Echo After Echo

by Amy Rose Capetta

  He can hold on to the words, even the long-ass monologues, thanks to Zara and her special technique. Adrian can get the words out now, but he can’t really act. (Or maybe he can. Maybe he’s better than he thinks he is. But then why hasn’t Leopold told him so? Why hasn’t Leopold told him anything?)

  The director starts to shout from his table out there in the middle of the house. Zara tenses at Adrian’s side.

  But the anger isn’t for her. Not this time.

  The lights go from blue to some other shade of blue. Leopold spins around and shouts up at the lighting booth, “That can’t possibly be the right cue. You can fix it, or you can leave.”

  Adrian feels bad for the lighting girl. Eli. Her boss just died, and she’s got a pretty intense job at the moment. Leopold could cut her a break. “I guess that’s not special treatment,” Adrian mutters to Zara.

  She looks bad all of a sudden. Paler than pale. Like she wants to break off the stage and run — where? Away from Adrian? Then he would be completely alone.

  “Keep moving!” the stage manager yells. Zara gets out one line before the dreaded “Hold!”

  The second Adrian has his lines down, they absolutely forbid him to speak.

  It figures.

  In Hollywood they do this stuff before he even steps onto the set. He has people to stand in place for him. An army of not-quite-Adrians. They go out for drinks sometimes and after a few rounds they let girls at the bar guess which one is the real Adrian Ward. He misses those guys. He misses those girls.

  All he has right now is Zara — and he doesn’t even have her. Not really. They kiss every day, but that’s just onstage. There was that one time in the studio, but Adrian stopped it, stepped back right when things were heating up. He couldn’t get Kerry out of his head. “Hey, Z,” he whispers. “Maybe we should run away together at the next break. Ariston would love that, right? It’s his sort of thing.”

  Zara whispers back. “I think I used up my running away on the Aurelia.”

  “Hey,” Adrian says. “Me, too.” He didn’t even know that was true until it came out of his mouth.

  He came here to get away from what happened with Kerry.

  With the blond in her red hair, the sweet, scratchy voice, those thighs. Kerry, so pretty and not at all famous. The famous ones fall for Adrian, too, but they go back to their actor and director and music-producer boyfriends as soon as the movies wrap. Kerry was different. Adrian called her his Indie Darling, and she liked it. (Most of the time.)

  He wishes she were here right now and then wipes the thought clean. Kerry was the one who said she couldn’t be seen on his arm — couldn’t just be Adrian Ward’s Girlfriend. Adrian didn’t get it. He knows his fans can be intense and his fame can feel like too much, but why should that stop them from being in love? Was that a bargain he made when he started acting — get too big and lose the person you want to be with? He doesn’t remember signing that contract.

  “Are you okay?” Zara asks.

  Now he must be the one looking sickly.

  The stage manager calls a break, and Adrian hops off the stage and walks right up to Leopold.

  “I’m here to act,” he says. “Not just, you know, stand. I was wondering if you have any notes for me.” Adrian needs to know there’s something he can do to be a better Ariston. He’s supposed to be giving the performance of a lifetime. If he can pull that off, it means he didn’t come all this way just to avoid an ex-girlfriend.

  Leopold waves him away. “Nothing at the moment.”

  “I just need to know, if there’s anything I can be doing . . .”

  Leopold takes Adrian by both shoulders. He’s stronger than he looks. “Don’t worry. The press will be gentle with you. They love you. And the public? They go to sleep at night hoping to dream about you. It’s Echo I’m worried about.” They both look to Zara on the stage. She looks small up there, stranded. “I wish my reputation could protect her, but you must know that casting someone as your love interest is a high-stakes game. She must be perfect. If not . . .”

  Adrian knows what he’s talking about. It’s happened before. Even to famous girls. If his fans think that someone isn’t good enough for him, even in a costar capacity, she’ll get eviscerated. He’s been around long enough to notice that people can be seriously nasty when it comes to actresses.

  “Zara is a good actress,” Adrian says. And it’s true. She gets nervous sometimes, but when she’s on, she’s very, very good. She blazes through their scenes.

  She makes him feel so much.

  But Leopold is looking at Zara Evans like she was a mistake. “This girl has never been in the public eye. Never touched a real stage before. She’s never been in love. She’s far too innocent.”

  Adrian claps his hands together. “Right.” He turns back down the aisle and strides toward Zara. She helped him once, and it’s time to pay that back. Maybe Adrian’s not the world’s best actor, but there are things he can do to help this production. Whether Leopold knows it or not, he just gave Adrian a brilliant idea.

  Zara takes in the long makeup table and the clutter of shoes and bags opposite Cosima’s tidy costume racks. The men’s dressing room is so much like the women’s that Zara feels like she’s stepped into a mirror world — everything an inch to the left of where it should be, the colors muted, the smells sharper. Aftershave and deodorant instead of hairspray and flowers.

  “Is there a reason you wanted me to see this?” Zara asks Adrian, who led her in with a huge smile and no real explanation.

  Then Zara notices something at the end of the long table, and it feels like a reason to stay put.

  Carl’s bag.

  Rich brown leather with brass clasps. It’s sitting on a chair right at the end of the makeup table.

  Enna’s death won’t stop bothering her, and she doesn’t know how to let it go. Maybe it’s easier to worry about Enna’s death than it is to worry about Echo, about Leopold. Maybe this is just another way that Zara’s paranoid brain is distracting itself. It tells her that this is an opportunity she shouldn’t ignore.

  We keep our eyes open.

  “All right,” Adrian says, clapping. He pulls out his phone. Bounces lightly on his feet. “You and I are going to take a picture.”

  “What?” Zara asks.

  Adrian grins at his phone without answering. He seems thoroughly distracted. Would he notice if Zara stuck a hand into Carl’s bag?

  “You stand over here,” Adrian says, waving one of his hands, directing Zara toward the best lighting.

  She walks, her steps sticky with self-consciousness. As much as Zara loves standing in front of hundreds of people at a time, cameras are different. They demand little slices of perfection. What happens onstage is beautiful, but it’s also messy and breathing and real.

  Zara fiddles with the hemline of her shirt. “What’s this for?”

  Adrian looks so beautiful and sure of himself. “Leopold wants us to do it.”

  “Did he say why?” Zara asks. She thinks back to his office, the director’s body so close to hers. He’s famous for pushing his actors.

  She shouldn’t let it bother her.

  Adrian shrugs. “Just a marketing thing. You know. Get your face out there.”

  Zara snaps back into the present. “He said he didn’t want anyone to see me until the gala.”

  Adrian is getting frustrated now. Which he also expresses by shrugging. “He must have changed his mind.”

  That sounds like such a small thing, but it makes Zara go incandescent with worry. Why does Leopold want to change the plan now? He must be desperate. She made a little bit of progress in their meeting, but it wasn’t enough.

  “Wait,” Adrian says, hopping next to her, his arm going around her shoulders. It feels like a rash spreading. Adrian holds his arm out, making the muscles on his forearm hop out. “Put your head on the boyfriend shelf,” he says.

  “The what?” Zara asks.

  “Right here,” he says, patting th
e smooth place just below his collarbone. Zara laughs, surprising herself with the warm sound.

  “Like this?” she asks, tilting her head into place. Adrian’s chest rises and falls. The moment gives Zara a forceful shove of déjà vu. This feels the same as taking pictures with every boy she’s dated.

  He hugs her tighter. “We have to make it look couple-y,” he says, the corners of his smile curling as the phone makes the fake shutter snap.

  Couple-y. It hits Zara all at once. If Adrian posts this online, two million people will see it by morning.

  “Don’t put that up,” she says. Adrian’s fingers rush over the buttons of his phone. He is a hurricane of social media. “No worries,” he says. “You look really good.” He thrusts the phone out between them and shows Zara — the entire frame is taken up by the two of them, her hair falling in a soft curtain, her T-shirt dipping at the neckline to reveal contours of her chest that she would rather not have two million people staring at. She’s wearing her necklace strung with eight keys, not that anyone besides Eli will know what that means. And then she notices Adrian’s caption — Love this Echo.

  “Oh God,” she says.

  “Why do girls always hate the pictures you take of them?” Adrian asks, already off in his own little realm, muttering and focused on the screen. He pushes a button. “Look. A thousand people liked it already.”

  A thousand? How is that even possible?

  Hot panic-prickles spring up on Zara’s neck. Eli. What will she think when she sees it?

  Maybe that Zara doesn’t feel anything for her. Maybe that Zara will do anything for Echo — even pretend to date someone famous. Maybe that Zara is desperate for attention, for closeness, for love.

  Maybe nothing at all.

  They’re stuck in the Aurelia all the time. Eli flirts with Zara, but she probably doesn’t mean anything by it. Zara’s just there. As far as Zara knows, what Eli is experiencing could be the same as when Zara leaned her head on Adrian’s chest. An almost-feeling. An empty replica.

  “You all right?” Adrian asks. “Do you want me to get you something from the snack machine?” Oh God. One picture and now Adrian is being sweet and solicitous and acting like her boyfriend.

  Zara almost says no, but she has less than three minutes before they go back onstage. She still needs to look through Carl’s bag.

  “Yeah. I could use a ginger ale.” Her stomach is a mess, so it’s not even a lie.

  Adrian sends a smile back over his shoulder as he leaves the dressing room. Zara waits a beat. Closes the door. Waits another beat.

  Then she crosses the room.

  She’s not sure she should be doing this. Any of this — staying at the Aurelia, hiding things from Leopold, spending so much time with Eli, pretending that she belongs with Adrian Ward.

  The brass clasps come undone with a sharp flick and Zara’s hand slides along the opening of the bag. The leather has a thick, musty smell. It gives her the right feeling, so she plunges her hand in. She finds a few loose mints, a change of shoes, a copy of Murder on the Orient Express, a wallet, a phone.

  What did she expect? A bottle of pills with Enna’s name on it? Secret messages that spell out I killed her? Anything, she realizes with embarrassment, as long as she could show Eli. Zara wanted to go back to her triumphant and glowing and all she came up with were purse mints.

  The door swings open.

  “Thanks for the ginger ale,” Zara says, dropping the bag at her feet.

  But it’s Toby, not Adrian. She didn’t think any of the other actors would come in during break — they usually flock to the greenroom.

  Toby scolds her with expertly furrowed eyebrows.

  “Adrian brought me here,” she says. The words are true, but they sound as convincing as a set built out of cardboard.

  “Of course,” Toby says. “Adrian Ward, with whom you have as much chemistry as a cat and a cold bath.”

  Zara’s relieved. She doesn’t want to be Adrian Ward’s fake girlfriend. But what if he can see how she feels about Eli just as easily? What if everyone can? Toby is old friends with Leopold. He could tell the director about her feelings without having any idea how much damage he might be doing.

  “That’s not Adrian’s, is it?” Toby asks, nodding at the puddle of leather sitting at her feet.

  “This? I. Ummm.” Zara picks the bag up gingerly, pats it back onto the chair. “I was walking by and it fell.” The open clasps sit there, calling her a liar.

  “Oh, sweetie, sweetie,” Toby says with music in his voice. It would comfort Zara if she wasn’t so firmly in the clutches of her nerves. “You know I’m going to have to tell Carl about this.” He looks at her appraisingly. “Unless . . .” He draws it out, makes her wait. “I want you to come out with me tonight. To the bar. There hasn’t been any time for us to bond in this horrid production.”

  The threat of telling Carl should be enough, but Zara can see another reason to go out with Toby — and it’s not to bond. We keep our eyes open. Toby knows everything about the Aurelia. He can tell her more about Carl and Enna.

  There’s only one little problem. “I’m not twenty-one.”

  Toby sticks a hand to his chest, as if the words have fatally wounded him. “We’re going to the Dragon and Bottle! It’s a hundred-year-old theater bar. If you’re Aurelia, you’re family.”

  Toby remembers the first time he gusted into the Dragon and Bottle on a cold wind, high on his own hopes — and probably other things. He’s slowed down a considerable amount since then. Now, instead of sitting at the bar and making friends with every pretty boy who walks in, he takes up one of the dark wood booths near the back.

  Zara’s face is kissed with shadows from the hurricane lamp. The waitress slaps two beers on the table and gives Toby a hug so handsy that it might be scandalous if they weren’t both quite so gay.

  Toby nudges one of the pints — unnecessarily frosted on this winter night — toward the nervous girl on the other side of the booth. She looks into it like it she’s staring down a dark fate.

  “Drink up, my dear,” Toby says, polishing off most of his pint in one go. He needs the oomph of courage. When he found Zara pawing through Carl’s bag, he should have told Carl straightaway.

  This isn’t part of the script.

  “I want to be very clear with you about something,” he says, wagging a finger at Zara. It’s his best I’m-a-wise-adult-so-you-must-listen gesture. “Carl is my greatest and truest friend. Our friendship is antediluvian. Do you know what that means? When the world flooded, Carl and I were already close.” He stops long enough to finish his pint, noting how bitter it always gets toward the end. “If you’re digging around in the hopes that you can find something bad about Carl, you’re going to be disappointed. He wanted only the best for all of us. Including Enna.”

  Zara lifts her eyes — large, bitten with dark lashes. “Kestrel told me they hated each other.”

  “No, no, no,” Toby says, feeling his inner pendulum swinging from sober to tipsy. It takes so little these days. “Kestrel has it backwards and upside down. Carl worshipped Enna. It hurt him so much, to see her like that.” Toby takes a long draught from Zara’s pint since she doesn’t seem interested. “I hated her sometimes.” He shouldn’t have admitted that — but oh well. No taking it back now.

  The look Zara’s giving Toby is a bit strange, so he tries to explain himself. Possibly also a bad idea. “Enna was a cloud — gentle and lovely until she was storming all over you. And then there were the drugs.” Toby looks around at the bar, layering it with other nights, other people. “Enna and I used to come in here for a friendly pint or twelve, but she had stopped. Same with the pills. Xanax, Oxy — she used to gobble them like cut-rate candy. And when you go off such things, your tolerance is destroyed. Getting clean can be more dangerous than staying dirty. Enna must have had a little drink, a pill or two to relax — nothing that would have hurt her five years ago — and the way things were, it tipped her over the edge.” Anoth
er round of drinks appears. Another kiss from the sweetheart waitress. As soon as Toby and Zara are alone again, more words fly out, as if the truth is a glass he’s accidentally backhanded off the table. “In the end, what happened to Enna wasn’t really her fault.”

  “What do you mean?” Zara asks.

  “Oops,” Toby says, burying himself in the second drink. “I’ve said quite a lot, and I won’t say any more.”

  “Toby.” Zara tugs at his name. “Please.”

  He doesn’t want her to look at him with those big, bruising eyes. There’s no reason Zara shouldn’t know this — in fact, it might save her life. “Enna went off the cliff, but there was someone right behind her. Pushing.”

  “Who?”

  “Leopold,” Toby says evenly, to make up for his slight drunkenness. “That man is an art monster.”

  Zara pushes away the second pint. She’s drinking in his words, ignoring the beer. “What does that mean?”

  “An art monster is someone who gives his entire life over to creation. Leopold Henneman doesn’t give a shit about the people he uses, or the problems he creates.”

  Zara is silent.

  “And he’s brilliant,” Toby plows on. “We don’t think we’re supposed to stop brilliant men. We think we’re supposed to worship them. We all play our roles so well.”

  Zara’s phone goes off in her pocket. She does the thing that all young people do — takes it out without worrying that Toby might feel suddenly invisible. He is just drunk enough to reach out and pluck it from her hands.

  “Come back to the theater,” Toby reads from the little screen in his most dramatic voice. “I think I figured something out. Now who is this from?” He looks all over until he finds what he’s looking for.

  Zara. Eli.

  A smile spreads over his face, to see the names all snuggled up like that. Toby shouldn’t love this idea as much as he does — not after what happened with Michael. They used to sit at this very booth, on this very bench, hip to hip, kissing when they thought nobody was paying attention, dropping whispers into each other’s ears, drinking each other’s Dark and Stormys.