by Tanya Chris
“What do you mean?”
“I mean Tommy. Forget his height. You don’t need a protector. You’re kickass enough yourself.”
“He doesn’t even talk to me. It’s not really his height. I just say that because it makes me feel better if I’m rejecting him instead of him rejecting me.”
“Sweetheart, unless he’s gay, which I can’t guess at, he’s not rejecting you. He’s scared of you. I can’t even tell you how hard it is for a guy to chat up a woman, especially a woman who looks like the girl in the video he jerked off to last night. Give him a head start.”
Ironically, I'd been slow to approach Jenny myself, assuming she had too much going on to bother with me, even though I knew traditionally beautiful women weren’t a whole different species from non-traditionally beautiful women. I wondered if Sherry’s confidence had grown out of Joshua’s attention to her or if Joshua had been brave enough to approach a woman exuding that magnitude of sex appeal.
After spending Saturday night with Jenny, I showed up at rehearsal Sunday night excited to see him, ready to skip past any discomfort and prove we could work together with the same easy camaraderie we'd shared before everyone’s libido got in the way.
It still boggled my mind that he had a sexual interest in me. On the one hand, our working relationship might be smoother if his attraction towards me could be made to disappear, but on the other hand, I’d miss it. The compliments, the endearments, the casual touching, that white knight act—I enjoyed being made much of.
No wonder I loved older women. They expected less and gave more. The confidence I'd gained from them made me able to approach women my own age now—something I definitely hadn’t been able to do in school—but I still felt at a disadvantage with a beautiful woman, like they were more desirable than me, like I needed to spoil them so they’d stay.
Right from that first moment he’d put his arm around me at the read-through, Joshua had been spoiling me.
Yeah, I was excited to see him, but that wasn’t how it happened. On arriving at the theater, I discovered Carol had only scheduled me and Deb.
“The Othello/Desdemona relationship is the centerpiece of the show,” Carol announced to kick off the rehearsal.
Personally, I’d have tagged the Othello/Iago relationship as the centerpiece, but I respectfully kept my mouth shut. My job was to fulfill the director’s vision, not tell her what vision to have.
“I must weep, but they are cruel tears,” I read at the conclusion of my monologue. “This sorrow's heavenly; It strikes where it doth love.” I waited for Deb to stir on her palette, which would be my prompt to say the next line—she wakes—but Deb continued to lay stone-like with her eyes closed.
“She wakes,” I said with a shrug.
“Deb,” Carol interrupted, “you need to move a little here.”
“We’ve got that you roll over,” Rebekah added.
Deb heaved a heavy sigh but rolled obediently over onto her side.
“And then you say ‘Who’s there?’” Rebekah prompted.
“I just don’t believe it.”
“It’s right in the script.”
“No, I mean I don’t believe Nate.” She stood up, completely breaking the scene. “I’m not buying that he loves her.”
“You’re not the director,” I reminded her. “You don’t have to buy it.”
“Do you know what Othello’s feeling right now, Nate? He’s being eaten alive by a pain so intense he’d sacrifice the thing he loves most to stop feeling it. Do you have any idea what that kind of emotional pain feels like? Because it’s not coming across in your lines.”
“I thought it sounded pretty good,” Carol said.
“Yeah, sure. He sounds good. Same old Nate, putting on a good act whether he’s playing Othello or Sweeney Todd.”
Carol pursed her lips. “If you have something constructive to offer, I’m open to hearing it. Otherwise, I’d like to move on with the rehearsal.”
“Maybe Nate could explain his character’s motivations.”
“I don’t care if he’s motivated by jelly donuts. There wasn’t anything wrong with the way he said those lines.”
“OK, you’re the director. If you’re happy with it, that’s fine, but I’m having a hard time relating to him. He’s a blank wall emotionally.” Deb picked up her script. “What page are we on? I know the lines, but the way he’s saying them, they don’t flow for me.”
“Is there something going on between you two?”
“Never has been, never will be.” The first part was the lie Deb wanted me to tell. The last part was the truth from now on.
Deb swung around to face me, fury marring her features. She threw her script at me with a fuck-you chaser and stormed out. Rebekah and Carol looked at each other, then at me.
“I’ll go after her,” I volunteered.
“You think that’s the best idea?” Rebekah asked.
“I’m the one who pissed her off.” And the one who understood how.
“All right,” Carol said. “I’ll take a smoke break, but the two of you had better be in here and ready to work when I get back.”
Deb hadn’t gone far. I found her on the curb outside the stage door, her arms on her knees and her head on her arms. I sat next to her, stretching my legs across the pavement. It had cooled off since yesterday and neither of us had grabbed a jacket. Around us, the dark street was populated by parked cars and garbage cans, and the windows of the apartments above the storefronts glowed with the flicker of a dozen televisions.
“Carol gave me ten minutes to get you back inside.”
“Or what?” Deb asked without raising her head.
“Or else. I don’t know. What’s going on with you?”
“You think this is easy? Listening to you spout off about how jealous you are when all you’ve ever done is cause jealousy, and all the while she’s sitting there?”
“She who? Carol?”
Deb made a face that suggested I was being intentionally obtuse.
“What’s Carol got to do with anything?”
“God, Nate. Do you fuck so many women you can’t even remember which one you cheated on me with?”
“Oh, Carol.” The number of things I wanted to say about that exceeded my capacity for speech.
First, I'd never cheated on Deb because I'd never, ever agreed to an exclusive relationship with her.
Second, my relationship with Carol, brief as it had been, started before I got involved with Deb and ended shortly after. Carol had been freshly divorced at the time. She’d consoled herself with me until she’d gained enough confidence to get back in the dating pool. Nowadays she was re-married and far from my mind as an ex-lover.
“What we had was good until she ruined it.”
“Deb, don’t. I’ve apologized before about not being as clear with you as I should’ve been at the beginning. I’m sorry you learned who I was by seeing me kiss Carol. I know that wasn’t right, so go ahead and be mad at me for the rest of your life if you want to, but leave Carol out of it. If I hadn’t been seeing Carol, it wouldn’t have changed anything about you and me.”
“You say that now, but I know what we had was good.”
“It was. It could’ve been. If I’d told you first that we weren’t ever going to be exclusive—before you saw me and Carol together—would it have made a difference?”
“If I’d known we weren’t ever going to be exclusive, I’d have said no to the first date.”
“Well, you asked me, so …”
She didn’t smile at that.
“OK, my fault, but that’s where we ended up—not dating. So we’re in the right place now. Maybe we got here the wrong way, but we’re in the right place. Can we go back to rehearsal?”
She shook her head, her eyes down on the pavement.
“No?”
“We’re not in the right place.” She grabbed my hands and sandwiched them between hers. “Nate, look at me. This is killing me. Isn’t this killing you
? You love me.”
“I kind of do, but not the kind you want. I don’t want to own you. I don’t want to be owned.”
“OK, fine. We’ll try it your way.”
“We’ve tried it my way.”
She kept agreeing to my terms, then being furious when I lived up to them.
“Then try it my way,” she begged. “One time. Try it my way one time.” She climbed over my legs to straddle me. Her breath hit my face, and I recognized the smell beneath the mint thanks to Joshua’s tip-off.
“Deb.” I unwound her arms from my neck. “You’ve been drinking.”
“So?” She completed the separation herself, dropping her butt back down onto the curb beside me.
“So maybe this isn’t even about you and me. You know you don’t do well when you drink. It makes you emotional.”
“I’m emotional because of you and that bitch in there. It’s got nothing to do with whether or not I had a cocktail with dinner, which has nothing to do with you either.”
“You’ve been drinking a lot lately.”
“Says who?”
“Joshua mentioned he’s been smelling it on you.”
“Joshua? Fucking Iago?”
“He said if you ever needed anyone to talk to— He doesn’t drink, so—”
“If you think you and Joshua can talk about me behind my back— What the fuck have you been telling him about me?”
“Nothing. I haven’t told him anything. He mentioned smelling the alcohol, that’s all. I know you don’t want to go down this road, Deb. You’ve told me about your dad—”
“Don’t you dare compare me to that asshole.”
“I’m not. You did, once. You said when you drank you got uncomfortably like him and that was why you didn’t drink. So maybe cut back a little?”
“Fuck you,” she said for the second time that night, but her heart wasn’t in it this time. She dropped her head onto her knees and turned her head away from me.
I wanted to put my arm around her but I was afraid of sending the wrong message, so I sat stiffly at her side, trying to figure out what else I could say. Finally, I realized that the answer to that was nothing and stood up, dusting off the back of my pants with the palms of my hands.
“I’m going in. Do you want to come with me or do I tell Carol that you and I can’t work together?”
“You’d like that, wouldn’t you? To get me out of the show.”
“No. I’d like the show to be good, and you’re the best Desdemona we could have.”
“You think so?” She didn’t raise her head but she turned it so I could see her face.
“Like Joshua said, you bring a lot of passion to the role.”
“He’s an asshole.”
“Don’t judge him by association. Maybe he’s someone it’ll be good for you to know.”
“I don’t have a drinking problem.”
“You’ve told me before that you do.”
“I was wrong. I don’t have a drinking problem. I have a Nate problem.”
“And now you’re going cold turkey.” I was tired of humoring her. “Come inside or not. I’ll let Carol reach her own conclusion.”
We finished the rehearsal with uncomfortable formality, Deb’s readings intentionally flat to the point that mine grew flat in response until Carol gave up and called an end to it. I escaped into the rapidly cooling night, glad to be physically free but emotionally bound up by what had just happened.
I pulled up Joshua’s number on my phone, then changed my mind about dialing it. I'd just sworn to Deb that I hadn’t told him anything about her drinking problem. I couldn’t go back on that now. Instead, I called Lissie.
“You’re doing the lighting for Othello, right? Is Deb helping?”
“No, I’m doing this one myself. I don’t want to lean on her any more than I have to, not with her playing a lead role in the show. I’m not sure how agile a pregnant woman is going to be on a ladder, but I figured I could rope in other people to help with the physical labor while I supervise.”
“She probably wouldn’t mind helping. She might like it if you needed her. People like to be needed.”
“I guess. Why?”
I hesitated. “Maybe you could call her at least.”
“What’s going on?” Lissie’s alarm system had been activated.
“I just think she needs a friend.”
“Nate.”
Shit. What was I supposed to tell her? Lissie and Deb had grown close in the last year, but obviously Deb hadn’t told her anything about the two of us or she wouldn’t keep trying to set us up.
I gave her a sort of half-truth. “You know how you’ve always figured there was something between me and Deb? Well, I think you’re partly right. She might be interested in me, but I’m not interested back, and now we’re playing lovers and I get the feeling it’s hard on her.”
“Are you sure you’re not interested, Nate? There’s so much chemistry between you two. I could always feel it, even when we were dating. Even before we were dating.”
“It’s not a lack of chemistry. She and I want different things. Remember how I told you I’m not the monogamous type.”
“Believe me, I remember.”
“Well, eventually you decided you could live with that. Deb can’t live with it. She’s not like that.”
“Neither am I, but we made it work. Maybe if you and Deb tried—”
“Give it up, Lissie.”
“You’re selling yourself short. Is this really how you want to live your life, flitting from one woman to another, always on the surface, afraid to go deeper? You can do better than that.”
“Jesus, Lis. I thought you knew me.”
Lissie exhaled loudly. “I’m sorry. I just want more for you. I want you to have everything I have. Marriage, children. Don’t you want those things?”
“I actually don't. This is how you got in trouble with Derek and Amanda, remember? We don’t all fit in the same box.”
“Yes, yes. I get it. I’m still not completely on board with Derek being beaten though.”
“Really? The radiant happiness isn’t convincing? He out-glows you, Madonna.”
“He does seem happy,” she admitted. “You’re sure Deb wouldn’t make you happy?”
“Completely sure. And even more sure that I wouldn’t make her happy. Find her someone who can’t see anyone but her.”
“I’ll work on that. And in the meantime, I’ll give her a call.”
Even though Lissie had apologized, my wounds were still raw when I hung up, so I dialed Irene, my comfort go-to. Her voice, when it answered, was muddy with sleep.
“I woke you up. I’m sorry.”
“You know I never mind if you wake me up, so long as it’s to tell me you’re on your way over.”
“Ten minutes.”
“I’ll unlock the door. You know where to find me.”
I did.
I slept over because her bed was warm and soft and had a naked woman in it, but that meant a scramble to get home and changed and in to work Monday morning. I was only fifteen minutes late, but my uncle gave me death-ray eyes over it.
I knew I ought to do better. Even a guilt-induced uncle might have limits on his patience. If I ever got fired, I'd have to face the fact that, unlike Joshua, I had no wife to support, and therefore no reason for not going to New York.
Rather than think about that, I applied myself to my job with extra vigor.
Chapter 9
Carol had thoughtfully arranged our rehearsal schedule so we each got one night off per week. She’d reserved Tuesday night for Desdemona and Iago, so I’d reserved it for Jenny, but Monday’s rehearsal included the full cast. Which sounded a lot more comfortable than Sunday’s tête-à-tête with Deb.
When I got inside the auditorium, I immediately spotted Joshua hanging by the stage door, laughing at Pete and Repeat who were trying to teach Mikaela-the-teenaged-clown how to juggle, though they were doing more screwing around than teachi
ng, playing Harlem Globetrotter keep-away with her while Pete delivered a monologue on proper juggling technique.
I smiled at Joshua as I walked by and took a seat safely away from Deb who had her head buried in her script. Joshua pushed himself off the wall and came over to me.
“So the reviews are in.” He nudged my foot with one of his own.
“How’d I do?”
“Mostly A’s. One A plus.” He paused expectantly. “Aren’t you going to ask me what the A plus was in?”
“I can guess. I’m more interested in the B.”
“How do you know it was a B? Maybe it was a D minus.”
“Please.”
“You’ve got a lot of confidence for a white boy.”
“Is that what the B was in?” I looked pointedly at Joshua’s crotch which was pretty much at eye level.
“Jesus, don’t do that.” He plunked himself down next to me in a hurry.
“Sorry, was I stereotyping? Is the stereotype true?”
“Yes, and maybe. But that’s not the problem. Problem is if you ogle my junk, it’s likely to cause a reaction that might prove the case one way or the other.”
That sobered me up. “You don’t exactly think of me as a friend, do you?”
Joshua cocked his head at me. “You ever been friends with a woman?”
“Sure, lots of them.”
“You ever imagine them naked? Imagine what you’d do to them if they were naked?”
“OK, I see where you’re going with this. You don’t have to paint the picture in 3D.”
“It makes you uncomfortable.”
Uncomfortable wasn’t the right word. It made me warm. Warm and nervous.
“I worry I’m leading you on.” Was it right to hang out with him, knowing how he felt, joking about it?
“No more so than those women friends of yours are leading you on. I understand where you’re at. Doesn’t mean I don’t check out your ass when you turn around or that my body’s not going to react to you occasionally. You know how the male anatomy works. Things arise.”
“Again with my ass.”
