"Leah, look--"
"What?"
He stood up, and tucked the napkin into his
back pocket. "I thought going out would loosen you up a little. Not
throw you into a tizzy."
"I needed to be loosened?"
"You've been brooding since we got here."
"It's a dark play, Adam."
He said, "Not about that. You're distracted.
You're not fully committed."
"I'm distracted? You're the one doing the
star. That's not distracting?"
He shook her, and when she offered no
resistance, just flopped like a rag doll in his hands, he let her
go and walked back to the piano, rubbing the back of his head. His
hands were shaking. "I have a lot riding on this, Leah. On
you."
"You can rely on me, Adam. I love this
musical."
"I know."
She went and poked him in the chest, and
said, "Don't screw with me."
"I know." He sighed. "I'm sorry. I wrote this
on you. I always intended you to play the part. It's your
show."
"Don't forget."
"You, either," Adam said.
"I'll never forget what it's like to have a
musical written on me, Adam. You have no idea."
He sat down at the piano bench. She took her
donut and went into the kitchen, where, finally, she checked her
email. Adam began to play the Moonlight Sonata, which was about the
most depressing thing she'd ever heard. She wondered what it would
be like to be waking up next to Sophia instead. Raven hair, sweet
smile, Sophia pulling her down for another kiss; laughing at her
bad breath, curling so that she could wrap herself around Sophia
again and stay, too cold on top of the hotel room sheets, forever.
Stopping only to eat and star in regional theater.
"Oh, God," she said aloud.
"What?" Adam called from the living room. His
playing didn't stop.
"I think I'm in love," Leah said, too quietly
for him to hear. But she'd heard. Her palms felt heavy and hot. Her
stomach churned. She went into the living room, and asked, "Are you
in love with Ward?"
"Yes," Adam said, looking at the piano, as if
he were reading invisible sheet music. A note, a chord, a press of
the pedal. Allegro. Sonata. "But we're not going to raise kittens.
We're doing a musical, and it's going to be glorious, and if we're
really lucky maybe we'll do one again one day. And if we're not so
lucky, we'll do readings and workshops and I'll put him on an album
and he'll introduce me to investors. And if we're not lucky at all,
I'll never see him again, and he'll be a nobody in theater, or I
will."
"That's not how I feel," Leah said.
"About what?"
"About Sophia."
"Sophia? Leah, no--"
"I'm going home."
"What?"
"To New York."
"You can't."
"You said I had a couple weeks off."
"Go to the beach. Go to the mountains. But
home? That'll screw you up, Leah. What about focus?"
"I need to be reminded of why I'm here." She
didn't want to spend a week arguing with him, and she could foresee
it if she didn't get away.
"It's not a good idea."
"Screw you. You'll have the house to
yourself."
"This is our project, Leah," he said, and
sighed. And then he added, "Say hello to your mother."
"I'm sure she'll say hello to you."
Leah stood on the sidewalk and looked up at
the left-most window on the second floor. Home. Trading an empty
hotel room for an empty walkup didn't seem so grand, now that she
was back in Manhattan. But she had missed her things. She wondered
if they would be just as she left them, perhaps dusty, smelling
faintly of stale air. Or perhaps a burglar had come and her
television would be gone, and her clock radio, and the cheap safe
where she kept her contracts.
New York was unseasonably cool. Leah felt
foolish in shorts and a tank top, like she'd just come back from a
winter cruise. She wasn't even tanned. Everyone else had brought
their jeans out of storage.
She opened her cell phone. "Want to have
coffee?" she asked the voice on the other end of the line.
"Only with you."
Angel met her at the Starbucks on Broadway
and 8th and they stood outside sipping lattes, leaning against the
brick. He gave her his brightest smile, matching her height and
turning on the Latin charm, trying to be young again at
thirty-five, but she saw, after a month away, how gaunt he was, how
his teeth and eyes had yellowed, how long sleeves in summer hid
track marks and bad skin and veins.
"Let's see a show," Angel said. He rubbed his
arm and looked at her sideways.
"Oh, come on."
"You're a tourist, now, Leah. Do tourist
things. Fall in love with New York."
"Fine. But it can't involve Shakespeare."
"Why not?"
Leah flushed. She shrugged, and said, "So
overdone."
"We're going to see a
Jew Grows in
Brooklyn
," Angel said.
"If we're going to see that, I could just
have dinner with my parents," Leah said.
"Oh, Leah."
"We're capturing the tourist experience
how?"
"Do I really need to explain symbolism and
meta and projection to an actor? You're supposed to be an
artist."
Leah sipped her coffee and looked south. She
couldn't see very far past the closest buildings. She imagined they
went on forever. New York was the entire world and places like
Durham only existed in old books and fairy tales.
"Do you want to go to Ground Zero?" Angel
asked.
"No, I'm good," Leah said. "It's great of you
to spend the whole day with me, you know."
"You've been gone. You were missed. You're
like an elusive celebrity now. We want you, girl."
Leah chuckled. She glanced at Angel. Angel
looked down at the concrete. No roaches, even by the cracks in the
building. Giuliani had driven them out like the pied piper. Or
maybe it had been the thunderous voice of Broadway, singing out the
plague, shaking the stages.
"What's wrong?" Leah asked.
"I got fired from the ensemble. I'm
unemployed again."
"Oh, Angel."
"They found coke in my locker."
* * *
Neither Angel nor Leah laughed much at the
play, but they smiled, and Leah let herself be immersed in theater
that didn't involve Sophia's descent into madness or Ward's
trembling fingers as he drank, as he looked at her and sang, so
afraid that someone would find out that the darkness in his heart
really wasn't all that special.
"Now that's theater," Leah said as the cast
took their bows.
Angel took her back to Broadway, and asked,
"How could you leave all this?"
"How could you?"
"Let's go to a party," Angel said.
"There's a party?"
"There's always a party."
"I have to meet with my agent in the
morning," she said.
But she went anyway. The trick to combating
loneliness was to be so worn out that the apartment felt welcoming,
so exhausted that she could stumble into bed with her eyes shut, be
too drunk, so that the pounding in her head echoed against the bare
walls by morning, and filled the space.
* * *
"How would you feel about singing "My Funny
Valentine" on a compilation of Broadway's 100 greatest love songs?"
Her agent asked over omelets at the Plaza hotel. She wondered
briefly if he'd brought her there to impress her. The way he was
glancing around, probably more to be seen. Everybody had to be seen
in New York.
She raised her glass of orange juice, careful
of her pinkie placement, and asked, "That's what you've got for
me?"
"That's what I've got. Honey, the anime's
recasting your character with another voice."
"Whose voice?"
"It's not--"
"Whose?"
"Gates McFadden."
"What?"
"They feel the only way to really legitimize
themselves with an American audience is through
Star
Trek
."
"I've worked with Mark Hamill on dozens of
projects."
"Twice. You've worked with him twice, and
Gates McFadden is bigger than Mark Hamill."
"In what universe? She had, what, two lines
in
Patriot Games
?"
"It's just business, Leah."
"What else do you have for me?" she
asked.
"The End wants you to do a set."
That was something. Leah leaned forward.
"Really?"
"Yes. Isn't that awesome?"
The way his eyes lit up made her suspicious.
"What's the catch?"
"You'd be opening for someone."
"Not Gates McFadden."
"No."
"Who?"
"The Maguires. They're a Celtic industrial
band from Canada."
"No," Leah said.
"You'd get four songs."
"No." Her eggs were getting cold. She stabbed
at them.
"So, how's North Carolina?" he asked.
She smiled sweetly at him. "Wish I was
there."
* * *
The opening night party for
Renegade
Tartuffe
cooled down after the press left. Joe's Pub had been a
good choice; cast settled onto couches, talked quietly, drank cheap
champagne. Leah had been seen with everyone. When the pictures went
out in the post the next morning, she'd be there. Her parents would
complain that she hadn't called them.
Or maybe the editors would ignore her
altogether, filter her out, bemoan that she was taking space that
could be filled by Hugh Jackman or Jeremy Kushner.
Angel asked, "Renee Zellweger, couldn't she
get you a part in a movie?"
"Oh sure. Maybe I could be the caterer. Or
second assistant."
"What about your little friend, the one that
got discovered by Nicole Kidman when she was on stage?"
Leah sighed. "See, you said it yourself. You
have to be on stage, first."
"Maybe you shouldn't spend so much time in
North Carolina."
* * *
Enrique from the ensemble had a Blackberry
and shortly after one in the morning Enrique, the dark and lithe
dance captain, exclaimed that the
New York Times
had posted
its review.
"Ben or Charlie?" Angel asked.
"I believe he prefers Charles," Enrique
said.
"That's not what he said when my dick was in
his mouth," Angel said.
"Ew, ew. Can we please not slash the theatre
critics?" Leah asked. "It's like picturing Republicans naked."
"But theater critics are actually gay,"
Enrique pointed out, shrugging. He scrolled the text on his
handheld.
"I won't believe that until they use
'fabulous' in a review." Angel leaned forward. "Did he say you were
fabulous?"
"All right, shut up!" Enrique yelled. He
stood up on the couch. The room quieted. The director finished off
his drink. The producers settled in at the bar, and hid their
faces.
Enrique read, "We gave the French Jerry
Lewis--"
"Not a good start," Angel said.
Leah elbowed him.
"And in return, the French gave us this. Set
in a time before the bloody revolution--either of them, there's a
sense of nostalgia and innocence. In the same way
Spring
Awakening
borrows from an older century's text,
Tartuffe
draws us in because we want to see something different than the
next jukebox musical.
"There are no fake French accents. The
attempt to Americanize it, to offer a social commentary on being
swindled by the power figures we idolize, doesn't always work, but
it works enough. The commentary on the religious right cannot be
ignored, and the direction and acting are apt enough to win
shameless laughter from us, rather than uncomfortable titters.
"Were this a tragedy, the ending would be
quite different, and more familiar, and perhaps more satisfying.
This, however, is a comedy, and a reminder that stories don't
always end as we expect.
"Part of this surprise is the performance
of--" Enrique lifted his head and asked, "Should I go on?"
The crowd threw popcorn and pretzels at him,
and he laughed and went on. Everyone cheered as he finished, except
for Teresa Rosa, who fled to the bathroom. Presumably to puke.
Charles had called her inept.
Angel whispered to Leah that it was
drugs.
Leah had gone home with Theresa once and had
bad, drunken sex without much satisfaction. She had contemplated
trying for that again tonight, but not if Teresa had been
vomiting.
"How does she get parts?" Leah asked.
"You mean, when we don't? It's her
vulnerability. She should be the perfect Mariane, since she was
born as Ophelia. But that doesn't make her funny."
"It just makes her sought after," Leah
said.
"Bingo."
Leah sighed. The party was dispersing. Only
the people too drunk to stand weren't out on the streets by now,
calling their loved ones, quoting the reviews.
"Now see what the
Los Angeles Times
said," Enrique said.
If the review had been bad, no one would read
the other papers at all.
The New York Times
was the only one
that mattered. But in their success, they could be drunk on praise.
They could take the fainter blows of the
Daily News
or the
New York Post
with more ease. Leah envied them and thought
of the little North Carolina paper, that wouldn't have sent their
movie critic to New York, because
Tartuffe
didn't exist in
that world.
Even though
Tartuffe
was the only
thing that existed at the moment in hers.
Stefan tapped her. His breath was sweet from
gin and tonic, and he said, "Sing for us. I'll play the piano."
"Do you know 'My Funny Valentine'?" she
asked.
He did.
"When are you coming back?" Adam asked
through the phone.
"Tuesday."
"Why not Sunday? What is there to do in New
York on a Monday night?"