Harmony (23 page)

The magician Sam was gruff and driven as the Planter and his brashest, flashiest sleight-of-hand symbolized the great wonders of technology he would bring to the benighted natives. Later, as an ancestor-god, a cooler, subtle illusion became his very essence. As the doomed clansman’s wife, Omea sang and chanted a haunting narration, twinned by Ule’s sensitive panpipes. Moussa’s rolling percussion swelled in and out of the action like breaking waves. Lucienne and Tuli lent an air of abstraction as attending spirits who sometimes mirrored, sometimes mocked the human dilemma.

The sultry Tua blossomed irregularly as the village maiden, the clansman’s daughter. She hadn’t played the role originally, so was behind the others in her preparation. Pen was attractive but somewhat stiff as her youthful suitor. You could tell he’d been doing vids—he kept looking for the camera, then remembering where he was. As the clansman’s friends, then executioners, Cu was a grim and stalwart straight man to Ule’s more fluid comic pacing.

Mali, playing the clansman as I’d guessed, seemed to have decided to use this rehearsal as a technical exercise. He marked his way through most of his scenes, running his lines, checking his moves and timing with mechanical efficiency. But every so often he’d forget. Then the energy in the room would ignite and the other actors would be drawn into his fire. For long moments he’d have us on the edge of our seats, until he recalled that he hadn’t meant to be acting that afternoon.

And he made it seem effortless, as if he could slip in and out of his skin at a second’s notice. He made no lengthy preparation, used no vocal tricks, no body mannerisms. He just suddenly
was
the betrayed and martyred clansman, and you couldn’t tear your eyes away. His pain was your pain and his dying breath your own very last.

At the end, there were only six of us to applaud, but we made it sound like fifty. Howie was up on his feet and roaring, and in Micah’s eyes I saw something very rare: undisguised, near boyish admiration. This was the Mali who had gazed into the model and seen the design for what it was.

“That was great, everyone! Just great!” Howie waded in among the company, scattering individual praise like rose petals. The actors were excited. Omea’s contralto laughter spiraled like smoke toward the girders. Sam juggled the woodblocks while Moussa looked on with a benign grin. Ule already had the girls reworking some of their harder combinations, railing at them in falsetto so they’d break up laughing and misstep. Even sober Te-Cucularit allowed himself a small smile of satisfaction.

Mali received Howie’s compliments gravely and drifted off to pack up his bag. I thought he looked tired suddenly, older and preoccupied, his stoop more pronounced.

“Don’t think it’s as easy on him as he makes it look,” Micah advised quietly. “The soul of a great artist cannot die once a day and remain unaffected by it.”

“Twice on matinee days,” I murmured. I rolled my wooden bead in my pocket. I understood now that what I needed was their permission to wear it. Mali’s permission.

Mali passed us on his way out with a nod and the quick flash of a smile. But his eyes were remote, defended as they had been that first day. There were matters other than us on his mind.

“Well, Mi, what’d ya think? If it works in the rehearsal hall, it’ll be pure gold onstage!” Howie’s elation was blinding in light of his recent treatment of Micah. The need for an apology didn’t even occur to him. “I knew I was right about this! Nothing touches the heart like a great performer working the waiting void!”

Oh please
. I frowned and pretended absorption in my notes.

But Micah, amazing Micah, extended a hand and a wryly forgiving grin. How could he not require the rest of the world or at least his colleagues to behave as decently as he did? “Looking good, Howard. You could make an international star of that man.”

Howie beamed brighter at Mali’s retreating back. “Something, isn’t he? We’ve got some pacing problems here and there, but the rest of ’em ain’t bad, either. Moussa, eh? Sam and Omea?”

Micah nodded. “Remarkable.”

“Even little Tua’s gonna wring their hearts. We have really got something here! Look, Mi, about the set…”

Micah raised a palm. “Let me look at it first thing tomorrow.” He grasped Howie’s arm, shook it a little. “Don’t worry. We’ll work something out.”

Howie looked grateful, but he’d have had to get down on his knees to mollify me. “First thing tomorrow” really meant all day tomorrow and maybe Sunday—the long extra hours it would take to find a solution to his demands.

* * *

“Good thing you were pushing so hard on Willow Street,” I remarked on the Tube to BardClyffe. “While you still had the time.”

Micah stroked his mustache with comic sagacity. He was relieved not to have left things with Howie on a sour note.

“You knew this was coming?”

“One must always be prepared for the possibility,” he admitted. “At some point, things will get tough in rehearsal and the director, or somebody, even you yourself, will come down with a case of cold feet.”

“And then?”

“Well, then you just have to roll with the punches.”

I scowled. “I don’t like it.”

“Who does? Why do you think there’s so much bad design around? In all the chaos attendant on making a production, the original impulse often gets lost in the shuffle. Sometimes it’s up to the designer to haul it into the light again.”

I was still mad at Howie. “If nobody else has the guts to do it.”

“If nobody else notices it got lost in the first place.”

“Directors shouldn’t be allowed to change their minds after a certain point.”

“They are and they do, so get used to it.” Micah chuckled. “Sometimes you’ll even thank them because sometimes they’re right.”

But walking up through BardClyffe Village, as if fifteen minutes hadn’t passed since he’d last spoken a word, he said, “But I didn’t see too many signs of a revolution in style in there… did you?”

HICKEY:

The stunning run-through lit some kind of fire under me. I worked late that Friday and all day Saturday, formalizing Cu’s prop sketches. Saturday evening I rushed them over to the Arkadie, where the shop had gone on weekend overtime to finish
Crossroads
.

Fetching Plaza was empty, puddled from a recent rain. The bookstalls were folded up and shuttered like deserted houses. I pedaled over the S in C
LOSE
, still ghosting through its many bleachings and scrubbings. I left my bike unlocked in the theatre’s rack, noting with pleasure that I could never have done that in Chicago.

I padded through the silent lower lobby. A lone electrician was installing new lighting fixtures in the low-ceilinged, boxy space in front of Theatre Two. He took my lingering as an excuse for a break and stood back with me, wiping his hands on his thighs, to inspect the one completed wall.

“That’s a bit cheerier, eh? Now they’ll be able to see where they’re at.”

“And that these walls need a serious coat of paint,” I smiled. No polished marble here. No brass and plush. Instead of Minor and Major, the wags should call them Theatre Plain and Theatre Fancy.

It was well past quitting time, even for an overtime Saturday. But Hickey Kirke’s home life was the Arkadie. He was more in than out on weekends and usually stayed late. I was sure of finding him still squirreled away in what the crew called Hickey’s Cage.

I pushed through the shop door into a vast darkness lit by the flash and dance of sparks. The welders were still hard at work in the metal shop. Pale light glowed in a far corner. Shop foreman Ruth Bondi was hunched at her terminal.

“How’s it, Ruth?” I murmured, stopping by her elbow.

“It goes,” she nodded. Ruth was a solid, red-cheeked woman with a surprising waist-length waterfall of brown hair which she usually wore piled up under her hard hat. Tonight the hat was on its peg and the hair gleamed softly around her shoulders as she leaned into the light of her desktop.

I squinted at her monitor. “So what’s this?”

“What else?” She made a deep-throated dog noise. “My newest nightmare is I’ll be building this show for the rest of my life!”

“Mr. Eider been around much?”

Ruth rolled her eyes. “When hasn’t he been?” She flattened both palms on the backlit drawing as if to shove it away. “This is a rebuild of a cornice we rebuilt yesterday! No, we didn’t build it wrong. Max just keeps having these little changes of heart!”

“Little?” I glanced around. By the flicker of the welders’ torches, I picked out a giant curved staircase, several pilastered walls, an elaborate colonnade, at least a mile of carved “stone” railing, and a forest of unfinished topiary. Nothing that I recognized. “Uh, listen, Ruth, has
Gift
been started at all?”

Ruth bent low over her terminal. “Better ask Sean about that.”

“He only cracks jokes when I ask him. C’mon, I won’t hold you to anything. Is it even on the floor yet?”

She sighed. “Don’t put me in the middle, hey?”

“Just yes or no, Ruth. No sources cited, I promise.”

“Talk to Sean.”

“Not even for Micah’s sake?”

She rubbed her snub nose, sniffed, and rubbed it again, then sat back. “We’ve done all the working drawings, the materials are on hand… but no, nothing’s been actually started so far.”

“Nothing.” I’d been hoping she’d reveal the hidden corner full of our half-built scenery. “But why?”

Ruth folded her arms into her chest. “We don’t have the men or the space. It was total madness to schedule another show alongside
Crossroads!
It’s got us out flat all by itself!”

“Would more overtime help?”

“Are you kidding? We’re in from six light to nine dark as it is! The men have got to eat and sleep sometime!”

“But something’s got… what are we going to do?”

“I don’t know,” she laughed wearily. “Die young.”

“When do you think he’ll start on it?”

“Probably when
Double-Take
closes. I think he’s looking at building
The Gift
in the theatre.”

Double-Take
was the show currently occupying Theatre Two. “Next week? That’s less than two weeks before
Gift
goes into technical rehearsals!”

“It’s a small show,” she reasoned.

My voice broke like an adolescent’s. “Doesn’t he care?”

Ruth hushed me quickly. “Of course he cares! He’s doing the best he can! You know how it is.
Crossroads
was in the shop first, we got a momentum going with it, and he’s afraid if he breaks men off to start another project, we’ll bog down and never finish. It’s been a long, hard season. All our usual extra hands are unavailable. And, hey, Sean gets tired same as the rest of us.”

“Bring in some new help.”

She shook her head. “You gotta start all over with new people.”

“But what am I going to tell Micah?”

She trilled her fingers stubbornly on her keypad. “That
Crossroads
is one motherfucker of a show!”

I took a breath. No use beating up on Ruth. “I gotta get him down here.”

“It’d be a good idea.”

I watched for a bit while she figured moulding lengths for Eider’s again-revised cornice, then nudged her arm. “Hey. Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it.” Then she smiled wanly. “Really. You’d better not. For my sake.”

I gave back my most earnest smile. “Not a word.”

* * *

Hickey’s Cage looked deserted when I peeked in, but the overhead lights were glaring as if it was midday, and a fresh cup of coffee steamed on the prop master’s littered desk.

“Hickey?” I squinted up into the four-story jungle of metal storage scaffolding crammed with furniture, statuary, weapons, and household items from three thousand years of human history, in facsimile reproduction, of course. “Hey, Hick! You here?”

I heard a distant rattle down along the narrow aisle between two towers of shelving, then a clanking across the upper catwalks. The noise halted above my head. Then some more rattling, and Hickey spidered down the ladder beside his desk.

“ ‘Lo, Gwinn.”

“ ‘Lo. You look all dusty, Hick.”

Hickey brushed at his rumpled shirt, then wiped his face on his sleeve. He yanked at the homemade belt that cinched his oversized pants to his skinny, high waist. “Eider swears we’ve got this Empire fire screen in stock that he used his first show here,” he grouched, “but the computer disagrees and I sure can’t find the damn thing! Must be somebody else’s stock he’s remembering.”

“So tell me. Are you as far behind as Sean is?”

“Is Sean behind? Hell, we’re moving right along in here. Nothing I can’t handle ‘long as sleep isn’t important.” His expression was sour, but Hickey wasn’t known for sweetening the truth when he could lay you flat with it, or at least darken your day.

“Good, good, ’cause here are a few items I
know
you don’t have in stock.” I untaped my slim roll and spread out the
Gift
prop drawings on the faux-marbre top of a Victorian washstand.

“Ah ha!” he exclaimed. “Geegaws!”

I giggled. “Don’t let them hear you saying that. These are muchee taboo.”

He waved a dismissive hand. “Oh, I’m cool with those guys. People around here think they’re stuck up, but they’re all right. Nothing a few centuries of cynicism and civilization wouldn’t cure.” He slumped at his desk, drew a big hunting knife from a cubbyhole, and dug delicately at a splinter in his thumb. “I like ’em. They’ve got good drugs. The kind you grow in the ground and smoke.”

“How archaic.” Not to mention illegal. Not the drug part, of course, just the smoke.

“Don’t knock it until you try it.”

Drugs from the ground? I wondered if that was safe. “I’ll pass the word to Cris.”

“You do that.”

“If I can get him to listen long enough.”

Hickey smiled tentatively. “Problems?”

“Nothing that couldn’t be solved if I were someone else.”

“Or he was, hunh?”

“Yeah.” I smiled back, grateful. “So you’re getting pretty friendly with these guys?”

“We’ve hung out a coupla nights. Ule and Moussa, mostly. Guess they decided I was okay after I unpacked their props with due ceremony and respect.” He tossed the knife down and went after the offending splinter with his teeth.