by Mindy Klasky
I could have eaten ashes and been happy.
We agreed to take Drew’s car to rehearsal. We had to move it out of the driveway, anyway, so that the Swensons could get in and out, and it seemed wasteful for both of us to drive to the exact same place. As we maneuvered around Lake of the Isles, I was relieved to note that Drew’s extreme goofiness from the night before had ebbed a little bit. I didn’t feel like we were trapped in a bad play anymore; I wasn’t quite as worried that Teel and I had manipulated him in some totally unfair way.
In fact, the sex that we had shared—repeatedly—seemed to have tempered him into something approximating the perfect boyfriend. He held the car door for me when we stopped at his apartment, and again when we parked near the theater. He shrugged good-naturedly when I suggested that we stop in at Club Joe for more coffee, and he rolled his eyes, smiling, when I had them dump half of Colombia’s gross national caffeine product into mine. He held my backpack as I dug in the side pocket for my theater keys; I’d managed to disorganize everything with my frantic search for the first aid kit the night before. He greeted Stephanie and Jennifer with a distracted air, as if he barely saw his stunning coworkers, as if he only had eyes for me.
He even offered to go back to the car when I realized that I’d left my script on the floor. It was his fault, anyway. He was the one who’d distracted me after completing his parking maneuvers. If my head hadn’t been spinning from his kiss, I never would have left the script behind.
Smiling as the door closed behind him, I turned to the routine task of setting out chairs. They were stacked neatly in the corner where I’d left them after rehearsal the day before. They weren’t very heavy, but they were awkward to manipulate, and it was hard to take down more than one at a time.
“Oh!” Stephanie said, springing up from her warm-up stretches and cutting off a chattering Jennifer midsentence. “You shouldn’t be doing that. Let me get those.”
I jumped back from the chairs as if they might carry some invisible contagion. “What?” I said stupidly.
Stephanie looked confused herself. “It’s just—”
And then I saw her eyes go to my waist.
My baggy-sweatpants-clad waist. My nonpregnant, never-pregnant, Teel-skinny waist. My obscured-by-fabric-falling-straight-off-my-increased-bust waist. My still-hidden-by-sweats-because-I’d-never-made-time-to-go-shopping waist.
I could feel my blush steam crimson to the roots of my hair. I would have been every bit as mortified if I hadn’t just spent the past several hours engaged in activities that could have made Stephanie’s misinterpretation come true.
Jennifer stepped forward with an awkward smile. “Stephanie just meant that the chairs can be so noisy. We’ll both help and then you can finish faster. She and I wanted to talk about the whole man-love thing, with Romeo and Mercutio. You know, does it become gay because two women are out there, instead of two guys.”
“Yeah,” Stephanie said, and I realized that she was a better actor than I’d ever suspected. She could certainly take a line when it was fed to her, and her reading was spot on. If I hadn’t been drowning in embarrassment, I’d probably even have believed her. She raised her voice, the better to be heard over the imaginary clatter of shifting chairs. “The whole ‘brothers in arms’ thing has a strange tone with the switch.”
Jennifer responded, her own voice pitched just loud enough that I could pretend to believe her lie. “That’s probably what Bill is getting at, isn’t it? One of the major things behind this whole interpretation?”
I had to let them help, had to let them pretend they had meant to help little old stage manager me all along. Together, the three of us wrangled the chairs into a rough circle, but the entire time I worked, I kept staring down. How could anyone think I was pregnant now? When Teel had erased thirty pounds weeks ago?
Sure, I’d had a couple of embarrassing moments in the past year, times when I’d ordered my typical alcohol-free drinks and seen the quick measuring flash of eyes to my waist. I’d even had one older woman gesture toward an escalator, smiling sweetly as she said, “Please, dear. It would hardly be polite for me to push you out of the way.”
I’d told myself that those were exceptions. Minor oversights. The older woman had eyeglasses hanging from a chain around her neck; I’d pretended that she needed them for distance.
But now? Here? After my second wish was long granted, and I’d almost grown accustomed to the body of my dreams? It didn’t make any sense. It wasn’t fair.
I excused myself and hurried into the bathroom. Glaring at myself in the mirror, I turned to my right, then to my left.
As much as I wanted to, I couldn’t actually blame Stephanie. I did look pregnant. There was something about the way the black jersey knit bunched around my waist. I pulled my sweatshirt waistband as low over my hips as I could manage and gritted my teeth. I had to go shopping that afternoon. It was time—long past time—to ditch my old clothes.
I was still tugging at the fabric when I stormed out of the bathroom.
“Whoa, Franklin!” I looked up in surprise as John McRae reached out to steady me. I’d been so intent on my appearance that I hadn’t even noticed him crossing the lobby. “Is something on fire?”
I shouldn’t have blushed. The words were innocent enough; they didn’t have to be a reference to Drew and me, to the heat we had generated between my sheets the night before. I dug my fingernails into my palms, though, as my cheeks started to burn. Again. John—utterly unaware of the memories filling my mind—gave me a curious look. I muttered a greeting, and he followed me into the rehearsal room.
Drew was waiting for me, anxious as a lost toddler. “Kira!” he exclaimed. “Here’s your script. Good thing we didn’t leave it all the way back at your place.”
I was only a little surprised that my capillaries let me blush a third time in less than fifteen minutes. I saw Stephanie and Jennifer register Drew’s words, immediately parse them for the secret message of how we’d spent the night before. I couldn’t bring myself to look at John; I didn’t want to read the comprehension that would crease his face around his mustache.
“Thanks, Drew,” I said, taking the binder and flipping through to the morning’s scene. It was only as I stared at the typeset page that I realized Drew didn’t even need to be at the morning’s rehearsal. “I’m sorry!” I said. “I don’t know what I was thinking! Juliet isn’t even in today’s scenes!” I lowered my voice and pretended that no one else was listening. “You could be home sleeping.”
“I’d rather be here,” he said simply. His statement made me feel warm inside. Supported. Loved.
That was stupid. It was absolutely too soon to talk about love. I couldn’t plummet from crush through lust to love in less than twenty-four hours. At least not on my own. Not without Teel’s help.
But I had to admit, I really liked the way it felt to have Drew slip into the chair next to me. And I loved, even more, the look of speculation that I caught in Stephanie’s eyes as she joined us. I didn’t even mind the more opaque expression on John’s face, as he took in Drew’s quick touch to my shoulder, as he acknowledged the nearly constant male attention I was receiving.
When Bill strode into the rehearsal room, he was positively thrilled that Drew was there. “Excellent! I was going to have Kira call you. We have some changes to make, changes that are essential to the play, and I want all the leads to know about them now.”
I glanced at John, to see if he knew what Bill was talking about. He shook his head once, a short confirmation that he had no advance notice of what our director was about to announce. He started tapping a pencil against his leg, though, as he ran a hand over his mustache. Settling back into his chair like a man reminding himself to relax, he said, “What’s it going to be now, Bill?”
Bill looked around at all of us, fairly bouncing on his feet as he gripped the back of his chair. “Supertitles.”
Drew said, “Do you mean subtitles?”
“No. Supertitle
s. Above the show. Up in the air.” Bill’s excitement was contagious; I glanced at my cup of coffee to see if he had somehow managed to gulp all of my caffeine. “They have them at the opera, translations so that audiences can know what’s going on.”
John kept his voice carefully neutral. “But Romeo and Juliet is already in English.”
Bill’s arms spread expansively. “Elizabethan English, yes! English that is four hundred years old. English that has been worn down, eaten away, changed so that it can barely be recognized by the average guy on the street. But we have the solution! We can translate! Picture it!”
Bill’s fingers were splayed, jazz hands trying to bring down the very ceiling. Drew looked up obediently, almost as if he expected something to materialize from thin air. Stephanie, Jennifer, and the other women who had arrived to block out Mercutio’s final battle exchanged glances among themselves.
Oblivious, Bill tossed his head back and howled his excitement. When he could speak again, he said, “And the best part is, all of you actors will be in on the secret! You’ll come downstage and gesture toward the supertitles. You’ll actively direct the audience’s attention to the new words. Old, new, all of it will come together! We should be able to reblock the first three acts today.”
Jennifer was actually the first to recover. She said, “So the supertitles will say something like “Romeo, oh Romeo, why do they call you Romeo?”
Of course, when she said it that way, it sounded absurd. Unnecessary. Just one further complication, for a production that was rapidly assuming the complexity of the D-day invasion. I waited for Bill to laugh, for him to say “Gotcha!” To bellow “April Fools’!”
But we were only halfway through February.
And the only fools were those of us sitting in the rehearsal room, trying to get our minds around the fact that we were going to have the first dumbed-down, supertitled Romeo and Juliet in the history of American theater. Or British theater. Or any other self-respecting theater, anywhere.
I swallowed hard and said, “Bill, you want to rework all of the blocking? So far into rehearsals?”
“This is art,” my director reminded me, for at least the thousandth time. It might be art, but I questioned whether the actors could memorize new places to stand, especially when there were so many other technical tricks about this show.
John stepped forward to save the day. “Bill, it’s too late to build a projection system. Too late to add a screen. Not with all the ironwork we have on the pipes.”
Bill laughed. “I knew you’d say that. I knew you’d have some song and dance about why it can’t be done. I already called a friend over at the Minnesota Opera. You have an appointment at noon, to be shown around their stage. They do it every show, so just forget about your ‘can’t be done.’”
For the first time in six weeks, I saw absolute rage on John’s face. “Dammit, Bill, we don’t have time to add supertitles! You’re changing the set every goddamn day, and I can’t go back now and add something totally new. Six weeks, Bill! We’ve got six weeks left!”
Silence.
Bill just stared at John in silence, his ebullience utterly deflated. The actors were shocked, too. They weren’t trained to think about sets, about stage design, about tricks with lighting and sound and costumes. As a group, they were getting ready to switch from working in the rehearsal room to working on stage. They were eager to start moving in their sibilant slime-strewn costumes. They were excited about banging pipe swords against wrought-iron frames.
But they never really stopped to worry about how it all happened, how it all came to exist. They never worried about how stagehands built platforms and ironworkers welded manhole covers and stage managers tried to keep entire productions from falling apart at the increasingly weighty seams.
Drew spoke first, directing his best Leading Man smile at John. “Hey, dude. It’ll all come together. You’ve got Kira to help you. Kira can do anything.”
Any other time, I would have appreciated the vote of confidence. Just about now, though, I wanted to kick Drew’s shins, smother his Pollyanna assessment before he made things even worse. John’s silence felt heavier than the manhole-cover frames he’d designed.
And Bill just stared at his recalcitrant set designer. “Noon,” he said, and then he glanced at his wrist, at his nonexistent watch.
John stormed out of the room.
I couldn’t let him go. I was the stage manager—it was my job to keep the production moving forward, to keep everything on track. I jumped up from my chair, shrugging off Drew’s hand as he reached out to keep me by his side.
I caught up with John on the sidewalk. “Wait, John! You can’t just walk away!”
He shortened his stride, but he kept on moving. I crossed my arms over my chest to cut the winter chill.
“That is exactly what I’m doing.” His voice was deeper than I’d ever heard it before. His words were more clipped; his Texas twang sounded almost like a British accent.
“John, you know that Bill’s just excited about the show. He wants to make a splash. He’s building the Landmark’s name, building our reputation.”
“He’s flushing this show down the toilet.”
“You don’t honestly believe that,” I said, although I was suddenly afraid that he did. I was suddenly afraid that I did. “He’s daring, John. He’s brave. He’s the most charismatic director I’ve ever seen. You’ve watched—he’s got the cast eating out of his hand, Jennifer and Drew, and all the rest of them.”
John stopped. “Yeah, Drew is ready to do just about anything for this show, isn’t he?”
I felt like I’d been slapped. “What is that supposed to mean?”
John stared at me for long enough that I wondered if he somehow knew about Teel. I wondered if he knew that I was a fraud, that Drew’s sudden adoration was completely made up, that my body was a sad joke, that my very presence at the Landmark was all one cruel, manipulative excuse for professionalism.
But then he shook his head. “You’re going to freeze to death.” I realized that we were standing in front of a salt-stained silver pickup truck. John reached in front of me and unlocked the door, tugging it open with an exasperated sigh. “Get in.” He shrugged out of his denim jacket, tossing the coat across my lap. The plaid lining radiated heat from his body. I suddenly realized that I was cold. I set my teeth to keep them from chattering, and I tucked my hands beneath the jacket’s worn hem. John closed my door as soon as I was settled.
As he walked around to his side, I glanced around the cab of the truck. A copy of the StarTribune was fanned across the bench seat. A wadded-up paper sack on top told me that John had indulged in McDonald’s for breakfast. The gear shift was neatly wedged in Reverse, glaring like an exclamation point from the steering wheel.
John slammed his door closed when he got in and then leaned his head back against the padded headrest. His eyes were closed. “I didn’t mean anything by that crack about Drew,” he finally said.
My fingers were still freezing. “It’s okay,” I said.
“It’s just that he was really pushing my buttons in there. Callin’ me ‘dude.’”
“That’s just something he says. He doesn’t mean anything by it.”
“He’s not in a fraternity anymore. He shouldn’t talk like he is.”
I wasn’t comfortable with the conversation. Truth be told, I thought that John was right. “Dude” was okay with actual friends; but it did make Drew sound…immature. If we were theater professionals, we should act like grown-ups. Sound like them. That’s what John was saying, and he was right.
But who was I to talk? I used my share of “totally” with Jules and Maddy, sounding like I should still be chomping on Bubble Yum and twirling my hair around my index finger.
And things had changed last night, things between Drew and me. We were bound to support each other now, to stand beside each other, if either one of us was questioned. I knew the drill. I’d perfected it with TEWSBU. I knew what it
meant to be the affirming girlfriend, the one who always listened, who always agreed.
I expelled a deep breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding. That type of unquestioning support had been one of the things that had driven me most insane when it came to TEWSBU—to his career, to our engagement, to everything about my life with him. There had been times that I had known he was wrong, but he wouldn’t tolerate my speaking out against him, even in the privacy of our own bedroom.
There was that time that he’d wanted to cast a beautiful woman as Antigone, just because she was beautiful—he’d said she’d fill seats in the theater, even though she was totally wrong for the strong-willed role. There was the time that he’d insisted on staging Glengarry Glen Ross in the round, even when everyone else could see that the play would be ruined by diffusing the audience’s focus.
At least he’d never set Romeo and Juliet in the sewers. With slime. And supertitles.
I looked at John steadily. This wasn’t really about Drew. There was no need for us to talk about Drew at all. This was about Bill and his artistic vision, about his plans for the entire production. “Come on, John,” I begged. “Just go over to the Opera, okay? See how they do the supertitles. See whether we can get them up in time. If it’s really not possible, then I’ll back you up. We can go to Bill together and explain that it can’t be done.”
John shook his head, but he’d started to smile. “You realize that you’re going to need another stagehand. Someone to change the slides.”
I shrugged. “What’s another person on the payroll, among friends?”
He laughed, the slow easy laugh that I realized I’d come to expect from him. “Want a ride back?”
“It’s only a block. I can walk it. I don’t want to make you late to the opera.”
He shrugged. “Have it your way. I’d just as soon be late.”
“Exactly,” I said, and I was pleased when he chuckled again. Stage-manager mission accomplished.
