by Tanya Chris
And that was when it finally got through. Where was Deb?
I stopped midway through pulling my tunic over my head. What time was it? I yanked the tunic the rest of the way down so I could see the large clock that hung over Rebekah’s stage manager podium. Seven thirty-five. Twenty five minutes until curtain. Well, that wasn’t right. Where the fuck was she?
Beneath the clock huddled a cluster of people with worried faces: Rebekah, Pete, Repeat, Joshua, Carol. Directors didn’t belong backstage before a show. This wasn’t just a question of Deb running behind. I joined the group around the podium with a feeling of being late to the party.
“It’s not like there are a lot of women to choose from,” Rebekah said insistently, making unwavering eye contact with Carol.
“There’s no way I’ll fit in the costume,” Carol protested. “Am I going to go out there dressed like this?” She waved a hand at the t-shirt and jeans she had on.
“We’ll find something in the costume loft.”
“Mikaela would fit,” Repeat said, with an air of repeating himself.
“It’s not about costumes,” Rebekah said.
“I haven’t been on stage in years. I’m completely wrong for the part—old and ... and fat.”
“It’s your show. You know the blocking, the everything.”
“Mikaela can do it,” Repeat said.
“Mikaela has another role to play,” Rebekah pointed out.
“I can cover the clown stuff. I know it already. I mean, not the lines but whatever, people won’t know if I jumble them anyway. I can fake my way through the ones where I’d be juggling and use a crib card for the rest.”
“And what about your role? We’re still one actor short.”
“I’m never on stage with Mikaela. I can do both.”
“She’s just a kid. This is Shakespeare.” Rebekah’s voice rose.
“She read for Desdemona at auditions,” I put in. “She didn’t sound bad.” I could see how freaked out Carol was about stepping into the role. Better to have someone confident on stage, no matter who that person was. And Mikaela did look the part.
“Has anyone even asked her?” Joshua asked.
We turned as a group to the green room at my back. About four feet away from the podium, Mikaela stood watching us. Her face registered fear in the wide splay of her eyes, but her body reflected excitement in the eager lean forward. Carol beckoned her over.
“You probably overheard some of that,” Carol said. “We don’t know where Deb is and it’s too close to curtain to keep waiting for her. Maybe she’ll show up and everything will be business as usual, but if not—do you think you could fill in for her tonight?”
Mikaela gulped.
“You’d carry a script,” Repeat said. “You don’t have to have the lines memorized.”
“We’d make an announcement to the audience so they’d understand,” Rebekah added.
“And we’d all help you,” I said gently, responding to her continued silence. “We’ll nudge you where you need to go and work around you if you’re not in the right place.”
I had experience with being a last minute substitution, though never with a role as big as Desdemona and only after I’d had a lot more stage experience under my belt than Mikaela had. It was a lot we were asking of her, but as Rebekah had pointed out, our female options were limited.
“It’s either you or Repeat goes on in drag,” Pete said. Everyone laughed, needing a respite from the tension. “You’d probably prefer that, right Nate? You’re running towards guys lately.”
I looked away from Mikaela, not at Pete but at Joshua. I smiled, trying to say yes, and also to say that I didn’t mind if Pete knew it. Joshua tipped his head and narrowed his eyes.
“OK.” Mikaela nodded tightly, excitement winning out over fear.
We all leaped into action. Rebekah dragged Mikaela into the women’s changing room to pin her into Deb’s costume which would fit with material left over. I tagged along, keeping my eyes carefully averted from both Mikaela and all the mirrors that reflected her, to talk her through the blocking for the scenes we shared.
Pete and Repeat broke into the costume loft to find something not-as-soldeirish for Repeat to wear as the clown. Carol and Joshua divided up a copy of the script, Carol cribbing out Desdemona’s lines and Joshua taking the clown’s. Time counted relentlessly down to zero.
At any moment, Deb might suddenly show up—a flat tire and her phone out of battery. Who knew? Then there’d be a mad scramble to get Mikaela out of her costume and Deb into it, to throw on clothes and makeup and take a deep breath of re-composure before the house lights went down and the stage lights went up.
But no.
At a few minutes past eight, Carol made her way onto the stage to announce the last minute substitution and Rebekah called places. I, with still ten minutes before my first entrance, sat with Mikaela on one of the couches and ran her lines with her, giving her a chance to say them out loud to herself and to me before the whole audience heard her. We had a small house tonight, not surprising for the night after opening night, but the crowd would seem like a firing squad to her.
I touched her shoulder as I left her to take my place. “Your first scene is short and simple,” I reminded her. “Just stand next to me and look at me like you love me.”
She nodded.
“One scene at a time. We can talk about the deathbed thing during intermission.”
I joined Joshua behind the drapes. We had no choice but to be silent, but I found his hand and squeezed it and after a moment he squeezed back. Then our cue line floated back to us and he parted the curtains and we walked on stage, enemies disguised as friends, played by friends who should be lovers.
~~~
Everyone wanted their turn to congratulate Mikaela after the show, but Repeat had her pretty well wrapped up. Little shivers coursed through her, causing Repeat to hug her over and over. I snuck up behind them and got a kiss planted on her cheek. She flung her arms around me.
“A star is born,” I said as I separated myself from her to return her to Repeat. She needed the support, hanging loose and jittery in his arms.
“You did good, too.” I slapped Repeat on the back. He wasn’t getting a quarter of the attention Mikaela was, but he’d played his new role flawlessly, almost without referring to the script he’d carried.
“Has anyone heard from her?” Rebekah asked, her voice loud enough to carry across the noisy backstage area.
No one answered. As soon as the show had ended, I’d gone straight to my phone to check. I’d even called her, not that everyone hadn’t already tried that. Her number rang straight to voice mail, and I hung up without leaving a message.
“We’ll be in touch,” Carol told the quieter room. “Depending what we learn, we may need to have some rehearsals this week for the principles.”
“You mean I’d do it again?” Mikaela asked.
“Time to start learning some lines,” I teased.
“We don’t know yet,” Rebekah reminded us. “The first thing is to find out if Deb is OK.”
“But you could look at the lines,” Carol said. “In case.”
Mikaela shivered again and Repeat hugged her again and I smiled to see them both so happy, though it had come at a big expense. Like Rebekah said, now that the rush of ensuring that the show did, in fact, go on was over, the real question loomed: where was Deb?
When I’d gathered up my belongings and was ready to leave, I went in search of Joshua, wanting to ask him what he thought it meant that Deb was missing and, more personally, to make clear my desire to take our relationship to the next level. We needed a moment of non-dramatic quiet, just the two of us, to work through the missteps and miscommunications of the last couple of days.
I searched so many nooks and crannies that Pete eventually said, “If you’re looking for your boyfriend, he already left,” with a nudge of his elbow into Repeat’s side and a troll-like grin for me.
I answe
red, “He did?” without thinking about it, which took the wind out of Pete’s sails.
“Yeah, about five minutes ago.”
I fished my phone out of my pocket as I walked to the parking lot. A quick scan showed no sign of Joshua’s car. As I contemplated whether I should call or simply drive over and force the issue in person, my phone rang. It wasn’t Joshua, though. It was Gillian, Deb’s roommate.
A wave of apprehension crashed through me as I pushed the button to accept the call. “Hey, Gillian,” I said, using all my years of training and practice to keep my voice neutral.
“Nate.” Her voice wasn’t neutral at all, twin notes of desperation and anger ringing clearly across the line. In the background, another voice could be heard, farther away but angrier and louder. I couldn’t make out individual words, but the general sense was of a profanity-laden tirade.
“Is she drunk?” I guessed.
“Drunk doesn’t even cover it. It’s ... it’s scary, actually. I think I should call someone, like 9-1-1 or her family, except I don’t have contact information for her family because she hates them and never talks to them and—” She broke off, her voice rising in volume but moving away from the phone. “It’s not your fucking family, all right? It’s Nate.” There was a pause and then: “Well, what the fuck do you expect me to do?” She came back on the line with me. “I don’t know what to do.”
“I don’t have any contact info for her family either. Is it really bad enough for 9-1-1?”
“Come and see,” she said with a short, unamused laugh. “No really, could you come? I literally don’t know who else to call.”
I no more knew what to do than Gillian did, but perhaps between the two of us we could figure it out. I drove to Deb’s apartment considering the whole way whether I should call Joshua, deciding it would be more of me taking without giving, then considering it all over again because I wanted Joshua.
Joshua might know what to do, but that wasn’t why I wanted him, and so ultimately I pulled up in front of Deb’s apartment without having made the call.
Chapter 23
Gillian flung the door open like she was preparing to escape through it.
“She’s in her room,” she said, although I could pinpoint Deb’s location from the noise. More than shouting now. Sounds that suggested destruction.
“How long has she been like this?”
“She came home drunk last night. The theater?”
“No, she left right after the show. She must have gone out somewhere. She’s been drinking since last night?”
“Not straight through. We didn’t have any alcohol in the house—she checked thoroughly, believe me; the cabinet banging woke me up. Anyway, she went to bed. Three-ish, I guess. I don’t know what time she got up but she was already drinking by the time I did. Must have gone out as soon as the liquor stores were open. She had bottles—I mean bottles—lined up in front of her on the coffee table and she was already working her way through them.”
“How much has she had?”
“Can’t say exactly because I don’t know what she’s got stashed in her room right now. I tried to hide the bottles when I saw where she was heading, but she finds them again. For someone who’s drunk off her ass, she’s remarkably clever. Two at least.”
“Two what?”
“Bottles.” Gillian waved at the coffee table behind her where two empty bottles remained from Deb’s original line-up—one vodka, one scotch.
“Fifths?” I asked, appalled. “She’s had two fifths of straight liquor?” Fuck that was ... I tried to do the math, something like forty shorts. I’d feel sick if I had forty shots of beer even, like being the biggest loser at a fatally long game of quarters.
“Two fifths at least,” Gillian said, interrupting my calculations.
“I don’t think that’s safe.”
Gillian gave me a look that said duh. “And that’s why I called you. She’s got to get her stomach pumped, I think. At least, she’s got to stop adding to the problem. But you try to make her.”
The sounds of rage and destruction emanating from Deb’s bedroom hadn’t stopped.
“What’s she doing in there?”
“Looking for the other bottles. When I hid them from her, she found them. Then she hid them from me. Apparently she’s better at this game than I am, because I don’t think she knows where they are, thank God.”
The two of us stood looking at each other against the backdrop of Deb’s shrieks.
“Do we call 9-1-1?” Gillian asked, phone in hand.
“Let me talk to her. Let me try.”
Behind me, the doorbell chime rang. We exchanged glances, as though 9-1-1 might show up because you wished for them. More likely a neighbor complaining about the noise.
Gillian crossed to the door and opened it a fraction, keeping her body between the hallway and the living room. Through the narrow slot, I saw a confused and frowning Lissie.
“It’s OK,” I told to Gillian. “She’s a friend of ours.”
I was immensely relieved to have a third person to share this burden with, though I didn’t understand how Lissie came to be there. She hadn’t even been at the theater for the show.
“Debra called me,” Lissie said, hesitant and unsure. “She sounded ...”
“Drunk? She missed the show tonight.” Missing a show was a cardinal sin and illustrated, as best as I could illustrate it, the depth of the problem.
“You can be grateful she did,” Gillian said. “She didn’t want to. I had to wrestle her keys from her, and while I was hiding the keys, she found the bottles. Once she had her hands on those, she forgot about the theater again.”
“A phone call would’ve been nice.”
“I didn’t have any contact info for the theater. And I had my hands full.”
“Sorry. I didn’t mean from you. I meant from her, but I guess if she’d been capable of thinking that clearly ...”
“Right.”
“Is that her?” Lissie jerked her head towards Deb’s closed door, from behind which the occasional crash or scream still emanated.
“You’d think she’d wear herself out,” I said, nodding my head in answer to Lissie’s question.
“Maybe just as well she doesn’t,” Gillian said. “I did some research on the internet and it said we shouldn’t let her pass out, at least not without a babysitter. She’s likely to choke on her own vomit.”
“Wouldn’t vomiting help the situation?” Lissie suggested. “That’s what I remember from my college years.”
“Internet says no. Something about the gag reflex stops working after a certain point. I have a feeling she’s beyond that point. Way beyond it.” Gillian blew out an exasperated breath. “You said you’d go in there. I could use a break from her. I’ve been doing this all day.”
I raised my eyebrows at Lissie and beckoned with my head towards the bedroom door at the end of the hall. Lissie grimaced and nodded. As we walked down the hall, I noticed that the room beyond the door had grown finally quiet.
“By the way, Nate,” Gillian said from behind us, “this is all your fault and she hates you. Just so you know.”
Great. Not a surprise, but not what I wanted to hear.
“Your fault?” Lissie asked, her hand on the door. “What did you do?”
“I expect you’re about to hear about it.” I put my hand over hers and turned and pushed.
The scene beyond the door shouldn’t have been surprising—I’d been listening to the destruction for ten or fifteen minutes now—but it pulled all the air out of my lungs nevertheless. Deb sat in the middle of the chaos she’d created, cross-legged on the floor with her back against the bed. In her lap, she cradled a bottle—the reason the shrieks and crashes had ceased a few moments ago. On her lips was the eeriest smile I’d ever seen.
“I knew you’d come,” she said. Or some approximation of “I knew you’d come.” It was close enough that I was able to make out the intent, if not the exact words. Then she loo
ked at Lissie and slurred out something like “Why are you here?”
“You called me. You said your roommate was holding you hostage and you needed me to come save you.”
“Don’t need you now.” Deb waved the bottle. “I’m free.”
“You’re drunk,” I corrected.
“Same diff.”
“Gillian thinks you should go to the hospital,” Lissie said in a gentle manner, without the tone of aggravation I couldn’t keep from spilling into my voice. “Could we do that? The three of us go to the hospital to get you checked out?”
“Know why I’m drunk?” Deb asked me, ignoring Lissie.
“Yeah, my fault. Gillian already told me.”
“Because you’re a heartless snake. A lying, cheating, asshole scum.”
“Nothing you didn’t already know, and I haven’t touched you in months, but if you want to blame it on me, fine. Let’s go to the hospital and you can tell them all about it.”
“Do you know what he did to me?” she asked Lissie, since I wouldn’t give her the satisfaction of an argument.
“People are allowed to not be interested,” Lissie said. “I’m sorry I gave you the wrong idea, but you can’t let a little rejection do this to you. There are other guys.”
“Not interested?” Deb scoffed. “Tell her how not interested you’ve been, Nate. Tell her how long you haven’t been interested. Go ahead, tell her.”
“Oh, I have permission now, do I?” It was that implication that I’d been the one keeping our relationship a secret that got the response she’d been fishing for. “Fine. I’ll tell her everything. I’ll tell everyone. Why the fuck wouldn’t I?”
Deb only shrugged, that same evil smile on her face. She raised the bottle and drank from it, pulling it back behind her body when I lunged for it.
“Can’t keep his hands off me,” she gloated to Lissie, while I groped behind her until I finally came away with the bottle—another fifth, this one of gin, about half of it gone. God, she was going to be sick.
I looked around for the cap and couldn’t find it. Fuck, a cap wouldn’t be enough to keep her out of it anyway. I carried it to the bathroom down the hall and emptied it into the sink, smelling the pine-scented fumes that rose up as the liquid gurgled slowly down the drain. I was tempted to take the final swig myself, but the image of Deb, manic and disheveled and filled to the brim with alcohol-fueled hate, dissuaded me.