Screen Play (5 page)

After a long monologue, I stood in character, eyes still closed, waiting for Tabby to throw me my next cue. Silence. I opened my eyes to find Tabby lost in a text message on her cell phone. I cleared my throat.

“Okay, we’ve been at this long enough,” she said. “It’s almost eleven thirty. Someone is supposed to bring lunch here so we don’t have to leave. Since she’s not here, I suggest we take a break while I go see what the problem is.”

Tabby slid off her perch on the wooden bar stool, dropped her master script to the floor, and rounded the corner out of sight.

I let the weight of concentration fall off my shoulders like a pack from a mule and wandered off the improvised stage, taking a dancer’s towel from a folded stack near the doorway to dab my face and forehead. How long had it been since I’d worked so hard and sweated like this? On the wall opposite the mirrors, I took a sip from an old turn-wheel drinking fountain like I hadn’t seen since grade school. I grasped the star-shaped gear, turned it away from me, and bent down to taste the cool water arcing from its spigot.

From my position at the drinking fountain, I could hear Tabby talking on her cell phone around the corner.

“I walked her through the script and we’re working on blocking … like I said, not great. I mean, I respect your decision, Ben, but we both know we could have called in Tira Bancroft, Melanie Catsburn, Elizabeth Benton—any one of them could have nailed this, and they’re all local. What? I guess, but Ben, I’m basically teaching a rudimentary acting class today. Harper’s so far behind the rest of the cast she isn’t … yes, she knows her lines, but … yes, she’s hitting the blocking, but …”

Tabby’s voice rose and fell like waves in a sea of churning drama. It was clear that Tabby didn’t care if I overheard her.

“Whatever you say, Ben. I was a professional when I woke up this morning, and I’ll … right, if you want her to work, I’ll make Harper work.”

It was the last I heard of their conversation. Tabby’s heavy footsteps descended the stairwell to the street below, where I heard the outside metal door hit the wall with a smack.

I took liberty with the break, lying down on the rug to catch my breath. I slowed my breathing and tried to relax every aching muscle in my body. God had showed Himself again, protecting me from Tabby’s sniper fire. I thanked Him, like I’d done the night before, for bringing me to New York. And for sending Bella to run into me at the used bookstore on Michigan Avenue in Chicago when my life was a mess.

Bella had invited me to the stone church on LaSalle Street. She’d held my hands when they trembled, sat with me on the back row in the church. Listened quietly while I cried, and prayed with me when I told her how hard life was, how hopeless I felt. She shared her faith with me, told me she didn’t believe everything was hopeless, and asked if I believed Jesus had risen from the dead, and “was anything impossible for God?”

Two months before Christmas I’d been baptized. Bella flew home to North Dakota before Christmas break, and Ben called to invite me to New York just days after Christmas. Just like that, things had fallen into place after a year of telephones that wouldn’t ring. I felt like a blind trapeze artist, somehow catching the bar with chalky hands at the peak of its swing. I had no clue how the trick was done, only that I wasn’t the one doing it.

Ten minutes later, Tabby returned with sandwiches. I sat up on the rug, then stood to my feet and made my way toward her in the doorway.

“That took a few minutes,” she said. “I had to sharpen my teeth in someone’s hide.”

Tabby dropped a brown deli sack on top of the upright piano. I heard one of the low notes vibrate inside the wooden shell.

“Is something wrong?” I asked.

Tabby snorted. “In my job, there’s always something wrong. I explicitly told her to bring the sandwiches to the studio,
not the theater
. So, what does she do? She takes the sandwiches to the theater. Unbelievable.”

“I overheard your conversation with Ben,” I said, because I couldn’t pretend I hadn’t.

She darted her eyes toward me.

“So,” she remarked. “Ben wants you as Helen’s backup, that’s the way it goes.”

Tabby wadded up her sandwich bag into a tight ball. She tossed it at the small trash basket near the door, and her shot hit the rim and ricocheted out the studio door.

Thoughts of Bella’s care for me were still fresh on my mind, as was a trace of regret for not apologizing to Tabby the day before. I decided to extend an olive branch, hoping she wouldn’t snap it off with her teeth.

“Tabby, I was surprised when I got Ben’s phone call too,” I said. “But I think things happen for a reason. I appreciate the time you’ve devoted these last two days, and I hope as the show moves forward, you and I can learn to get along.”

She recoiled, flashing a look that was something between condescension and total dismissal.

“Harper, you and I are
not
going to be friends. It’s my job to make sure you can take Helen’s place for a night in the unlikely event we have to send you out onstage. But thankfully, it’s not in my job description to be your buddy because I don’t have the time or the interest.”

She picked up her cell phone, eyes scanning up and down the screen like she was reading another text message. I wanted to say something kind and brilliant, like Bella could. I wanted us to be friends, not adversaries, but my mind was a blank.

“Let’s eat,” Tabby said. “I want to wrap up as quickly as possible this afternoon. I have to get back to the theater. It’s the first day of dress rehearsal, and I can think of a hundred other things I’d rather be doing.”

By two o’clock on New Year’s Day, the show’s costume designer, Phyllis Holcromb, had fitted all eleven cast members into their costumes with the help of her assistant, Mira.

My exhaustive morning rehearsal with Tabby over, I milled about backstage marveling at the transformation of the cast wearing their costumes. Harriet Greene pointed back with her thumb as she exited the fitting room.

“Harper, I think Phyllis is looking for you. She has costumes for you to try on.”

Harriet was wearing her landlord’s costume, a man’s tan slacks and vest over a white business shirt. Though the role was originally written for a man, Ben recast the landlord, Mr. Hedges, with a rotund African-American woman, Ms. Hedges. I’d seen Harriet at rehearsal the day before, joking around with some of the other actors.

“Thanks,” I said, entering the wardrobe room.

“There you are,” Phyllis said, as if she’d been looking for me all morning. She spoke with two pins pressed together in her mouth, hemming a costume at a sewing machine. She took the pins out. “Your costumes are over there, Harper. Ben gave me your sizes and sent me shopping, but you’ll have to try everything on. You’re the last I have today.”

Phyllis pointed to a rolling wardrobe rack half filled with costume changes. An elegant black evening dress caught my eye, hung on the rack’s end with a string of gaudy large pearls looped over the hanger.

“Size six, right?”

“I’m a size four,” I told her.

Phyllis stopped the sewing machine.

“Shoes, dear. Size six.”

She pointed to four cardboard shoeboxes sitting on the bottom rack below my wardrobe. I crouched down and shimmied the lid off the box on top. Inside, a hot pair of black designer heels rested in a bundle of thin white packing paper.

“These shoes are amazing,” I said. I felt the soft Italian leather against my fingertips, remembering the life I’d once lived.

I stood up to thumb through my costumes. A vintage 1950s black cocktail dress, the evening gown, black wet-leather pants like a rock star might wear, a frilly chemise as red as bloody roses. Phyllis joined me to admire the eccentric collection.

“Well, what do you think?” Phyllis asked.

“They’re beautiful,” I said, holding up the short cocktail skirt against me, admiring it in the large oval of mirror on a stand. Phyllis looked pleased with her work.

“I found that at Gargoyle, a vintage clothing store off Broadway. Ben called me and specifically asked for a drastically different look for you than he wanted for Helen.”

“What do you mean?”

“He said he wanted Helen’s Audrey Bradford to look like she rarely goes out, and your Audrey Bradford to look like she never stays in.”

Phyllis pulled the plastic cover off the dress for me in one quick motion. “You’ll look and feel gorgeous in this gown, Harper. It’s Versace.”

“Oh my. It’s too bad I’ll never wear it.”

“Well”—Phyllis tilted her head sympathetically—“it’s a funny last-minute detail, but Ben gets these ideas, and he calls me at odd hours from the back of taxi cabs or wherever he might be. I just jot down his impressions for costumes and hit the boutiques.”

I ducked behind the changing screen and emerged minutes later in the long black Versace gown. Even in bare feet it was gorgeous, and powerful. I felt like I was someone else watching me in the mirror. Tabby stopped dead when she entered the fitting room and saw me.

“Do you like it?” I asked Tabby.

She hesitated, poker-faced. “It looks fine,” she finally said. “When you’re finished, see Laura in makeup. She’ll need to try out some looks on you. Wear the dress so she can see what you’ll be wearing. Oh, and make sure nothing gets on it.”

Tabby disappeared around the corner before she’d finished her sentence, off to corral other actors for the start of dress rehearsal, I presumed. I left the shoes in their box, making my way down the long backstage hall toward makeup. Helen appeared from her dressing room just as I passed by her door and halted when she saw me.

“What is
that
they’ve got you wearing?” she said in a voice every bit as disapproving as Audrey Bradford herself.

“It’s one of my costumes,” I said. “I was just trying it on …”

Helen frowned at the dress, her eyes darting to mine, then back down to the dress. She turned without speaking, then snapped down the narrow hallway, her patent leather flats striking the floor like she was giving it a spanking.

“Dinner?” Avril offered.

“Yes, please.”

“You look tired,” she said, sitting next to me in the back row of the Carney following the first dress rehearsal. The houselights had been lowered like a Christmas candlelight service, and the effect was calming. Avril crossed one leg over the other. She’d cast off her Roxy Dupree costume and come home to her Avril clothes, always more California than New York.

Maybe it was the lighting, but it suddenly struck me just what a star she was becoming. Watching Avril bring Roxy Dupree to life on the Carney stage, seeing her languid and beautiful now after rehearsal, so easy with this vagabond life, it felt like catching a glimpse of someone just before the inevitable moment arrives when stardom catapults them into the stratosphere. Soon Avril would be one of those celebrities who dons dark sunglasses to dodge paparazzi, drives incognito behind the tinted windows of her Escalade, and walks Hollywood’s red carpet on Oscar night with cameras flashing. Hollywood’s fast lane would one day whisk her away.

Harriet and another actor, Melissa Ginch, approached us, taking silent steps up the long aisle toward the exit.

“Time to check out the new girl,” Harriet said in jest. She and Melissa drew closer.

“I hope Tabby didn’t wear you out today. Molly couldn’t get out of here fast enough.”