by C. E. Case
"Often?"
There had been other opportunities, mostly with men, or female friends who thought she'd be fun, or lesbians in the industry who had heard about Grace, but she never got past dinner with most of them. There hadn't been anyone new. But she couldn't share that vulnerability with Sophia, and she couldn't kiss her back or she'd fall to pieces. She was too drunk for this, and it was making her too nostalgic.
She settled for brushing Sophia's hair away from her face and asking, "Can I stay here tonight?"
"Yeah," Sophia said.
"Just to sleep, you know."
Sophia looked down at her coffee mug and said, "At least take off your boots."
"If I put them under your bed, there could be a song about it."
Sophia cringed. She sipped at her coffee as Leah laboriously took off her boots.
Leah didn't usually sleep in her bra, or her sluttiest top, or her tightest jeans, and Sophia looked enviously comfortable in sweats, but she decided not to press her luck as she crawled up to the headboard. She glanced at the other bed in the room, which had Sophia's suitcase and scattered dry cleaning bags on top of it.
She settled onto her side, facing Sophia.
Sophia rolled over, away from Leah, and turned out the lamp. She exhaled. "I'm so tired," she said, settling on her side, showing her back to Leah.
"Big Friday night."
Sophia sighed. "No, just in general."
Leah put her hand on Sophia's shoulder, and then moved closer, pressing against her back.
"Is this okay?" Leah asked, carefully settling her hand against Sophia's stomach.
"Yeah."
"Good." Leah closed her eyes.
Sophia patted her hand, and then rolled almost imperceptibly backward, tucking herself against Leah. Leah inhaled and caught the scent of Sophia's hair, straw-like and musky from the night of sweat and hairspray. Just before she fell asleep, she learned that Sophia snored.
Chapter Ten
She woke up before Sophia and found herself in the dark, lying flat on her back with Sophia on her side next to her, one leg over hers. The clock read 4:37--so just a nap, really--and her phone was blinking red with a message.
She stumbled out of bed and checked it, wincing at the white light and Adam's face, staring up at her. He'd called.
And had texted. "Where are you? Having fun? Call!"
Her boots were under the bed. She pulled them out and stuck her feet into them, wincing at the pain that shot through the soles and up her calves. Sophia stirred and rolled over. Leah's chest constricted. She hated to leave, but the thought of an awkward morning was even more daunting. She smoothed hair out of Sophia's face and knelt beside the bed. "I'll see you later," she said, her voice hoarse in the dark.
Sophia's nose wrinkled.
Leah kissed her forehead, hesitated, and then kissed her lips. Sophia murmured something against the kiss.
"Bye," Leah said. "I'll see you at the theater."
She lingered in the doorway, thinking of all the things she could imagine she had, with Sophia asleep, that she would no longer have in the daylight.
* * *
She got home at five thirty with donuts and let them cool on the counter while she went upstairs and tumbled into bed. She didn't emerge until after ten. The piano played downstairs as she showered.
When she went into the living room, she found Adam also freshly showered, wearing shorts, and playing Beethoven.
Leah got a donut and threw herself on the couch.
Adam finished his song and turned around and asked, "You have a good night, too?"
"I really, really did," she said.
"Were you with someone?"
Leah inhaled, and asked, "Adam, what does it mean when you kiss a girl, and you sleep with her, and you don't..."
Adam got off the piano bench and went to the kitchen. He came back with a paper napkin and a pen, and sat down on the couch, slipping under her legs.
"What are you doing?"
"I'm drawing you a picture."
She pushed at his legs. "It was rhetorical."
"You have a very goofy smile on your face."
"I do not." Leah tried to frown. She giggled. That couldn't be good.
"Is this going to be a distraction?"
"A distraction? You're the one who told me to go out." Leah squirmed out from under him to pace the living room.
"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."
Chapter Eleven
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 o
f 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.
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.
Chapter Twelve
"When are you coming back?" Adam asked through the phone.