New York, New York #16
“Put this on,” he said, handing it to AJ. He stood beside her, now in a white T-shirt, slightly out of breath and so intensely in his element, it made him hard to look at. As AJ pulled on his amazing-smelling sweatshirt, Noah took a few steps downstage to assess her. He shook his head.
“She should be golden. It should hit her here and here,” he yelled up to Alfie, indicating AJ’s brow and chin. Then, as if only just seeing her, he walked over to AJ and kissed her soundly.
“What was that for?” she said, breathless as a new constellation of lights clinked on above them.
Noah shrugged, then kissed her again, holding her to him until she sighed.
AJ never did see the Architectural Digest kitchen. Whatever Noah’s objections to her couch, they weren’t enough to keep him from sleeping over every night. There was a practical excuse for this: it made it easy to rehearse amid AJ’s work schedule. But that’s what it was, an excuse.
With just two weeks until curtain up, they began practicing more at the theater, waking early to get time in before AJ went to 30 Rock.
They knew the scripted section cold, exchanging roles each day.
On Sundays, they would run the entire show multiple times with the light crew so the technicians could get a feel for blacking out the hour-long improvised second act.
The Hayes may have been Broadway’s smallest theater, but to AJ it felt huge. As their opening neared, she found herself grateful for the cons, where she had faced crowds several multiples of the Hayes’s capacity, as she increasingly had to remind herself.
Truthfully, it was exhilarating being onstage with Noah even without an audience.
“It’s ours forever.”
“I don’t understand.”
“This hill, the view. The stars. We’ll be safe here.”
The spell of Fire according to their house manager, all twelve performances would be standing-room only.
AJ had been happy about this in the abstract—it meant that Noah would get his money out of the show. But as the two of them waited in their shared dressing room on opening night, her nerves cinched with every crescendo of the crowd.
As the minutes crawled by, she stared catatonically at her own reflection, at the white of her shirt, at the way the stage makeup brought out her eyebrows, her cheekbones.
Noah didn’t bother her. He sat nearby on the green leather couch reading his phone, Bud asleep on his lap.
It was always cold backstage, but AJ was practically shivering.
It was the adrenaline. It was the waiting.
Their characters entered from opposite sides, so they parted ways as they left the dressing room.
“Hair dryer,” said Noah.
“Hair dryer,” said AJ.
As AJ stood in the wings, she could feel the audience’s expectations like a rising tide.
These people had paid good money to see Noah Drew perform his esteemed uncle’s work with a complete rando.
Well, not a complete rando, but a woman whose only real acting credit had been an accident, and who was considered, at most, a one-hit wonder.
They must be so confused about what she was doing here.
But AJ knew what she was doing here. And as the lights came up and they walked on, the crowd lost their minds.
AJ and Noah waited, feeling the emotion of the room lap over them. AJ glanced beyond the stage and was somehow not at all surprised to see Otto and Oona in the front row. She smiled at them gratefully, then back at Noah, whose eyes flashed as the din died down.
Tonight, AJ had the first line. She watched Noah take a breath, watched the stage light gild his hair, his shoulders. She felt the audience’s energy lock in with theirs.
Then she began.
The scripted portion of the play unfurled like a pleasant drive on a familiar road; the route was the same every time, but the experience was always a tiny bit different.
Noah got a big laugh on the first joke, which gave them both a boost. They paced themselves, feeling their way through each scene. W’s desperation built steadily as F reassured her he’d had a good life, until finally W’s grief drove her to create the sanctuary of their house.
“Time can’t touch us here,” AJ said. Time won’t touch us here, she thought.
There was no intermission or set change to signal the end of the scripted portion of the play, just a single light cue that transformed the feel of the stage, and the tint of AJ’s white shirt, from gold to rose. It was so simple, but the audience gasped when it happened.
Now the flight path shimmered to life before them. Now it was time to play.
AJ looked at Noah and smiled. He smiled back.
Then she ran at him, charging full force across the stage.
“Get down!” she cried.
But it was too late. A tree had crashed into their oasis, disrupting their lives and reversing their roles. W had managed to save F, but in the process, she had been cataclysmically wounded.
“This is bad. I can’t feel my arms,” she said, lying supine on the floor.
“Try not to move,” he said, phoning the doctor.
Despite F’s terminal prognosis, it was now W who required immediate and intensive medical care. As she lay on a bed constructed from the two prop chairs, he tended to her every need.
“It’s funny,” she said, forcing him to spoon-feed her. “I guess you never can predict what will happen in life.”
“Well, we sort of can,” said Noah, pointedly. “I’m still sick. In all likelihood, you will still outlive me.”
“More soup, please,” said AJ feebly.
F, who had spent years identifying as sick person, came to find new meaning in his role as caregiver. But sadly, the damage to W was too grievous; not even Molten Ice could save her.
“It was supposed to be me,” he wept, kneeling by her deathbed.
AJ used her remaining strength to pat his hand. “Maybe. Maybe not. I guess I take comfort in the fact that someone goes first in every couple. This isn’t unique to us.”
In the split second before the blackout, AJ felt Noah’s energy pulse.