The Summer Set

by Aimee Agresti

  She hadn’t realized that this intense internal debate had slowed her pace, the rest of the group now several yards ahead, cutting across the dark and leafy Quad to the dorm. Ethan looked around as though he’d lost something.

  “Hey, you really are sleepwalking,” he called out, jogging back to her. “What’s with you?” He grabbed her bag, slinging it over his shoulder with his. “Don’t say ‘nothing.’”

  She stopped walking, looked in his heavy, questioning eyes. “I think you should tell Charlie,” she said, though it pained her.

  “The letter? Now?” he asked, stunned. “I was just gonna forget that whole thing, like Miles said?”

  “I know but if it was me, then I would want to hear from someone like you, on a night like tonight. Like, immediately.”

  He exhaled, but she just nodded, pulled their bags from his shoulder.

  “Good luck,” she said, kissing him on the cheek and walking alone to their dorm. When she looked back, he still stood there for a moment, then, finally, set off into town.

  53

  I NEED THE LIGHT BULBS THAT LOOK LIKE IDEAS!

  As he stomped down that backstage hallway, dodging a sea of people looking for answers, Nick’s first inclination was to hide in the broom closet, wait for everyone to go away and then leave the theater and Chamberlain itself and never be heard from again. He imagined the story of his disappearance might get covered somewhere, maybe the Boston Globe, since the incident might be mistaken at first for local crime.

  Oscar-nominated director goes missing after nightmare show. But a quick investigation discovered him to be missed by, really, no one, and the search was instantly called off. “He’s done us all a great service, disappearing like this,” said a source, who worked with him, echoing a number of other sources. “His first movie was a brilliant fluke. Not the sign of greatness to come, like everyone thought. It was beginner’s luck, the equivalent of a viral video. Good riddance.”

  But Nick passed the broom closet and knocked on the door just beyond it. Not waiting for an answer, he threw open the door, and found Jasmine yelling into her phone, makeup smeared from sweat and tears. Her assistant fanned her with a program.

  “Consider yourself fired, effective immediately,” he told her. “You’ve got ten minutes to get your stuff or I’m sending security.”

  “I’m on with Taylor and my agent, right now,” she barked at him.

  He smiled, felt himself actually growing a backbone as he stood there, even sensed his posture straightening. “Fantastic,” he said. “Tell them both to call me when you’re done. Ten minutes.” He slammed the door shut and went straight to the neighboring dressing room, knocking. Invited in, he found only Chase and Marlena.

  “If this is what you all are doing with Shakespeare these days then I am here for it!” Marlena greeted him.

  “Thanks,” he sighed.

  “Seriously though, it was really revelatory until, you know, all hell broke loose,” she said, earnest. Nick had always liked Marlena. He had lost custody of their friendship when he and Charlie split.

  “I think she went home,” Chase said.

  * * *

  Nick shot across the stage, hoping to avoid the minefield of those hallways and to get outside faster, and ran right into Mary from the box office.

  “Oh! I’ve been looking for you!” she said. He grimaced. “Everyone wants to know—”

  “Mary. I have so many fires to extinguish that—” But his eyes drifted stage left, the corner of the wings: a sea of black where there should’ve been a tiny beacon. “Where’s the ghost light?”

  “The ghost light?” She looked side to side. “It’s around here somewhere.”

  “It’s supposed to be right there, in that corner, quietly keeping the evil spirits at bay.” He charged over to the spot, moving carts and equipment. Finally he saw the small, lonely stick lamp with the broken bulb. “This is never supposed to go out.”

  “I thought that was just a superstition—”

  “That’s exactly what it is,” he said, walking away. “We’ve gotta replace this.”

  She followed him to the closet in the greenroom but all he could find were tiny bulbs that didn’t fit or the coiled ones. “We use those coily ones in the office,” Mary said gently.

  “Those just aren’t right.” There was history to this light, it had been there when he was an apprentice and certainly long before. “I want a bulb that looks like a fucking idea, you know what I’m talking about? Like a normal fucking idea-looking light bulb.”

  “I think we’re just out of ideas, right now, idea-light-bulbs,” she said, calm.

  “I don’t know how to make this fit into my life.” He waved a coiled bulb at her.

  “Well,” she said slowly. “You could try it. And maybe it’ll even be better. Sometimes change is good—lighting technology changes, people can change...”

  “I see what you’re doing.” He pointed the bulb at her. “And I’m going to put this in here for now,” he said, screwing in the energy-efficient bulb. “But I don’t necessarily like it.”

  “It bears mentioning, I believe,” she began, “that, tonight aside, there have been some genuinely exciting things happening here this season. That’s not something I’ve been able to say in many years. And that’s because of you being here. Being present.”

  He shrugged.

  “Well, you and maybe some help,” she amended with a wink on her way out.

  54

  I HATED YOUR LETTER

  No one answered the front door when Ethan rang the bell at the house on Avon. The lights were out on the first floor, but when he walked around to the side, he noticed one light upstairs and saw Charlie inside, shoving clothes in a bag.

  What Sierra had said had surprised him. The truth was that after last night, he wasn’t really thinking about Charlie in quite the same way anymore. Instead, he couldn’t stop thinking about Sierra. But he couldn’t tell her that. And worse, it seemed that if he didn’t talk to Charlie tonight, Sierra was going to be disappointed in him. He imagined Sierra might think he was the kind of guy who didn’t have the guts to tell someone how he felt. But then, he kind of was that guy, wasn’t he? Because he sure as hell didn’t have the guts to tell Sierra how he felt about her.

  All he knew for sure was that Charlie was in there and he had promised Sierra he would do this. So despite the twisted logic of it, he took a deep breath and climbed onto the dumpster in the alley and up to the fire escape that led to her window. Then he abruptly got a debilitating case of cold feet, changed his mind and moved to climb back down, when he heard: “Ohmigod, what the fuck.”

  He looked up to see Charlie staring right at him through the glass. Startled, Ethan stumbled and nearly fell right off the metal landing. She opened the window.

  “Um, hi,” he started, still crouched on the fire escape like a cat in a tree.

  “I don’t know what you’re doing, but I cannot deal with you getting killed tonight, so get in here,” she ordered. He hesitated then did as he was told, since it was easier than climbing down. “What is with everyone tonight?” She wore part of her costume, a full-length black bodysuit that made her look like a dancer. The entire contents of her closet lay on her bed as she stuffed them in her bag. “Everyone is fucking crazy.”

  “I just, I came to check on you, and I saw your light on and no one had answered the door and I wanted to make sure—”

  “Look, Mercutio,” she said, chilly. “You’re really sweet, but I’m just not in the mood for, like, anything tonight.”

  “No, I know, that’s why I just wanted to say, real quick, then I’ll go... I just...wanted to tell you—” She sighed, and he blurted out the rest. “I wrote you a letter, at North End? Way back, in April? It was this class assignment—write a letter to someone whose art has mattered to you. Anyway, I wanted you to know that Midnig
ht Daydream got me through high school. You got me through high school. You gave me hope that there was more out there for me, that maybe I was ‘sleeping through the good parts.’” He made quotes around the film’s tagline. “I needed to open my eyes, see something new. It’s why I left home and applied to transfer east to do something that made no sense but made me feel something. I said it better in the letter.” He needed to stop, felt disappointed to not be delivering this speech as effectively as he had envisioned. “I signed it ‘Robert.’” A flicker in her eyes showed the blanks being filled. “My real name. But when I came here, I decided to make my middle name my stage name—the way you named yourself. I thought this place would be a new start. But I still don’t really know what I’m doing. Clearly.”

  He was nearly panting now, he had said it all too fast, in too few breaths. She stared at him, eyes squinting as though processing it. “So, that’s all,” he said, highly embarrassed. “Now I can leave you to...whatever you’re doing.” He began to climb back out.

  “Wait,” she said softly. “I hated your letter.”

  Her tone sounded just the opposite. He froze, not sure he’d heard correctly. “Excuse me? You read it?”

  “Your letter.” She smiled, and in that same dreamy inflection, murmured, “I hated it.”

  “Okay,” he said almost to himself. “That must be why Miles told me to forget about it. He told me to leave it for you. Then he told me not to say anything.” He crept out onto the fire escape. “Very confusing, but now I get it.”

  “No!” She leaned out the window, grabbing his arm to stop him. “I mean, wait. So much is making sense now, with Miles...” He could see her putting the pieces together. “He was asking me about getting back into this, acting, taking a break from the art house. Even before the harbor. He was weirdly worried about me.”

  “The letter was supposed to be inspiring, make someone feel like their artistic contributions were important. Sorry if that didn’t really come through—”

  “No, I got that,” she said slowly. “It reminded me of everything I wasn’t anymore. How I sort of gave it up and stopped trying.”

  “Oh...” he said. “Yeah, not my intention.”

  “No, that letter was the best thing that could’ve happened to me, in a lot of ways, actually. It shook me up in a way I needed. I probably didn’t need the accident part of that night so much, but the rest...” She didn’t finish her thought. Instead she just said, in a deep, meaningful way, “Thank you.” She sifted through her stack of books and there it was, the letter, nestled in among them. “See?” She held it up. “I’ve been known to reread it from time to time.”

  Ethan felt a wave of shock from those words. It meant everything to know that she still had it. He didn’t know how to convey that, so he just smiled, nodded in respect. Before climbing back out, he said with care, “One last thing that’s not in the letter.” He looked at her clothes and duffel bag. “Wherever you’re going now. Don’t. Okay? Things are just getting good here. Don’t leave before the last act.”

  55

  MAYBE IT’S TOO LATE

  When Marlena appeared in her doorway, Charlie, lying in her clothes-strewn bed, just threw her hands up. She had entirely forgotten that Marlena would be in the audience tonight.

  “So, how’s your night?” Marlena kidded.

  “Yeah, it’s great, whatdidya think of the show?” Charlie answered in the same loaded tone. She wanted to laugh and maybe cry, though she wasn’t really a crier.

  Marlena just stepped in and wrapped her arms around her. Nothing more to even be said.

  “Don’t tell me you believe a single word out of those overinjected lips,” Marlena said. She looked around. “And what’s going on over here?” She gestured to the bed. “This is where you say, ‘It’s not what it looks like.’”

  “No, this is exactly what it looks like. I’m getting the hell outta here,” Charlie said, on her feet to continue packing.

  “Okay.” She nodded. “Or, alternatively, you could not do that and instead you could listen to what this guy has to say.”

  Nick appeared outside her room now.

  “No, thanks.” Charlie resumed throwing clothing into her bag item by item, with greater force than necessary. Marlena tiptoed out, grabbing the door to swing it shut.

  “Ohhh no,” Charlie called after her. “You’re staying, this won’t take long.”

  Marlena looked like she was about to object but instead sat back on the bed.

  “Listen—” Nick started, tentative.

  “I’m sick of—”

  “I have done almost every single thing wrong since you got here,” Nick cut her off.

  “That’s a good start,” Marlena said under her breath.

  “I say almost because the things I got right were pretty much exclusively the things you told me to do.” Charlie still didn’t look at him, just continued throwing clothes in the bag, while Marlena took them right out, folding them. “I fired Jasmine—” At this, Charlie glanced over. “And I fired Taylor. Or, I mean, I told her we don’t need her cash if it comes with strings.” He paused for that to fully sink in.

  A smile curled Charlie’s lips but erased just as fast. “No.” She shook her head, tossing clothes again. “You can’t. There’s no way—”

  “I can find another Hermia—”

  At this, Marlena cleared her throat in an exaggerated way, still folding. He and Charlie looked at her.

  “I know that, technically, you can’t afford me,” Marlena said. “But I’d be willing to do it for scale...or, you know, maybe pro bono, because that’s just how I am.” She added in a stage whisper to Charlie, “And, you would not believe the dollars those cosmetics companies are throwing at me.”

  “Done,” Nick said to her. “Thank you.”

  “But you still need Taylor’s money,” Charlie said to him, unemotional.

  “Maybe I can’t afford to say no to it...but I can’t afford to take it either. It would cost me too much.” He said it with a heaviness, kneeling on the floor near the bed now, trying to force her to look at him. She just continued folding, her mind turning it over. Her heart too. It was simple, really: tonight had wounded her. To have those words said by that woman felt like a perfect storm, all of Charlie’s fears and failures, converging. “You are all tied up in this place for me, in the way I work here, in the way I work at all, and—”

  “I don’t want to do this right now,” she said slowly, icy enough to stop him. If Nick said the right words to her right now, she feared she would cave again and she wasn’t yet sure she should. She had opened her heart up to him this summer, not something she did easily, only to have it torn out of her chest. How many times can you let the same person hurt you? How many times can you take the same risk?

  This is why she always needed to be the one to walk away—from a relationship, from a career—and not look back: to give the illusion of power and control no matter how quietly broken she remained inside.

  “I don’t...understand...” He paused, body slouching, as though knocked out by her words. “I thought we were in this together? I’m trying to tell you I need you here—”

  “I’m trying to tell you, you should’ve thought about that. I’m trying to tell you I have seven days left and that’s literally all I owe you. And I don’t even want to give you that much.” I’m trying to tell you I’ve always loved you but I’m in pain, she thought but would never say. Vulnerability was not something she condoned in herself. Ever. Like that day she walked off his film set. She had told him to delay, that the script wasn’t ready, he told her she was fired if she didn’t shoot that day. So she said that was fine and walked away and didn’t look back. He let her go. It played out in front of a stunned cast and crew but the scene was eerily calm, final. Each assumed the other would apologize. They had too much pride, of course. It was so much easier to just blame th
e other for everything that went wrong that day, before that day and after that day. So they did.

  “I know that,” he said softly now, as destroyed as she had ever heard him.

  “I’m trying to tell you maybe it’s too late.” She struck a tone that cut so deep that Marlena, silently folding all this time, looked up, reaching her hand out toward Charlie, then, as though instinctively, setting it down again.

  Nick looked away a moment. “I know that,” he repeated, sitting back on his heels. “I understand.” It came out defeated. He ran his hands through his hair, as if trying to reset. She got up to avoid looking at him. Marlena shot her a quick questioning glance, brow furrowed in concern, but Charlie just grabbed the handful of books from atop her dresser and returned to the bed, placing them in her duffel bag.

  “Wait,” Nick said, as she nestled his copy of A Midsummer Night’s Dream in the bag. “What about this—I know you still care about this place at least. I don’t know if it will survive this summer, but I am certain it won’t survive if you go now. Stay for the seven days, for the full twenty of Midsummer’s run? Don’t do it for me, you’re free to hate me and I’ll leave you alone, whatever you want, honest.” He held up his hand in oath. “But give this place—this place, that I know you love—one last chance.” It was a statement, not a question, but one that trembled with hope and fear. She lay back on the bed, looking at the ceiling.

  Charlie thought of how heavy it would weigh in her heart if the Chamberlain closed without her here, trying. The theater world—here, London, New York—had always been there for her, before film, then in between the films—because she never much cared for the dull film scripts that came her way after The Tempest, passing on them all in favor of theater for years, until Midnight Daydream, which had potential but had ultimately faltered. It was Shakespeare and Tennessee Williams and Ibsen and Albee and Tony Kushner and Sam Shepard and Chekhov who had caught her when she had fallen, after losing Nick and his film.