Authors: Suzy McKee Charnas
Closed Rehearsal
“T
hen there
is
no past?” Eva said incredulously, turning from the mirror to confront her antagonist. “You mean that the past is dead from the moment that time moves onward—unless it’s a story that
you
need to justify yourself!”
“Is that such a bad idea?” Marko demanded. Jess knew that from the audience the pleading gesture of Sinclair’s right hand (that was blocked from her own sight) would be visible, signaling Marko’s underlying appeal for understanding and consent.
“Not for thieves and criminals,” Eva retorted.
“Are you so spotless yourself?” Marko demanded. “You love any pack of ragged foreigners better than your own flesh and blood. Your virtues are our shame, Eva!”
“And what about
my
shame?” she cried, and dried on the rest of the line. Holding her position, she raised her voice: “Line?”
From his place at the back of the theater Walter fed her the words. She repeated them, and then they all backed up and did the scene all over again.
Damn! Another flub.
All afternoon she’d had a feeling of being watched, not in the professional way she expected and needed from colleagues like Walter, but with an intensity that she felt like an electrical current stirring her hair. Could it be Nick?
Maybe he was out there in the house now, quietly dropping in to get a glimpse of how things were going with “The Jewel.”
No, that was foolish. He hadn’t come before, and he wouldn’t come now. No matter how uneasy she felt, her insecurity was more about being observed than about
who
might be observing her.
“Marko,” Walter said from out in the empty hall, “what would happen if you turned a little when you said that line, so that you’re looking both at Eva and at her reflection in the mirror when you deliver the kicker? Does that feel right to you?”
Anthony grimaced in mock despair which only Jess could see, but for Walter’s benefit he drawled pleasantly, “There’s an easy way to find out.”
They ran through the confrontation scene one more time, ignoring the sounds of hammering from backstage. The set crew was reconstructing the “stone” steps that had collapsed under Jessamyn in the first hour of the rehearsal period today. Her bruised shoulder was beginning to throb now. She wasn’t still shaking with shock, but she was tired, and she felt her concentration draining away.
Anthony noticed—his light blue eyes, hooded and watchful, caught every signal she sent and some she didn’t, which was what made working with him so amazing. Going through the scene again, he visibly cranked down his own energy to match hers.
Walter knew better than to beat a dead horse. He stopped the scene, thanked them, and ended the session.
“Jess, go home and take a hot bath,” he told her in a falsely casual tone. “If that arm stiffens up on you, give me a call. My masseuse is a wizard with sore muscles.”
She insisted that she was fine, and he seemed satisfied.
“It’s not so simple,” Anthony muttered. “It can really rattle you, having a fall like that.”
He vaulted off the front of the stage and began gathering his cold weather gear from the front row. He might call himself an old man, but he was never averse to showing how fit he was.
“Honestly, are we sailing under a curse?” he added lightly. “I’d consider skipping out myself, if I didn’t need the paycheck. It’s almost as if we had a malicious spirit haunting us.”
“Oh, baloney,” Jess said. “Quit trying to scare me, Anthony. Life is tough enough.”
Sinclair shrugged. “Accidents happen. Did I ever tell you about the time I split my scalp doing a warm-up exercise right before the opening of ‘Ghosts’ in Sacramento? Blood all over the place, you wouldn’t believe it! Head wounds bleed like all hell.”
She’d heard the story twice since starting rehearsals for “The Jewel,” complete with the dash to the emergency room, the sympathetic nurse who loved theater and so rushed Sinclair to the head of the line to avoid delaying the performance, and the opening night performed with a six-inch gash stapled shut along the crown of the actor’s head.
Sinclair always swore that he wouldn’t have even a tiny start of a bald spot if not for the scar. He regularly and roundly vilified whatever fool had moved the prop table on the stage from its accustomed place, so that it was right behind where he was sitting when he had tipped backward for a nice, spine-loosening flop onto the stage.
“Of course I’ve heard it, but you tell the story so well—”
“Old windbag that I am,” he sighed, looking mournful. “Why doesn’t anybody ever shut me up in time to save my reputation, such as it is?”
“We cherish our windbags around here, even if their hair is falling out!” Anita MacNeil chimed in, reaching up to ruffle his hair as she hurried past. Petite and as beautiful as a model, Anita had a playful streak that Anthony always responded to.
Now he clapped both hands to his head and loped away up the side aisle of the small theater, bellowing that she was trying to sabotage his career by pulling out even more of his thinning hair. She stalked out after him protesting her innocence and pulling on her down coat.
“Actors!” Walter said, rolling his eyes with affectionate exasperation; and he went off to talk to the publicity people in the theater office.
“The Jewel” was a serious piece. Anthony and Anita fell easily to cutting capers in order to bleed off some of the emotional tension accumulated during rehearsal. Jess wished she could join in, but she’d felt depressed and depleted.
She lingered, looking for a stray glove. Fun and games or not, she felt wrung out.
As a newcomer to serious drama, she got a lot of support from her fellow players, but she sometimes felt left out of their easy camaraderie. They entertained each other by endlessly and brilliantly telling stories of theatrical disasters, feuds, and last-minute saves. Being out of circulation had withered her store of gossip and her own ready humor, so she didn’t have much to contribute.
Tonight she could have used some extra attention. She was beginning to feel scared. The fall through the loosened board was a step beyond marbles on her dressing room floor, and might have caused worse than bumps and bruises not just to her but to others in the company using the stage.
On the other hand, nothing terrible had actually happened.
Yet. That was the problem—as well as the lost glove, damn it.
The lighting people began flicking the spots off, sinking more and more of the stage and the rows of seating into gloom. Time to go out into the winter cold. Her apartment would be warm enough for a soak with bath salts for her shoulder. She winced, trying to work her sore arm into the sleeve of her coat.
Then the sleeve drew easily on, as if moving on its own, over her awkwardly extended arm. Startled, she turned to find someone standing right behind her, smoothing her sleeve with the lightest touch of his hand.
“Who the hell—?” she yelped.
It wasn’t a good time for surprises.
“Forgive me, please,” he said in an accented voice she knew. “I didn’t mean to startle you, but I saw that you had some trouble.”
It was the man from the terrace, that night at Whitely’s party.
The backstage hammering continued, lights came on again as the lighting staff worked through a cue sequence—nothing could have been more comfortable and familiar than business as usual in the Edwardian Theater late on a rehearsal afternoon.
But Jess could scarcely breathe. What was affecting her, she realized, was the nearness, and the stillness, of this stunning young man whose thick and beautifully cut hair shone like polished bronze and whose skin was as pale and smooth as fresh, rich cream.
He had a strong face with a touch of the exotic about the high cheekbones and broad forehead. Lines already framed his sculpted lips, signs of a deeply lived life. His eyes, with a tilt at the outer corners suggesting an Asian influence, were very steady of gaze, smokily dark, and thickly lashed.
He was only an inch or two over her own height, but he stood solidly planted as if nothing could move him without his consent, and his carriage—chin slightly raised, shoulders thrown back—read as a cool challenge so natural as to need no other statement. She couldn’t tell his age; probably still in his early twenties, but his poise gave him an air of maturity.
With a start, she realized that she was staring like a bird fascinated by a snake; he seemed to accept this as merely his due, his mouth curled in a slight smile.
Annoyed, she said rather curtly, “Thanks. Have you been in the theater long today? I didn’t know anyone was watching the rehearsal.”
“I came a little while ago,” he said. He seemed oblivious to the fact that he was standing nearer than people ordinarily stand for casual conversation. Jess was damned if she would give ground like a timid girl.
“Then you didn’t see me almost break my neck on those stairs earlier,” she said. “I took all my weight on my left arm and shoulder. It’s time I went home and put some ice on it.”
“If you’re hurt, your colleagues shouldn’t have left you,” he said critically. “If you permit me, I will escort you.”
“No thanks,” she said (
Who does he think he is and who let him in? He’s not even supposed to be in here
).
Yet she felt reluctant to just walk away. He was—interesting looking. He had that faint swagger to his well-tailored frame that she thought of as belonging to European men of a certain level of privilege, but hardly ever seen in Americans. This guy would look perfectly natural with his overcoat slung dashingly from his shoulders, like a character in an old war movie.
“Are you an actor, mister—ah—?”
He smiled, just a quirk of the lips.
“I have performed different roles in my life,” he said. “But am I an actor like your colleagues here—?” A graceful turn of his square-palmed, muscular hand indicated the empty aisle up which Sinclair and Anita had laughingly gone moments before. “No, I can’t claim so much.”
Like hell
, Jess thought, drawing back a little now with a sense of regaining balance, solidity, and common sense.
If you’re no actor, mister, you’re missing the best bet of your life!
Aspiring actors would kill for this man’s bearing, his striking looks, his light, expressive tenor. Actors went to classes all their lives trying to acquire presence like this.
And of course he knew it. He was using it all on her right now. People who had this quality—it ranged from light charm to compelling animal magnetism—did that. They couldn’t help it. This was one reason (among others) that Jessamyn didn’t look for a life partner among professional performers. You could never be sure you’d connected with the true inner man, or whether there even was one.
And, she noticed, he hadn’t given his name either. Was it too grand a name for the mere
hoi polloi
?
Oh no, I’ve stumbled into “Pride and Prejudice”!
She turned away to hide a grin he certainly didn’t deserve and began poking around at the side aisle seats, still looking for her glove. “These are closed rehearsals. How did you get in?”
“I came at the request of Miss Lily Anderson,” he replied, following her.
Well, that was a surprise.
Lily Anderson was the production designer, a very private woman; it was odd to think of her in connection with this rather glamorous man.
He answered her unspoken question. “At Mr. Whitely’s party, Ms. Anderson saw some fine examples of jewelry that I found for one of his collections. She contacted me later to consult on some details of this production’s design that she isn’t satisfied with. We agreed to confer about it, but when I came here today, as arranged, I couldn’t find her.”
“Oh,” Jess said. “Lily sometimes has to leave early. I’m sure she didn’t mean to stand you up.” This stranger didn’t have to know that the designer’s young son had a medical condition that required frequent doctor visits.
The stranger acknowledged her circumspect covering for Lily, inclining his head slightly, and added, “So I wandered into your theater to see what I could discover about this play for myself.”
She almost asked what he had discovered, but seeing how he studied her she thought he might say, “You,” and she just wasn’t up for suave seduction right now, no matter what package it came in.
“They’re closing up here for the day so we both need to leave, Mr.—is there some reason you won’t give me your name?”
“No. My name is Ivo Craggen.” he said. “I should have introduced myself right away, but I was distracted.”
Don’t ask “by what,” just get going
, she told herself,
there’s more to this than an attempt at a casual pick up. He’s an unknown quantity, and with the things that have been happening in the theater—
But the words that came out of her mouth were, “There’s a place I stop at sometimes on the way home from here. If I don’t have a small caffeine jolt, or I’ll be asleep on my feet before I’ve unlocked my door. Join me for coffee, if you like; but not for long, not today.”
She was rewarded with a smile that reminded her of purring cats—actually, Mr. Craggen had something of a feline look about him.
Am I going to regret this? Of god damn course I am; but nothing ventured, nothing gained, they say.
She strode ahead of him, propelled by something—the imagined pressure of his compact muscularity padding quietly and confidently after her?
Pride and Prejudice with Tigers, she thought. I must really be exhausted. He’d better not be a mind-reader.
“‘Night, Miss Croft,” Johnny Wagner called from the box office, which he was checking out before locking up. His friendly expression darkened as he registered the presence of her companion.
“See you, Johnny,” she replied, giving him a big smile. Poor kid, he couldn’t hide his crush on her. Her newfound escort could hardly fail to interpret Johnny’s fiery blush correctly. Jess had a feeling that Ivo Craggen’s smoky eyes didn’t miss much in any case.
The evening air was like an icy knife blade. She shivered at the first intake of freezing breath.
The man strolling at her elbow said, “You don’t dress warmly enough, Miss Croft. Won’t it hurt the production if you come down with a chill or a flu bug?”