Offed Stage Left

by Joanne Sydney Lessner

  She was about to find out for herself. Or would be, if the traffic from the Albany train station weren’t impossible. She had leapt out of the bathtub that morning, propelled to her laptop by the inspired but obvious solution. Naked and dripping (a benefit of being alone in the apartment), she had navigated to Amtrak’s website, done some quick calculating in her head, and found a train that wouldn’t kill her whole day, but would get her there in plenty of time for the eight o’clock curtain. Then she’d indulged in some retail therapy, grabbed a quick lunch, and returned home with enough time to throw some necessaries into a bag and race out the door to Penn Station.

  She needn’t have raced, because after sitting on the train for an hour, it was announced that there was a mechanical failure and they would all need to take the next train. She waited another forty-five minutes for that one to depart, and then there was the inexplicable half-hour hiatus in Poughkeepsie. When she’d asked the conductor why they were stopped, he had returned the singularly unhelpful, “So we can have this conversation.” Finally, they had started moving again. The train had pulled into Albany-Rensselaer at seven forty, and here she was, stuck in traffic.

  It was only now that the true cost of her impulsiveness dawned on her. In the middle of everything else, she’d neglected to buy a ticket for the show.

  “Son of a bitch!”

  The cabbie scowled in the mirror. “Hey, lady, I’m doing everything I can!”

  “I know, sorry.” She let out a strangled groan and pulled out her cell phone. She quickly located the theater’s phone number. After three tries, she got through.

  “I’m sorry, we’re totally sold out. It’s opening night,” the woman intoned disapprovingly in her flat, upstate New York accent.

  Of course, thought Delphi. Because nothing was going right today.

  “Please,” she begged. “I have friends in the show. I decided to come up from the city last minute to surprise them. They don’t know I’m coming. Don’t you hold house seats?”

  “They’re all spoken for.”

  “Standing room?”

  “Against fire regulations. But come anyway. We sometimes have subscribers who don’t show. When you get here, come find me. My name is Miriam, and I’m the box office manager. I’ll see what I can do.”

  “I’ll be there in ten minutes!”

  “Five,” said the cabbie as a policeman waved them past, and the taxi picked up speed.

  “Five,” Delphi repeated into the phone. “Miriam, thank you so much.”

  “No promises. By the way, who are your friends?”

  “Isobel Spice and Sunil Kapany. And Hugh Fremont.”

  “Oh, that Hugh.” Miriam giggled. “He’s such a charmer.”

  “How’s the show?” Delphi asked.

  Miriam paused. “You’ll see.”

  NINE

  ISOBEL HAD COMPLETED her traditional opening night rituals, but given the events of the past twenty-four hours, she decided it wouldn’t hurt to devise a few new ones for good measure. Hugh had given her a box of Godiva chocolates, and after choosing the red foil-wrapped heart, she resolved to save the rest and eat one before each performance. She also sang the song she’d learned in sixth grade listing all fifty states in alphabetical order and followed that with the first fifty digits of pi, which her brother Percival, a math prodigy, had set to music when he was six.

  She wished Percival were coming for opening night and Delphi too, for that matter, but Percival was deep into midterms at Columbia, and Delphi didn’t want to give up any work hours, which Isobel understood. Percival, as was his wont, had written her a humorous light verse in praise of her achievements, but the opening night gift that was most unexpected and made her happiest was the bouquet of flowers from her friend James Cooke. She wondered if friend was the proper designation. He had started as her temp agent, when she sandblasted her way into his office a year ago and insisted he send her out despite her lack of office experience. Their relationship had progressed stormily, and he no longer worked at Temp Zone, but they had parted on good terms.

  She had given James’s flowers pride of place on her side of the dressing table she shared with Talia, and as she reread his note, “Knock ’em dead—figuratively speaking, of course,” Isobel felt a rush of warmth and affection. James, who was not a theater person, had not only known the right thing to do, but had taken the trouble to do it.

  Talia peered into the dressing room mirror, turning her head from side to side.

  “What do you think?” she asked.

  “You could use a touch more color in your cheeks. Those lights are bright, and you’re still a little peaky from last night.”

  Talia reached for the blusher, and it flew out of her hands and into Isobel’s lap. “Sorry. I don’t know why I’m so nervous.”

  “It’s opening night!”

  Talia took the blusher from Isobel and applied it with a shaky hand. “It isn’t only that. I thought everyone was acting a little strange this afternoon. What if you’re right and someone is trying to sabotage the show?”

  “Then only one person would be acting strange. If you ask me, it’s because now they know there are Broadway producers coming.”

  “But Kelly said—”

  “She’s just trying to keep everyone calm.”

  Talia’s face went pink under her reinforced rouge. “So it is true? I thought Arden was a little delusional.”

  “Well, Arden is a little delusional, but yes, it’s true.”

  “You really don’t like her, do you?”

  Isobel shrugged at her reflection in the mirror. “It’s more that she doesn’t like me.” She rose to take down her bonnet from the wig head on the shelf above the table. “Do you like her?”

  Their eyes met in the mirror as Isobel tied a neat bow under her chin.

  “I think it’s wise to stay on her good side.” Talia shuffled her feet in her white lace-up boots. “How do you know it’s true about the producers?”

  “I heard it from Thomas, and the costume people always know everything.” Isobel bit her lip. “Sorry. That probably didn’t help your nerves.”

  Talia positioned her own bonnet over her wig and tied it under her chin. “At this point it doesn’t much matter.”

  “Break a leg,” Isobel said.

  “Thanks. You too.”

  Isobel left Talia in the dressing room and went off in search of Hugh. She found him pacing nervously in the pit.

  “How’s it going down here?”

  “All the parts are on the stands, and I’m guarding them like Cerberus. What’s the mood upstairs?”

  “The usual jitters, magnified by the possibility of sabotage and Broadway producers.” She was seized by a sudden suspicion. “Did you know?”

  Hugh smiled sheepishly. “I did.”

  “And you didn’t tell me?” she cried indignantly.

  “I didn’t want you to get your hopes up. I doubt it will come to anything. They probably won’t even show. You’ve seen Waiting for Guffman.”

  She tugged his sleeve. “But what if they do? I know I don’t have a big part, and it’s all pretty sketchy anyway, but as long as I show some talent, even if they think the show is awful, which of course it is, they might like my performance and remember me, right?”

  He took her in his arms. “Nobody who has ever seen you could forget you.”

  An ostentatious cough startled them apart.

  “If you two lovebirds are finished, I’d like to find out what the orchestration is going to be for my first-act song, since I didn’t get to hear it this afternoon,” Arden said.

  “Actually, we weren’t finished.” Isobel planted a long, lingering kiss on Hugh’s mouth. She pulled away and smiled sweetly at Arden. “There. Now we are. Good luck tonight!”

  Arden gasped and took a faltering step backward. “It’s bad luck to wish someone good luck, you idiot! That’s why you say break a leg or merde.”

  Isobel caught Hugh’s eye and winked. “You do
n’t believe in all that superstitious stuff, do you?”

  Arden huffed and looked away, but Isobel divined from the tightness around Hugh’s mouth that he believed in it. She hoped her irreverence hadn’t just undone all her brand-new good luck charms.

  DELPHI LET OUT A LONG, slow breath as the opening number finished and the cast held for applause. The clapping started slowly after an overlong pause during which the audience, despite the unmistakable cue to clap in the form of a giant cymbal crash, collectively tried to decide what to make of what they’d just seen.

  “‘Antonio is a happier pappy now’?” she muttered. “Please, God, tell me I did not just hear that.”

  “Sadly, you did,” said a male voice next to her.

  She glanced over and saw a slightly built man with round glasses, a boyish face, and receding ash-blond hair. He was scribbling in a notebook.

  “Are you a critic?”

  He raised an eyebrow. “Aren’t we all?”

  Delphi bit her lip to keep from laughing out loud. Onstage, the scene continued with a medley showing young Sousa, known to his family as Philip, morphing with astonishing speed from a pink plastic prop baby to a boy of around ten, who was charged with playing Philip from ages five through fifteen, when he disappeared behind a gazebo and reappeared as an adult actor.

  And to think I nearly killed a cabbie over this, Delphi thought.

  Finally, Isobel and Sunil came onstage together as Emma and Benjamin Swallow. Isobel looked particularly fetching in a blue and white dress and flower-trimmed bonnet, but it was Sunil who took her breath away. His burnished complexion shone against his pale seersucker suit, and she could feel the heat of his eyes from her seat in the fourth row. She had seen Sunil onstage before and knew he had a gorgeous voice, but she’d never seen him costumed quite so attractively. The slim, nineteenth-century suit clung to him in an appealingly suggestive way, and she gained a new and visceral appreciation for why clothes that hid the body were considered sexy.

  Sousa came back onstage, and the three of them had a brief scene. Then there was a duet between Sousa and Emma, “Song of the Sea,” based, according to the notes, on an actual poem of Emma Swallow’s.

  I stood by the cruel, crawling sea

  And this was the dole it brought to me.

  A song so strange came in with the tide,

  Mine eyes were blinded, my strong heart died.

  The song was sweet, but it ground the action to a halt. Delphi applauded enthusiastically for Isobel, but the critic groaned and flipped a page of his notebook.

  “Hey, that’s my friend!”

  He continued to scribble without looking up. “Nothing against your friend—lovely voice—but you pays your money, you takes your chances.”

  He was right, of course. If Isobel and Sunil were watching this debacle with her instead of appearing in it, they would be engaged in an eye-rolling competition, which would culminate in a full-scale takedown at the bar afterward. Or during intermission, because she couldn’t imagine they’d stick it out for the second act. But there were her two dearest friends, soldiering on in the face of material that was either intentionally sappy or unintentionally hilarious, and she had traveled the better part of a day to see them. If they could tough it out, so could she.

  Oh, and here was Sunil again, putting the kibosh on the budding romance between Isobel and—Delphi glanced at her program—Chris. Somehow it was easier to process the actors as themselves, rather than their characters. And here was a stunning auburn-haired beauty in danger of being capsized by her anachronistically surgically-enhanced bosom. Delphi noted with some disgust that her seatmate was sitting bolt upright with a moony smile on his face. With a sharp intake of breath, she suddenly recognized him as the New York Post’s bitchy theater columnist, Roman Fried. What had brought him to the wilds of Albany—and how could she save Isobel from his poison pen?

  The scene onstage continued, and Delphi realized that the beautiful redhead was the infamous Arden Claire—whose real last name, according to Isobel, was Horowitz—in the role of Sousa’s wife. She wasn’t a bad actress, but she seemed far too glamorous and contemporary for the role. Isobel’s complaints weren’t simply ego, Delphi conceded. The truth was, Isobel would have been much better as Jennie Sousa.

  “The Washington Post” began—one of the few Sousa marches Delphi recognized—and she groaned inwardly as more embarrassing lyrics assaulted her ears. Next to her, Fried scribbled furiously on his notepad, while his eyes remained glued to Arden. Chris whirled Arden around and pulled her onto his knee. She sat for a moment, gazing at him with a look more of hatred than love, then jumped to her feet. Chris extended his arm, and Arden twirled into his chest, which reminded Delphi of the disco moves she and her sisters had spent their childhood perfecting. In a single, graceful gesture, Arden dipped backward and Chris caught her under the small of her back.

  But then a strange look crossed Chris’s face, and he buckled under Arden’s weight and sank to the floor. He kept singing, but his eyes telegraphed panic. He looked toward the wings, shaking his head furiously, and as he gently set Arden down on the stage floor, the curtain fell.

  TEN

  ISOBEL STOOD ROOTED to the spot, distracted from her silent run-through of the lyrics by Chris and Arden’s unrehearsed choreography. It wasn’t until the curtain hit the floor and all hell broke loose around her that she realized Arden had passed out.

  Heather, white-faced, rushed onstage screaming into her headset, “Call 911!”

  Chris crawled backward away from Arden and pulled himself to his feet. He glanced around helplessly. “She was dead weight. One minute she was fine, and then she just dropped.”

  “That’s what happens when you faint,” snapped Marissa.

  “Arden? Arden!” Heather shook her gently. When there was no response, she put her ear to Arden’s mouth. “Her breathing is faint. I don’t know what to do!” There was an edge of hysteria to her voice.

  Felicity burst into the wings, followed by Jethro and Ezra.

  “What’s going on?” Felicity demanded.

  “She passed out. Kelly is calling 911,” Heather said in a trembling voice.

  Ezra pushed forward and knelt by Arden. “Everybody back,” he cried and immediately began chest compressions.

  Cast and crew alike huddled in groups, spilling from the wings onto the stage behind the curtain, but nobody dared speak. The confused murmuring of the audience filtered over the backstage monitors until someone thought to turn them down. But as Ezra’s compressions became more frantic, the company too began to whisper, and Isobel heard muffled sobbing from somewhere behind her.

  Ezra was just starting to tire when the paramedics arrived, and he stood aside gratefully to let them take over. His body was shaking, and he sank into Heather’s chair. Kelly and Heather hovered nearby, clutching each other guiltily like babysitters whose child has fallen off the jungle gym on their watch. Jethro and Felicity retreated to the rigging, their concerned voices rising and falling. Isobel sidled over to Marissa.

  “Do you know if Arden had some condition that might make her pass out? Did she take any medications?”

  Marissa shook her head. “No idea.”

  “I thought you guys were good friends.”

  Marissa gasped. “Oh my God, you talk about her like she’s dead!”

  “I didn’t mean it like that. I—” Isobel flailed.

  Marissa stalked over to Talia and whispered something to her. They turned cold stares on Isobel.

  Sunil joined Isobel. “What was that about?”

  “Came out wrong,” Isobel mumbled.

  Felicity was speaking to one of the paramedics. Her voice rose. “But is she going to be all right?”

  “We have to get her to the hospital. Someone needs to come with her.”

  “Heather, you go,” Kelly instructed.

  “Stand back, please.”

  The company parted, and the paramedics rolled Arden through on a stretcher with
Heather trailing them, looking terrified. Felicity jumped aside as they cut past her.

  A hush fell, and Felicity turned, her lips set in a thin line. “I’ll go out front and make an announcement. Isobel!”

  She started. “Yes?”

  “Can you finish the show for Arden? Even if you have to hold the script.”

  Isobel felt every eye on her. She swallowed. “I can do it without the script.”

  Immediately, everyone started murmuring. Felicity quieted them. “How long do you need?”

  “Not much. Maybe five or ten minutes, just to get my head together.” She glanced down. “I’ll have to wear my own costume.”

  “That’s fine,” Kelly said. “I’ll need someone on headset back here.”

  “I’ll do it,” Ezra said.

  “What do you do in act two?” Felicity asked Isobel.

  “Only the maid.”

  “I can cover it,” Marissa volunteered. “Once I’m done as Mrs. Blakely, I’m ensemble.”

  “Thank you, everyone, for being flexible, and thank you, Isobel, for being prepared.”

  With that, Felicity pushed through the break in the curtains, and the chattering in the house trailed into silence at her appearance. Suddenly, Isobel found herself shaking uncontrollably. Sunil and Hugh rushed to her side.

  “What is it?”

  “What’s the matter?”

  “How can I go out there? I mean, I think I know it, but I’ve never had an understudy rehearsal. Maybe I should bring my script. I don’t know what any of the movements feel like!”

  Before either of them could respond, Chris came up behind her.

  “There’s not much left in act one. Let’s walk through the rest of ‘The Washington Post,’ and I can rough you through the finale. Then we can talk through act two during intermission. You’ll be great. Everyone knows you’ve been preparing your ass off.”