All's Well(108)

Grace looks at me, shocked. “You didn’t see it?”

I have a flash of kneeling over her dead body in the black box.

“I missed some parts,” I say.

“Oh, it was great. Briana was brilliant. As the dying King she was unbelievable, obviously. I did worry she was going too far. She played the frailty up so much, you know. It was almost too real. I was convinced she was going to die up there. But then that transformation.” She shakes her head. “I didn’t realize you were going to have them do the healing on the stage like that.”

“They did the healing onstage?” I see Ellie’s tear-streaked face before the show, her low voice saying to me, I’m going to fix it all tonight, Ms. Fitch.

“I thought you knew,” Grace says to me.

“Oh, of course, I knew. Yes.”

“Well, it was incredible. People were crying. Me too, if you can believe it. It was really the most amazing onstage transformation I’ve ever seen.”

I think of Briana striding into the dressing room, aglow with sudden health, high on miracles. Her face the picture of cautious glee. Her hand on Ellie’s shoulder in the dressing room. Theater heals, she said, smiling at Ellie, who smiled at me. You see, Miranda?

“The kiss really surprised me,” Grace says. “I thought it was quite daring of you.”

“Ellie and Trevor have always kissed at the end,” I say. “It’s actually quite common for Helen and Bertram to kiss.”

“No. Ellie and Briana. They kissed, and then they danced insanely across the stage. This weird jumping dance. Briana really got into it. She was screaming her head off with joy. I actually thought it was getting a bit out of control, I have to say.”

I picture Ellie and Briana dancing and laughing together. Briana’s great pain suddenly taken away. I remember how that felt. Like a roaring in your head turned off. The beauty of the sudden silence. The miracle of lightness when you have lived so heavy.

The pub door blows open just then, making me jump in my seat. I turn, expecting to see their suited shadows crossing the threshold. Nothing there. Just the door creaking on its hinges. The windblown night like a blank face.

“Miranda, are you okay?”

“Fine. Sorry. What were you saying?”

“Just that Briana’s become quite the actress.”

“Yes,” I say, “quite the actress.”

“Maybe that terrible virus did her some good after all. Gave her some depth.”

“Maybe.” But I don’t know about good, I want to tell Grace. And I don’t know about depth either. What’s down there. If it does us any good. I look out the window at the impossible night. “Maybe we should have done Macbeth after all.”

“I don’t know, Miranda. I actually think All’s Well was a success. The audience ate it up. My god, Hugo especially.”

I turn away from the window to look at Grace, who’s grinning at me now.

“Hugo?” My heart lifts even as my face flushes with embarrassment and shame, thinking of the last time we saw each other.

Grace tells me how when she got to the theater, he was standing in the back, his gaze glued to the stage. Totally transfixed for the whole show. He even cried at the end during the scene when Bertram and Helen reunite, the scene I made Trevor and Ellie rehearse to death, the one where he improbably declares his improbable love and they kiss. Right then, Hugo turned to Grace with tears in his eyes, tears if I can believe it. Where’s Miranda? he said. And Grace says I should have seen his face. The poor man looked like he was under some kind of spell. “When I told him I had no idea, he took off to go looking for you.”

“He did?” A surge of lightness in my body. That blooming feeling that used to brighten my heart. Before his wheat-colored hair turned to red-gold. Before his face turned strangely, terribly, into Paul’s face.

“He actually texted me earlier and said he’d been trying to reach you. You should really let him know you’re okay,” Grace says. “Let him know you’re a walking miracle.”

Peal of thunder now like a warning. Like a sheet of shaking tin. My shin throbs, and the blooming lightness fades to black. I remember I lost my phone in the sea.

“Must have left my phone in the theater or something,” I tell Grace.

“I’ll let him know we’re at the Canny Man but that you’re heading back soon,” she says, pulling out her phone and typing away before I can tell her to stop, that I’m doomed anyway. The instant she sends the text, her phone buzzes in her hand. She smiles at her screen, then hands the phone to me.

A selfie of Hugo. Sitting on my front steps in the dark. Beside him is what looks like a bottle of champagne, a bouquet of stargazers. He looks tired, worried. He looks beautiful and nothing at all like Paul.

Tell her I’ll be here when she’s ready.

I feel my face break out into a smile in spite of myself. A sharp pang of longing that’s all for him. Back when he was just himself, in his cathedral of wood and light, smiling at me with no tricks.

“I guess he must have missed you backstage,” Grace says. “Where the hell were you anyway? During the show?”

“I thought I heard a noise,” I tell her. “In the black box.”

“What was it?”

Just my worst nightmares come to life. Just three demons trying to win my soul. The coming storm is a vengeful triumvirate howl.