Chapter 27
Ten days until Opening Night
Of course it was filmed. One of the high school kids in the lighting booth got the whole thing. It’s viral before Nick gets back from the ER.
He has, in an almost delicious bit of irony, broken both legs.
He will be in recovery for months. My mind goes straight to the show—Listings, not Midsummer’s.
He’s done with us, and I think, having seen his true colors, everyone is pretty done with him.
No, it’s Listings I am thinking of: Shooting was supposed to start up in mid-September.
They will have to write around it; he’ll be out for months.
They’ll need to do something drastic, and fast. Not my problem.
Or, not my problem until Jay, the showrunner, calls me.
“Mira! How you doing? Up there doing Shakespeare, yeah?” I am quiet.
Last time this asshat spoke to me, it was to unceremoniously fire me.
“So you heard about Nick, right?” I say nothing.
“Oh, shit, duh, of course, you were there! Ha! My brain. Okay, so listen, we have a proposition that might work really well for all of us. This thing with you and Nick has caught a lot of heat—naughty, naughty! But yeah, we ran some numbers, and we think audiences might actually really like us to run with this.” He pauses. “Are you still there?”
“Yes.”
“So what we’re thinking, we bring you back, move you to the lead spot . . .”
“I thought my character moved to LA.”
“That’s just it—you came back!” He delivers this as though it should be good news. “And, I dunno, Nick can be in a coma or something, and until he’s out, it’s up to you to save the agency. And then when he gets out, you become partners.” I can practically see his jazz hands over the phone.
“Jay,” I say. “You saw the video, right?”
“Oh, yeah!” he says. “Pretty rough!”
“Okay, great, so, does that seem like a working relationship that should continue?” Now he is quiet. “And, given the fact that the last time we spoke, you were firing me because that person asked you to, do you think I would ever work with you again?”
There is a long pause. Then Jay says a number.
“Per season? Give me a break.”
“No. Per episode.”
Ah. Now that’s a big number.
“Let me think about it,” I say. There’s nothing to think about. It’s the most money I’ve ever made in my life. It would be a lead, first on the call sheet for a prime-time show. It would be the fame and success. Everything I’ve always wanted.
Of course I’m not fucking taking it.
Before the ambulance had even pulled away, my dad was on the phone to Will, who has now been rightfully reinstated in his role as Demetrius.
The show opens in ten days. Now, on top of the usual chaos of tech week, figuring out set and costumes and actually using the finally finished set, we are, at the eleventh hour, bringing in a new actor.
We are supposed to do our first stumble-through tomorrow.
Sally has drafted up a new rehearsal schedule with as many extra hours as possible.
Luckily, all the sponsors who signed on when Nick was in the show had already handed over the money.
None of them have asked for the money back; it would be a bad look, and I think maybe they are relieved to not actually be affiliated with Nick now, given how things have turned out.
On top of the extra rehearsals, my father has enlisted me to get Will back up to speed and has scheduled us a private rehearsal, giving me the keys to the theater.
Max and Bailey will join us in a few hours when Max gets off work, but we have the whole morning to run the blocking and lines before they arrive.
I arrive half an hour early to open up the theater.
I’ve never actually been here alone. It’s incredibly still.
Without people and words and sounds and lights, it’s just a building, empty and quiet and dark.
I make my way up to the theater. The stairs creak under my feet.
I feel my way through the dark and flick on the lights at the top of the stairs.
I pull the heavy soundproof doors and step in.
The room feels thick with the energy of the past week.
The last time I was here was total chaos: my world imploding, Nick’s meltdown, his fall.
As the paramedics were wheeling him out, I heard a lot of rumblings from the cast and crew as they left.
“He had it coming.”
“You don’t mess around with the Scottish play.”
“It’s irresponsible, is what it is.”
“It’s disrespectful.”
As I watched the entire cast and crew descend into panic, from screams and cries when Nick’s femur split through his skin to a heavy, somber silence as people gathered their things, no idea what would happen to the show, I felt many things, but mostly guilt.
True, I did not ask Nick to follow me from the city and lie to my parents and steal Will’s role and get the entire town excited about the big celebrity, but none of it would have happened if not for me.
I caught a number of sideways looks on my way out, and it was very clear that my feelings of responsibility were shared.
I knew how it looked: The director’s daughter gets the role handed to her, and all she brings in is chaos. And now the show is ruined.
And somewhere deep below all that, my own deep resentment, because Nick has tainted this whole thing for me.
Because without his presence and interference and drama, this show was the most fun I’d had in a long time.
It was the first time in forever that I was loving acting.
I was falling back in love with it, even with my hometown a little. Even with myself.
I make my way onstage. Will isn’t due for another fifteen minutes.
I do a little warm-up, some stretching, vocal runs.
I haven’t done this stuff since theater school, loosened myself, opened myself up.
An inordinate amount of time in theater school is spent learning how to find your breath, land in your body, become present.
It’s been years since I actually put these skills into practice.
The nature of my role on Listings was such that the more tightly wound I was, the better.
I didn’t realize that it had become my default setting.
I run through my monologues. The big one is that first one at the top of the play.
I have been playing it comically: big and pouty and quirky.
But alone onstage, when it’s just me, it lands differently.
I run through it, and it hits me how, under the snark and haughtiness, Helena is deeply sad.
I am sad. I am maybe a little broken in the same way she is: We do not completely believe we are deserving of real love.
I have had relationships. I have had a lot of sex.
I’ve often mistaken sex for something more.
I shake it off and go again: “Things base and vile, holding no quantity, love can transpose to form and dignity. Love looks not with the eyes but with the mind, and therefore is winged cupid painted blind.”
It hits me that I am thirty-four and have never really been in love, not for real, not with someone good and attainable who could see me back.
Helena is the supporting actress longing to be the leading lady.
Helena, I suddenly realize, my dad’s words solidifying in my mind, is not in a comedy.
A comedy is happening all around her, but she’s in a drama, a tragedy, even.
Helena thinks she’s Juliet, or could be but for all the obstacles and fairy magic and general fuckery all around her.
Her resolve never changes. She loves Demetrius.
She wants him. She never falters. It occurs to me that all I ever do is falter.
It occurs to me that I’m not ever sure who I am.
I run it again, this time quieter. Even sadder.
But I have unlocked something in this comic monologue, a deep longing in Helena, and in myself, that she has led me to.
I let it all out into the dark, my voice bouncing around the empty room.
My heart is racing, and I am surprised to feel tears pricking my eyes.
I am alone here, and it all hits me. I lie down on the stage and close my eyes.
I try to find my breath. It’s been so much.
Too much. I lie there for a long time. I’m so exhausted by this whole summer.
“Are you okay?” Will is standing over me.
“Shit!” I jump up, wiping my eyes. “I didn’t hear you come in.” I feel exposed.
“I came up from backstage,” he says. He has two coffees and hands me one.
“Oh, thanks.” I feel caught somehow. I wish he had come in when I was killing my monologue, not during this lying-on-the-floor part. We stand there awkwardly. I haven’t seen him since the night at the pub.
“We’re very glad to have you back,” I say. I take a sip. Oat milk and cinnamon. We stand there looking at each other. “This is good coffee. Thank you.” I wonder if he remembers the part at the pub where we said we liked each other.
“So, um, how, um, drunk were you? The other night,” I ask, looking intently at my coffee cup.
“Not that drunk,” he says. “Just enough to get interesting.” He is watching me watch my coffee cup.
“It certainly was,” I say. I look up and he holds my gaze. It feels like something hot that I shouldn’t touch. I look away.
“Not as interesting as the show Nick put on here.” Will glances at the edge of the stage and cringes.
“Did you see the video?”
“Would you hate me if I told you I watched it a few times?”
“Karma’s a real bitch!” I say.
“But he’s okay?”
“Yeah, he’ll be okay.” I don’t know what makes me say it. “They asked me to come back to the show. To replace him. And then be colead when he returns. They offered me all the money,” I say. I haven’t told my parents this yet, or even Theo.
“Huh,” he says. “Are you . . . ?”