Harmony (43 page)

“Dead pages,” said Liz wearily. “Howie’s been doing cuts.”

“Isn’t it a little late for that?” I asked.

Liz shrugged. “Panic sets in…”

Howie was walking Louisa around the ground plan taped out on the floor, spieling eloquence about the evolution of his new production style. Hickey had sent over the little dark-haired woman who would be head of
The Gift
running crew, which was reasonable except Hickey usually came to final run-throughs himself.

Micah sank into the chair beside Liz. “I’d better get those cuts from you.”

Mali and Ule sauntered in, not at all concerned about being late. They joined the circle catch immediately. I smelled coffee brewing in the food corner and headed over. I poured one for Micah and stuck a second under the spout for myself.

“So, you get any work done this morning?”

Hot coffee cascaded across my wrist. Clumsy fool. Really, I thought, I should be handling this better. “Sure did.”

“Congratulations.”

I knew it was significant that I couldn’t bring myself to look him in the eye. “You’re a mean drunk, Sam.”

“I was not drunk.”

“Then you’re mean sober.”

“Hey, I was working. A job needed doing.”

Angry, I could look at him. His scars were pale lines against his tanned skin, his bruises fully healed. Amazing. “I don’t like being part of your job, whatever it is.”

He poured himself a large tumbler of fruit juice. Behind us, Tua ran through the hoots and trills of her vocal exercises. Liz tried to call the company to order and discovered she was still a few short. Sam sipped at his brimming glass. “Okay, if it helps, I apologize.”

“You treat us like children.”

“No—”

“Yes, you do! Hopeless, ignorant children!”

“Innocent,” he corrected. “And that is never hopeless.”

“You know, when Mali says that sort of thing, it doesn’t sound pretentious.”

“Now who’s being mean?”

“I’m tired of you looking at me like you knew something I didn’t.”

He smiled into his juice. “Probably do. A few things.”

“I mean—”

“About the world, maybe, how it really is. Other things.” He set his juice down casually. “Like, why you let the kid off the hook so easily last night.”

This was not a conversation I wanted to have. I moved away, he blocked me. His hands were free, mine full of steaming liquid.

“You let him go because he’s a self-involved young snot and you don’t need that kind of shit anymore.”

Oh, how right he was. “Please, I’d like to take Micah his coffee.”

He stood aside, then stopped me with a murmur as I passed. “I lied to you last night. The charade was nothing. Habit. But I learned something from it.”

I glanced up, curious in spite of myself.

“Forget the kid. It’s me you want, whether you know it or not.”

HARMONET/CHAT

MICAH’S DILEMMA:

Micah returned to the Arkadie mid-afternoon. “They really
are
unhappy. I certainly hope Howard can get them back on track.”

I smoothed plastic sealer over a freshly carved rock. “The run-through?”

“Awful.”

“Even Mali?”

“Like a black hole, sucking up all the energy in the room. The emotional arc collapsed before the end of Act One and the play never made it out from under. One thing for sure: if Mali doesn’t perform, the piece will never get off the ground. How’s it going here?”

“Slowly.” We’d done the best we could to fix the curve of the backdrop, and Margaret and Peter had nearly finished surfacing the deck. The pinkish natural color of the material made the undulating rise from front to back resemble a patched-together human body melting into the stage. But the vanishing trick was a gaping hole downstage center. Two days before our first technical rehearsal and Sean still hadn’t sent back our regular crew.

Micah put on his work clothes and settled in beside us.

I always looked forward to the week or so spent in the theatre opening a show. It was a tense, exciting time of high energy and quick camaraderie; a time of miracles, of watching a show unfold like a hatching butterfly and take flight.

Not this time. I took up a new block of foam, cutting in the steplike layers of broken shale. What a sorry group we were: Micah and Margaret working with the concentration of the dead, Jane no conversationalist since her breakdown. Peter had finally abandoned his run-on stand-up comedy due to lack of response. Cris was unsure whether or not he should talk to me and was therefore talking to nobody. I certainly wasn’t talking to him. A grim and silent crew indeed. Only Songh remained cheerful, humming tunelessly as he shaped plastic mesh into rock forms for the back wall. But then, Songh was probably a little in love. When Mark walked in, Songh’s whole body reoriented itself like a blossom to the light.

Mark trotted down the aisle, a sheaf of papers under one arm, a pen over his ear. He headed straight for Micah.

“Micah, I need a favor.”

I recalled a certain boyishness in Mark and wondered where it had gone. We’d called it charming, but when it left, the charm was still there, a kind of golden light about him. Weary, frowning Micah thawed visibly as Mark presented his case. This guy, I decided, was born to convince people of things.

“Yes, yes,” replied Micah. “I shouldn’t be asking any of you to work extra hours at a time like this.”

“Oh yes, sir, you must. And they will. Otherwise I’d ask you to me lend all of them.” Mark held out his hand.

Micah shook it, then watched after him bemused.

“Songh! You’re reassigned. Let’s go!” Mark stopped to ruffle my hair. “Taking one of your workers, G.”

“We should be out there with you.”

“I got enough. Micah needs you more.”

“What’s the count?”

“Forty-one hundred. We’ve posted every possible notice board, every greenroom and gallery that’ll let us, and I’ve got nineteen people out there working it door to door. Even, can you believe it, Yolanda!”

“You’re amazing. Hope they’re being careful.”

“They are. Security’s threatening to arrest curfew breakers now.” He squatted close beside me. It was like having a whirlwind settle down for a chat. “Listen, there’s, um, some nasty gossip about. You all right?”

“Kinda confused, but actually, I think I am.”

“Good. Got to tell you something Sam said to me.”

“Sam?” Even the name made me start.

“About the Outside.” Mark hugged my shoulder and rose. “When we have time.”

“When’s that going to be?”

He laughed and hurtled away with Songh in tow.

During a break, I checked the petition we’d posted on the shop notice board. It was gone. The corner pins imprisoned two ragged scraps of paper. I hurried through a hall full of laughing ladies and gentlemen in powdered wigs and gold embroidery, so cheerful you’d have thought there was a party going on instead of a final dress before the night’s first preview. In the greenroom, I nosed around the actors’ call-board, pretending interest in the monitors broadcasting the rehearsal. This petition was still in place. Even had a few names on it, over which someone had scrawled in red, “C
LOSE THE
D
OOR
!”

It no longer scared me to find this so close to home. It made me angry, the deep, slow kind of rage that fuels determination, that rises when a longtime dream is being threatened—no, defiled. My Harmony. My artists’ sanctuary. I stalked back to the shop and pinned up two new petition sheets where the old one had been.

Back in Theatre Two, Louisa Pietro’s manic energy was stirring up the emotional murk. She perched on a crate and shook her fists while Micah worked. “Howie can talk concept all he damn wants, it won’t do a bit of good without a set to focus on!”

Micah nodded, fastening a bit of flooring into place.

Margaret laughed, deep and cajoling, her arm sunk up to her shoulder in a slot in the deck. “C’mon, Lou, you’ve focused just fine on less scenery than this.” She tightened a bolt, then extricated her arm and the tool. “ ‘Course, you swore about it like a damn Outsider—”

“And I’m swearing now. Enough of this gloom. Micah, I’m taking you to dinner. Maybe get you drunk enough to make it up with Sean.”

She didn’t understand. Nobody did.
I
didn’t.

Micah had done everything he could. He’d found extra money for more labor. He’d called in markers to supply that labor. He’d kept Howie out of the theatre, closed down his studio, dedicated his staff and the labor of his own hands to getting the show built. None of this made any visible impression on Sean, and without Sean behind you, things just really didn’t happen in the Arkadie shop. The only move left to Micah was to stop short, declare that he could not work this way, and threaten to quit.

Why didn’t he?

Because Micah could never desert a show.

And it seemed that’s what Sean wanted, for Micah to make himself the weapon with which Sean could bludgeon the Arkadie’s management.

So Micah, badger stubborn, kept working, waiting for the confrontation that never came. For his sake, so did we.

Downstage center, the empty hole in the deck drew things into itself like a whirlpool: tools, stray materials, too often nearly one of us. We finally dragged an old platform out of stock to cover it up. Sean wasn’t even bothering with basic safety.

Sean.

What would it take to turn him around?

Micah reappeared very late from his dinner with Lou, having shared at least one good bottle of wine. He watched us sculpt for a while, then paced upstage to stare with restless melancholy at the backdrop. When I looked for him next, he was down center, gazing at the platform over the hole in the deck as if it concealed the blackest sort of void.

I wiped glue off my hands and went to join him. “Good dinner?”

“Delicious.”

“Where’d you eat?”

“Fishko’s, on the square.”

“Hope you two didn’t talk about this the whole time.”

Micah laughed, a short, unamused burst. “Lou saw
Crossroads
last night.”

We stared at the covered hole together for a bit. Finally I decided, no point in small talk here at the chasm’s edge. “Why’s he doing this to us, do you suppose?”

I didn’t catch him by surprise. I never caught Micah by surprise. Only Sean had managed to do that.

“I don’t know,” he replied sadly.

“Couldn’t you… I mean… isn’t there something?”

Micah looked at me gravely. “Not you too.”

Shamed, I murmured, “No, it’s just… I should be helping better but I can’t, if I don’t understand why.”

“Why.” He made a sound like something brittle breaking. “It doesn’t matter why! He’s rationalized it to himself and everyone else—scheduling, time, money, men, whatever, the final straw—but the truth is that he’s chosen to desert an ongoing production because of some agenda of his own and that’s wrong. Not lazy or pragmatic. Just plain
wrong
.”

“Yes, but what if—”

“No. If we give in and smile and cajole, and accept that this is the way things work, we make a mockery of the whole idea of right and wrong. What are we left with? He who shouts the loudest wins the day, Art and Quality be damned? There goes civilization down the drain.”

“Micah, what if it gets the show built?”

“
We
can get the show built!” His whole body tensed with conviction. “If we have to become like him to do it, what’s the point?”

I thought of Te-Cucularit then and his stubborn keeping of the old laws, even in the face of risk and ridicule.

Micah said harshly, “All right, I lied! I do care why he’s deserted me! I don’t understand what makes a man like Sean overturn the habits of a lifetime, desert a show, throw a friend to the wolves…!”

I waited while he fought through his outburst and grew grave again and thoughtful. I could offer him nothing, since I didn’t understand, either.

“Sean’s tired,” he mused finally. “We all get tired, I suppose. Burned out. And then the battle no longer seems worthwhile. And that makes us scared, because if it’s not worthwhile, what the hell have we been killing ourselves for all our lives?”