Epilogue （Eight Months Later）
Epilogue
(Eight Months Later)
New York City
B eyond the blinding glare of the footlights, the downpour of applause is deafening. I can see nothing of the audience, but the cacophony of noise tells me all I need to know. Tears of joy sting my eyes; I beam out at the dark mass on the far side of the white-hot blaze, so exhilarated I feel I might burst. The twenty-two of us onstage raise our clasped hands and bow once more as a company, then take a step back as the red velvet curtain drops.
I can still hear the packed house cheering as we collapse into a laughing, breathless heap of opening-night congratulations. April is early for a production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream ––especially in light of the fact that it snowed last week––but our run will take us all the way through September, and now that we’ve opened I can almost feel the warm rays of longer days warming my skin once more.
Would Summer have been in that audience tonight if she’d never met John? Or was our friendship doomed from the moment Eric and I laid eyes on each other? Would she be in prison awaiting trial for murder if Three had never raped her? I think a lot about the tipping point, about what drove her to become who she is and me to become who I am, but the web of events and consequences is so complex that when I pull one string, the whole thing unravels.
I see her sometimes––partially hidden behind a rack of clothes at a hip store in Soho; huddled beneath a Burberry umbrella and scuttling up Fifth Avenue in the rain; obscured by a large menu at lunch downtown with Wendy. It’s not her, of course; it couldn’t be. It was Wendy, though. She and the other girls all flipped like pancakes the minute Summer went down, avoiding jailtime. Only Rhonda claimed not to have seen anything––and no one could prove otherwise, so she remained free, as well.
It was just before Christmas when Wendy approached my table at Balthazar, all smiles. I was alone, waiting for Hunter and Michael to arrive for lunch, and she was with a small pack of pretties I didn’t recognize, in town to do some shopping while her new boyfriend attended meetings, she said. She prattled on about him like he was important, but I didn’t know or care who he was––I hadn’t seen her since Italy and couldn’t get my mind around the fact that she was acting like nothing had happened between us. “I’m here through the weekend,” she said casually. “We should grab dinner or something.”
I evaluated her, wondering if perhaps a screw had come loose in her brain, but she looked as perfectly put together as she always had. Maybe before our fateful trip I would have been nice, would have agreed and then begged off with an excuse. But I have more self-esteem and fewer fucks to give these days.
“No thanks,” I said. “I’m good.” She blinked at me like perhaps she’d misunderstood, but she hadn’t. “We’re not friends, Wendy,” I said, more coolly than I felt inside. “I don’t ever need to see you again.”
It was at that moment that Hunter showed up, immediately took stock of the situation, and escorted her from the restaurant with a firm hand.
But Summer and Wendy have taken enough of my time already; I don’t want to think about them tonight.
I high-five everyone I pass backstage as I thread my way through the dark maze of hulking set pieces and neatly stacked props, down the narrow stairwell into the basement retrofitted with dressing rooms. Our theater is grand but very old, and space is a hot commodity, so I’m fortunate to have one of the small single dressing rooms. Not that I would have minded sharing, but privacy does have its perks.
Like now, when I push open the door with my name on it to find Eric seated in my director’s chair before the lighted mirror, a giant bouquet of red and white Osiria roses in his lap. He’s wearing a fitted black suit with a black button-down, the collar unbuttoned, and his hair has grown out just long enough to fall into his eyes, which are now focused on me with admiration. He rises and presents the flowers, never shifting his magnetic gaze from mine.
“You were magnificent,” he says.
“Thank you.” I inhale the intoxicating scent of the roses, suddenly transported back to the tiny elevator in his building in LA, the day I ran into him at the flower market in the rain. The day he kissed me for the first time. “Remember the afternoon we bumped into each other at the flower market?” I ask.
He nods. “In detail.”
I close the door to the dressing room, dampening the sound of someone singing in the hallway beyond, and slide the lock into place. “What do you remember?”
“I remember that thin green dress clinging to your wet skin,” he says, untying the strings of my front-laced corset. “You were cold.”
I laugh, popping open the first of the snaps that holds my corset together. “The strings are decorative. They won’t get you anywhere. What else do you remember?”
“I remember your fuchsia underwear. I thought about that fuchsia underwear a lot.”
“I’m afraid the underwear I’m wearing now isn’t so exciting,” I tease, opening my corset to reveal the flesh-tone leotard I wear beneath to facilitate changing in the wings.
“Doesn’t matter.” He brushes a strap off my shoulder. “You’d be beautiful in a burlap sack.”
I run my hands over his crisp shirt. “You dressed up for me.”
“I did.”
I trace his collarbone with my lips. “I like it.”
“If I knew it had this effect, I’d do it more often.” He bends his head toward mine, and I tilt my mouth up to him. Even after eight months the taste of his lips is more intoxicating than any drug.
“I’m gonna get this stage makeup all over you,” I murmur.
“Good.”
I push back the shoulders of his jacket and leave red lipstick kisses down his chest as he unbuttons his shirt. I peel off my leotard and press my skin to his, our breath fast as our lips and bodies find one another, the heat between us burning just as brightly now as it did that day in the elevator. I wrap a leg around his waist, inhaling the scent of him as he presses me into the wall, biting my ear gently.
The rapping at the door doesn’t stop us. “Afterparty at the Black Cat,” calls one of my cast mates. “You’re coming, right?”
“Yes,” I call, before Eric covers my mouth with his again and we tumble to the floor on top of our discarded clothes, our bodies grinding rhythmically together until our craving is satisfied.
Afterward, my limbs are tingling and unsteady as I clean off my smudged stage makeup in the basin, awash in sweet release. I hang my costume and get dressed in my street clothes while he settles the roses in the vase he brought, telling me about his meeting this afternoon with Dylan, who is now working for Charles. Eric and Dylan may never be as close as they were when they were boys, but at least they’re trying to put their differences behind them. “Oh, you’ll love this,” he says with a grin. “He told me dear old Dad has a new girlfriend who’s already moved onto the ranch in Montana with him, and guess how old she is?”
“Nineteen?”
“Close. Twenty-two.”
I cringe. “Can’t teach an old dog new tricks, I guess.”
I make a move to wipe away the stain of red lipstick visible on his skin beneath his open collar, but he stops me. “You’ve marked your territory,” he says. “I like it.”
We slip out the back door into the alley, where the night is cool, fresh on my skin after the warmth of the theater. It must have rained because the pavement is wet, shallow puddles reflecting the city lights in gold and red as we stride down the sidewalk arm in arm, invigorated by the hint of spring in the air.