Set Change: A Nina Bannister Mystery (The Nina Bannister Mysteries) (15 page)

To the right of Laertes and just slightly between his shoulder and the audience.

Now circling him…

…coming to a stop just there, stage right, so that Laertes must bend slightly to hear.

Now in motion again, making circular gestures with a long staff that he was not actually carrying at the time.

And all the time Clifton Barrett, some ten feet away, looking hard into Polonius’ eyes, then turning and gazing at the balcony, from which Nina could see, from time to time, behind the great green eyes, a positive hand wave or an encouraging gesture.

Until, those last great lines:

“
This above all—to thine own self be true…”

And, while saying this line, this crucially important line—Polonius forgot where to go.

He hesitated ever so slightly, and stepped to his right.

Pause.

Voice from the balcony:

“No.
 
J32.”

There was silence onstage for a moment.

Finally Clifton Barrett pursed his lips and said quietly, to the man who was standing no more than three feet from him.

“Do you understand J32?”

“Yes, Clifton.”

“Do you know what that means?”

A slight smile, then a nod.

“Do you?”

“Yes, Clifton.”

“Point it out for me, please.”

Absolute silence in the theater.

The sound of Polonius’ feet as he turned, pointing to a spot on the stage behind him.

“There.”

“Are you certain?”

“Yes, Clifton.”

“Are you sure you understand what you’re supposed to do, and where you’re supposed to go?”

“I do.”

“You do?”

“Yes.”

“You definitely do? Because you didn’t, only some seconds ago.
 
Where did you think you were going?”

Silence.

The question repeated:

“Where the hell did you think you were going?”

“Sorry
 
Clifton.”

“You’re sorry?”

“Yes.
 
Won’t happen again.”

“Are you certain of that?”

‘Yes.”

“Yes what?”

“Yes, I’m certain.”

“That’s good!
 
That’s good to hear.”

Then Clifton Barrett took a long step forward and bellowed straight into the man’s face, which now had begun to blush vividly:

“Because we open IN TWELVE DAYS, YOU BUFFOON!”

Silence again, except for the shout, echoing through the theater.

“If you want us to run through it again, Clifton…”

A shake of the head.

“No. You obviously don’t know what you’re doing.
 
Let’s move on.”

And they did.

Oh my God
, thought Nina.

Oh my God.

Clifton Barrett nodded to Laertes, who said:

“most humbly do I take my leave, my Lord.”

Somehow, the actor who was to play his father, and who had just been completely humiliated, managed to go on, replying gamely:

“The time invites you.
 
Go your servants tend.”

Laertes to Helen Reddington:

“Farewell, Ophelia; and remember well what I have said to you.”

To which Helen, replying:

“This in my memory locked; and you yourself shall keep the key of it.”

Laertes:

“Farewell.”

Laertes exits, stage left.

Polonius:

“What is’t Ophelia, he has said to you?”

Ophelia:

“So please you, something touching…”

Voice from the balcony:

“No.”

Silence.

The voice again:

“No, it’s K-14.
 
It’s K-14, Helen.”

No one breathing.

Two steps from Clifton Barrett, who was now standing directly before his wife.

And with a quick deft motion, his right arm jerking upward, he slapped her hard on the right cheek.

POP.

“Oh!”

Nina did not know if the short burst of air and sound had come from herself, or from the collective crew, or from Helen, who now stood motionless as the statue she had been to begin the scene—

––or from Hope Reddington, whose hands now covered her mouth, and whose eyes were wide with horror.

Clifton Barrett wheeled, leapt down from the stage, and strode out of the theater.

And that, Nina thought to herself, explains the rouge.

They sat there for some instants.

There was nothing to do.

Finally, Helen having disappeared backstage, and the various crews beginning to mill and worry and chatter as they had been doing, Hope said quietly:

“Perhaps we should go now, Nina.”

“Yes.
 
Good idea.”

They rose and made their way out of the theater, then out of the mansion, then into a waiting huge car driven by one of the ubiquitous ladies who always seemed prepared to drive Hope—and
 
anyone with Hope—anywhere she needed to go.

“So how was the rehearsal?” said the woman driving.

“Oh fine,” said Hope, who seemed perfectly at ease.

“Hope––” began Nina, not knowing exactly where she was going with whatever it was she was going to say to an eighty year old woman who’d just seen her granddaughter physically assaulted…

…but she did not have to say anything, for Hope interrupted her like a cheerful little blue and babbling stream flowing into a muddy and stagnant river.

“It’s remarkable,” she said, “how complicated it all is.
 
All of the things they have to remember.”

“Yes, it is.”

“Thank you for coming with me, Nina.”

“It was my pleasure.”

“I hope we were not in the way.”

“I’m sure we weren’t.”

Then they were silent.

They remained silent until the car disgorged both of them; Nina made sure Hope was safely in the house; the two women had made the necessary conversation leading to parting; and Nina found herself, Vespa putt-putting dependably along, traversing the Mean Streets of Bay St. Lucy.

Oh my God oh my God oh my God,
she found herself thinking, while wondering whether to turn on Coastal Boulevard or keep sputtering along Bay Drive or stop and get coffee somewhere—or just drive straight into the sea and drown and get the whole thing over with.

What could Hope be thinking now?

Nina, Nina, Nina…

…Nina, should you have left the woman alone to wander up the stairs into that bedroom to stare at the pictures of a sixteen year old girl who had at one time seen her entire life in front of her?

…but what could you have said, if you had stayed?

What was there to be said?

That slap—a brutal slap, the sound of it having echoed through the space, as it was echoing now through Nina’s brain––

––and the thing about it that was worse, that being the knowledge that it was almost certainly not the only one of its kind.

There had been others before it.

There before her loomed Margot’s shop, and there out of the shop loomed Margot, who, perceiving Nina, smiled and waved and thus brought back into the world some semblance of normality.

“How did it go?”

She parked the Vespa, locked it, stored her helmet, and straightened.

Margot was about to get into her Volkswagen.

“How was the rehearsal, Nina?”

It was, she did not say, the worst single experience of my entire life. She continued not saying, I don’t think I will ever get over it. Furthermore, she did not add, I’m going to be sick to my stomach and I may never sleep again, because I will keep having nightmares about that insufferable jerk humiliating that beautiful and fragile young woman there fifteen feet in front of her aging grandmother.

She did not say any of these things.

“It was okay,” is what she did say.

“Good. Want to come with me? I’m visiting a few studios around town. Stock is getting a bit bare, and I need to buy some pieces.”

“I’d love to come.”

“Good.
 
Get in.”

She did, immensely grateful to have something to do, and also wondering if she and Hope had been the only citizens of Bay St. Lucy to have seen the slap, everyone else being ‘theater people’ and thus unable to communicate with the town itself.

“We’ll pop by Laura Redmond’s studio first. She does divine things. They keep selling, too. Then we’ll head over to Bob Fiske’s place. He told me he’d be throwing a few more clay pots this morning. Those always move nicely.
 
Then we’ll…”

Thank heaven
, thought Nina.

Margot had been in her shop all morning.

The slap had taken place, when?

She looked at her watch.

Fifty-five minutes ago.

If Margot, bustling about in the center of Gossip Center Bay St. Lucy, had not heard about it, no one had.

Which meant it did not exist.

It had not happened.

So Nina could allow herself to be drawn into the same flow of meaningless chatter she always engaged in with Margot and avoid using a string of profanities to describe Clifton Barrett, because she hated profanities and never used them anyway.

But then, thinking back on what she’d seen, perhaps that was a mistake.

One or two choice profanities right now…

They turned into Laura Redmond’s driveway.