The Summer Set

by Aimee Agresti

  “Is it just me, or do they have more free time than we do?” Ethan asked.

  Nicholas appeared at the front of the lobby and clapped his hands. “Curtain up,” he announced simply.

  At once, the apprentices scattered to their places, string music piped in through the speakers, the glass doors opened, and the well-dressed, deep-pocketed guests flowed inside. Choreographed to arrive just five minutes later were the beautiful, talented creatures—the artists themselves—tasked with enticing the potential donors to part with their cash. Danica swanned in first, a lavender Cinderella. Then came Matteo, distinguished in his dark gray suit and splashy watercolor tie, followed by Chase in a cobalt tuxedo, the gauze on his cheek somehow adding to his allure, giving his perfect features rugged charm.

  “That works on him, you’re lucky,” Sierra said, paying no attention to the people scribbling bids for the auction.

  Ethan followed her line of vision. “The two stitches?” He laughed.

  * * *

  They had manned the table a solid hour—Sierra’s feet aching in the strappy black sandals borrowed from Harlow, a half size too small—overseeing a steady stream of silent bidders, when Charlie finally wandered in through those glass doors.

  She wore a cerise leopard-print satin tuxedo and stilettos, pausing just a moment to take in the scene and let the scene take her in. Then she made eye contact with Sierra, her arms out to her sides, as if to say, Not bad, right?, and disappeared down a corridor.

  “Um, did Charlie Savoy just send you some kind of telepathic message?” Ethan whispered, adjusting his tie.

  “Could be,” Sierra said, proud. It was her greatest accomplishment in the apprenticeship thus far.

  The lights dimmed, and a clinking of silver on crystal rang from the museum’s second floor, which overlooked the lobby. Ethan stopped talking to a potential bidder midsentence. Everyone around them froze, their collective gaze lassoed by a figure leaning against the waist-high railing, champagne flute raised in the air.

  There stood Charlie, commanding all those eyes.

  22

  I’M OKAY WITHOUT A NET

  “Ladies and gentlemen, kindly take your seats in the auditorium, the performance will begin...” Charlie addressed the crowd from above. “As soon as I find the stage.”

  Everyone laughed, applauded, just as a tense Nick ran onto the mezzanine from stage left.

  “Hi there,” she said to him as he grabbed her forearm, gave a quick wave to onlookers, before escorting her into a hidden doorway.

  “What was that?” he whispered into her ear.

  She had gotten his attention at least.

  “Thought it might be nice to welcome everyone.” She smiled innocently.

  He held open the door to the winding staircase that led directly into the auditorium’s backstage. “The whole idea was for you to not be seen until the performance,” he reminded her. “Build anticipation? We talked about this.”

  “Oh, you were serious about that?” She wasn’t about to tell him that she had changed the plan after watching that investor Taylor glom on to Nick’s arm during what little of the cocktail hour Charlie had witnessed.

  Only forty-two more days...

  He stopped now on the staircase, gave her a look as if to say, You know we talked about that. She responded with a sly shrug. “I just mean, this is kind of a big deal and I already feel like everyone can read my desperation, so give a guy a break and stick to the script. Okay?” He looked her up and down, noting her attire like a disapproving parent, but didn’t say a word, just exhaled, walking again. She took it as a compliment. “Even the apprentices are looking at me weird tonight.” He led them down another corridor and made a sharp turn to reach a door. He held it open for her, and she walked through then stopped in front of him:

  “They’re looking at you because you don’t look half-bad and you were actually smiling at one point, which is like seeing an eclipse. Hold this.” She handed him her champagne and untied and retied his bow tie. He let her fix it—as he always used to before all those awards ceremonies—making eye contact just a moment with her then looking away. “Perfect,” she said of her work, grabbing the champagne back. “Thank God I’m here.”

  They continued into the dim lighting of the backstage, the minimal crew—just a few apprentice sound technicians—scurrying to prepare. Nick and Charlie halted at a marking on the floor in the wings where they wouldn’t be seen by the audience. An all-black-clad stagehand materialized at Nick’s side, reaching into his jacket and hooking a battery pack as Nick wound a small microphone in place.

  “I’m doing this old-school,” Charlie said, declining a mic.

  He pulled out note cards from his pocket, reviewing. Through a sliver between the curtain and wall, Charlie watched the audience file in, spotting Taylor in the front row between a pair of suit-attired men.

  “Oh, look, your girlfriend is right in front,” she said calmly.

  “On in two,” someone said behind them, followed by a brush of footsteps, tech crew rushing.

  “I told you, she’s not my girlfriend!” Nick said so loud it echoed all around them, a hush falling in the auditorium. He looked up from his cards. “And I don’t know why it matters anyway.”

  “Who said it mattered? Not me.” She sipped her champagne.

  “Great! Then I don’t know why I have to explain this to you, since you claim to not care,” he said, his voice still raised. “And I’m a little busy launching our season here.”

  The stagehand reappeared, looking sheepish. “Sorry, Mr. Blunt, sir, that’s a hot mic,” she said. “And you’re on.”

  Nick shot Charlie a look as the announcer’s voice introduced him, applause ringing out.

  “Good talk.” Charlie slapped his back. “Go get ’em, tiger.”

  Nick sighed and stepped onto the stage. He really was nervous, more so than she had realized: he had certainly addressed more intense crowds than this. But he could perform too. She watched Nick walk the length of the stage as he introduced the three productions, unveiling them as though these were new technological devices everyone needed, not three centuries-old plays. She had forgotten he was capable of this kind of selling. This had been the side of him that had secured financing for The Tempest all those years ago and wrangled an award-winning cast.

  Then she heard her name, served with such reverence she barely recognized it. “We’re extremely honored to have her, bringing a fire unlike any the Chamberlain has seen—”

  The applause again. Charlie closed her eyes, allowed herself the three-second flash of fear that assured her she was alive and then strode onto the stage.

  * * *

  The apprentices had all been granted standing tickets, lucky to attend without coughing up $250 for an actual seat. As Charlie, radiating complete calm—joy, even—took her place at center stage, Sierra whispered to Ethan, “It’s like nothing happened!”

  Minutes earlier, they had hushed—along with the entire room—to overhear Charlie and Nicholas Blunt sparring backstage. But now, Charlie greeted Nicholas with a handshake and winning smile. Then, as he made his way offstage, she stopped him. “Nick! Hang on.”

  He froze, turned, looking concerned enough that this felt truly unscripted. Sierra grabbed Ethan’s arm as Charlie swiped the water bottle and script off the music stand and then held out the stand for Nicholas to take.

  “I’m striking the set.” Charlie shrugged, winking at the audience. Nicholas looked confused. Sierra was too. She had been to enough readings to know they were called that for a reason: even the most experienced actors still referenced the script, turned the pages, read. Charlie nudged his leg with her stilettoed foot as he took the stand from her. “This is a one-woman show.”

  Then Charlie walked to the edge of the stage. “And it’s not a high-wire act, so I’m okay without a net.” She fanned the page
s of the script, then called to someone in the front row. “Sir!” Sierra stood on her toes, trying to see the audience member. “Hold on to this for me?” Charlie tossed the script at him, the whole room erupting into laughter, applause.

  Alone now, under the lights, Charlie stood perfectly still, hands clasped behind her back, head hung, and when the room had quieted at last, she looked up: a peace washed over her, a new person. Transformed. “‘Two households both alike in dignity...’”

  Leaning forward on the railing, Sierra rested her head on her folded arms, the way she used to watch TV as a kid, instantly enraptured.

  * * *

  More selling to be done, bids to collect, but Ethan felt rooted. He hadn’t moved for nearly an hour. His legs had stiffened, as if paralyzed, like after that last disastrous bull ride as a boy. But this time, he didn’t mind.

  He felt like he had been on some kind of journey with Charlie, everyone else in the room falling away. He could sense the shift at the end, the empty silence after her last line and then the change in her eyes when she became Charlie again. With the quick snap of a cursory bow, she was gone.

  Ethan lingered in the auditorium, hopeful, the way you did at a concert, expecting the band to come back for an encore. From the corner of his eye, he caught Sierra watching him. She nodded at him with her kind eyes and he felt understood. He smiled in appreciation, nodded back just once, then led the way returning to their table.

  23

  I ALWAYS ACCUSED YOU OF NOT BEING SPONTANEOUS

  “So that’s a no? Because we’re not cutting edge enough?” Nick’s postgala high was extremely short-lived. Saturday morning the good reviews were already flowing, just not the cash. He had been up all night, fearing this very scenario. This was the third conversation he’d had like this and it wasn’t even 10 a.m. yet. He slouched, defeated, in his chair, looking out the window for answers. “I’ll admit, recent years may have gotten a bit, to use your word...commonplace. But this is the new Chamberlain. We just need some new...dollars...to make it happen... I’m sorry too, sorry that you’re not bold enough to join us on this journey, because many others will.” He hoped, if nothing else, to inspire a fear of missing out.

  He swung back around in his chair, tossing the phone on his desk, and found Taylor seated opposite him. He flinched, startled.

  “Sorry, the door was open,” she cooed.

  False, it had been closed. “No, of course, always a pleasure—”

  “I was brunching in the neighborhood.” Doubtful. “Where’d you disappear to last night?”

  “Did I? Disappear?” he asked, though she was right.

  “I saw you before the show and then never again. I think that qualifies.”

  “Just circulating. How are you?” he deflected.

  “Well, I suppose,” she started. “I’ve been waiting for you to circulate that email to Jasmine Beijao. It’s time.”

  The mere release of that name into their atmosphere made him feel he’d been poisoned and his organs were instantly liquefying, ensuring speedy death. “I can reach out and gauge...interest...but I can’t make any promises.” He lowered his voice, stern enough to convey what a last resort this was. He couldn’t tell Taylor that he had vowed never to work with Jasmine again and that this would be suicide for him, personally speaking. Or that the theater company itself would suffer. It would be like injecting a foreign, toxic body into a unit on life support that had just begun to stabilize. “I’ve made no formal decisions yet.” There was absolutely no fucking chance he could let this happen.

  Mary knocked on the door, and he had never been so happy to see her. “Taylor, you’ll have to excuse us, this is urgent,” Nick said before Mary could speak.

  “Of course, we can talk later.” Taylor flashed her smile.

  As soon as Taylor left, Mary looked at him, confused. “I’m just making a coffee run. Did you need another?”

  “Not unless they have something stronger there,” he sighed.

  She smiled and closed the door.

  He brought up his email, began typing: Jasmine, it’s been a while, but a mutual friend asked me to touch base in the event this might be of interest... He stopped, hands through his hair, and opened his desk drawer, rummaging to the very back beneath pens and staplers and take-out menus until his fingers located it: the photo clipped from the back pages of the program that long-ago summer.

  Charlie and him. Seated beside each other on the Black Box stage. She was watching him, listening. Script rolled up in his hands, he was repeating back to her one of her own ideas, probably, showing her that he understood, talking through how he could make it happen. But there was more there, an electric current. He could feel the telepathy between them. It was, for some reason, the only photo of them beside each other and looking at one another, from that entire summer. It had been snapped by his mentor, the theater’s founder, Grayson, of all people. When Grayson sat in on Nick’s rehearsals, it always terrified Nick. It was Grayson’s approval he cared about more than anyone’s in his entire life. He was the one Nick had learned everything from, had given Nick the opportunity that brought all the other opportunities.

  So many years later, when Grayson grew ill, he summoned Nick to his Berkshires estate and told Nick he planned to bequeath the Chamberlain Theater to him. The theater doesn’t have to be everything for you, Nicholas, but it will give you dimension, remind you to give back, remind you of your foundation. No one is prouder of you and your film career than I am—I like to take some credit for it, in fact—but you began in this world and it’s part of you and that’s something not to be forgotten or taken for granted.

  * * *

  “What did I do now?” Charlie asked, already defensive, as Nick pulled her offstage, fresh from setting Romeo’s poisonous plans in motion. They had begun rehearsal without Nick, who had been nearly an hour late—completely unlike him.

  Nick led her by the elbow all the way backstage, the rehearsal continuing without them. Finally he stopped in the bright corridor outside the greenroom, a manic smile on his face. “I think we need to do this.” He produced his passport from his back pocket, like a magic trick, and held it up.

  “You just carry that around with you?”

  “I went home to get it.”

  “And I always accused you of not being spontaneous,” she said.

  “I’m holding flights. For Monday.”

  “Monday, as in the day after tomorrow?”

  “What do you think?” He shook the passport again.

  “Um, I think this is a little bit crazy, for lack of a better word. You, specifically, are crazy—”

  “I know, true. I am. I was up all night. Thinking. Worrying. Worrying. Thinking—”

  “You should stop that, I don’t think it’s good for you—”

  “And I think it’s led me to a place of clarity.”

  “And you need a passport to get to this clarity—”

  “Because this clarity is just in London. At the moment. Do you think there’s a chance your mom would say yes? To coming here? If we asked really nicely? In person?”

  Charlie took a deep breath. She hadn’t gone home in two years, in an effort to avoid her mother’s frosty judgment at Charlie’s imploding career and spiraling life choices. To avoid the inevitable guilt and aggravation. But for some reason, Nick seemed to have pinned all of his dreams for the survival of the theater—a place Charlie had to admit she may have missed, might actually be enjoying—on this Hail Mary of a trip.

  Nick looked at her with that same intense hope he had decades ago when he asked her to star in his one-act, to polish it, make it shine. Those eyes, vulnerable and adoring, had a way of making her feel needed, even heroic. She snapped the passport from his hand, fanned its colorful stamped pages, considering it all. Could she do this? For the theater?

  PART TWO

  Lord, what fools
these mortals be!

  —WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE,

  A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM

  24

  THIS DAME IS GONNA NEED TO BE WOOED

  Two days later, Nick was on a flight to Heathrow with Charlie. This whole scheme was going to have to work because the airfare alone cost more than the wardrobe for Romeo and Juliet. The way Charlie had bristled when he brought up including her mother in the season had convinced Nick that traveling to London to ask in person was the only way to get Sarah to sign on. This dame is gonna need to be wooed, Charlie had warned him. And she always liked you, possibly more than she likes me.

  They couldn’t get seats together, but it might’ve been for the best. He was on edge. He gave up on sleep and flipped through the in-flight entertainment, slightly horrified to find his Tempest in the “classics” section—was it really old enough to qualify?—though he appreciated the status.

  They touched down at 8 p.m. London time, strategizing on the ride to South Kensington as though about to engage in guerrilla warfare.

  “So how is your mom?” Nick asked lightly, pretending to make idle conversation.

  “We’ll see,” Charlie said, exhaling.

  “That’s encouraging.” He nodded, regretting canceling the hotel. “You’re sure it’s okay to stay there?” The cab drove too fast, winding and weaving.

  “She insisted.” Charlie shrugged. His body slammed into hers. “Ouch.”

  He watched the lights outside the window. They had agreed not to tell Sarah the real purpose of the trip yet and certainly not to let on about the theater’s dire straits.