The Summer Set

by Aimee Agresti

  “Dawn of the Super Id.”

  “—when he resurfaced, he had this plan devised that I couldn’t go along with—to do this terrible movie without reworking it, without taking the time, without the collaboration. And I had to walk away.”

  “You guys literally weren’t on the same page of the same script.”

  “Exactly,” she said, as Marlena unlocked the door of Hathaway House, letting them in. Marlena went straight for the bottle of rosé from the night before. “He had all the wrong ideas. And then we were over and the movie happened and Jasmine happened and we had this cold war. And our careers fell apart in the process. Because you’re only as good as your last project, et cetera, violins, cautionary tale, the end.”

  “Wow, that’s a hell of a montage when you lay it all out like that,” she said, pouring their glasses. “I would say you’ve just been taking an intermission.”

  Charlie sighed as though not buying it.

  “And I would also say,” Marlena went on. “Sure, so you don’t know what happens after The Tempest, at all. You don’t know where he goes, you don’t know what you’re going to do. Status quo or something gutsy.” She took a gulp of her wine. “Here’s the only thing that matters—do you know what you want? Just for you. What Charlie wants. Not about him. About you, about your life, your career, things you haven’t bothered considering for a while. And I love your movie theater, you know, I love everything you do, but you know what I’m talking about.”

  Charlie took a deep breath as though about to dive from a cliff, studied her glass then looked at Marlena. She nodded. She did know. For the first time in years.

  “Then that’s what you do. Scary as it is. And after this is over, then you’ll see if his script looks like yours.” She shrugged, took a sip of wine. “Can I rock a pep talk or what?”

  “Not bad. So Dr. Stevens does make house calls?” she joked of Marlena’s TV character.

  “Listen, this is a totally radical concept called friendship, not sure you’re familiar with how it works. You were there for me, you know? Remember my intermission? And my montage becoming me?” She topped off Charlie’s wine. “It was you holding my hand, talking and listening and researching and deliberating and scheduling and comforting and convalescing and encouraging and then finally, thank God, celebrating. So I’m here. For whatever’s coming at you.” She said it all easily, glossed over, in her way.

  “That’s good because I have no idea what’s coming in the next fucking act.” And she was nervous, for the first time in years, but it meant that she cared.

  “Cheers to that.” Marlena clinked her glass against Charlie’s.

  * * *

  Two days before opening, Charlie had a very different role to play. She sat down on a wooden stool before a camera set up in one of the rehearsal studios.

  “So Nick did this? Already?” she asked Fiona.

  “He did, indeed, just yesterday,” Fiona said, adjusting the camera on its tripod.

  Charlie pulled her hair up in a topknot. She and Nick had discussed doing a few “very short confessionals” talking about each other, but she realized now that they had neglected to go over what each of them would say. It was Charlie’s inclination to skim the surface, play it safe—exactly the opposite of how she behaved on stage. This just wasn’t her kind of performance. Nick’s either. She inhabited other people’s stories. She didn’t share her own. But to preserve this place, she would make the sacrifice.

  “Ready when you are,” Fiona said. “I’ll get that—” she pointed to Charlie’s lark tattoo “—at the end.”

  “So he did talk about that...” Charlie said to herself. “Any chance I could maybe—?”

  “I know what you’re asking,” Fiona said, still setting up her shot. “We’ll make a deal.” She spoke directly to Charlie now. “After we shoot this, I’ll let you see his clip. Then you can even reshoot if you want.”

  Charlie exhaled, tentative. “Okay, fine.”

  “Rolling.” Fiona signaled. “Total softball question. Why do you think you two work well together?”

  “I guess that sort of presupposes that we do,” Charlie laughed, looking away a moment; this was going to be harder than she’d thought. She drummed her fingers against her lips. “He can do things I can’t, which is always exotic and mysterious. He’s all structure, foundation. Where I jump first and just explode at everything.” She considered their years. There was so much she could say, but not here, not like this. “He hears me and listens too—and those aren’t the same. Many directors do neither.” She stared off, smiling softly. “If I had words for it, then it wouldn’t be very special, would it? I can’t define it. But it’s always been there. And it’s unlike anything I’ve found anywhere else.” She paused a moment, looked not at the camera, but at Fiona. “What?”

  The girl seemed disappointed in some way. “I think you’re holding back,” Fiona said, boldly. “There’s got to be an example you can give or something. All your history together...”

  Rather than bristling at this, Charlie actually felt proud: Fiona sounded like a director, a good one, one who wasn’t afraid to challenge Charlie. And also, if Charlie could admit it, she knew Fiona was right. She looked at the ceiling now, big surrendering exhalation, and back at the camera. For once Charlie truly thought about what she was going to say before she said it. Turned it over in her mind, smoothing it like a river rock, deciding it was something a person deserved to know, that Nick deserved to know. And this might be as good a place as any to share it.

  “Well, there is one thing,” Charlie started slowly, her tone heavier now. “I heard Nick’s voice, that night in the harbor...that night, you know, the night of the car accident.” She looked away. “I know, he wasn’t there or anything, but I heard him anyway and it sort of...woke me up. That night. Got me back up to the surface. You know what I mean?” She worried she wasn’t making sense but it was the best she could do. She hadn’t realized how hard it would be to hear those words out loud, to admit that he had remained part of her all that time, even while they blamed each other for downward-spiraling careers, even when they weren’t speaking.

  Fiona looked directly at her, asked in a soothing voice, “Does he know that?”

  “Not yet,” Charlie sighed. “But he will when he sees this.”

  “Is that okay?” Fiona asked, making sure.

  “I guess it’s gonna have to be.”

  * * *

  True to her word, Fiona sent Charlie the clip of Nick, or a link to access it. She watched it that night on her phone, up on her balcony overlooking the town.

  “What’s special about Charlie...?” Nick had repeated Fiona’s question on the video, grimacing. “I can’t believe we agreed to this. Okay. I hope this is gonna be okay with her.” He looked worried, which made Charlie smile because she still couldn’t believe she had revealed what she had. “She brings the life to everything, in case you hadn’t noticed. And without fire, you have nothing. It’s not something as readily available in the world as you might think. Plenty of people think they have it—and are wrong. If you have it you probably don’t even know. It’s definitely not something that I have.” He laughed at himself. “I mean, obviously, these—” he slapped his neck as though killing a mosquito there “—these were her idea, a long time ago. And it reminds me every day of what I could be...” He trailed off, changed course. “I’ll just say this, there is no one like her. If you’ve been near that and you somehow lose it, you do everything you can to get it back and then you don’t let go.” He folded his arms across his chest, gazing at his feet. “She’s the voice in my head. Even in those years when she wasn’t really speaking to me, she was still the voice in my head.” He ran his hand through his hair, looked up and stared right into the camera. “I feel like I said too much. I’m not good at this.”

  Charlie had been so taken with his video—comforted by his word
s, set at ease by the raw candor that seemed to match her own—that she hadn’t realized the next clip loaded automatically: it was Sierra.

  “This is going to sound crazy,” Sierra said into a mirror, wiping off her stage makeup after what must have been the Black Box dress rehearsal. “I never thought I would have people like Marlena Andes and Chase Embers and Charlie Savoy and Nicholas Blunt clear their schedule to come to some show that I happen to be in.” She whispered, shaking her head, “I’m terrified of messing everything up. Which I did at the start of the summer and I do not want to do that again. But if I’m being honest, like I’m supposed to be, I guess...” She looked to the side of the camera, as though for prompting from Fiona. “Then, weirdly, seeing Ethan out there opening night is going to be even more terrifying. I want him to think I’ve done something this summer, because I remember how I felt watching him the first time as Mercutio, you know? And I want him to feel that too. A version of that, because that feeling is, like, life-changing. Don’t tell him,” she said and then laughed at herself. “Well, I guess he’ll know at some point. Obviously. Unless this gets edited out.” Her eyes lit up, as though an idea struck. “Wait, what did he say?”

  Ethan’s clip was there too, and now Charlie had to watch. Fiona had recorded it during his shift at the pub. She asked him about the future.

  “Back to school in a couple weeks and then, I don’t know, more of this,” he said. “I mean, the drama part, not the waiter part. Although, that too, actually.”

  Fiona’s voice asked about Sierra. “I don’t know what she’s thinking but...between you and me and whoever watches this, I guess I’d say...well, one of my first nights as Mercutio, she made me sign a photo, which was so kind but I always got a solid friend vibe from her, so, you know, anyway, I signed this thing and it was after this night onstage and I was just feeling, everything, and I started to sign it ‘love,’ without thinking but then caught myself, and sort of fixed it, but anyway, this summer has been...everything. We go to school just miles from each other. And I’m hoping maybe she needs someone to go to Cape Cod with at the end of the summer...” He trailed off, wistful.

  That was the end of the footage. It had gotten Charlie thinking about opening night for The Tempest. Maybe there was time to make one more change.

  60

  YOU STOLE MY LINE

  “You can’t really be asleep.” Sierra heard Ethan’s voice and popped her head up from the bar, where he had just set her iced tea.

  She yawned, laughing, “Actually, I can.” She glanced at her watch. The madness had set in, everyone afflicted now. One night until the Black Box show and The Tempest opening. Either one would be huge enough, but they were happening on the same night, in rapid succession. So much needed to be done before then, it could barely fit in the remaining hours. Sierra felt like a time-lapse video of a skyscraper being built. When she wasn’t onstage performing in Midsummer, rehearsing The Tempest, fine-tuning the Black Box show or in the costume shop, she was either asleep or she was awake working herself into a frenzy over the agents and directors expected to descend upon the theater on that one all-powerful night. Scoping out new talent and possibly extending invitations for meetings, auditions or even representation.

  “You might actually be the luckiest person around tomorrow night,” Ethan said. “Between the Black Box and The Tempest, all in one night, that’s a lot of stage time.”

  “Only if I actually do okay.” Sierra had gone from Least Likely to Succeed to as close to ubiquitous as she would ever be. “Otherwise it’ll be like, ‘This girl again? Make it stop.’”

  “Good attitude,” he said. Then paused. “And—same. Not to freak us out, but this could be life-changing—”

  “Tomorrow night is kind of the point of the whole summer,” she said, exhaling. “I feel like I already need a paper bag to breathe into.”

  “You know what though, it’s not...the whole point,” he corrected. “Even if we crash and burn—”

  “This is not the encouragement I was looking for—”

  “No matter what happens, there are people like Nicholas and Charlie who know what we can do, right? That’s something. And being nervous, that just means you’re alive, right? Unless you’re—”

  “Harlow,” she said. Her roommate had been in a hyperfocused zone the past week and had barely spoken to her, but seemed totally calm to an otherworldly degree, not the least bit bothered by this date circled in neon on their calendar.

  “I was going to say Alex.”

  * * *

  The night before The Tempest opening, their dress rehearsal ended early, so the professional company had dinner together at the pub, jovial in the way of a family gathering at the end of that kind of feel-good film you watched on repeat. Afterward, Charlie, Sarah and Marlena deposited Chase, Danica and Matteo at the house on Avon with shared wishes of good rest and sweet dreams.

  “Especially you,” Chase had said, knowingly, to Charlie. And then to Marlena, lightly, with a wink, he added, “And you too.”

  After, at Hathaway House, where her mom and Marlena were staying, Charlie said, “I still need to know how this all happened with Chase.”

  “I’m a woman of mystery,” Marlena said with a laugh as she lay on the bed in her room.

  Sarah, at its foot, raised her glass of pinot noir as though toasting. “And don’t act like you don’t know about that kind of thing yourself, Charlie.”

  “Me?” Charlie asked, coy, sifting through Marlena’s closet.

  “I think you and Marlena have a lot in common,” Sarah said, which Charlie ignored. “Not to bring up London, but there was much time unaccounted for, take it from a mother who waited up for quite a while—”

  “You first,” Charlie said to Marlena.

  Her friend sat up, leaning on her elbows. “Fine. So, you know how I always thought during our shoot those years ago that Chase didn’t like me at all?”

  “Yeah, he was pretty cold.” This had been the subject of daily discussion back then.

  “Thanks,” Marlena laughed. “But, no, you’re totally right. Well, turns out he liked me too much. And he was really confused back then. And I was a different me, or you know, figuring out how to become the true me.”

  “We were all so young too, eighteen, nineteen.” Charlie still couldn’t believe it was that long ago.

  “I know, please, I feel so damn old all the time.” Marlena went on, “Anyway, it’s been a lot for him, know what I mean? So it was just recently that he started...figuring things out...” Charlie could tell Marlena didn’t want to share too much, since it wasn’t her journey. “Anyway, totally worth the wait is all I can say.”

  “Cheers to you both, finding each other again,” Sarah said.

  “Thank you,” Marlena said, her hand on Sarah’s arm. “I feel like we should be brushing each other’s hair, it is so nice having you here. And I still feel bad you let me have this room, Dame Sarah. I try to make her switch every day,” she explained to Charlie.

  “No, truly, the accommodations down the hall are much better suited to me, and full of...greater memories,” Sarah said, looking at her manicure—always the lightest pink—demurely.

  Marlena picked up on the subtext. “Grayson?” she asked gently.

  “Mom! I am not hearing this.” Charlie stared at them in the mirror, where she had been sorting through Marlena’s vast array of beauty products, spraying perfumes on herself, testing lipsticks. “Don’t make me leave.”

  “You’re no fun, darling,” she said, then leaned into Marlena. “So, we would steal away here from time to time. We had a very loose arrangement, dictated by the fact that his wife was often around. Which could be somewhat problematic.”

  “Did she know?” Marlena gasped.

  “I always suspected she had her own...supporting players, if you will.”

  “I can’t believe I missed all of th
at.” Charlie looked at them now, a soft pink lipstick on, entirely unlike her usual crimson.

  “That’s lovely on you,” Sarah said as Charlie cringed, wiping it off. “Help her, please,” she said to Marlena.

  “I’ve tried.” Marlena shook her head.

  “She doesn’t need help,” Charlie said of herself. “And she doesn’t need to know anything else about your...liaisons.”

  “Well, you might’ve known back then if you weren’t so busy swimming and running off to get tattoos and enrapturing a young director and antagonizing me. All your favorite hobbies.”

  “Memories,” Charlie sighed.

  “I like it here,” Marlena said. “Everyone’s hot. Everyone’s sleeping with everyone. I’m so glad you convinced me to do theater. I had no idea.”

  * * *

  Before midnight, Charlie walked back to the house on Avon. Everyone was still awake.

  She poked her head into Matteo’s open door. “Did you know about my mom and Grayson?” she asked, grabbing popcorn from the bowl on his bed. He had FaceTime up on his laptop.

  “Well...” He thought about it. “Yeah, I always kind of suspected.”

  “Really?”

  “Really, you didn’t?”

  “You never think your mom is capable of that kind of thing, you know, it seems too sordid and...interesting,” she said with a shrug. And then, because she spotted Sebastian’s name at the top of the list of calls: “Speaking of...”

  “He’s coming to The Tempest,” Matteo said. “Talked him into it. He’s gonna come to one of the last shows and then we’re going to Maine. It’s so gorgeous there. We need some time together. Hit the reset button.”

  She squeezed his shoulder, nodded. She did understand, but he seemed to read her hesitation.

  “I know, I mean, supposing the dates at the end of the season actually do happen.” He smiled. By now they all knew what was riding on this.