Chapter 16
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The dress rehearsal was the longest night Ada had spent in a building in two years.
It started at five with Marin Pell’s full production crew on the rink floor laying down a temporary platform over the ice — a panel system designed to take two hundred pairs of black-tie shoes for three hours without buckling — and ended, in theory, at ten.
By ten Ada had been on her feet in heels for three hours of walk-through, eaten a bowl of cold pasta backstage in the dressing room, run a second walk-through with two different lighting cues, and stood patiently while a young man with a clipboard explained the run-of-show to her in such precise minute-by-minute detail that she had a small, irrational urge to ask him whether he had ever, in his life, been to a small-town gala.
It was, the young man had said apologetically, Tidemark’s standard run-of-show document.
It was, Ada had not said, enormously not Mercer Bay.
By nine, the production crew had thinned out.
Marin Pell had left at eight with a hand on Ada’s shoulder and a quiet good work.
Pete had left at eight-thirty in the kind of glassy euphoria of a man who had not had a real meal in two weeks.
Cass the photographer was packing up her gear by the lobby.
Joanna had gone home to her own kitchen for the first time in three days.
Most of the Pilots had filed through earlier in the evening for a quick walk-through of their gala entrance and had since dispersed back to their own lives.
By nine-fifteen, the rink was nearly empty.
Wes had been there all night.
He had been there in his work jeans and a navy crew sweater, with his coat over a folding chair in the corner.
He had not been needed for any walk-through in particular; he had been needed only twice — once for a posed entrance with Ada, and once for a Tidemark-mandated check-in pose in front of the gala banner — and he had handled both with the easy professional courtesy he had developed over four weeks.
Then he had spent the rest of the night, with no one’s instruction, helping the production crew.
He had carried two of the platform panels.
He had moved three folding tables. He had fixed a microphone cable that had developed a short.
He had, at one point, gone out to the parking lot in his coat to help a Tidemark intern jump a dead truck battery.
By nine-twenty, he was on a ladder on the lobby side of the rink, tightening a bolt on the gala banner that one of the crew had hung crooked.
Ada was in the mezzanine.
She had gone up to the mezzanine to escape, briefly, the brightness of the rink floor.
The mezzanine was the long, narrow upper level of the Barn — a balcony that ran around three sides of the rink, with old wooden bench seats bolted into a low concrete wall.
The mezzanine was not heated in the same way the rink floor was.
It was darker. It smelled like cold concrete and dust. At nine-twenty on a Thursday night it was empty.
The corner she chose was the corner farthest from the rink floor, on the side that overlooked the harbor through a small high window.
From this corner, the rink floor below looked like a stage someone had been building for years and had not, yet, decided to use.
She sat down on the bench.
She took her heels off and set them on the concrete next to her.
She did not, for a long minute, do anything.
She had asked Wes, on Thursday morning, after the back booth at the Penalty Box, what is the rule for tonight.
Are we performing for cameras during the rehearsal.
He had thought for a beat and said Cass will be there for one or two shots.
The rest is rehearsal. We do not perform when the cameras are not on. We act like people. She had agreed.
They had, all night, acted like people.
They had also held hands, twice, in front of Cass, for the check-in pose and the entrance.
Both times had been brief. Both times had been the easy, almost-laughing version of hand-holding that they had been doing for weeks.
Both times she had been very aware, for the few seconds her hand had been in his, that her body had stopped, six weeks ago, being able to be casual about it.
She heard, very faintly, the lobby door close downstairs. A short pause. Footsteps on the long concrete stair up to the mezzanine.
“Halloran,” Wes said.
“Berglund.”
He came around the corner into the dark mezzanine in his navy sweater. He had not, yet, put his coat back on. He had a paper cup of something hot in his off hand. He held it out to her.
“Tea,” he said. “From the staff kitchenette. Bridget went home at eight. I made it myself.”
“Wes.”
“Yes.”
“I am going to sit on this bench in my stocking feet and drink this tea and not talk for a minute.”
“Yes.”
He sat down next to her on the bench, three feet over. He set his coat on the bench between them. He did not, for a beat, drink anything. He had been working all night and his hands had a faint film of dust on them from the gala banner.
She sipped the tea.
It was hot. It was — it was perfectly, infuriatingly, exactly the kind of tea she would have made herself.
She drank it slowly.
The rink below was lit at half. The platform was down. The folding tables were in place. The banner was straight, now, thanks to Wes. A long string of small white lights that someone had hung along the boards was on, and the lights gave the whole place the look of a long-empty theater between acts.
For a long minute neither of them spoke.
Then Wes said, very quietly, “You all right.”
“I am tired.”
“Yes.”
“I am — I am not — I am not the room face right now.”
“No.”
“I am — I have been doing the room face for four weeks. It is — Wes, the room face is — the room face is real work.”
“I know.”
“You — you know.”
“I know because Theo told me on Monday.”
“What.”
“Theo,” he said. “Theo cornered me in the dressing room on Monday after practice. He told me you spent ten years giving rooms what the rooms needed and that the rooms have always cost you. He used the word break. I corrected him to pay. It got — Halloran, it got less friendly than that. He told me I had known you six weeks. I told him he keeps talking like he still owns the old version of you. He left without the ending he had planned, and I spent the rest of the night deciding how much of what I said was for you and how much was for me. Some of it was for me. I am telling you anyway, because I said the words Ada pays, and I would like you to know that the word in my head about the cost of these rooms is pays, not breaks. On the record. Before tonight.”
She looked at him.
She did not, for a long beat, answer.
She picked up her heels with her free hand and set them, by the strap, in her lap.
“Wes.”
“Yes.”
“That is — that is one of the kindest things any person has ever said about me in any room I have ever been in.”
“Halloran.”
“It is.”
“I am sorry Theo —”
“I am not sorry. I am — I am glad he did it. I am glad he did it with you. I am — I am glad you said Ada pays. Pays is — pays is right. I have been paying for rooms my whole adult life. No one has said the word pays in front of me. They have all — Mom included — used the word breaks. Breaks. The word breaks is the word a person uses when they want to take the cost away from you by making it about your fragility. Pays — pays is the word a person uses when they understand that the cost is a thing you have been choosing to pay. I — I have been paying. I will keep paying. I would like, occasionally, for a person in a room to see that I am paying and not call it breaking. You — you saw it. You used the word. I am — I am — thank you, Wes.”
He did not, for a beat, answer.
He looked at his hand on the bench.
He had set the dusty hand on the bench between them, palm down, on top of his coat. The hand was still.
Ada looked at the hand.
She looked at it for a beat.
She set the heels on the floor. She set her tea on the bench on her side. She turned, slightly, to face him. He turned, slightly, to face her.
She did not, in this moment, perform the slow careful pause that she would have performed at the wharf in Portland for Cass.
She did not, in this moment, do the slow lean-in that she would have done at the donor reception in front of Howard.
She did not, in this moment, smile the small smile she had used at center ice on Family Skate Night.
She did the thing she had been not doing.
She reached.
She put her hand on his hand on the bench. She did not take it. She did not lift it. She put her hand over his, flat, the way she had not, in two years, put her hand on any person’s hand.
He went very still.
He did not pull away.
He did not turn his hand over.
He kept his hand on the bench, palm down, under hers.
He waited.
She looked at him.
“Wes,” she said quietly.
“Yes.”
“I would like to kiss you.”
He did not — for one full, perfect, terrible beat — do anything.
Then he said, very low, “Ada. I would like — I would like to know if you are sure.”
“I am sure.”
“Are you sure because the rink is empty and we have been in a building all night and we are tired and the lights look like a theater between acts and there is — there is — there is a thing in the air that this building is making and we are catching it because the rink is doing it to us, or are you sure because —”
“Wes.”
“Yes.”
“I am sure,” she said, “because for three weeks I have been thinking about you when I am not in this building. Because I have walked into the equipment closet at four in the afternoon to ask you questions I did not have. The heater dial on the way back from Portland. The lobby door on Saturdays. I am sure because I want to, and I have spent two years not letting myself want anything I had to reach for. This one is mine. Wes. I am sure.”
He breathed.
She had not realized he had not been breathing.