Chapter 36
Priscilla
Marlowe told me I couldn’t watch her act. She didn’t say anything about the dance call.
It’s in the wide-open rehearsal space, so she sees me as soon as I enter. The look she gives is deadly, but I don’t care. It’s too much fun to watch her all sweaty and committed. She looks fucking great. Too bad for the rest of these arts losers here that she’s mine.
Jaz is also here, and she greets me with much more enthusiasm. You should audition, too, she mouths.
Absolutely not, I mouth back.
My phone starts vibrating. My new agent, Gina, is calling.
I answer, and Gina replies with, “Priscilla?” like there might be someone other than me picking up the phone. I’m about to judge her for it when I remember that answering my phone is the exact kind of task I used to ask Erik to do on my behalf.
“Yep, it’s me!” I say instead. “What’s up?”
“I know you’re still in Iowa, but I have some interesting news.
Some director you worked with recently—” She pauses like she’s reading something.
“On a car commercial? He’s secured funding for an indie drama, and he thinks you’d be great for the lead.
He said you were so hilarious at the commercial and such a good sport about it that you’re the first person he thought of for the part.
He thinks the funniest people are usually the best at the really deep stuff. Those were his exact words.”
It’s a weird mix of emotions, hearing this. I’ve regretted a lot about that shoot. At the same time, I was a professional through and through, and now that professionalism has given me a real opportunity.
“Send me the script,” I say. “I want to read it first.”
“Already in your inbox,” Gina tells me. Then, softer, she says, “I know we’ve only worked together for a few days, so I don’t know how much weight my word holds yet, but I think this could be good for you.
There are a few other names already attached to the project.
All quality people. This could be that serious project you told me you were looking to find. I really think it’s possible.”
Oh, elusive possibility.
Welcome back.
—
When Marlowe gets out of the audition, I tell her about the movie, and she shrieks in delight.
“I knew it,” she says. “I knew you weren’t done.”
“And I knew you weren’t either,” I reply. “I saw you dancing in there. That’s a Greaser if I ever saw one.”
“I don’t think this director is seeing me for my inner Kenickie, though.”
“Her loss,” I say.
“Let’s drive by the school,” Marlowe suggests. “I want to do something there. Then we can go to Tequila Thursday and really celebrate. I already told Jaz to come, too.”
“Perfect,” I say.
Marlowe parks along the curb. The school is mostly dark, though some security lights still shine, illuminating the space above each door.
“Can you believe I won’t be the head of the drama department?” she asks. “Well, in two weeks I won’t. You know what I mean.”
“I do. And yes, I can absolutely believe it.”
“I’m glad I won’t be running the program next year. I really am. But I’m also sad. It’s scary to hand it over to someone else.”
“There will never be another Dallas Winthrop or you, but maybe that’s not what WRHS needs anymore. It’s time for a change.”
“Change is good,” she says, squeezing my hand. “What do you think the other versions of us are doing right now?”
“I’m sure the psychics are practicing tantric yoga in their cat pajamas. And I bet Teacher Priscilla had a hell of an opening night last week,” I say.
“Oh god,” Marlowe replies, hand over her mouth. “We really left her and Mars with a mess.”
“We did them a favor,” I remind her. “Wouldn’t it have been nice if someone else came into our lives and kick-started some necessary conversations between us?”
“But do you really think those two are destined to be together? Mars is…she’s not the best of me, that’s for sure.”
I cup her chin in my palm like I’m about to say something really poignant. “Isn’t it nice to know it’s not you?”
Our laughter fills the quiet of the car.
“It’s made me want to leave something that’s ours here,” Marlowe says. “Like how we painted the stage. Just a little proof of us.”
I turn off the ignition for her, already on board. “Say where.”
She laughs. “Come on. I still work here. I’m just not running drama.”
“I’ve got a pretty good machine we can hop inside and escape all consequences,” I say. “I’m sure Wilbur and Estelle Reed would love to see their favorite queer thespians again.”
“I know a place,” she tells me.
“Let me guess. The stage?”
“Surprisingly, no.” She grabs my hand, taking me on a winding path to avoid the floodlights and cameras until we end up by the emergency stage exit, in the spot the cameras don’t cover.
She opens her purse and gets out a Sharpie, then squats down in front of the flowers lining the side of the building.
The Arts Losers Are Forever, she writes.
I grab the Sharpie from her hand.
And So Are Priscilla and Marlowe.
“We can’t write our names!” she says.
“Of course we can,” I assure her. “I send this place lots of money. They just approved my request to name the theater the Dallas Winthrop Auditorium. They can handle five inches of permanent marker on the bottom brick beside a bed of flowers.”
I take my phone out of my back pocket and snap a picture.
“Get in,” I say, gesturing for Marlowe to join the next one. She throws up a peace sign, and it makes me laugh so hard I almost start choking.
“Excuse me, ladies. Are you causing trouble?”
The voice wipes the smile off my face. He’s behind me, in Marlowe’s view, and I don’t need to turn to know who it is.
“You’re…here,” Marlowe says, rushing forward to tackle him in a hug.
Dallas Winthrop has returned.
“You look lovely, dear,” he says, coming over to kiss me on the cheek. “Don’t think I got to tell you that when I saw you back in ’95. But you two are the first sights I’m seeing after getting out of the Memory Machine. What luck I have to find you here, my dearest and my darling.”
He’s warming up the runway for our usual airplane of compliments and kindness to take flight. Cilla Cove would have taken that path willingly. But Cilla Cove isn’t here anymore.
“All my life, the people I love have abandoned me. But not you. Never you.” My words are warbly, same as my hands.
Nothing comes out half as composed as I wish, but I have to get it out.
I can’t bury this and pretend everything’s fine.
Not anymore. “I trusted that you’d never do that.
But then you roped me into this. You made me the last person you spoke to before you disappeared.
I thought maybe you were sending me a message or something.
I came here for the first time in sixteen years to find you.
Never did I think it would be because you left voluntarily. ”
“I was sending you a message,” he insists.
“Not to come find me, but to walk into a different life. You forget that for all the years you’ve known me, I’ve been teaching you.
It’s a different kind of lens, that of a mentor.
You see people through enough seasons, and you start to recognize when the leaves aren’t changing the same way they used to.
You’d forgotten yourself, and I thought that me sharing my excitement with you might remind you to find it again inside you, too. That you could start again.”
“Why’d you have to say it like that? Of all the times to use your little riddles!” Marlowe argues on my behalf. It’s not an angry delivery. She plays it for the joke, and it blunts the edges of my anger.
“I know,” Dallas admits. “I was trying to fix the wrong things. I was a mess. I still am. But seeing you two had more of an impact than you know. I never thought I’d live to see the day when you two realized what you are to each other.
You planted a seed of hope in me I didn’t know I could have anymore. ”
“Well, you missed a hell of a show,” Marlowe tells him. “I played your part to great success. Critics are calling it the best non-Dallas adult actor in a high school production they’ve ever seen.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t come back sooner,” he says. “There’s no excusing it. But I can only hope you’ll find forgiveness in your heart for me the same way you’ve found it for each other.”
He’s got me. And he knows he’s got me. But I still hold out.
The art of expectation.
“If you hold too tightly to the pain of your past, you’ll miss out on all the amazing things waiting for you in the future,” he says. “Someone very wise told me that.”
“Very wise,” I confirm.
“I want to find that future now,” he says.
“I want to see what this old life can be like for me without hiding behind teaching or obsessing over the Memory Machine. I want to know myself in the present tense, not cling to my pain in hopes it will finally start to love me back. I know I can’t have my Teddy.
I have to be okay with missing him so much I know I’ll never be whole, but not so much that I’m running on empty. ”
“God damn it,” I say, giving him the biggest hug I have to offer. “I love you.”
“I love you, too,” he tells me.
Marlowe joins us.
As all three of us hold one another, I draw us in the shape of a triangle in my mind. The three of us have always moved that way. But even the most fixed points can move. Nothing is permanent.
We can change this shape whenever we want. The best I can hope for is that we will change together.