He’s having a vision.
Zara doesn’t turn away. She pays attention to what Leopold looks like when he’s in pain. There’s a savage happiness involved — whatever Leopold is seeing right now hurts him, and Zara wants him to hurt.
He’s watching someone die.
Zara wants to scream at him.
Who do you see?
But she can’t give away how much she knows. Her innocence put her in danger for so long. Right now, it’s her only defense.
Meg rushes to the stage with a little orange vial in her hand. She gets to her knees and feeds Leopold a pill, opening his mouth and pushing the pill to the back of his throat. Zara can see the old-fashioned silver fillings in his molars. Her gaze flicks away, only to get stuck on the vial in Meg’s hand.
Oxycontin.
Adrian doesn’t expect Zara to show up at the door to his private dressing room, looking determined. “I’m coming in,” she says, sliding past him on an angle and then closing the door with a bang.
Good thing Adrian’s already changed. Getting stuck in a small space with his costar and none of his clothes would not be his idea of fun. He’s done with the whole naked-in-front-of-Zara thing.
“What’s up?” he asks, throwing on his coat. The last week of December has gone furiously cold.
“What I said to you onstage isn’t true. It still matters. All of it.” It looks like she’s about to add something, but she veers in a new direction. “I need you to do me a favor.” Zara pulls an envelope out of her pocket. “Can you hold on to this? Give it to Eli. If anything happens.”
“What kind of anything?” Adrian asks.
Zara’s got the wide, unblinking look that she wears during the last scenes of the play, when the soldiers are on their way and nothing can change what’s coming. “You’ll know.”
Adrian lets the envelope hang in the air between them, dangling from Zara’s fingers. Before he takes any sort of job, he wants to make sure he can get it right. “I’m supposed to hold on to this note, and maybe give it to your lesbian lover?”
“Don’t use that word,” she says.
“Lesbian?” Now Adrian’s really confused. He didn’t see the whole two-girl scenario coming, but now that it’s here, he’s trying to roll with the punches.
Zara winces so hard that she actually closes her eyes. “She’s not my lover. Anymore.”
“Yeah, I kinda got that.”
Zara looks up at Adrian, and it feels like they’ve cleared away layers of smoke and they’re seeing each other for the first time. No Leopold to push them together, no earlobe kissing to get in the way. “I’m sorry about the other night,” he says.
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you the truth,” Zara says.
Adrian wishes they could just skip this part. Thinking about how he tried to kiss her on the landing has become a hot poker of embarrassment. “I mean, it would have made things easier, you know?”
“If you thought I could only fall for a girl?” Zara asks.
“Yes,” Adrian admits.
Zara sighs, like she’s weighing something — deciding between an easy lie and a hard truth. “I don’t think that’s how it works for me. I’ve dated guys before. I’ve thought girls were pretty.”
“Girls are pretty,” Adrian confirms.
“This is the wrong time to talk about it,” Zara says.
“Is there a better time?” Adrian asks. “Because this whole play has been a hot mess.”
Zara sits down, tucking her hands between her knees. “I don’t know how to say this.”
“Don’t worry,” he says with his very best smile. (The real one.) “I can help you with your lines.”
She doesn’t really say it to Adrian — she says it to the ceiling. “I’m bisexual.”
Adrian feels like something just went right between the two of them. Finally. “Did that feel good?”
“It made me so nervous,” Zara says. She mutters, “There are bigger things to be nervous about right now.”
“You mean the play.”
“Yeah.” There’s a weird and sudden hollowness to her voice. “The play.”
Adrian feels like he’s missing something. He slides to sit on the counter, making the brushes rattle and a few of the little makeup pots fall to the floor. “Well, the media will be shitty about it, especially since we just kissed. And my fans can get . . . intense. But I’ll do a press release about how that kiss at the gala was just for fun, you know, since we’re such good friends. I’ll say that I’m still looking for my perfect girl. They love that sort of thing.”
Zara gets out half a smile. “Thank you.”
“Bisexual,” Adrian says, fiddling with a makeup brush. He knows he should stop talking, but he wants to help. “That’s good news, right? You have more people who can help you get over Eli.”
Zara looks at him like it’s the stupidest thing he ever said. Adrian wants to find some crawl space in the theater and hide for a while. “First of all, no. That’s not what it means.” Her voice softens, and she goes to some other place, somewhere that isn’t the Aurelia at all. Some place in her head where all the best memories are locked up tight. “And second of all, I’m in love with her. Even if she’s gone. I love her.”
Those words hit Adrian squarely in the chest. His mind goes back to the night when he packed a single suitcase and left his entire life in LA. There was the hug in the driveway. The stupid, stilted good-bye. The days and weeks he spent dismissing every thought of Kerry.
He already found his perfect girl. And he lost her.
“Hey, Zara Evans,” he says, giving her a pained smile. “I think we have something in common.”
Zara looks at him in pure confusion. He’ll have to give her more than that.
“Her name is Kerry,” Adrian says. “She’s back in LA.”
Zara nods like she understands that perfectly.
Maybe that’s the real reason Adrian came to New York. Why he signed on for this play, picked it out from all the projects in the world. Ariston’s heartbreak is the same one he went through, the same that Zara is living right now. Adrian gets that, in a sudden and not very pleasant way. Tragedy is the glue. It connects every smashed-up person on the planet.
“So why aren’t you trying to get her back, if you love her so much?” Adrian asks.
“Just . . . take this,” Zara says, holding the envelope out, arm shaking. “Please. You said you were sorry, and this is how you can help.” She puts the letter in Adrian’s hand, and their fingers do that sliding thing. But it doesn’t make Adrian want to kiss Zara. For the first time in months he lets himself think about Kerry, her long fingers. Kissing them. Her skin always smelled amazing, like ginger and grass and some third thing that he could never quite name.
Zara walks out of his dressing room, and Adrian immediately opens the envelope. She must have known that would happen — right?
First of all, there are two tickets to Hamilton in there. That’s a really good idea. Maybe he should send some to Kerry. And then he sees the other paper, the one folded on itself so many times it can’t fold anymore. He picks it open, carefully.
On one side is Echo and Ariston.
The gods have not given me leave to speak
And yet I will
For to leave this unsaid would be a violence
Against all things.
It’s one of the best monologues in the play. (It’s also when Zara and Adrian do the sexy lantern dance. But he’s not going to think about that right now.) He turns the page to the side where Zara’s plain block handwriting stands out against the white, the words of the play showing through where the light hits.
Eli,
There are so many things I want to tell you.
(Everything). But first . . . I was trying to tell you
on preview night, and I never got the chance.
It was Leopold. It was always Leopold.
Adrian doesn’t know what that means. Maybe Leopold was the one who kept them ap
art? Adrian can’t imagine letting someone else come between him and the person he wants to be with.
Only that’s what he already did. He chose his fans over Kerry.
The letter goes on, cramped with memories, so many that the margins are almost black. Adrian stops reading, because some of this is way personal. What would happen if he wrote a letter like this and sent it to Kerry? Would she read it on her little balcony with the Spanish tiles, the sunshine hot on her shoulders? Would she take him back? The right words matter, but they’re not a guarantee.
Maybe he and Zara are both dead in the water.
Zara can’t help noticing that New York is different a few days after Christmas. The lights stay up, but everything else goes back to normal. The city was putting on a show. Now it’s over.
Now it’s opening night. Zara finds a spot onstage and warms up, sliding her muscles to the very edge of their abilities, coaxing her voice to new heights. She is merciless with herself, thinking pain might crowd out fear.
The curse ends on opening night.
When the stage manager tells the actors to clear out, Zara rushes to her dressing room. Loads her face with makeup. Stabs her hair full of pins. Slides on her act 1 costume, the white dress.
The curse ends on opening night.
The stage manager comes knocking, calls fifteen minutes to curtain, and Zara echoes, “Thank you, fifteen.”
Zara tucks Eli’s Leatherman down the front of her dress, snug in the fabric of her bra — the only place she can keep it close without having it show through the outline of her dress. It sits like a cold fist an inch away from her heart.
If Eli isn’t here tonight, she can’t get hurt.
That’s what Zara has been telling herself. That’s why Zara asked Adrian to wait. She wants to believe that if Eli knew the truth right now, she would come to the Aurelia. But then she would be in danger. Zara has already failed her enough.
And if something goes wrong, at least Eli will know the truth.
She would hate what Zara is about to do, but Zara’s out of time, and she can’t see any other way. No matter how many stories she collects, no matter how firmly they all point to Leopold, it’s not the same thing as hard evidence.
So there’s one thing left.
Zara can try to stop him.
The director isn’t backstage. He isn’t in the men’s dressing room, at least as far as Zara can tell by hovering outside. She storms around in the same restless pattern — greenroom, backstage, dressing rooms, greenroom, backstage, dressing rooms. She runs the length of the hall and checks the loading dock, but all she gets is a slap of cold air to the face.
Zara feels blank, emptied of possibilities. Would Leopold go up to the studios? She thinks of the mirror scrawled out along the whole room. She wonders what it would be like to die there, caught staring at her own panicked reflection. But no — too many people have access to those studios. She needs to think of a private place. Away from the crowds.
And then she remembers his office.
The fear in Zara’s system is taking over, a panic that pushes on her nerves and plays tricks with her pulse. It feels indistinguishable from stage fright. Some of it is stage fright. She has to get onstage soon and give the best performance of her life.
Zara runs up the stairwell, and when she opens the door to the hallway, she sees blond hair shining from a pool of overhead light.
It’s Meg.
“Have you seen Leopold?” Zara asks.
Meg’s eyes cut to the far end of the hall. The emergency exit. “No,” she says slowly. “I came up here to find him. But he’s missing at the moment. Probably not feeling well.” Meg puts on a soothing tone, a textbook sort of calm. “Can I give you a bit of advice, from one actress to another? This is what you’ve wanted so long, what you’ve worked hard for, and now it’s here. If there’s one thing I know, the chance won’t come twice.” Meg’s blue eyes bear down on her. “Stay focused.”
The words travel backward in Zara’s brain, searching for something. An echo. Or — what comes first and creates the echo? An origin? A source? She’s heard these words before.
You need to stay focused on the play.
Carl said that at the gala.
“Let’s go down,” Meg says. “Have they called ten yet?”
Zara should leave now, forget about Leopold. She cared only about being Echo for so long — she wishes she could have that back now. But she feels as drunk and dangerous as she did on gala night. She swings an accusation at Meg. “You know he hurt Enna and Carl and Toby. You probably know more people he hurt, and you’re not doing anything.”
“Of course I do, and of course I am,” Meg says. “You just can’t see it. It’s one thing to know what he’s done, and another to try to get people to believe. So many would find a way to ignore it. To put it in a little compartment in their minds and say, yes, he was a monster, but he made such beautiful things. I’ve seen how people treat him. I’ve lived with him. I know.” Meg catches Zara’s hands between her two small ones. They smell comforting and predictable. Lavender soap. “Go downstairs and put everything you think and feel into this play. Forget about Leopold.”
Zara feels the world swinging around her — or maybe that’s the nausea part of stage fright setting in. “Why would you tell me all that, about his visions, if you wanted me to forget?”
Meg closes her eyes and sighs. “I wanted you to be careful.” She opens her eyes again, tightens her cheeks, adds some impossible cheer to her demeanor. “Let’s go down. All right?” And Zara does, trailing right behind her. The audience will be taking their seats now, sliding into place.
Zara has one last chance to disappear into the fantasy of her childhood — the love story. She used to pick and choose, remembering Echo and Ariston’s epic love and forgetting the unspeakable ending. That doesn’t work anymore. She can’t believe in love without knowing it could end in pain. She can’t care about Echo’s life and keep her death at arm’s length.
Everything in her training tells her that if someone’s eyes flick to the emergency exit, there’s a reason. Zara isn’t going to let that go, to pretend it never happened and hurry to places.
As soon as Meg disappears down the hall, Zara heads back up the stairs, taking them at a blinding run. Her toes bruise immediately. The shoes that Cosima gave her aren’t much more than slippers. They were made for a girl who was kept inside, kept safe.
Zara pelts down the hallway, putting a shoulder to the metal exit door. She shoves with all her weight. The door opens, blowing cold air in at her. The metal fire-escape stairs are waiting. They eventually lead up to the roof — to the open wound of the winter sky.
There is a sound far above, like the shadow of steps. She thinks of Eli, of how she wouldn’t want Zara to do this, especially not alone. But Zara can be braver than she ever showed Eli.
Zara can be more.
And she hopes that, if this all goes wrong, she can someday be forgiven.
She takes another frozen breath and tells herself that she can do this. Maybe it’s just a story, but it’s enough to make her believe.
Zara starts up the stairs.
Leopold’s toes are set against the marble edge of the Aurelia’s roof.
Buildings crowd and jostle on their way to the sky. When Leopold looks up, he sees the endless stretch of clouds, milky gray on black. New York City, no matter how hard it tries, is only a handful of glitter cast into the darkness.
When Leopold looks down, he feels like he is already falling.
The gun was an option, but in the end, he couldn’t take it seriously. It was more suited to a man stealing cigarettes from the corner store than someone who had staged Shakespeare’s histories for the RSC. Leopold went through all the knives and ropes and less obvious tortures. For days and weeks, his mind glistened with weapons.
And then there were the days and weeks Leopold spent not thinking about it — shoving the notion of his death down, watching it float back up. Now it
has broken the surface and become real. This moment. His feet pushing forward. The scrape of marble against his shoes.
And still he hesitates. He tells himself that what holds him back, like a hand to the chest, isn’t fear. It’s a simple question.
Is this the best way for Leopold Henneman to die?
Such a long plummet — twenty stories — will leave no body. At first, this thought gave him trouble. People have been known to plan their own funerals, but what he really craves is the wake. Everyone shuffling by in a long, respectful line, shedding memories instead of tears. Would they do that for an empty casket?
But in the end, Leopold isn’t his body. He is the story that he leaves behind.
He raises his arms, spreads them wide. He thinks that maybe if he catches the perfect updraft, it might lift him away, and he will be gone.
He won’t die. He’ll disappear.
Leopold was glad that his visions gave him a say in the matter. In other cases, they were painfully specific. Roscoe’s death was a flash of falling, and then his body on the ground, marooned in a small ocean of blood. Enna was a paper flower, long past its prime. A crumple of drink and death.
Leopold closes his eyes, but he’s not inside the vision, which is a mercy. That would send him over the edge too quickly — no swan-dive rush of cold air, no heady sense of the afterlife. What he feels now is a simple darkness closing in, the claustrophobic final shutting of a door. Like death is a closet to be stuffed into, left to suffocate forever. Nothing grand about it.
Leopold will have to furnish the beauty himself. It’s a fine challenge, really. He closes his eyes and gets ready to leave the world one last picture.
Zara takes a step onto the roof and finds that it has started to snow. Not the soft, wayward snow of the gala night. These are driving, reckless flakes that race to see how fast they can land.
Echo After Echo Page 24
