I don’t know. Whatever you need. Intimacy, right? We’re on this ride together, right, Z? Can I call you Z?”

  Zara sighs, then thinks, then nods and marches over to him, which means she has to stop hiding her body. He tries not to stare at her. “This is act three, scene two,” she says, her voice moving in waves of confidence he’s never heard before. “Echo and Ariston meet at the market, and they’re already in love. But they don’t know that they’ve fallen in love with the exact person they were supposed to marry before they ran away.”

  “Seems kind of silly, doesn’t it?” Adrian asks.

  “Silly, how?” Zara asks, crossing her arms over her chest again. (It only reminds Adrian she has a chest.)

  “They could have just stayed where they were and ended up married. Popping out little Greek babies. It seems pretty obvious.”

  Zara frowns. “That’s not the point.”

  “Oh.” Adrian puts a hand to the back of his neck, which is suddenly hot. “Yeah. Probably not. So what do I say first?”

  Zara feeds him lines. Adrian vomits them back up.

  “Now say it again,” Zara instructs.

  When Adrian goes looking for the words in his head, he finds a thousand other things. Boring ones. Exciting ones. Some of them leap and demand his attention. Others whisper and whisper and won’t stop. And then there’s the scene that’s always playing out in his head these days. A car in a driveway in the middle of the night. Bags, everywhere. A barefoot girl on the pavement, not kissing him. Staring at him with the kind of sadness that you can’t fix, not even with a perfect kiss.