You in Five Acts(67)

Sorry man, just saw her at rehearsals, he wrote back, so I got drunk and worked some more on my new play, a monologue about a World War II soldier cuckolded by his wife back home.

At school it was hard to keep a straight face. The anger and mortification just kept growing. I blamed myself, obviously, and your doorman and the lucky, probably brain-dead male model idiot you’d been taking upstairs and every single person I ran into, especially the couples, rubbing their happiness in everyone’s faces, the Diegos and Joys of the world getting exactly what they wanted. And then, of course, there was you.

Being high didn’t excuse what you’d done to me. The more I thought about it, the more I was sure about that, at least.

? ? ?


The saving grace of tech week was that it consumed me by necessity even more than you consumed me by choice. I spent most of my time in the darkened theater with our technical director, Chris, a recent college grad whose sole role on the faculty was to do the technical jobs all of the actors felt were beneath them. Over the next few days I also started a little experiment in which I stopped talking to you unless you directly asked me a question. We could do a whole run-through and I might say nothing. It was fun to watch the insecurity take hold as I gave Roth notes and completely ignored you. I wanted to make you crave my attention, and the only way I could force you to realize you needed it was to take it away.

I was relieved at first that whatever you two had done over break, however infrequently, seemed to have worked. The energy was back, the dialogue wasn’t as rushed, and your chemistry was believable again—onstage, at least. The weird thing was that when you weren’t saying lines, you still seemed to be avoiding each other. At the end of rehearsal, you’d leave not only at separate times, but through separate exits. Without the hostility that had plagued the weeks before break, the disconnect seemed out of place, like overacting for an audience of one. In retrospect, that was my first real clue.

My second came courtesy of Diego, who I ran into in the costume shop, getting fitted for a bolero.

“Looking fancy, dude,” I said, scanning the racks for the post-Victorian work clothes the costumer, Ms. Gaspard, had been tailoring for our dress rehearsal.

“Feeling pretty fancy,” he grinned.

“Don’t move your arms, honey,” Ms. Gaspard mumbled through a mouthful of pins.

“So how’s it coming together?” I didn’t care, really—dance was never my thing, and I got bored watching anything with no dialogue—but in order to pump him for information, I had to go through the motions of social graces.

“Amazing,” he said. “Although I guess I can’t speak for Joy, since she’s working twice as hard as me.”

“Is it different now that you two are . . .” I let my ellipsis do the talking, and Diego blushed.

“Yeah,” he said. “I mean, no, but—it’s just better, you know? Everything’s better.” He smiled, like he couldn’t believe his luck, and I focused hard on making my face look normal, forcing the bitterness down.

“I’ve seen this happen so many times,” Ms. Gaspard said, placing her final pin in Diego’s velvet lapel. “Get kids together, rehearsing nonstop . . . something always clicks.”

“Not for everyone,” I said. “I almost had to recast, but luckily my leads got back on track.”

“Well, there’s an exception to every rule.” Ms. Gaspard turned Diego so that he could admire himself in the full-length mirror, and then busied herself getting my costumes off the rack. “But when it’s there, anyone can see it. You can fake a lot of things, but you can’t fake chemistry.”

I bristled. Your chemistry with Roth had been natural—that was partially why I cast him, even though he was way too classically handsome for the gangly, nondescript Rodolpho I had envisioned when I wrote the play. I hadn’t been worried because I thought you were mine then—and also because by the end of February you two had been constantly sniping at each other. It was only since I’d gotten back that things had shifted. Anything that had happened would have happened while I was gone.

Someone’s been here all week. They barely left. A stomach-turning casting choice for your “new friend” snaked its way into my brain with a venomous hiss.

He wouldn’t, I thought. It’s so sad and telling how I never doubted that you would. But not him. He was my friend.

“Can we, uh, get some more soot on this?” I asked, inspecting the vintage cap Roth would be wearing. I faced the mirror and put it on, turning my head slowly while keeping my eyes in the same spot.

If you narrow your focus enough, you stop using your peripheral vision, the Director whispered. You start to miss things.

“Looks pretty dirty to me,” Ms. Gaspard laughed. It took me a second to remember we were talking about the hat.

“He” couldn’t be Roth. He was the reason I had gotten into Janus in the first place. Without Dave Roth, one could argue, I never even would have met you.

Then again, without me, you never would have met each other.

No one could argue with that.





Chapter Twenty-Five


    May 8

5 days left


“HEY, HANDSOME.”

The Monday before Showcase, you sat down next to me at the fountain, flashing a smile on the small section of your face that was still visible underneath your huge sunglasses, and I quietly seethed. Mom had been wrong. It was Shakespeare who’s been right. Like Romeo said, love could easily spring from hate. Or, as it so happened, vice versa.