Chapter 20
Six People
It was our last week in the rehearsal space before we moved into the theatre, so the set designer and his team brought us down to get an early look. I walked beside Ashlee as we marched into the theatre so we could see the stage as the audience would.
“You seem happy,” she said with a laugh.
“How?” I asked. “I’m just walking.”
“No, you’re definitely chipper,” Kathleen said from behind us as we continued up the aisle.
“How’s your something?” Ashlee asked, as Rebecca and Kevin brushed by us, and I reminded myself to keep breathing.
“It looks good,” Michael said, surveying the stage and nodding, somehow simultaneously shooting us a look.
“It does,” I rushed to agree. The stage gave the appearance of being filled within almost every inch of its life with the apartment set.
The crushing feeling Casey battled as her family arrived would be literal.
The set was also beautiful, in a picked-lots-of-pieces-of-furniture-off-of-curbs way, but like that person knew what they were doing.
Definitely not Andy and me with our terrible futons.
I wondered about Rebecca’s place, too small not to put your foot in a cake, too impossible not to imagine it beautiful anyway.
The set was a masterfully designed space, though. As we walked closer, I could see how much room there actually was for movement, for us. Within weeks we’d be up here every night in front of an audience, and I genuinely still reeled at the thought of it.
The designer led us backstage and through the wings, until the company plus Rebecca and Kevin were onstage with him. The houselights were on so it didn’t feel like performing, exactly, but to stand on a theatre stage for the first time in so long, well, it didn’t feel like nothing.
When we got back to the rehearsal space, we jumped right into the top of the show. I imagined myself out on that stage, my body boxed in by that beautiful set, and I felt my words meet the air like it was the first time.
“Good,” Rebecca said, nodding. “Really good, Gardner.”
The rest of the company joined the scene, and their energy found mine.
The thing about Michael Madden was that while he was one of the most irritating people I’d worked with, he was annoyingly one of the most talented.
And the more comfortable I was around him, the more I looked forward to our interplay.
I actually hadn’t had the kind of relationship with either of my parents where I could get into their faces, but Casey and John got into it.
“Let’s take a beat,” Rebecca said, when we reached the end of the scene.
I was literally shaking, all the way down to my feet, and I walked it off to the edge of the room and back, the way I felt like men were always given free range to roam while I stood in place unless I was explicitly told otherwise.
“How’d that feel?” she asked us, turning to make eye contact with every member of the cast. Rebecca and I held each other’s gazes so neutrally, so in line with everyone else, no one would guess we’d started the day together in my bed.
“Because it looked good. I’m interested to see if we go in with this energy how the rest of the show looks. So let’s find out.”
At lunch, I did my best to nonchalantly eat my quinoa bowl, but Kathleen and Ashlee were onto me.
“How’s your thing?” I asked Ashlee, who laughed and shook her head.
“How’s yours?”
I held my hands out to my sides. I felt like the shrugging woman emoji.
“No,” Ashlee said again, laughing. “You don’t get to shrug like that after this morning. I was thinking, what’s gotten into Tess, then I thought—”
Kathleen cackled. “Yes, we can imagine exactly what’s gotten into Tess.”
I knew that they would never guess that it had been a vibrator shaped vaguely like a People’s Choice Award.
Michael and Henry walked in with sandwiches and sat down at our table, and I hoped deeply that the current course of conversation would abruptly change.
“Good day today,” Henry said, nodding as he picked out pieces of arugula from his roast beef sandwich. “Still feel like Rebecca never says anything to me, though.”
“Yeah, maybe because you’re good and she doesn’t have to,” I said, aloud instead of in my head like usual. Everyone else laughed though.
“Sometimes I feel like we’re their victims,” Henry said. “We have to go out and try all these things, no idea what they’re after, while the whole team’s just watching us. It almost embarrasses me.”
“Jesus, just ask her then,” Kathleen said. “She’s not your mom, you know. Her job’s not to make you feel comforted.”
“I hate asking questions,” Ashlee said, with a shrug. “But I know I always get better when I do. And Rebecca’s so nice about it.”
I felt like I would have said something similar if I hadn’t spent the night before—as well as the early morning—having sex with Rebecca, but the idea of it panicked me so much that I couldn’t think of anything to say.
Also, despite it all, I understood Henry, even if I agreed with Kathleen and Ashlee.
Being an actor was embarrassing sometimes. Maybe more than sometimes.
“You looked good in there today,” Michael said, and I realized he was talking to me. “Nice to see you actually getting to use your acting abilities here.”
I knew that I was fitting into a conversation he was clearly already in the midst of about me but not actually with me.
Kathleen and Ashlee could tease me all they wanted to; despite Henry’s flailing, I was still on a bit of a high from the day’s rehearsal so far.
I didn’t want to hear whatever else was lurking in Michael’s tone. “Thanks.”
“A shame you normally waste it on those comic book movies,” he continued. “When Scorsese said—”
“You know what, Michael, I don’t really care what Scorsese said.”
The entire company plus Kevin, who’d just walked into the room, stared at me.
“I’m sorry, but saying that all comic book movies are garbage is as ridiculous to me as the people who used to write off television as a storytelling medium,” I said.
“Yes, obviously, I know that not all of them are good. Some of those movies are soulless. But that wasn’t my experience.
Everyone involved cared, a lot. We weren’t phoning it in. ”
“OK,” Michael said with a sigh.
“No, don’t OK,” I said. “It’s so dismissive.
You don’t have to like them, but these movies matter to people.
I know it sounds like a lot, but these movies save people’s lives.
I meet or hear from girls all the time who see themselves in Princess Platinum, because girls still need to see more strength represented onscreen. So just stop.”
Oh my god, what was happening to me?
I stood up and walked out of the room, bumped right into Rebecca, of course.
“Hey,” she said, smiling like we were the only two people in the world, because we were the only two people in the corridor. “Actually—are you OK?”
I shrugged again like an emoji, which made her laugh. I realized that Ashlee had followed me out and was watching me with huge concerned eyes, and somehow I had never felt so old—really saying something for a Hollywood actress in her mid-thirties.
“Tess is a total badass,” Ashlee said, smiling. “But I still wanted to make sure she was OK.”
Rebecca nodded. “Of course.”
“I need to take a walk,” I said. “But it’s downtown LA in the middle of the day, so I can’t.”
“You could borrow my sunglasses and I can walk with you,” Ashlee offered.
“That’s a great idea,” Rebecca said. “Also, I assume my sunglasses are larger, so let me offer those instead.”
It wasn’t until I was outside in the sunshine next to Ashlee that I realized Rebecca had given me giant prescription sunglasses—and that her vision was much worse than mine. Though they did smell like her, so they were as comforting as they were horrible.
“I didn’t want to come off like a fangirl when I met you,” Ashlee said, “but I feel exactly that way about Princess Platinum. I’d never read the comic books, but I remember that I was in high school when I saw the first Vindicators trailer, and when you showed up all blonde and pretty—sorry, is it gross to self-identify as blonde and pretty?
—and then blew the shit out of that villain’s lair, oh my god.
Maybe I shouldn’t have needed a superhero movie to make me feel like I could be a badass, but I did, and—anyway.
I’m glad you said it. I said it too, just now, after you left. ”
I nudged her gently as we walked. “Thank you. I really appreciate that.”
“I was thinking about how all of us let men put us in our places or whatever sometimes,” she said. “Like it’s easier to just let them and complain about it later. I’m honestly still working on it, but seeing you … You still make me feel like I could be a badass, and I’m really grateful for that.”
I glanced at her, though she was a blurry wave through the glasses, and I cracked up. “Ashlee, thank you, really, so much, but I have to go inside. If I keep walking in these sunglasses I’m going to fall over and throw up.”
“Can we take you out for a drink tonight?” Ashlee asked as we headed back to the theatre. “Me and Kathleen, that is. Not the guys. You said chill places are OK?”
“Actually,” I said, thinking about my conversation with Rebecca, “do you want to come over? I have wine and leftover zucchini lasagna, if that’s appealing.”
Inside Ashlee marched me into Rebecca, who was scrolling on her phone. Sometimes I felt like Rebecca was always on her phone. “You gave her prescription sunglasses.”
“Oh,” Rebecca said in a surprised tone, before bursting into laughter. “I’m so sorry, Gardner. Ashlee, would you mind giving me a moment with her?”
“Of course,” Ashlee said. “Tess, I’ll confirm with Kathleen.”
We waited until Ashlee was out of the room. It was the first time we’d been alone at the theatre since we—well, since we started doing whatever we were doing.
“You’re OK?” she asked me.