by Gigi Blume
And then she was gone like the enigma she was. A little bit of an odd birdy, that one. It was a small wonder she wasn’t completely nutso with a workshop so many flights of stairs below the theatre.
Down once more.
I amused myself by singing as I navigated my way down, down, down those narrow stairs as the air became cooler the further my descent into the dungeon of black despair, my geeky musical theatre brain just an endless loop of songs on repeat.
As I continued through my repertoire, I found myself testing the echo in that long stairwell with an eerie reverberation reminding myself to keep my hands at the level of my eyes.
I must have spooked myself out because I thought I heard footsteps behind me, masked in the echo of my voice.
I realized in that moment that although I was most likely perfectly safe, it would have given me more peace of mind if I had only waited to find Jane before taking this endeavor all alone. A faint light at the end of the corridor like a beacon in the darkness peered through the costume shop door and as I reached it, I could hear music coming from inside. That scatterbrained woman left her music player on. I thwacked the bolt of fabric on the cutting table and went in search of the offending music.
Three things happened at once.
One. I found the source of the music. It was a small Bluetooth speaker.
Two. The music shut off, but I wasn’t the one to do it.
Three. The figures of two people moved in the shadows.
I was already spooked from the creepy dungeonous stairwell and the freaky echoes reminiscent of the secret passageways to the fifth cellar. To say I was startled would be an understatement. I screamed. Reality dawning, my addled brain devised it could either be A) a deformed man obsessed with a soprano or B) a rat catcher. This is what happens when you’re tired, haven’t eaten much, and allow yourself to get worked up over an ominous yet harmless stairwell.
In the half second after my B-movie scream, I sobered to the vision before me. Jane and Bing were shuffling apart with the guilty evidence of post-osculation faces. And yes, I resort to obscure vocabulary when in shock. Osculation. In other words, smooching, making out, smacking lips together. Kissing. I was equal parts embarrassed, delighted, and furious. The two of them likely felt the same way, but not in the same order.
For the next few moments that felt like ten minutes but was probably only three seconds, we had a staring contest. I stared at them eyes wide, mouth open. They stared at me cheeks flushed, hair askew. I opened my mouth wider to say something, but nothing came out. So many thoughts ran through my head at once, I couldn’t figure out which to give voice to. Apologize? Give them high fives? Yell at Jane for sneaking off like a randy teenager?
To my chagrin, I was spared the effort because the bustle of heavy footfall exploded into the room and the imposing, shark-like form of Will Darcy appeared, followed closely by his very own remora fish—Caroline.
“What’s going on?” he said rather threateningly. I nodded in agreement, deciding that’s exactly what I would have said had I been given the chance—if he hadn’t barged in or, more accurately, if I’d remembered how to use the faculties of my mouth. It seemed to be contagious because neither Jane nor Bing could remember how to use their mouths either, other than opening and closing them like fishies gasping for air—fishies about to be eaten by a great, big Darcy shark.
“Uhh, uhh…” was all Bing could manage to say before a shrill scream came from the direction of Caroline.
“What is it with the screaming?” growled the Darcy shark.
Caroline danced like a leprechaun on hot coals, shrieking, “Spider! Spider!”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” cried Will. “Step on it.”
At that moment, my animal activist roommate suddenly remembered how to speak and shouted, “No, don’t kill it.”
It seemed to happen in slow motion like I was a distant spectator to the most ridiculous scene: Caroline shrinking away from a spider, Jane rushing to save it, Bing looking for something to humanely capture it, and Will staring everyone down like they had gone insane. I didn’t watch sports, but I imagine that was what the instant replays must look like. Then, as the crazy town scrimmage played out, Caroline swung her leg in one swift motion and kicked the spider like a football through a field goal—the goal posts being the threshold of the costume shop door which she quickly and abruptly shut.
A robust “Noooooo!” resounded from the remaining four occupants of the room because we knew—we knew what Caroline obviously was too dumb and self-absorbed to realize—the door locked from the outside.
5
It's Hard to Be the Bard (or MacGyver)
Will
What sort of moronic architect would design a door to lock from the outside? Unless guarding a bank vault or sensitive government documents, there was no reason for a door to have a Fort Knox security system like the one currently employed by the costume shop in the Gardiner Theatre. I would have felt inclined to credit the idea to that crazy woman who ran it. But I knew that door had been there many years before Ari became the wardrobe director. How did I know this? Because I’d been locked in before.
The Stella Gardiner Theatre was my playground when I was a kid. My father, the most excellent actor I’d ever known, enjoyed taking a break from filming his blockbusters to perform in a summer-stock show at the Gardiner. He would often bring me to his rehearsals, and since there were no other boys my age to play with, I would wander backstage, in the catwalks, and through catacombs for hours. I knew every single crevice of this theatre better than my own home. One day in particular, for a reason I no longer remember, I hid in the costume shop and closed the door which locked me in. I was rescued within twenty minutes, but to me, it seemed an eternity. To this day, I never close a door without checking the knob first.
Therefore, when Caroline dislodged the doorstop in the surprisingly impressive soccer play with a spider, my instinct was to dive for the door, but my body felt like it was swimming in glue. I couldn’t get there fast enough. Furthermore, if Caroline spent more time learning to read rather than watching makeup tutorials on YouTube, she would have seen the bright-red warning sign on the door. That sign must have been put there by Ari. That woman might have been nutty as a fruitcake, but she did make a point to warn the actors about that door when they came in for fittings. I imagine Caroline was too busy taking selfies to pay attention.
To compound my frustration, she had no business following me down there. She had no idea what I was doing. I could have taken advantage of her if it suited me. She certainly was willing enough. As hot as she was, all I wanted to do was shake her off, but she was gum on my shoe—irremediably stuck to me.
To some extent, I was used to the attention from women, but that lifestyle got old very quickly. Oh, I was a firm believer in fun, but I liked to think I was more selective than girls like Caroline took me for. Plus, she’d been grating on my nerves all day. If it wasn't a jibe against other cast members spewing from her mouth, it was the conditions of our contract, or a complaint about the facilities, or bragging about her film work. But her crowning sauciness was her barefaced, unequivocal contempt for Beth.
Honestly, I couldn't care less about that pixie. As far as I was concerned, Beth was just a pretty little girl in over her head in professional theatre. She was rarely prepared for rehearsals, always seemed to be frazzled, and would oftentimes arrive at the theatre a hot mess. And I couldn’t keep my eyes off her. What was it about her? She was… scrappy. The way she looked in those clingy yoga pants she wore, or how her fandom t-shirts stretched tightly over her chest and exposed just a tiny bit of skin at her waist when she moved the right way. I didn’t have to particularly like the girl to appreciate her at a distance.
Woah! Hold it right there. I certainly did not like the girl. But I didn’t hate her the way Caroline was determined to.
Beth had been a half hour late for rehearsal that morning, blaming her tardiness to car trouble. Her arms and face
were smudged in grease, and her hair was all over the place. She looked flushed and radiant. It was hot. But Caroline wouldn’t shut up about it.
“Did you see her pants?” she sneered when Beth left to clean up in the bathroom. “Looks like she wiped her hands all over them.”
Oh, I had most certainly noticed that.
She went on. “What was she doing? Trying to fix her own car? Is she a hillbilly? And so sweaty!”
When I didn’t indulge her rants, she pressed me for my opinion.
“Still admiring her fine eyes?” she mocked. “Hard to see much of them under layers of dirt and sweat.”
“I wasn’t looking at her eyes,” I said more to myself than to her, and then to shake off the effect the vision had on me, I stood and spent the remainder of rehearsal by the piano.
At lunch, Caroline climbed into the passenger seat of my car and insisted I take her to Whole Foods. Since I hadn’t yet decided what I wanted to eat, I acquiesced. All the rest of the day, I would catch her eyeballing me. Once rehearsal was dismissed and Bing was missing in action, she followed me when I went in search of him. Subsequently, by the turn of events that ensued, she trapped us in the costume shop. And who just happened to be there? The very woman I was trying to forget: Elizabeth Bennet. I was cursed.
At present, however, it wasn’t the arousing yet vexing presence of Beth in the room, or that Caroline had shut us all in together indefinitely that upset me. Those things were enough on their own. What irked me the most, and after all my admonishments to him, was that Bing got us into this situation because of some girl. It was written all over his dopey face. I didn’t blame him for wagging all over Jane; she was gorgeous—blonde hair, blue eyes, and legs for days. But Bing wasn’t the kind of guy to differentiate hook-ups from serious girls. He wasn’t a player, and he was falling fast and hard. I warned him not to get distracted by a woman. He needed to think of his career first, and he wasn’t following any of my advice. It infuriated me.
Also, my brain was a muddled mess with Beth so nearby. I needed to think of a way to get us out before we all murdered each other.
Four sets of eyes incredulously stared at the door as though staring at it with a Jedi mind trick, it would open and grant us passage. Then the same four sets of eyes turned to Caroline, and I don’t know about the others, but mine were set on kill mode. I might have strangled her if Beth hadn’t spoken up.
“Dddd-did you just…” she stuttered. “Did you just… slam the door to keep a spider out?
Caroline didn’t respond.
“You slammed the door to keep a SPIDER out?” she repeated with more of an edge.
“Yeah. So?” Caroline looked around at all the incriminating faces burning holes into her skull.
“It wasn’t a big spider,” said Bing in a stoic fashion. “He can get back in through the crack.”
“She,” corrected Jane.
“What?” he asked, turning his gaze to her.
“She,” Jane repeated. “It was probably a female spider.”
“Well, he or she is dead,” said Caroline, “so you’re welcome.”
“Then why shut the Thenardier door?” cried Beth.
“Thenardier?” said Bing.
“From Les Mis,” touted Jane matter-of-factly.
“There might be more spiders,” exclaimed Caroline.
“Can we drop the issue with the spider?” I bellowed. Why was I the only sane person in the room? “We’re trapped in here now.”
Caroline laughed, evidently not believing me and jiggled the door knob. Then she jiggled it again. It wouldn’t budge.
“There must be some other way out of here,” she said. “Or another way to open the door.”
I pressed my lips in a thin line, keeping any profanity at bay and slowly shook my head. For good measure, I crossed my arms over my chest, so they wouldn’t decide to commit homicide on their own accord. Caroline tried the knob again. Yep. Still locked.
“We’ll just wait until someone comes down to let us out,” she said.
“It’s the weekend, Caroline,” I growled. “No one will be back until Monday.”
“Does anyone have Ari’s phone number? Or anyone with a key?” asked Beth optimistically.
I immediately took the phone out of my back pocket. “I have Stella’s number.”
I quickly found her contact image and tapped the screen. A red ‘X’ appeared where the signal icon should have been. No service. I moved around the room, trying to get reception from different areas. I tried standing on the sofa, pointing the phone towards the ceiling, walking around that confined space like a Ghostbuster trying to detect psycho-kinetic energy, but nothing I tried was successful. We were too far below ground. In a fruitless endeavor, Bing did the same with his phone. We looked like a couple of interpretive dancers offering our smart phones to the ceiling gods. This lasted a good five minutes before frustration got the better of me, and I lashed out on the one person I believed was responsible: Bing.
It was he who stole away with Jane to hide from the rest of us for his face-licking fest, he who I went in search of followed by the door-slamming, spider-kicking Caroline. I surmised Beth was down there because she had likewise searched for Jane and found the lovers climbing on each other right before I arrived, hence the scream I’d heard earlier. All this could have been avoided if Bing had taken my advice. Therefore, in a not-so-articulate display of anger, I barked. All at once, everyone in the room pointed fingers at one another, placing the blame on Caroline for having shut the door, on Beth for creeping up on them and screaming, on Jane for being so beautiful, and on myself, according to Beth, for something akin to sharks. It was a very messy and poor rendition of It’s Your Fault from Into the Woods, except with no music and no Bernadette Peters. I didn’t approve.
I had to do something. I couldn’t stand still, and I certainly couldn’t wait until Ari came to work on Monday only to find four corpses and one crazed and homicidal Will Darcy. I went in search of something, anything that I might use to get that door open. Tools, perhaps.
“What are you doing now?” Beth crossed her arms and glared at me.
“I have to get that door open.”
“With what?” she said sarcastically. “A seam ripper?”
I pretended to ignore her, but I was hyper aware of her scathing glower as if she willed me to fail. She wouldn’t be the victor. Not today, pixie girl. Determination under my wings, I searched harder and finally came upon some paper clips, corset boning, knitting needles, and a butter knife. I immediately set to work on the door, jamming the knife in the frame and poking around with the paper clips. I thought for a minute I felt it give, but then I lost it. Surely, it couldn’t be that difficult.
“Are you picking the lock?” asked Caroline.
“Yes.”
She hovered over me, blocking my light. It took all my willpower not to bite her head off. Maybe that was what Beth meant when she called me a shark. I sighed and counted to ten. Maybe Caroline got the hint or maybe she just got distracted by something shiny, but when she moved to the other side of the room, I was hyper aware of Beth sneering somewhere behind me.
“Do you mind?” I said, turning my head just enough to see her crossing her arms. “I’m trying to concentrate.”
She rolled her eyes. “Don’t mind me, MacGyver. Would you like some bubble gum and a wire hanger? You could build a bomb.”
“I’ve done this before, you know.”
“Oh? And then did the director call ‘cut?’”
I feigned a laugh. “Har har! Actually, a wire hanger would be great. Thank you.”
Caroline was at my side in seconds with the hanger and said quite seriously, “I have faith in you, Will.”
It was too much pressure. At one point, Bing tried to help me, using his flashlight app to illuminate the doorjamb. One thing I could say for those old industrial steel doors—the craftsmanship was far from shoddy. That was one sturdy mother-lovin’ door. After about a half hour, I
took a break, not conceding to defeat, but to rest for a time. By then, Caroline amused herself by stacking spools of thread, Beth had found a copy of Anna Karenina somewhere on Ari’s shelves, and the lovebirds exchanged hushed secrets.
I was so worked up and quite frankly peeved beyond all that was good and holy, socializing with any of them was out of the question. And so I took a seat at Ari’s desk, fished a notebook out of my bag, and vented my frustrations on paper. It was much safer than venting on Bing’s face. I was able to write a few lines, but only before Caroline once again interrupted my solace.
“What are you doing?”
“Writing.”
“With a pen?” she asked confoundedly.
Smothering her with a pillow sounded good in that moment.
“Yes,” I hissed. “That’s usually what one uses to write in a journal.”
“OH! You keep a journal? I’d love to read it.”
“It’s a rather private thing.”
“Oops. Sorry. So, it’s more like a diary.”
“If you want to call it that, yes.”
She thought about that for a minute and at length, asked, “You won’t let anyone read it?”
Clearly, I wouldn’t get much else down on paper. I sighed. “If you must know, my sister reads my journals sometimes.”
She perked up at this. “I didn’t know you had a sister. Is she older or younger?”
“Younger.”
“What does she look like?”
I could tell she was fishing for me to produce a photo. In fact, my sister Georgia’s image was the screensaver on my phone but sharing that somehow seemed oddly intimate all of a sudden. I didn’t have the energy for that.
“She’s my sister, I don’t know how to describe her. She’s petite, I guess.” I flicked my hand dismissively. “Like Beth.”
