The Trouble With Flirting

by Claire Lazebnik

  So the days are crazy for all of us, but the nights . . . the nights are pretty sweet. When we’re done with rehearsal (which gets later with each passing day), Harry and I often walk into town and grab a late-night bite to eat or a cup of tea. Isabella joins us most of the time, and so do Vanessa and Lawrence.

  We don’t hang out in the common room anymore. Things have gotten too awkward with both Marie and Alex.

  For obvious reasons Julia and Manny continue to spend time with Alex, so I don’t see them at meals as much, but I see them plenty at rehearsals. They really do seem to be genuinely kind of devoted to each other, which is sweet, and I’m happy for them both, but poor Vanessa isn’t so lucky: she has a fling with a fellow cast member that doesn’t last long. “He has the worst bad breath,” she tells me afterward. “Like something’s rotting from the inside.”

  “That’s so poetic.”

  “Nothing poetic about that smell.”

  Once the few remaining straight guys know that Isabella is free, she always has someone trailing hopefully after her. Even so, when she’s in the Sweatshop trying on her nun’s habit for Measure for Measure, she looks in the mirror and says grimly, “Suits me. Never knew I was a method actor, but I seem to be living the part.”

  I get why she’s alone: most of the guys there are from small towns and seem way too young for her. She’s cursed by her own sophistication.

  Lawrence pursues a couple of interesting possibilities but eventually drops them, disappointed. “The good news,” he tells me at lunch one day, “is that there are more gay guys in any single room here than in my entire high school. The bad news is that there’s still no one I’m all that interested in. Or at least no one who’s equally interested in me. I’ve decided to save myself for Harry. Any signs he might be turning?”

  “I’m doing my best for you,” I say. “If I can’t turn a guy off girls, who can?”

  “Her,” he says, and points to Marie.

  Marie.

  After Harry broke up with her at breakfast (as gently and apologetically as he could, he swore), she went straight to Charles and told him that she couldn’t continue to act opposite Harry because he had made sexually inappropriate advances toward her, and she just wasn’t comfortable being in romantic scenes with him anymore.

  It was a mistake to use the same unfounded complaint she’d used before, especially since the program had now been running for a few weeks, and Charles had pretty much figured her out. He’d also seen her basically throwing herself on top of Harry just the day before. He told her that he would take her concerns under consideration, and later that day pulled Harry aside to get his side of the story, which Harry said was pretty much “she got pissed off when I picked Franny over her.” “That does sum it up nicely,” I agreed.

  Charles and the other graduate-student directors had a meeting with the head of the program to figure out what to do. They came back to Marie as a group and told her that they had some concerns about the truthfulness of these serious accusations. And they said they all agreed that the safest course of action for all concerned (especially her, since she seemed to be in constant danger of attracting unwanted advances) was to keep some distance between Marie and the other actors. So they were removing her from the cast and giving her a job helping out backstage.

  Julia and Vanessa told us later that Marie went ballistic when she heard this, threw a fit, said her parents would sue the entire program, accused all the directors of being sexist and misogynistic (even the females), and said she would go home if they didn’t give her her role back. She recounted all this to her roommates that night, alternating between self-pitying sobs and spitting fury.

  “Why is everyone out to get me?” she kept wailing.

  But when all the dust cleared, she reluctantly agreed to work backstage, and they replaced her as the lead of Twelfth Night.

  Guess who they got to replace her?

  Here’s a clue: it’s someone who’s spent her time at Mansfield quietly working harder than anyone else, someone who hasn’t sought any kind of public attention for any of her efforts, but has just done what she’s been asked to do, and done it well.

  Did you guess?

  Madeline Bigelow took over the role of Viola.

  Yeah, I didn’t really know who she was either.

  She’d originally played a bunch of small roles—servants, mostly—and while she had appeared in a lot of scenes, she wasn’t a big presence in any of them. Even though we were in the cast together, we’d never really talked, just nodded hello to each other now and then.

  Julia was originally upset that she had been passed over—yet again—for a major role, but she calmed down when Charles gave her Madeline’s biggest former role. I got an additional role too, as a serving woman, which I didn’t have the guts to tell Amelia about, since it would cut down on my sewing time even more.

  I figured I’d just sew faster.

  Which is what I’ve been doing: when I’m not actually onstage, I’m hemming skirts like crazy. I tell Amelia that it’s silly for me to keep running back and forth to her workroom so often, that I should just take a bag of work with me when I go to rehearsal and not come back until it’s all done.

  I sew every second I can, even when I’m at meals. Harry says it’s risky trying to put his arms around me, that he gets poked by a needle every time he tries. It’s not true. His embraces tend to land very successfully.

  Julia goes very quickly from being annoyed she didn’t get the lead to freaking out about how many lines she has to memorize in a few days. She’s making anyone who has a free second run lines with her.

  “I’ll never be ready in time,” she keeps moaning. And she’s not the only one. Everyone’s getting more and more anxious and intense as we get closer to performance week.

  Except Harry. He’s pretty calm. He says he never gets worked up about a performance. “What’s the worst that can happen?” he says to me. “I forget a line? I fall off the stage? How bad could that be, really? I’ve survived being ridiculed and cast out by the woman I love—every other tragedy pales in comparison.”

  “I never ridiculed you.”

  “Who said I was talking about you?” He grins wickedly and then kisses me until it’s clear that was a joke.

  Sometimes at the dining hall I see him walking across the room and I feel sure this guy can’t possibly be my boyfriend. He’s too good-looking. He’s too charming. He’s too much the kind of guy a girl like me doesn’t get and should probably stay away from. Eyes follow him wherever he goes.

  And where he goes is next to me.

  Mansfield Mayhem turns out to be the annual party for the actors and directors, to celebrate the end of rehearsals and the beginning of performances. Harry comes by the costume room to pick me up, since I’m trying to squeeze in as much work as I can—there are still some costumes to be altered before the shows tomorrow, and I feel bad leaving Amelia alone working on them.

  “I don’t know how I’m going to get all this done,” she says as we head out.

  “I’ll come back after the party,” I promise.

  “It ends at midnight,” Harry tells me as we leave the Sweatshop.

  “Oh. Well, I’ll leave early.”

  He takes my hand and tucks it under his arm. “You will not. I missed out on dancing with you last time. I’m not going to waste this chance.”

  “But the costumes—”

  “If a few tunics aren’t perfectly hemmed, we’ll all survive.”

  “You’re a bad influence,” I say.

  “If you think so now, just wait until I get you alone later tonight.”

  There’s a dinner buffet and a DJ and loud music and dancing. It’s like a cheesy bar mitzvah party, but one where you’re surrounded only by people you like. Almost everyone is a good dancer—one of the advantages of being in a group of actors—and we’ve all been working so hard for the last couple of weeks that we’re ready to be silly and wild.

  Which we are.

/>   Between the loud music and my exhaustion, a lot of the night is a blur, but I can definitely remember dancing every fast dance in a big group of friends and every slow dance curled up against Harry, his arms warm around me, the two of us the only people in the world. I also remember sharing a slice of chocolate cake with Lawrence, our forks clinking against each other as we fought, laughing, for the last bite. And I remember cans of Silly String appearing and everyone spraying everyone and then a long period of time when we were all plucking it out of one another’s hair. And I remember a long slow walk back to Amelia’s apartment with Harry, our arms so tightly entwined around each other’s waists that we could barely walk.

  Amelia is still awake when I come in, her home sewing machine gently humming on the kitchen table, unhemmed skirts in a pile on one side of her, hemmed skirts on the other.

  She greets me with: “A dozen more to go.”

  “I’ll help as soon as I get changed.”

  “Go to bed,” she says. “You have to perform tomorrow.”

  “It’s okay,” I say. “I want to help.”

  “And I want you to be rested for tomorrow,” she says.

  “But—”

  She swivels around so she can look at me. “I have no desire to spend your performance worrying about whether you’re going to be too tired to remember your lines. After all I’ve put up with to have you be in the show in the first place, I’m not going to risk your success in it for a couple of skirt hems. Now go to bed.”

  “All right,” I say meekly.

  When I wake up the next morning, she’s already back at work at the sewing machine. Or at least I hope so—I hope she isn’t still at work.

  I brew a cup of some vile herbal tea and bring it over to her, then pull up a chair and work on some last bits of hand sewing for the Twelfth Night costumes—we’ve been wearing the costumes for the last week, but there’s some trim that we haven’t had time to attach yet.

  Amelia found an old-fashioned sailor suit from a production of HMS Pinafore for me to wear as Antonia: it was too big, but since I have to look like I’ve been shipwrecked in it and the costume was already old and worn, she just shredded the bottoms of both parts and pinned the shirt unevenly and it works. When I play Olivia’s maid, my other character, I change into a 1920s-era uniform.

  We finish up the final alterations and wrangle the clothing into garment bags, then head over to the theater. Amelia drives us in her car: we don’t have time to walk.

  I join the other girls, who are putting on makeup in the ladies’ dressing room. Julia comes over to me. “Can you help?” she asks in a trembling voice, handing me her eyeliner. “My hands are shaking too much.”

  “You’re going to be great,” I say.

  “So long as I don’t throw up onstage.”

  Amelia flits around backstage while we change into our costumes, pinning falling hems, tying bows, adjusting hats.. . . She’s sharp-tongued and impatient, but she’s also everywhere at once, fixing problems faster than they can be discovered. You can tell she’s done this before. A lot. And that she’s very good at it.

  From backstage I peek out at the audience. It’s mostly the other students (they’re all required to go to one another’s shows), the graduate-student directors, the administrators, and staff members. There are a bunch of people I don’t recognize out there too—probably family of the local cast members.

  Charles gathers us all together ten minutes before showtime and tells us how proud he is of how hard we’ve worked, singling out Madeline’s courage in jumping into a huge role at the last minute and giving a shout-out to me, Julia, and a couple of other cast members who, he says, also stepped up when we needed to. Then he tells us to take our places and we do, but on the way Harry grabs me and gives me a quick crushing hug. “Break a leg,” he says.

  “Break two,” I say, and those are the last words we exchange out of character until after the show.

  Julia doesn’t throw up onstage and neither, I’m happy to say, does anyone else. I don’t forget any of my lines, which is good, and I get a lot of laughs with both my indignation at Viola (whom Antonia mistakes for her friend Sebastian) and my discovery at the end that they’re identical when dressed alike. By the time the curtain falls, I’m flying on the high of successful, crowd-pleasing acting.

  Madeline and Harry are both amazing. I knew they were good at rehearsals, but the extra adrenaline rush of performing in front of an audience brings them to a whole new level.

  I wouldn’t have said Madeline was beautiful or dynamic in person—I might even have said the opposite—but she’s completely in command on the stage today, arch and sincere by turns, tender when she’s falling in love and funny when she’s awkwardly fending off the romantic advances of Brianna’s Olivia. She’s much better in the role than Marie ever was.

  But when Harry is onstage, he’s all I see. He’s so good, so strong and noble and lovable in the role—and so heart-shatteringly handsome in his tux—that afterward I feel shy, like I can’t possibly have the right to approach him, let alone claim him as my boyfriend.

  But as soon as we finish curtain calls, he turns and looks for me, and when we meet in the center of the stage, he searches my eyes anxiously—for all his swagger and apparent confidence, he’s worried about how he did. I tell him he was incredible and that I adore him, and his whole body sags in relief.

  Charles congratulates us all and then ushers us out toward the lobby, where the audience is waiting to see us. I stop Madeline to tell her she was great, and I look for Julia, but she’s nowhere in sight. I ask Manny where she is and he says uncomfortably, “Um . . . she kind of had to run to the ladies’ room.”

  At least she made it through the show.

  Out in the lobby I’m talking to one of Harry’s roommates when I spot Marie standing in a corner, silently watching the actors being mobbed by their friends. She looks so separate and alone, I feel sorry for her. I’m about to head over to talk to her—although I have no idea what I’ll say and I doubt she’s going to welcome me—when someone else calls her name and she turns. It’s her boyfriend (former boyfriend? Ex-boyfriend? Once-and-future boyfriend? I have no idea): James Rushport. He’s back. Or maybe she never broke up with him and he doesn’t even know that she was desperately trying to hook up with someone else for a while.

  He calls to her, and she moves into his arms and rests her head on his shoulders, hiding her face from everyone else. They walk to the door like that, and, as they go by, he spots me and says, “Hey! Franny, right?” I wave, and he calls out, “Your foot all better?” I give him a lame thumbs-up by way of a response, and he smiles and nods and they make their way, entwined, out the door.

  I feel a tap on my arm and turn. Amelia is waiting there. She says, “You were very good, Franny.”

  “Thanks.”

  “I mean it. Very good.”

  I thank her again, and we stand together in awkward silence for a moment.

  “Well,” she says then, “I have a lot to do.” And she turns to go. But then she stops and says, “I’m glad you did this.” And then she walks away.

  Once we’ve changed into our street clothes and hung up our costumes (but left on our stage makeup, because it’s totally a badge of honor), a bunch of us go out to dinner together in town—big plates of pasta, we’re all starving—and then head right back to the theater to watch the first performance of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. I go backstage to help Amelia with all the last-minute costume tweaking, but then slip back out to join Harry in the audience for the show.

  Vanessa and Lawrence both blow me away. He’s a perfect Puck, graceful, small, mischievous, and sprite-like in his earth-colored tunic and leggings, and she owns the role of Titania, queen of the fairies. I know she wanted to be Bottom originally, but this is definitely the right role for her. There’s always been something regal about Vanessa, and she taps into it for Titania. She wears her hair loose and unfettered, so it springs out in a wild mass of curls that almo
st look like they’re alive. Amelia made a sky-blue robe for her embroidered with glittering silver thread in star patterns. It’s really stunning.

  My palms are red-hot and my voice is hoarse when I’m done cheering for them during the curtain calls, and afterward, when I see them in the lobby, the three of us throw our arms around each other and just stay like that for a while.

  Then we all go out for ice cream.

  Then I go back to the apartment and sleep the sleep of the dead.

  I’m pretty tense when we go to see Measure for Measure the next afternoon. I can feel Harry watching me whenever Alex is onstage, and I try to keep my expression as neutral as possible. But Alex is really good as the duke, and he looks great in his period robes. His character falls in love with Isabella’s about halfway through the (wildly shortened) play, and if they feel awkward about acting opposite each other, neither of them shows it.

  It’s a strange play, though: the duke is supposed to be the good character, the hero of the piece, and yet he does all these hateful things, like let poor Isabella think that her beloved brother is dead when he’s actually still alive.

  “I wouldn’t marry him,” I say to Harry when the curtain falls on former nun Isabella accepting the duke’s hand in marriage.

  He narrows his eyes. “Okay, but would you date him? Pine after him if he fell in love with someone else? Let him keep you dangling around, waiting for him to change his mind?”

  “You sure we’re talking about the duke here?” I ask.

  “You’re avoiding the question.”

  “There’s only one ‘the duke’ for me,” I say.

  “You better mean that.”

  Backstage he instantly heads for Isabella. He puts his arms around her and she bursts into tears. “It’s okay,” she says to me between sobs. “I always do this after a performance.”

  “Yes, she does,” Harry says fondly as he pats her back and murmurs little soothing sounds.

  “Too much emotion,” she weeps.

  “Too little perspective,” he says fondly.

  A couple of nights earlier, after he came back from a smoke-filled tête-à-tête with Isabella, I asked him if I should be jealous of how much they love each other.