Chapter 16
Everett
The whispers start on Monday.
I'm not supposed to hear them. The executive assistant pool operates with the kind of quiet efficiency that makes my company run. But when I round the corner to retrieve a file I could have delegated, two voices drift from the break room.
"Twenty thousand a month now. Can you imagine?"
"For what? Smiling at galas? Playing dress-up?"
"Please. We all know what she's doing to earn it."
I freeze. My hand tightens on the folder.
"I mean, good for her, I guess. Using what she's got while she's got it."
Laughter. Cruel. Casual.
"Kept woman. That's the technical term."
More laughter.
By Wednesday, HR had flagged it.
My phone buzzes. A text from Margot.
Table read Friday 7 p.m. Warehouse theater space in Bushwick. 427 Troutman St.
Friday. After her children's workshop.
I type back: I'll be there.
Three dots appear. Disappear. Appear again.
You don't have to.
I'll be there.
***
Friday arrives wrapped in the kind of cold that makes Manhattan feel inhospitable. I work through the afternoon - contract revisions, merger timeline adjustments, a conference call with Hartwell's legal team that runs forty minutes over.
At six-fifteen, my assistant appears in the doorway. "Mr. Lockwood, you have the Evans presentation at -"
"Reschedule it."
Her eyebrows lift slightly. "For when?"
"Monday. Tuesday. Whenever they're available." I save the document, close my laptop. "I have somewhere I need to be."
I grab my coat, my phone, my keys. The suit I've worn all day is the same suit I wear every day - my standard charcoal Tom Ford, crisp white shirt, silk tie in muted blue. Professional. Appropriate. The standard of my station.
The drive to Bushwick takes forty-five minutes in Friday evening traffic. I navigate using the GPS, watching neighborhoods shift from corporate glass towers to industrial warehouses to converted artist spaces with murals bleeding across brick facades.
A warehouse with a faded mural of theatrical masks, a regular door propped open with a cinder block. Light spills out. The sound of voices drifts into cold air.
Inside, the space has been carved into a working theater. Tables arranged in a large square, scripts and water bottles scattered across their surfaces. Folding chairs line the perimeter. Work lights dangle from exposed beams. The smell of old wood and coffee fills the air.
Maybe fifteen people mill around the tables - actors in jeans and sweaters, vintage coats, comfortable shoes. Casual. Theatrical. Alive in ways that have nothing to do with money or status.
I'm the only person wearing a suit.
The realization hits as every head turns toward me. Conversation doesn't stop, exactly, but it shifts. Quiets. They're assessing me - not hostile, not welcoming. Just calculating what a man in a three-thousand-dollar suit is doing in their warehouse theater.
A woman in her mid-thirties, vintage dress, bright red lipstick, and obvious authority detaches from a cluster near the tables. "Can I help you?"
"I'm here for the table read. Margot Bennett invited me."
Recognition flickers. "You're Everett." Her gaze travels over my suit, my tie, my polished shoes. "I'm Simone. Director. Margot mentioned you might come."
Might. Not would.
"Is there somewhere I should sit?"
"Guest seating." She gestures toward the folding chairs along the perimeter. "We'll start in a few minutes."
I nod. Cross to an empty chair. The metal is cold, slightly wobbly. I settle into it, drape my coat over the adjacent seat, aware I'm being watched by multiple people pretending not to watch.
Margot moves through the space. She's already here, has been for a while based on the organized chaos.
Scripts distributed. Water bottles placed.
A laptop open at one end of the table square.
She wears jeans, an oversized sweater, boots, hair twisted up with what appears to be a pencil.
She's talking to an actor, gesturing about something, completely focused.
She glances toward the door. Sees me. Her expression shifts — surprise, then pleasure, then something more complicated. She lifts her hand in a small wave.
I nod back.
She returns to her conversation. Doesn't cross to greet me. Doesn't introduce me to anyone. Her focus is the play, the read, the work that matters more than social niceties.
I'm a guest. Nothing more.
A small girl, maybe six years old, settles into the chair next to mine, coloring book and crayons spreading across her lap. She glances at me, offers a gap-toothed smile, then returns to coloring what appears to be a castle with dragons.
"Hi," I say.
"Hi. My mommy's in the play." She doesn't look up from her coloring. "She couldn't find a sitter so I have to be quiet."
"That makes two of us."
She considers this. "Are you somebody's dad?"
"No. Just a guest."
"Oh." She returns to coloring, apparently satisfied.
Simone calls for places. Actors settle into chairs around the table square. Scripts open. Pencils appear. The energy shifts from playful anticipation tightening into focused work.
"Let's begin," Simone says. "Act One, Scene One."
The read starts.
Margot's play unfolds in voices. A woman named Marie rebuilding her life after devastating loss. A man named David who challenges every defense mechanism she's constructed. The dialogue crackles. It’s sharp, funny, gutting in moments I don't anticipate.
The actors read without performance, just clarity and intention. They make notes in margins. Occasionally someone stops, asks a question. Margot answers with precision, explaining character motivation, defending word choice, adjusting a line when someone suggests a better rhythm.
I lean forward. Forget about the suit. Forget about being the only person in this room who can't quote Shakespeare or debate Stanislavski. Forget everything except the words unfolding.
The work is exceptional.
Twenty minutes in, they pause for discussion.
"The transition from Scene 4 to 5 feels abrupt," someone says.
"It's supposed to," Margot counters. "Marie's trying to avoid confronting what David's saying. The abruptness is her running."
"But what if we bridge it with a beat? Give the audience time to -"
"The discomfort is the point." Her voice firms. "The audience needs to feel her panic. Smoothing it undercuts that."
I find myself nodding. She's right. The structural choice mirrors the emotional state.
"I agree with Margot," I say before fully deciding to speak.
Everyone at the table turns. Stares.
The silence stretches. I'm acutely aware of my suit, my outsider status, my audacity in offering an opinion on work I have no credentials to judge.
Margot's eyes widen slightly.
"The abruptness serves the character," I continue, keeping my voice level. "Marie's entire arc is about avoiding emotional engagement. Making the transition comfortable would betray that."
Simone studies me for a long moment. Then she grins. "Exactly. Thank you... Everett, right?"
"Everett."
"Thank you, Everett. Moving on."
The read continues. I stay quiet through most of it, but when discussions arise - about pacing, about whether a line lands, about character motivation - I find myself engaged. Offering observations. Asking questions that seem to resonate.
Margot watches me with an expression I can't read.
Two hours pass. The reading ends to applause and immediate debate about casting, rehearsal schedules, technical needs.
Actors linger at the tables, scribbling notes, discussing their characters. The energy is insular. They're in their world now, the one where Margot's words become something alive.
I stay in my folding chair, observing. In my office, people defer. In boardrooms, my opinion carries weight whether earned or not. Here, I'm a foreign language speaker who memorized phrases without understanding grammar. My value’s measured only by what I can contribute to understanding the work.
It's humbling. And strangely freeing.
A man in his late twenties approaches Margot - the kind of easy handsomeness that comes from not trying. He played David in the reading, and he played him well. They talk for a moment, then he pulls her into a hug.
She laughs at something he says. He kisses her cheek. The gesture of someone who's earned access to her affection - casual, familiar, years of history compressed into a single motion.
I recognize the feeling that moves through me. I don't act on it.
They talk for another minute, inside jokes, shared history, the comfortable intimacy of people who've worked together for years. She touches his arm. He grins.
I'm the man in the suit. The outsider. The one who writes checks but will never truly understand what it means to breathe life into words on a page.
Margot extricates herself from the conversation, crosses to me. "Ready to go?"
I stand. "Your car or mine?"
"Both. I drove from the workshop." Outside, cold air bites. She pulls her coat tighter, leading me toward her beat-up Civic parked half a block down.
"That was incredible," I say. "Truly, Margot. The play is exceptional."
Her face flushes with pleasure. "You understood it."
"I understood enough." I pause beside her car. "The man who played David. He's talented."
"Noah. He's been with me from the beginning." She unlocks her door, tosses her bag inside. "He gets the character in ways I didn't expect when I first wrote it."
Noah. I dislike him on general principle.
"He seems close to you."
"We've worked together for years." She's oblivious to the edge in my voice.
I nod. Say something neutral about the cast. Watch her slide into the driver's seat.
"Thank you for coming," she says through the open window. "It meant a lot."
"Of course."
She hesitates. "I know it wasn't your scene. All those theater people."
"It was your scene." I meet her eyes. "That's what mattered."
Something shifts in her expression. She smiles, genuine, unguarded, then pulls the door closed.
I watch her taillights disappear into Brooklyn traffic.
Then I walk to my car. Slide inside. Sit in the cold.
My phone rings. Rowan.
I answer. "What?"
"Just checking you're alive. We still on for tennis tomorrow morning?"
"Yes."
"Good. I'll destroy you." A pause. "So tell me. You went to amateur theater on a Friday night. In a suit. For her."
I start the engine. Pull into traffic. "It wasn't amateur. The writing is exceptional. Professional-level. Better than half the productions on Broadway."
"Huh."
"What?"
"Nothing. Just... you sound different. Invested. In something that's not the company or the merger or keeping the board happy." Another pause. "In her."
I don't answer. Traffic crawls.
"Then what's the problem?"
I grip the steering wheel. "I didn't belong there, Rowan. In her world. With her people. I was a guest they tolerated because she invited me."
"And?"
"And I'm used to being the most important person in the room." The admission costs something. "There, I was nobody. Just some guy in a suit who happened to show up."
"How did that feel?"
I think about it. The folding chair. The small girl coloring dragons beside me. The actors debating character motivation without once glancing my direction for approval. Margot focused on her work, not on managing my comfort.
"Humbling," I say. "And freeing."
Rowan is quiet for a moment. "You're in deep, aren't you?"
"I don't know."
"Well. Figure it out."
He hangs up.
I sit in the car outside my townhouse, staring at the limestone facade. Margot will arrive soon, go to her suite. We'll exchange polite words about the evening. We'll maintain the careful distance this arrangement requires.
And I'll lie awake wondering what it would take to become someone who belongs in her world.
Not as a check writer. Not as the CEO who can open doors.
As someone who matters.
The jealousy sits in my chest like a stone. Noah's easy laugh. The kiss on her cheek. The years of history I can't compete with.
And underneath it all, the terrifying realization that I don't want to compete.
I want to belong.
The question is whether I'm brave enough to figure out how.