“Why not
Tempest
?” Leroy suggested sourly.
“Maybe
Taming of the Shrew
?” Fred piped up. Oh, so he was unhappily married, Larissa thought, him and his bow ties and French berets. He certainly looked unhappily something.
“
Tempest
is too long,” Larissa said.
“So?”
“Leroy, but you were just lauding the brevity of
Godot
. Now you don’t care how long the proposed play is. Plus,” she continued evenly, “
Tempest
is complicated, it’s hard to memorize and stage.” She turned to Fred. “As for
Shrew
, we put it on three years ago last fall.”
“I don’t think that’s true.” Just to be contrary!
Larissa was quiet. “I painted the sets. I know. Vinnie might recall it.” She glared at him. “He painted the sets with me. Remember, Vinnie?”
A sheepish Vincent barely nodded, hoping Leroy and Fred wouldn’t see him agreeing with her!
Larissa exchanged an impatient glance with Ezra, that reluctant-to-intervene people-watcher. “Fred, I don’t understand what the issue is. What’s wrong with
Comedy of Errors
?”
“What’s wrong with
Much Ado About Nothing
?” he countered. “We didn’t stage
that
three years ago, did we?”
“I still think
Tempest
is a good idea,” Leroy weighed in. “It’s not an actual tragedy, you know.”
“I know,” Larissa drew out. “Do you really want to stage it?”
“Let’s say yes.”
“Can I ask you, Leroy, why are you so suddenly adamant about
The Tempest
? In my hands I’m still holding the play you were adamant about an hour ago.”
“Well, if I can’t have the one I really want…”
Vinnie and Sheila and Fred nodded in assent.
Ezra finally spoke. “How do we feel about
Much Ado
?”
Leroy first looked at Larissa, as if to gauge her imminent reaction. Then he said, “I like it. It’s a fine choice.”
“What do you think, Lar?”
Now he speaks! “It’s fine for
fifteen
-year-olds?” said Larissa. “On the one hand we have
Comedy of Errors
, 122 pages, light, external, easy to set, funny, just right for spring. On the other we have
Much Ado About Nothing
, about betrayal, shame,
humiliation, infidelity, death, itself only one bad performance away from becoming a tragedy.”
“That’s what makes it so rich and rewarding,” said Leroy.
“According to you, Larissa, every comedy in Shakespeare is a breath away from becoming a tragedy,” said Fred.
“And not just in Shakespeare,” muttered Larissa.
“Okay, then how about
Midsummer Night’s Dream
?” interjected Ezra as the situation was about to become untenable. (About to?)
“
Midsummer Night’s Dream
,” repeated Larissa in a slow voice, (poorly) hiding her supreme irritation, “deals with lovelorn triangulating. It’s too adult to be performed by fifteen-year-olds. Then again…” She didn’t even have to glance at her watch. She knew it was one o’clock. Getting up, she grabbed her denim suede purse off the back of the chair.
“You’re leaving?” said Ezra. “But we haven’t finished.”
“You’re right,” Larissa said. “But you know my opinion. Discuss amongst yourselves. Tell me tomorrow what you’ve decided.”
“Should we do a casting call this afternoon?” asked David the line reader, already thinking ahead.
“Choose the play first.”
“Larissa…” That was Ezra.
“I really have to go, guys. Honest, I have no dog in this fight. It’s the end of March, the play opens in June, that’ll be barely eight weeks after auditions to rehearse. Not a lot of time. Whatever you decide, I’m fine.”
Ezra followed her to the double doors.
“Lar, what are you doing?” he said quietly. “They think you’re storming out.”
“Aren’t I?” She patted him on the sleeve, “Make nice with them, as only you can.”
“We have to have a decision!”
“Am I the director, or are you? Or is Fred? Or perhaps Leroy
wants to direct from the sidelines. I hear there’s a play he’s just dying to do,” she added with a brisk smile, pleased with herself. She waved
Godot
in front of Ezra.
“Stop it.”
“Gotcha. Well, I’m going to tell you how it’s going to work.” She placed her implacable hand on the metal bar, ready to push open the doors and sprint. “If you want me to be the director, I have final say. That’s how it works. What play we do, whom we cast, how we stage it, what I cut.
I
decide.” She nodded in Fred and Leroy’s direction. “No devil’s advocate arguments from the peanut gallery.”
“Fine. Decide.”
“I’m going to torture you and give you what you want.
Much Ado About Nothing
. Betrayal, shame, humiliation. In spring. I’ll see you.” She blew him a teasing kiss and ran down the hall in her Frye boots. Ran. From Pingry to Stop&Shop was 5.2 miles and twelve minutes if she made
all
the lights and there was no traffic. She made no lights, and there was a mob of traffic. She made it in nine minutes anyway.
He wasn’t there.
Granted, it was 1:20 and perhaps he had come and gone, but then it was 1:30, then 1:40 and he wasn’t there. Larissa bought some steak for dinner, potatoes, frozen corn, peanut butter—1:50—cereal, coffee, sugar, tea, dry dog food—1:55—and then reluctantly went to stand in the express line and listened to a heavy, sour woman (perhaps Fred’s spouse?) behind her say, “Looks like you have more than twelve items there, dearie.” And Larissa said, “All righty, I’ll play.” Normally, she wouldn’t have done it, but this is what happened when small inflammations festered into giant sores. “Let’s count together. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve—look at that! Exactly twelve.” Larissa
gave the embarrassed woman a cold stare. “Unless of course, you want to count each of the steaks as a separate piece. But we might have to count your six English muffins individually, and then where would we be?”
The woman mumbled something about the sign saying TWELVE OR LESS.
“Yes, and I’ve got one of those. Twelve. See?” Harrumphing to the cashier, Larissa pushed her items down the conveyor belt.
“Cash back?”
“No,” Larissa barked to the register girl. “Just the receipt, please.”
Still steaming, she bagged, paid and without a backward glance of smug contemptuous self-satisfaction pushed her cart outside. She was almost at her car when a voice behind her said, “Boy, you really showed her.”
She whirled around, swirled around like a tornado on boots, and in front of her Kai stood, looking worn and pale, unshaven, scraggly, unwell and sad, holding a coffee and a brown paper bag in his hands.
“Hey,” she said, her heart thumping, her voice shaking a little. Damn! Larissa hated that old witch even more for forcing her to be unlikeable when he was nearby. “Everything okay?” What to say? What to
say
! “Haven’t seen you in a while.”
“Yeah…I had…” He bowed his head. “I know,” he said, without looking up. “You have time to grab a bite?”
It was 2:07. Larissa had exactly seven minutes to grab a bite, and then she stood a thirty percent chance of being five minutes late to pick up Michelangelo. She wished that once, just
once
…
“Hang on,” she said. “Let me call my friend.” While he waited, Larissa called Donna, whose kids were walkers, asking her to please keep Michelangelo for ten minutes because she was running “a tiny bit” behind. Though she and Larissa had
spoken barely two words the whole year, Donna was gracious. She and her own kids were headed to the playground. Could she take Michelangelo with them? “Oh, he’d love that. Thank you so much. I owe you one…”
Larissa turned to Kai. She stood dumbly in the parking lot, and her steak in the Jersey sun was going to reach room temperature, oh, in say, fifteen minutes, just long enough for her to get home and throw it out.
“Did you already eat?” he said, holding his brown bag in his hands. “We can split my sushi if you want.”
“No,” she said. “I’m okay.” It was unseemly to say she was starving. As if she had uncontrollable appetites. She stayed composed in front of him, the way she was with everyone, the line lady and Leroy notwithstanding.
They had nowhere to go but her car. So they went and sat in her car.
“Is everything okay?” she said, turning on the engine and staring ahead at her comforting tombstones. Was it her imagination, or had some new ones popped up? She could swear there were more gray markers in the ground than last week.
“It’s fine,” he said curtly. After a silence that seemed to Larissa like someone stopping playing the piano because he couldn’t figure out what the next note was, Kai continued, “You know—everything is not fine, but I really can’t talk about it, so…”
“I understand.” She wanted to tell him that Brian and Gary already mentioned a funeral, but there was no good way of explaining her reasons for dropping by his dealership when he wasn’t there, and talking about him to not one but two men. She was silent because she herself couldn’t figure out what the next note was.
“Everything okay at work?”
“I guess. Monday’s my day off,” he said, taking a gulp of
coffee, then another, and staring at his open and untouched container of sushi.
Who had died? Was it his mother? He looked pale enough for it to be his mother. A friend of his? He had mentioned that he had to leave Hawaii because of stuff. Could this have something to do with that? Larissa was idly curious, slightly concerned, but mostly shamelessly relieved that he was back. A funeral in Hawaii seemed a long dry spell away from her current pool of calm water.
“How’s the weather been here?”
Talk about small talk. “It’s been pretty good,” she replied. “A little chilly. It rained all weekend. What about Hawaii?”
“Same old, same old,” he said. “Never changes. Eighty. Sunny. Windy in the afternoon.”
“Sounds fantastic.”
“I guess.”
Oh, so now he didn’t want to chit-chat even about the weather. They sat. The music played low, Alice Cooper, the Ramones.
Could she here deny the story that is printed in her blood
? Leonato says to Friar Francis in
Much Ado
. Love conquered all, despite one’s best intentions. What a lesson it would be for her young charges. Larissa had to go. She didn’t want Michelangelo to worry.
“I just wanted to say I’m sorry.” What she wanted was to touch him.
“For what?”
She said nothing. He said nothing. Then he groaned, in small restrained anguish. “Larissa,” Kai said. The way he said it, her name had a din to it, like a song of the summer swallows, something deep that rolled off his tongue.
The name was a caress.
Larissa
, he caressed her with her own name. The rest of what he said was insignificant.
“It’s not that I don’t want to tell you. But trust me that the
story is worse and more tawdry than you imagine, and there will be nothing for you to feel but pity, and the reason I don’t want to tell you is because I don’t particularly want your pity. Can you understand?” He didn’t look away from her as he spoke. “It will seem like I’m trying to manipulate you with tragedy. And I don’t want to do that.”
“I understand. Don’t worry. Just…take care of yourself.”
“I might eventually tell you,” he said.
“Eventually? Why not now, said the undertaker.”
Kai half smiled, half didn’t. “Funny. But I won’t ever
feel
like telling you.” He looked wretched when he said it.
“Does it have anything to do with why you left Hawaii in the first place?”
“Everything.” He took his empty can, his uneaten sushi, opened the door. “Nice to see you again,” he said.
“Yes, you too.”
That was positively breaking the courtesy barrier! Larissa thought as she drove to pick up Michelangelo, the fingers gripping the wheel trembling from the tension.
7
Explanation of the Navigation
N
ext morning at 9:30 the phone rang. She was getting ready to drive to Pingry and debated not picking up, but the caller ID said, “MADISON JAGUAR DEALER“. With all due haste she picked up.
“Larissa?” Kai said. Again!
“Yes, hello,” she said. It set her blood coursing, his calling her house, like breaking and entering.
“Um, Brian just told me that your navigation system is in,” he said. There was an amused glint to his voice. “Now, correct me if I’m wrong but I didn’t know you needed a navigation system.”
“I didn’t think I did,” said Larissa. “But it turns out I do.”
“Do you remember me trying to sell it to you?”
“Yes. But I didn’t know I needed it then.”
“I see. Okey-dokey. When can you bring in the Jag so we can install it?”
“When is good?” She had to order twenty-five copies of the play and write up the audition notice. That would take some time, probably most of the morning.
“Now is good.”
“Now?” Not twenty-four hours as director and already the
play was interfering adversely in her life! She should’ve never accepted. Oh, hell. She would call Ezra, make nice, ask Sheila to order the books, and she’d write the casting notice this afternoon. What was one more day? “Yes, okay,” she said to Kai in an even voice. “I’ll bring it in.”
“Thirty minutes?”
In twenty-eight Larissa was at the dealership. She brought her car to the back, walked through the service door, filled out some paperwork, signed on the dotted line, gave her credit card (what would Jared say when he found out that she bought a navigation system she didn’t need for $2900?) and took her receipt.
“Nav will be ready this afternoon,” said Brian. “You want one of my guys to give you a ride home?”
“No, that’s okay, I’m fine today,” Larissa said, keeping it succinct, her face impassive like her voice. She smiled.
Brian didn’t even glance at her. She liked hiding behind the polite words. Everything so smooth, normal, even keel, not a prob, nothing to see here, folks, just passing through, like all wives who have work done on their cars. She strolled through the dealership, smiled at the idle business office guys, barely acknowledged Crystal, the snippy receptionist, and made her way to Kai’s desk, where he was looking into a computer, drinking coffee and on the phone. Nodding to her, he pointed to the chair in front of him. She perched and waited. He was on the phone five minutes or more, searching for a car for a prospective client. The phone rang for him half a dozen times. The receptionist walked over to mouth to him there was another phone call waiting and he pantomimed to her to take a message. When he hung up, he faced her. “How you doing?”