Jenna & Jonah's Fauxmance (18 page)

20
SHE LOVES YOU (YEAH, YEAH, YEAH)

Aaron

I’m scared, of course.

After
Much Ado About Nothing
closes, I have no idea what I’m going to do. This is because I have no one telling me what to do. At first it was cool, feeling completely free for the first time in my life, but freedom is freaking scary. If there were something I
had
to do, well, that would take away the responsibility for figuring out how to build a life I can both enjoy and be proud of.

Then I’d have someone else to blame if I was unhappy. This “being a man” business kind of sucks.

I try to bring this up with Kyanna one Saturday at lunch.

“I mean, I just— It’s intimidating, you know, trying to figure out what to do with the rest of my life.”

“Yeah, must be tough to have so much money that you can go anywhere and do anything without having to worry about how you’re going to eat. I just have to hope the restaurant is holding my job for me like they promised they would, and that my landlord is going to replace the broken windowpane before winter comes. Your existential angst really moves me.”

“Ah. Yeah. I guess I can see how it would.”

“Honestly, Aaron. Get your head out of your butt. You’ve got what most people dream of. Let yourself enjoy it.”

“I know, I know. You’re right. I guess everything just feels off right now. Charlie—”

“Is going to land on her feet, and you’re not responsible for her.”

“I guess … it’s weird. I feel guilty about leaving her behind.”

“I’m thinking a few weeks in Bermuda might cure you of that. Listen, I gotta go. I’ve been, uh, burning the midnight oil”—there’s that pot-smoking pantomime again—“until really late every night, and I need a nap so Flannery doesn’t hand me my ass this afternoon.”

“Okay. I’ll see you later.”

Honestly, the one person I could really talk to about this is the person I’m not currently speaking to. I mean, I know Kyanna’s right, but nothing is ever simple, and living the dream has been kind of a nightmare. Charlie would get that. But she’d pretend not to, just to piss me off. If she were speaking to me.

I go back to my cabin and look at the schedule. After tonight’s run-through, we’ve got a full tech rehearsal at eight in the morning. I have no idea why, unless it’s just to torture us. Kyanna told me that the first tech rehearsal is a nightmare—lots of standing around the stage while the crew tries to get the lighting cues right. “It’s guaranteed to be the most grueling, boring time you will ever spend on a stage,” Kyanna said.

And then Sunday afternoon is our last real break until the festival closes. Full dress rehearsals every afternoon, plus to-be-determined work on parts that need extra work, as decreed by Flannery. And then Friday we open and run in repertory for two weeks. And then the first day of the rest of my life.

Well, what’s the point of having money if you’re not going to enjoy it? I call Ryan and ask him if he will set up a plan for me.

The run-through is god-awful. Everyone in the cast is forgetting lines and just giving basically horrible performances. Charlie and I are especially out of sync, which of course makes our scenes suck. I have to say that being entangled all the time did help us in our acting—on the show, there was trust and communication between us that made acting with her really easy. Now I have no idea what she’s thinking at any given time, and though we can recite our lines and hit our marks, it just isn’t working.

After the rehearsal, Flannery gathers the cast, and we sit in a circle, metaphorical tails between our legs, awaiting the verbal thrashing we all know we deserve.

“Apparently”—Flannery is whispering rather than yelling, which is twice as terrifying—“I was misled. I was told that I would be working with professional actors here. I would be embarrassed to mount this production at a community theater that performs at the Elks Lodge. At a festival like this, it’s simply unthinkable.

“None of you seem to care much about embarrassing yourselves, so I will just ask you not to humiliate me when we open on Friday. None of us will be back next summer, and all of us,
all of us
”—the repetition is accompanied by a special glare aimed at Charlie and me—“will have a very hard time finding any employment at all in this profession once the stink of this production wafts across the theatrical world. Now get out and get it together.”

We all slink away, and I find myself walking next to Charlie. “Well, that was brutal,” I say.

“Oh, why the hell do you care?” she asks. “You’re retiring anyway, right? Soon you’ll be far away from all of this and all of us, and you won’t have to worry if we’re not employed. You’ll be fine.” She walks away from me, and I really want to run after her and tell her it’s not like that, I do care, I am a professional, and she and I need to get ourselves right before Friday night so that we can do work we’re proud of.

Instead I kick the wall.

“Easy there,” I hear Kyanna saying from behind me. “You’re gonna need that foot to work for at least two more weeks.”

“Yeah,” I say, embarrassed to have been caught in a temper tantrum. “It’s just that she makes me nuts.”

“Oh, don’t worry about her,” she says. “First run-throughs always suck and directors always ream you out afterward. She’ll be tearing the tech crew a new one tomorrow.”

“Oh. Flannery. Yeah. I guess I’m not too worried about her.”

“I see. Well, no more kicking, okay?”

“All right.”

I head back to my cabin and don’t kick anything else. It takes me a long time to fall asleep, because things I wish I had said to Charlie keep rattling around in my brain.

On any two-camera sitcom, the crew can light the three main sets in their sleep (in
Jenna & Jonah
’s case, that would be Beach House, High School Classroom, and Rehearsal Studio), and any adjustment that needs to be done to the lights is done with stand-ins while the stars sit in their dressing rooms drinking imported mineral water.

In a low-budget, small-scale theatrical production, though, everybody stands on the stage and crawls through the play one line at a time while, apparently, the director threatens bodily harm to the crew if they keep screwing up. At least that’s what happens to us on Sunday morning.

I find Charlie backstage while Edgar is onstage and Flannery is making the lighting crew run through their cues again and again and again.

“Hey,” I say.

“I’m sorry,” Charlie says. “I’m just trying to stay in the moment here, and I really can’t have any distractions during a performance. You understand.”

“Dammit, Chuck, cut it out. Can I just talk to you?”

“One, don’t call me Chuck. Two, Charlie’s not here, and Beatrice doesn’t speak backstage.”

“We need to talk this out and get ourselves right.”

“We need no such thing. Soon you’ll be away from me and this, free at last, and you needn’t give it a thought. We’re professionals and will deliver a great performance. Now I really must insist that you stop speaking to me.”

I walk away and take deep breaths and try not to kick anything.

After the tech rehearsal ends at last, I try to forget Charlie and focus on having some fun. Flannery dismisses us so she can tear into the tech crew some more, and before everyone departs I yell out, “Hey, everybody, can I just have your attention for a sec?”

Most people stop and look at me. “We’ve got a really busy couple of weeks coming up, so I thought we should have some fun this afternoon. Nobody has to come or anything, but I hope you guys will help me enjoy some of my ex–TV star money. Walk outside and you’ll see what I mean.”

Outside the theater is a big bus, or if you believe the words painted on the side, LUXURY COACH. The door opens and the driver hands me a duffel bag.

“Okay, kid,” Al yells out, “what’s going on?”

“Well,” I say, reaching into the bag, “here’s a hint.”

I open the duffel bag and start throwing baseball caps out to the cast. The black caps feature a jaunty cartoon beaver poking his head through the middle of a big white capital
P
.

Most people look at the caps quizzically, so I have to say, “This bus is bound for PGE Park, home of the Portland Beavers, where I’ve hired a luxury box for us to enjoy tonight’s game versus the Albuquerque Isotopes. There will be abundant vegan treats for me and those who are similarly inclined, and plenty of dead-animals-in-tube-shape for those of you who enjoy that kind of thing.”

The entire cast cheers, and I feel like Santa Claus.

MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING, the sign on our luxury suite reads. We enter and find the vegan and omnivorous catering options clearly labeled, abundant beverages, and, outside, a beautiful night for baseball.

I load a plate full of Ma Po tofu and mustard greens, grab a seltzer, and head out to a seat under the lights. I think about how Kyanna was right—I am really lucky to have enough money to do something like this, and right now, watching a baseball game with good food in front of me, life is good.

So why don’t I feel happy?

Most of the cast remains in the luxury suite, while only a few come out to actually watch the game. I’m pleasantly surprised when Kyanna comes to sit next to me.

“Hey, thank you,” I say.

“What for?” she asks.

“For what you said yesterday. It made me think about enjoying my money and, you know, sharing the wealth with my beloved castmates.”

“Happy to help. Especially when there’s free food in it for me. You pretty much can’t go wrong with free food and actors. The first trays were picked clean in about thirty seconds—even the vegan crap.”

“It’s not crap! This is top-notch Chinese food! It’s not like some nutritional yeast nut loaf or something!”

“Whatever. The point is, people are happy. This is a good stress reliever. Thanks.”

“My pleasure. Beavers are up two to nothing, you know.”

“Whatever again. I just wanted to thank you. Are you feeling any better?”

“Yeah,” I lie. “I’m feeling a lot better.”

Kyanna gives me a long look. Maybe my acting wasn’t especially convincing. “Glad to hear it. I’ll see you a little later.”

She walks up the aisle back to the suite, and though the Isotopes’ cleanup hitter is facing down a 3–2 count with men on first and second, I turn away from the action to watch Kyanna’s butt as she walks up the stairs. At the top of the steps, she stops for a second and says something to Al, who smiles. They give each other a high five.

I turn back and find I’ve missed an inning-ending double play. I put my feet up on the railing and soon find Al sitting next to me.

“Hey, kid,” he says. “What’s the score?”

“Beavers two, ’Topes zero.”

“Do you follow a lot of minor-league ball?”

“Tonight I do,” I say, smiling.

Al takes a long pull on his Big Gulp–sized beer. “Ah. This is good stuff, kid, thanks.”

“My pleasure.”

“Listen, Aaron. I’ve gotta ask you something,” Al says. I look over at him, and his eyes are on the game.

“Okay.”

“So you know I’ve been kind of mentoring Charlie, right?”

“Yeah.”

“So she’s got a problem right now, and I’m afraid it’s affecting her performance. I like the kid, and I want her to get good notices when we go up—and I know she can—but right now she’s got this distraction that I’m afraid is hurting things.”

“I just couldn’t do the reality show, Al. I mean, I wish her luck in her career—I really do—it’s just—”

“This isn’t a career thing. You know that. Charlie’s a professional. She’d never let job concerns affect her performance.”

“So what is it?”

“It’s the fact that she’s madly in love with someone.”

I take a second to chew on this as the Beavers’ center fielder flies out to the second baseman. “Hmm. Who’s the lucky guy?”

“I’m sitting next to him.”

“Bullshit.”

“I shit you not. She told me. And I don’t mean told me like I read her body language or something. We were talking about what’s going on with her performance, and she said she feels like she can’t really let herself get into the performance because she knows she’s losing you in two weeks, and it’s just too painful to let herself fully inhabit the part of someone who’s in love with you.”