Chapter 4 #2
“I have,” he said, popping open his salad container as he sat.
“Most recently I stage-managed her revival of The Skin of Our Teeth last year. I get this frantic call from her late last week, am I willing to drop everything for a few months and follow her to LA for this last-minute gig. I didn’t even check with my boyfriend, I said yes on the spot. ”
“You must love working with her,” Kathleen said with an understanding nod.
“I love working with her,” he said, nodding emphatically. “She’s such an advocate, too. Geoffrey Gordan’s stage manager bailed when he did, but before they could hire anyone else Rebecca told them I was a nonnegotiable. I’m not even sure my boyfriend thinks of me as a nonnegotiable.”
“Well, definitely not now that you left town without telling him,” Kathleen said, and we all laughed. Still, I wondered if this extremely sweet guy knew that I was a dead woman walking, set for execution in less than an hour.
I hit the restroom a few minutes before my appointment and stared into the mirror.
Without any press responsibilities today, I let my wavy hair do its own thing, and I had enough makeup on to look polished but not so much I didn’t look as natural as possible.
I’d picked out my own clothes, a white short-sleeved sweater that fit like a cozy T-shirt, with jeans and a pair of flats.
Not quite my at-home anonymous self, but somewhere in-between her and Professional Actress Tess Gardner.
How would Rebecca see me? I’d never had less of an idea of something in my life.
She was sitting in her already-usual spot at the table when Kevin guided me in, flipping through the script and making more notes. Before I could wonder if she realized I was there, she looked up and smiled.
“Tess Gardner,” she said, like I was a colleague she hadn’t seen in a while and certainly not someone I’d once fucked against a tree behind a costume shop. “God, it’s been a while, huh. Thanks for coming in.”
“Hi,” I said, feeling shy and then like an idiot because shy couldn’t possibly be the appropriate emotion in this situation. It was like I literally had no idea who I was anymore. Since … yesterday.
“I thought it’d be great to have a chat today before we get any further into rehearsals,” Rebecca said, gesturing to the chair across from her.
I decided it as I sat, even if I was only fueling the justification for what she was about to do. “Rebecca, I’m so sorry.”
She tipped her head up like I’d said something confusing.
“I’m so sorry,” I repeated. “I’ve never forgiven myself for how I treated you. If I’d known you’d be the director, I wouldn’t have taken this role—I can’t imagine how you felt when they offered you the job and you heard my name.”
“Oh,” Rebecca said with a chuckle. “Tess, it’s been a long time. All of that was … just one of many items on the laundry list of dyke drama I got up to in my twenties.”
I fluffed my hair as if it were an unconscious movement and not a strategy to hide the fact that it felt like the wind had been knocked out of me.
I’d imagined this moment so many times. While I’d hated knowing that I’d been the villain in the scenario, wasn’t being a villain preferable than being nothing?
“And if you’re worried I’m going to say anything,” Rebecca continued, “I have no interest in rehashing the past or outing you. We’re all grownups here.”
“Of course,” I said, though I actually had worried about it before, in lower moments I wasn’t proud of. My fame surging upward, tipped toward the precipice. My ex-girlfriend letting the world know that not only had I been with her but I was also a monster. Princess Platinum would have never.
“Congrats on everything,” she said in a convincingly sincere tone. I had to accept that it was likely sincere. “It’s very well-deserved.”
“You too,” I said, matching her sincerity level, even if her success had thrown me for a loop, made her impossible to pretend had never existed, filled me up with an unwarrantable pride for knowing so long ago how incredible she was.
“Thank you.” Her voice was still sincere, but there was also a throwaway vibe about it, as if she didn’t need my congratulations. And why would she?
“So I wanted to spend some time chatting with you about the show,” Rebecca said, nodding to the marked-up script in front of her. “You’ve obviously spent some time with the script so far, so I’d love to hear what you think about Casey and her journey.”
“Oh,” I said, recalculating to let my media training kick back in.
I wasn’t sure what I’d expected from this session—except my imminent dismissal—but it hadn’t been formal meeting vibes.
Not that I had any right to ask about her life or tell her anything about mine.
I was fortunate she wasn’t giving me that chance.
“First of all, I should say that I think it’s a beautiful script, and I’m so thrilled for the opportunity. ”
“What a coincidence,” Rebecca said with a grin. “I feel the same way.”
“There are a lot of homecoming shows,” I said, carefully. Was she waiting for me to say something inane that she could use in her case against me? “When I heard the title, I expected something in the vein of …”
I knew what I wanted to say, but I didn’t know Rebecca’s current tastes and alliances, so I let myself fade off and I hoped we could leave it there. Could I be remembering Kevin accurately that Rebecca had asked for an entire half hour with me? Couldn’t she just fire me and get it over with?
“I’m not recording this to play back later for the Broadway community, if that’s what you’re thinking,” she said with a laugh.
I remembered with a jolt how much we’d laughed together, at first as we became fast friends, and later on when she felt like the answer to the question I hadn’t even known to ask.
“There are a thousand shows set around a family’s dinner table.
And some of them are very good. But I’m hardly eager to stage one of them, and I loved how right away with Stephanie’s script you feel it’s going somewhere else, coming home somewhere new.
That’s exciting to me as a theatre lover, much less a director. ”
I nodded emphatically. “As someone who loves the big city she moved to—”
Oh my god, no matter how much I no longer mattered to Rebecca, it couldn’t be good form to casually throw around my long-ago move to LA when it had been such a huge part of how I’d failed her.
“Ah, preach” is all Rebecca said, though. “No more the-American-beauty-of-the-small-town for me—unless someone gives me an Our Town of course, no jinxing, et cetera. So tell me how you feel about Casey.”
“I like that she’s a person.” I cringed. “Oh my god, sorry, I sound stupid.”
“No, say more about that.” Rebecca leaned in toward me, her elbows on the table.
A little voice inside of me screeched You’re such a professional!
because I still couldn’t get over this, the Rebecca Frisch who wasn’t a fantasy or a concoction but an experienced director sitting across from me and fully focused on the work while I was trying not to fall apart.
“How do you mean that she’s a person?” Rebecca asked, her gaze fixed on me. “Except, of course, obviously, that she is one.”
“I told you I knew I sounded like an idiot—”
“No,” she said quickly, “I mean that you obviously intend something beyond the fact that she’s literally a person. So tell me more about that.”
I lifted my water bottle out of my bag and took a few sips, wondered why we were wasting time on character details when Rebecca was going to fire me.
Rebecca was going to fire me, wasn’t she?
“She’s deeply concerned about her career.
And she has relationships, clearly, but they don’t define her.
Her family’s there, that’s the point, but it’s her story.
She isn’t the wife, the daughter, the sister, just identified by who she is to other people. I like that a lot.”
“Yeah, I like it a lot too,” Rebecca said, nodding.
It would have been far less annoying if she weren’t so attractive, if she didn’t know how to make eye contact across a large table seem intimate, if she wasn’t listening like what I said mattered to this degree.
“What kind of journey do you feel like she’s on? ”
“Well,” I said, not completely sure if she wanted an answer about the story or something bigger and more symbolic or something more literal-minded about my performance, and so I did my best to leave it there again, despite that it hadn’t worked the last time.
“There aren’t any wrong answers, you know,” Rebecca said gently.
“That can’t actually be true,” I said. “We’re not the cast you chose.”
“Ah,” Rebecca said, and maybe I was imagining it but I could have sworn there was a flicker of something like recognition behind her eyes.
At one point, after all, I’d known her better than I’d known anyone.
“I see. Well, how about I share some of my immediate thoughts upon reading the script, and you can let me know where we line up and where we diverge. Sound good?”
I knew that it still could have been an expertly plotted trap, Tess Gardner said the wrong thing and Rebecca Frisch finally got to take her revenge by firing her, but I nodded anyway.