All's Well(70)

I look away from the screen, back at the middling man. Standing beside the pool table now. Holding the cue stick in his fist. He seems larger than last time. Jacket off, revealing red suspenders, shirtsleeves rolled. Smiling. This supposed stranger who knows my name.

Who are you? I want to say. What do you want from me? What have you done to me?

“Sorry, could you speak up? The acoustics in this room are so terrible. It plagues mine ears.”

“Project,” shrieks the fat man through his hands. “Breathe diaphragmatically.”

“Maybe step a little to the left,” says the middling man. “More. Right. Little more left. There. Right there.”

Now I’m standing under a bright light. Their faces are shrouded in shadow, but I feel them looking at me. Waiting. Wanting to hear. Go on. Tell us. Why you’re really here.

“Briana’s back,” I say.

They gasp softly. Back?

“She came to rehearsal today. And she wants to be King,” I say.

“King, you say?”

Behind his hands, the fat man starts to chuckle.

“I think she’s trying to sabotage the play. Why else would she want to be King?”

Laughter now from the fat man.

“And she’s sick. Really sick,” I continue. “She has a limp.”

They all begin to laugh now. The middling man looks rapt.

“She’s accusing me. She accused me today in the theater.”

They break out into applause. “Oh, that’s good, really good. Love it. Bravo. Wonderful.”

“Encore,” shouts the fat man. The third man brings his fingers to his lips and whistles.

A rose is thrown at my feet. I gaze down at it lying on the floor, the sharp thorns, the riotous red petals. I smile in spite of myself. How long has it been since anyone threw me a rose?

When I look up, the spotlight above my head is out. They’ve turned back to their games. The third man has a dart in his raised hand. He’s taken aim at the fat man, who whimpers, perhaps in earnest now. The middling man is hunched over the pool table about to make a shot.

“Wait!”

They look back at me.

“You have to tell me what to do, what I’ve done. What you did to me.”

They’re smiling, why are they smiling?

“Do, did, done,” says the fat man.

“What’s done is done,” says the middling man.

“Is done, is done,” says the slender man.

“But she’s really accusing me. She’s going to tell the dean. It’s very serious.”

“It sounds very, very serious.” They all look about to laugh. I can feel them brimming with it. The fat man is chuckling again.

“Just tell me,” I whisper. “Please. Did I make her sick?”

The middling man looks at me, mistily. “Oh, how could you do anything like that, Ms. Fitch? You’re so, so good.”

The fat man laughs uproariously now behind his hands.

I look down at the rose in my hands.

“It was an accident,” I say to the rose softly.

“Of course it was.”

“I didn’t know what I was doing,” I insist. “I really didn’t.”

“How could you know, Ms. Fitch?”

“Maybe it was just a coincidence. Her getting sick like that.” I look back up at him, at them all, hopefully.

He just looks at me. “How’s that back now, by the way?” he says.

“Limp’s gone, Ms. Fitch,” the fat man says.

“Where did it go? I wonder,” says the third man. Not wondering. Knowing. Knowing exactly. I think of Briana dragging my dead leg today in the theater. Her bloodless face slicked with sweat. Her once bright eyes dark as death.

They smile at me. “Or maybe that physical therapy finally paid off in the end.”

Mark falling forward in his chair. His pale face. My face twitching with a smile as I stood over him on suddenly straight legs.

“He was hurting me,” I shout. “It was self-defense.”

They appear to look solemn now. The fat man cries for me. The middling man looks at me with watery eyes.

“Absolutely it was. And Briana needed to learn how to act, didn’t she?”

“You could say you gave her a gift.”

“Your gift.”

I look down at the rose again. The pads of my fingers pressed into the thorns. Bleeding, but I feel nothing, nothing.

“Look at you back on your feet. Doing all this good. Making people feel. That’s the work of the theater. All’s well that ends well, am I right?”

They look at me. Bloodless faces smiling, smiling, beneath the red lights. Eyes shining with mirth. My patrons. I feel fear. Bright fear.

“Why are you helping me like this? What do you want?”

They go back to their games. The thin man is about to strike the fat man, who braces himself. The middling man takes a shot. I watch all the balls go sinking into the holes.

“What do you want?” I ask again. “From me. What’s the cost?”

They turn to me now. The fat man and the third man stop. The middling man looks at me casually.

“We just want to see a good show, Ms. Fitch. Just put on a good show.”

“A good show. That’s all?” My turn to laugh now. Can’t be. Can’t be all. “There must be something else. You must want something else.”