Little Disquietude (5 page)

"Or maybe you were just too hopeless to deal
with."

"I'm not--" The onslaught of fury brought
tears. Some deep part of Leah echoed Ward's dismissal and by
extension, Adam's. She turned to the piano.

Ward did, also.

Adam frowned and glanced at the sheet music
on the stage. "Let's skip to the next song. I want to be out of
here by lunch."

Leah stepped to center stage. She ignored
Ward and listened to the piano. However poor Ward might think her
talent, the song belonged to her.

From childhood's hour I have not been

As others were; I have not seen

As others saw; I could not bring

My passions from a common spring…

* * *

Theater volunteers had brought potluck for
South Pacific's final dress rehearsal. Leah helped herself to fried
chicken and then went outside to guiltily eat it in the heat of the
sun. Maybe if she melted Adam could find a new Virginia for his
project, instead of one he had to keep yelling to, "Sweeter. Why
can't you look sweeter?"

Reading and eating fried chicken
simultaneously proved impossible, so she ate, wiped at her hands as
best she could, and then picked up the book. If she got grease on
the pages, no one would miss it.

"What are you reading?"

"
The Prince of Patagonia
," Leah said
with flourish. Then she looked up to see who had asked, shading her
eyes with the book.

Sophia stood on the top step of the theater,
smiling. "Is it hot?"

"I don't know. I promised myself this time I
wouldn't just skip to the juicy bits," Leah said. "Maybe they'll be
better if they have build-up, or something."

Sophia nodded." I'm late for rehearsal,
so--"

"Break a leg."

"Thanks."

Leah put down her book, wrapped her arms
around her knees, and tried to guess which house across the street
might be a crack house, from the amount of traffic going in and out
on a Thursday afternoon.

South Pacific
opened.

Leah sat in the back row with Adam and
elbowed him as hard as she could during "I'm Going to Wash That Man
Right Out of My Hair." He hummed along.

"Adam," she said.

"What? I like musicals."

She rolled her eyes in the dark.

The after party was at a mostly closed
restaurant three blocks away. Leah talked to each person she ran
into for about three seconds each and was relieved to spot Sophia
across the room. Sophia wore black slacks and a black, low-cut top
and looked ready for both an evening of dancing and for a
rehearsal. Leah let herself be impressed.

"Some evening, you know? It's
like--alluring?" Sophia asked when she drew near, smiling.

Leah wanted to say that she loved that smile,
and the words were on the tip of her tongue. Sophia, though, was
looking at her oddly, so she licked her lips instead and asked,
"How's
Macbeth
?"

"I don't want to talk about
Mac
,"
Sophia said.

Leah nodded. "I hate my co-star."

"Ward?"

"You know him?"

"I've seen him around."

"Oh." Leah exhaled.

"So, how's your book?" Sophia asked.

Leah warmed at Sophia's remembering. "Oh.
Demetrius, that's the prince, fell off his horse and into a pond,
and that's how he met Brenda, who has no idea he's a prince, she
just thinks he's a stupid rider."

Sophia chuckled. Then silence overtook them.
Leah knew she should go, that it was polite to mingle, that they'd
had their shot at conversation and had been reduced to the romance
novel. But Adam came up to them and, as Sophia laughed at something
he said, her bare arm brushed Leah's, and a charge went through
her, a heat she hadn't felt since the first time she'd worked with
Grace. She swallowed hard, unwilling to give up just yet.

Adam went on his way to talk to the director
of
South Pacific
, and Leah turned to Sophia. "Where are you
from? I don't think we ever got that far."

"Jacksonville," Sophia said. "My mother's
Haitian and never quite got out of Florida. I was in Charlotte,
doing post-graduate work in theater for a year, that's how I met
Elaine."

"I never knew there was so much going on in
North Carolina."

"I've been trying to break into the national
tours. Without much success. But I'm making enough to eat. If I
don't think about the student loans," Sophia said, and looked
resigned. She spoke with a seriousness that belied her age, and
Leah could already imagine her onstage, intense, with presence.

"God, how old are you?" Leah cringed.
"Sorry."

Sophia bumped shoulders with Leah, which made
Leah nearly faint, and said, "Twenty-five."

"And still trying to break in?"

"Trying. You?"

"It's the same in New York. Instead of tours,
just Broadway. And us, 'Off.'" Leah said. She noticed she was
talking in sentences twice as long as Sophia's, and tried to rein
in her chattiness. If Sophia preferred the stillness she herself
exuded, Leah's chances were hopeless.

"Adam seems so talented," Sophia said.

"He really, really is. But it's business. And
hey, aren't you?"

Sophia pirouetted. "Yes, I am."

"We get enough work to keep going."

"So we'll keep going. It's nice to meet
someone from New York. Everyone here is leading a different life
than what I want."

Ward was across the room, schmoozing the
producers, and Leah thought about his dreams. She understood,
finally, homesickness. "To goals, then," she said. She offered up
her glass.

Sophia clinked it with hers. "And to not
having anything to fall back on."

"Well, except family."

"Except family." Sophia took a sip of her
drink.

"I guess nothing makes me want to succeed
more than that," Leah said. She made a face, and finished off her
drink, and Sophia laughed and leaned into her arm.

They stood together, chatting about far-off
places, as people came up to them to introduce themselves.

Later, walking home with Adam, Leah realized
that
Macbeth
opened in two days, and
Poe
tech
rehearsals started tomorrow, and there would be no way she'd have
time with Sophia again. The words to "Some Enchanted Evening"
stayed stuck in her head until she fell asleep.

* * *

"You're brooding," Adam said at
breakfast.

"I'm hung over."

"You had one glass of fruit punch last
night."

"Fine. I have a crush on someone," Leah said.
She wanted to talk about it, to make herself feel less crazy. This
wasn't why she had come to North Carolina. Some people wrote it all
out--like Adam, she supposed--some people brooded. She talked. To
anyone who would listen, and Adam had been stupid enough to make
breakfast.

"On who?"

Leah glared at him. He folded his arms. She
stabbed her fork into the eggs. The metal clanged against the
ceramic plate. He shrugged and said, "I'll figure it out."

"I'm sure you will."

"Want to read the review
of South
Pacific
?" He tapped the folded copy of the
Durham
News-Star
on the table.

"Just tell me the good parts," Leah said.

"The avant garde staging and the sense of
nostalgia in a similarly war-torn era remind us all of the
timelessness of our humanity."

"Jesus," Leah said.

Adam nodded. "Sure as hell hope he likes
Poe
."

"Don't you have the reviews you want written
in your head already?"

"Sure. But those will never, ever see the
light of day."

Leah covered his hand on the table with hers,
and kept eating.

He squeezed her fingers gently and said, "At
least the musical will."

"Does it feel like giving birth?"

"I have no fucking clue."

* * *

The set designer yelled at Leah not to break
anything. She stood gingerly in the center of the stage, surrounded
by fabric. Her jeans and sweatshirt belied the opulence behind her,
but Ward, wearing an undershirt and sweatpants, at least kept her
company. They sang together. They stopped, they started. Leah began
to feel like she knew what she was doing. She could close her eyes
and let the century slip away from her.

Adam, conducting the five piece orchestra
he'd put together, smiled up at her and she hit the harder notes.
Ward's touches were more in the moment than inappropriate and when
she ducked his kisses and he sang wounded songs to her, she felt
her face grow warm.

"That's a wrap," Adam said at seven, and the
crew and the musicians followed them home to sing around the piano
and drink, laugh and eat pizza.

Leah settled onto the porch long after the
sun had set. She listened to the crickets and the frogs, beyond the
singing behind her, and let the heat invade her skin, and inhaled
deeply, letting happiness fill her.

* * *

"Jeremy, come on," Leah said, leaning against
the ticket window.

"Honey, it's sold out. It's Shakespeare.
People dig that shit."

"I'm not just a civilian, you know."

"It's opening night. Next week I can hook you
up, girlfriend."

Leah pressed her face against the glass.

"Here," a voice said behind Jeremy. Leah
opened her eyes. Sophia slid a ticket toward her.

"Thanks," Leah said.

"You want to see me that bad?" Sophia asked.
She had on worn blue jeans and what looked like the same top from
the
South Pacific
party and no makeup. Still, Lady Macbeth
lurked within her, somewhere behind her eyes.

Leah grinned. "You're in this?"

"Just like Eve is kind of in the Bible."

Leah tapped the ticket against her lips."
Thanks, again."

"No problem. My mom couldn't make it."
Sophia's face fell, and she disappeared into the theater. Jeremy
looked after her and sighed. Leah gave him a sympathetic look and
ran off to find her seat.

An older, gaunt woman in several layers of
shawl and overcoat that still managed to show she was too thin was
sitting next to her, and Leah ventured to ask, "Elaine?"

Elaine smiled. She had bright blue eyes that
met Leah's without hesitation. "Do I know you?" she asked.

"No. Sophia comped me the ticket, and I just
thought--"

"She's a good kid," Elaine said.

"I guess we'll finally get to see," Leah
said.

Sophia shook the stage. Her love for Macbeth
was as palpable as her love of power. Her ambition felt like raw
need.

Leah feared her. Her cajoling was cruel, and
her youth only added to her soulless, vulture-like character; her
seduction of an older man, her barrenness.

Leah trembled. Elaine's breathing stopped and
started next to her. A gasp. Then silence, so that Macbeth's words
thudded without obstacle through the auditorium.

When Leah found Sophia at the after party,
all she could think of to say was, "A tale told by an idiot."

Sophia's smile was polite, but not the kind
Leah had won from her before, and behind it there was a tinge of
sadness that seemed to fade when Leah followed up with, "You were
amazing."

"Thanks."

"Really amazing, actually," Leah said, with a
rush of headiness.

Sophia laughed. "All right, all right."

The play had made Leah's skin crawl and she'd
cried, afraid to wipe her cheeks in case the gesture gave her away.
She wanted to seize Sophia and kiss her in gratitude for the
emotion, also to have a place to channel it. She knew the swollen,
alive feeling would ebb, and that she'd have to seek it out again.
Already the scenes replaying in her head had lost their force, like
worn photocopies or videotape.

Leah wondered if this is how people would
feel if they saw her in
Poe
.

Sophia gently took her wrist and said, "I'm
glad you came. I wanted you to see--" She paused.

"What?"

Sophia dropped her hand and shrugged.
"Me."

"The understudies are always good. People
forget that," Leah said.

"Even the understudies."

"Please. The only person with more 'tude
around here is Ward."

"You haven't met our director," Sophia
said.

Leah noticed, as the cast and crew swarmed
about, and the press took pictures and asked for quotes, that
though people came up to Sophia to congratulate her, even to gush,
no one lingered.

When Elaine came, kissing each of Sophia's
cheeks, Sophia became shy. Coquettish. Leah thought she recognized
the chemistry between them and wandered away, swallowing the bile
that rose in her throat. Ward and Adam had already left. She went
to the bar and talked to everyone there, and then when she'd run
out of new faces she went back to say goodnight to Sophia.

Sophia gave Leah a wan smile, looking tired.
"I'm ready to go, too."

"Timing," Leah said, "is everything."

"I read that somewhere," Sophia said as they
strolled toward the doors.

"Where do you live?" Leah asked.

"The Days Inn."

The Days Inn was four blocks in the other
direction from her house, and through the worst part of their bad
neighborhood. Come home with me, Leah wanted to say, thinking it
was too soon for any bold statements. And yet, the opportunity was
here. "Come home with me," Leah said, and as Sophia demurred,
added, "Adam will drive you home from there."

"It's only four blocks. Isn't your place
like, twice as far?"

"Further away from the crack dealers, though.
It's midnight, and it's Friday, and I'm not going to walk you
home."

The fear that flashed through Sophia's
expression made Leah feel cruel. "Please. Live a little. See our
amazing rental."