Harmony

by Marjorie B. Kellogg

  Howie spotted us trying to slip past.

  “They were there!” He waved us over. “The whole place upside down, isn’t that right, kids?”

  We both got real still.

  “It’s okay,” Howie urged. “Omea called me first thing.”

  Cris stared back at him. “Cora told us to keep it quiet.”

  Howie’s cheeks puffed up. “Yeah, well, come on. We’re all in this together. It won’t go outside the theatre.”

  Sure it won’t, I thought.

  “It’s a security problem! I’ve got actors at risk!” Howie had finally realized the e-mails were not some young media artist’s journeyman project. I wondered how his blood pressure was doing.

  Sean turned tired eyes to me. “He wants to move his rehearsal into the theatre.”

  Our expressions were identical and eloquent. Sean turned back to Howie. “See? They don’t like it much, either.”

  “Nobody likes it!” Howie’s hands chopped away again. “But I can’t have my actors’ concentration disturbed by some asshole’s harassment campaign! They need a secure place to work!”

  Sean jammed his hat on his head and regarded Howie from under its neon yellow brim. “So where am I supposed to build your goddamn set?”

  “We only rehearse eight hours—the rest of the time, it’s yours.”

  “Graveyard shift? Jesus, Howie, my men are exhausted!”

  “Then hire some more!”

  I nudged Cris. “Er, we’re on coffee break…?”

  Cris led the retreat.

  “This coffee’s weird.” I stared into the mug I’d borrowed.

  “Pedro puts salt in it,” said Flick, my friend the mold maker.

  “Salt, huh? That’s novel.”

  Flick’s short dark hair was like a glossy bowl upended on her head. She had a ready smile and an equally ready tongue. She’d staggered comically into the crew room when the official break horn sounded to gulp her coffee as if it were water in the desert.

  The low concrete room was furnished with props Hickey couldn’t be bothered to store anymore. A dozen or so crew-folk lounged around in the broken-down assortment of chairs, benches, and stools, castoffs from past shows. In the rickety sofas at the far end of the room, several spent bodies sprawled in sleep. The rest of the crew was working through their break.

  Flick stirred a cube of soup into hot water without rinsing her mug. “I hear Hickey’s getting it on with one of your dancers.”

  “Hickey?” This was interesting news.

  “Yeah, of all people!” Flick guffawed. “Never seen someone look so soppy in all my life!”

  “Lucienne,” said Cris. “She’s been singing him all week.”

  So. He’d been keeping things from me. “Yeah. You want to know about the Eye, ask Cris. He’s real close with their sexy ingenue.”

  As soon as I’d said it, it sounded mean-spirited. Flick’s glance was shifting back and forth between us when the door slammed open and Sean stormed in.

  “There better be coffee in here or you’re all fired.”

  Flick tossed her head. “Big Chief. On the warpath.”

  “Asshole,” declared Sean to nobody in particular. He steamed over to the coffee table and snatched up a mug. “Stupid fucker.”

  “Howie,” I guessed.

  “Yes, Howie. Bad enough he has Hickey turning the joint into a goddamn greenhouse! The Barn’s been good enough for every other cast that’s worked in it. Who do these people think they are?”

  “It’s not them, it’s this security issue…”

  Sean dumped sugar into his coffee. “I just got started building. How’d Micah feel if I stopped?”

  I nodded. He looked too tired to argue with.

  “Well, fuck ‘im. I told him he couldn’t have it.”

  “The theatre.”

  “Yes, the theatre! I told him he could bring his goddamn actors where he goddamn liked, but I’d be in there with my hammers and saws and there’d be fuck-all he could do about it.”

  “I guess that told him,” said Flick.

  Stirring angrily, Sean spilled hot coffee on his hand and swore.

  “Asshole,” Flick observed.

  Sean chuckled, caught her eye, and started to laugh.

  HARMONET/CHAT

  08/02/46

  ***So! Are we up-to-date, friends and neighbors? Have we heard the *ultimate* latest? We would be so-o-o-o embarrassed if we didn’t know what went on at the BRIM yesterday!***

  ***It’s not that we wish to fill *all* our airspace with the folks from Tuatua, just because they can’t manage to behave themselves in public… though we WOULD like to know what the tall one was muttering sotto voce as he stalked out. But their little family squabble was only the start of the evening’s events. After they left, the *real* fun began!***

  ***First there was the hailstorm on the terrace. *HAIL* in Harmony? When did they add THAT to the weather program? But believe it, f&n. Chat is, Gitanne still has some squirreled away in her freezer… as evidence against charges of serving hallucinogenic beverages without due notice.***

  ***Then there were the flies in the soup. In EVERYONE’S soup. Or so we hear. Not a one of those *alleged* critters survived to tell the tale. We prefer Gitanne’s story about floating peppercorns.***

  ***As if that wasn’t enough to ruin the Brim’s business for at least a week, then came the fainting spells! And not just the old ladies, f&n. Three strapping young men, five women of indeterminate age, and two grandfathers *out cold* on the floor! Had to be revived with generous doses of food and spiritous liquors, on the house! Try fainting next time the check comes at the Brim!***

  ***So now that you know, you STILL don’t really know. But you don’t believe in the Evil Eye… do you, f&n?***

  ***Remember, you DIDN’T hear it here!***

  MICAH’S VERSION:

  The e-mail bulletin naming the Eye waited until Sunday morning.

  “More people bother to read their public mail on Sunday,” Micah pointed out when we raced in with newsfax in hand. We stayed to work on our projects, but concentration came hard.

  We told Micah about Gitanne at the Brim. He said the face of Harmony was changing and he had to admit he wasn’t happy about it.

  We told him about Sean and Howie. Micah insisted that Sean was imperturbable, and that he himself would talk Howie out of needing the theatre.

  Finally we unburdened ourselves of our theories about the e-mails. Cris reeled off his process of deduction concerning the identity of the Conch.

  “A hero in hiding. What a charming conceit. I wonder what the Eye wants us to believe.”

  “They said no.”

  Micah nodded. “But they act yes.”

  “You mean they might want us to think they’re hiding the Conch even if they’re not?”

  “What, for the publicity value?” Crispin looked as if he needed to spit. “They wrecked Cora Lee’s for the publicity value?

  “No, no. Just took good advantage of what happened.” Micah stood back to squint at his Don Pasquale sketch. “I like this troupe more and more. They’re as brilliant offstage as they are on.”

  “Micah, that’s cynical.”

  He shook his badger head. “It’s the greatest compliment I could pay them. Mali said it right here in the studio: reality can be manipulated. It’s… ‘Maliable.’ Did we ever get a clear answer on the shooting incident? No. The challenge is to play as many versions of reality as you can at once, not only to prove that no single version holds precedence but to get as close as you can to portraying reality’s true complexity.” He set the sketch aside and laid down a fresh sheet. His hands worked at the paper long after the last wrinkle was pressed away, enjoying the sensual pleasure of the smooth whiteness against his palm. “A performance is not always an act. At its best, it’s a direct expression of an ideology. Remember, these Tuatuans are genuinely mystical. Their T-shirts and tantrums can lead you to forget that.”

  I recalled the total co
nviction with which Mali had announced that his father was a Rock. “Yes. They can.”

  Crispin eyed Micah suspiciously. “I supposed you’d say they intend that confusion as well.”

  Micah tilted his head at the blank stretch of paper. “Encourage it, rather. As a diversion, as an expression of their worldview.”

  “They take real-world politics more seriously than you think.”

  “I never doubt their seriousness. But there are other ways to serve a cause than the obvious one. And the cause itself may not always be the obvious one. What if the cause is Art, and politics merely the means to express it?”

  Cris sulked the rest of the morning, without even the grace to pretend that he wasn’t. I managed some good work on my Lysistrata until I hit a serious conceptual snag around noon and was shaken by an irresistible upwelling of futility. My new confidence foundered. Even if Mark’s figures were alarmist, I couldn’t believe I was brilliant enough to survive the more rigid culling that seemed inevitable.

  Suddenly I could see no reason, if the Admin was going to throw me Out anyway, why I should bust my ass on a Sunday for a paper project that would never be realized.

  Besides, where I really wanted to be was at rehearsal.

  THE RAID:

  Micah and Crispin were so engrossed in their work, they didn’t see me leave the studio.

  I thought about that, alone in the sunshine of the empty courtyard. Not only was I losing faith in my work, but my supposed lover didn’t notice when I left the room. I watched a feathery argument among a quartet of finches that hung around the yard because Micah fed them. Maybe I didn’t mind. Crispin’s approval, though often withheld, had bolstered my self-esteem. But I’d gotten too used to letting him take the lead in things, deciding where we’d go and what we’d do. Maybe it wasn’t going to be that way anymore.

  A door shut softly behind me. Not, as I feared, Cris come to steal my re-evaluated solitude, but Mark, closing up Marie’s studio.

  “Hey, G.”

  “Hey, Mark. Thought you weren’t bothering with home projects anymore.”

  “I’m not.” He hauled out his bike. It was candy-striped, orange and magenta. Bela’s, its twin, still waited in the rack. Mark didn’t allow it a moment’s glance. “Coming or going?”

  “Rehearsal… I think.”

  He raised a brow at my air of confusion, but left it at that. “I’m meeting Songh. Walk you to the fork?”

  A batch of tourists clattered by outside. I waited until they had passed, then locked the gate surreptitiously behind us.

  “Chamber of Commerce’ll have us arrested,” Mark murmured.

  “We only do it on Sundays…”

  It was good to hear him laugh—it had been awhile. I studied him as he wheeled his bike along. Mark was what you’d call a fine-looking young man—straight-cut blond hair, earnest blue eyes, precise features, sort of like Christopher Robin grown up. People didn’t stare at him in the street like they did Cris. Their glance swept across him and beyond, but often their faces changed, softening, relaxing just a bit, as if some subtle reassurance had been gained in the passage. I decided he looked good. This new determination suited him. “So what were you up to in there?”

  “A little further research.”

  “More numbers, Mark? Don’t we have enough?”

  “No, I was reading the constitution.”

  I laughed.

  Mark dipped his head stubbornly. “Mali said, be thorough. I thought I’d find out exactly what rights we apprentices do have.”

  “Do we have any?”

  “I’m just getting started. All this legalese is slow going, even for a lawyer’s son.”

  The foot traffic thickened as we neared the market square. Avid faces all around, chattering like finches, about what they’d bought and how much it had cost them.

  “Want to hear something weird?” Mark asked.

  “Always.”

  “I was at Willow Street last night.”

  “To see that musical? I hear it’s a big hit.”

  “Packed to the rafters. And the show’s no good.” He shook his head wonderingly. “Typical Bill Rand stuff—real old hat. At any rate, the first weird thing was the box office refused my apprentice pass and made me buy standing room.”

  “Buy? Like, with credits?”

  “Had to borrow from an usher I know.”

  Our tiny apprentice stipends couldn’t hope to cover the costs of Harmony’s increasingly tourist-oriented ticket prices. “Are the apprentice freebees voluntary?”

  He shrugged. “First I’ve heard of it. But wait—at intermission the lobby’s so tight you can barely move. All around I hear talk about ‘those radicals at the Arkadie.’ There are a few other apprentices there, but mostly it’s locals and a lot of overnight tourists. I hear this couple behind me complaining about the crowd. The woman asks why there are so many apprenctices in the audience. Her much older friend reminds her that our training program requires us to see as much of other people’s work as we can. ‘Well, I don’t like it,’ she says, ‘they shouldn’t be allowed to take up seats meant for tax-paying citizens!’ ”

  We reached the fork in the path. “Micah says the face of Harmony is changing,” I sighed.

  “I think it’s the heart that’s changing, G.” Mark swung a leg over his candy-striped bicycle. “That’s what really frightens me.”

  I sneaked into the Barn and sat at the back by the door.

  Pen and Tua faced each other in the middle of the hall, working through the quiet first-meeting scene between the clansman’s young daughter and her suitor-to-be. The rest of the Eye sat cross-legged along the side, watching with unusual attentiveness. Or so I assumed, until Omea passed along to Sam a stack of papers she’d been reading. The bright blue caught my eye.

  The Barn smelled stale and smoky. I wished it was real, all that fake greenery arrayed about the room in optimistic clumps. The Barn needed a little of my grandpa’s green air.

  The scene wasn’t going well. Tua had made great strides since the week before. It was no longer obvious she was new to the role and to the company. She had her lines down, and disencumbered of her script, she settled more easily and consistently into character. But Pen was withholding, his concentration poor. He gripped his rolled-up script like the proverbial blunt instrument. His line readings were not character readings, they were Pen readings. Tua pushed too hard to keep the energy up. The wooing of the shy village Juliet by her eager Romeo slid toward something else entirely.

  “Hold, please.” Howie padded onto the floor to huddle with the actors.

  I pulled my chair up to the production table. “How’s it going?”

  Liz growled softly in her throat. “Pen came in half lit again.”

  “Ah. Did Howie say anything about moving into the theatre early?”

  “Tuesday, after the day off.”

  “Damn.”

  “I know. Sean’ll never speak to me again.”

  I sniffed elaborately. “It smells funny in here.”

  “I’ve been instructed not to notice.” She nodded toward Ule as he passed something to Moussa and eased back on his elbows to exhale luxuriously. A thin trail of smoke followed Moussa’s hand to his lips.

  “They don’t know it’s illegal to smoke in a dome?”

  “They know.”

  I watched, fascinated.

  Out on the floor, Howie’s voice rose in spite of itself. “But why can’t you?”

  Pen snapped, “Because she can’t get it fucking straight!”

  “You’re the one needs to get straight!” Tua snapped back.

  “Guys,” Howie reasoned, “this isn’t useful.”

  Liz leaned closer. “Pen claims he can’t do this scene ’cause Tua’s from the city and doesn’t understand the proper role of women in village life.”

  “Jeez.”

  “I know. But Mali says it’s a clan problem: he’s Fire, she’s Water. Some old dispute from their grandfathers.” />
  Fire and Water? “Older than that,” I noted.

  “And get this: Cu raised a big stink this morning when he found out there’s no men on our running crew. He says it’s taboo for women to handle the puleales or the gorrehma.”

  I felt a shiver of guilt, a genuine frisson, at the memory of my woman’s hands on the smooth, forbidden curves of the Gorrehma. Goodness, what was that? I wondered. Not belief, surely not. “Who does he think’s been painting the damn things?”

  “Has he been around to see you doing it?”

  “No, but…”

  Liz shrugged the weight of the world and let it settle back on her shoulders. “Out of sight, out of mind with these folks. They use these taboos as a convenience.”

  “Oh, I don’t think so, Liz.” I smiled carefully. “We were warned about their taboos.”

  “Does that mean we have to buy into them? Damn! You and I wouldn’t be here working if we did! Hey, you know me, I put up with a lot of shit from actors. But sometimes”—she glared at Te-Cucularit, who was doodling in his notebook, intent as a five-year-old—“I’m convinced they’re taking advantage of us. They know we’ve been told to give their differences a lot of room, so they flaunt them, just to goad us into proving we’re every bit as philistine and bigoted as they expected us to be.”

  “I like it when they flaunt their differences.”

  “You wouldn’t if you were here in the tank with them every day!”

  “Maybe it has nothing to do with being different,” I suggested. Color was in motion again—Sam passing the sheaf of blue papers on to Moussa, Moussa passing a tiny red pipe back to Ule. “Maybe Cu’s just an asshole. A Tuatuan should be able to be an asshole same as anyone else, I guess.”

  Liz stared at me as if I were simple. “Then we should be able to treat him same as any asshole!”

  Behind us, the door swung open. Liz glanced around. “Good Lord.”

  A Security patrol spread quick-step across the rear of the hall, twelve green uniforms crisp and tight against the peeling white paint.

  “Uh-oh. Smoke detectors must have alerted them.” I looked at the line of actors, apparently engrossed in the rehearsal. The little pipe had disappeared. The squad captain headed our way. Only in Harmony would the police interrupt a rehearsal and know exactly where the stage manager was. Except in Harmony you didn’t call them the police.