Theatrical Read online

  I see you, Tommy Knight.

  And for the first time, I think I understand you.

  With Tommy back in the room, we slog through the next handful of scenes; Rick pushes lunch break to the absolute limit of our working time, and I can hear the crew muttering darkly about Equity union rulings over my headset a full five minutes before we stop. After the constant noise of the morning’s rehearsals, actors going through their lines, Rick calling out instructions, or scenery sliding in and out on its track, the sudden silence when it stops is overwhelming. I need to talk to someone, somebody who isn’t just in my headset, and won’t tell me I didn’t give them enough of a standby warning for that last cue.

  “George?”

  The door to wardrobe is open, and I can see Nathalie and Jonna at the back of the room between two racks of costumes, their heads bent forward together over a sketchbook – but no George.

  “In here!” The next door along – the laundry – is ajar.

  I nudge the door open and peer round to find George leaning heavily on the ironing board, pressing what looks like a velvet jacket.

  “Cavan decided that putting his jacket back on the hanger was just too much of an effort, and now it looks like garbage.” He holds up the sad, crumpled jacket. It does, indeed, look like garbage. “I’m going to accidentally-on-purpose poke him in the eye with his eyeliner first chance I get – but before that, I’ve got to sort this. Jonna will kill me if she sees it.”

  “Well, I’m no expert,” I say, peering at the iron he’s picked up from the board, “but I’m pretty sure you’ve actually got to switch the iron on if you want it to do anything?”

  He does a double-take, looking at the socket on the wall. “Oh, what?”

  I lean around him and flick the switch on. The iron clicks as it starts to heat up. “Give it here.”

  “Are you telling me to let you take over the ironing? What would my mother say? What would your mother say?”

  I elbow him out of the way, laughing. “My mother would say that you’re about to press the velvet on the wrong side and you’re going to totally crush the pile.” I flip the jacket inside out and smooth it across the board.

  “Jesus, today is just not my day.” He stands at the end of the board, pretending to supervise. “You never thought about going into costumes too then?”

  “God, no. Very, very no – would you? Can you imagine how much that would suck? Bad enough wanting to work in theatre on my own terms, but if I wanted to do exactly the same thing as my mother?”

  “And the rest of your family?”

  “Dad’s not into theatre, really. And then there’s my sisters – Grace is a lawyer, Faith’s an accountant.”

  George blinks at me three times. “That’s not what I expected you to say. At all.”

  “I know. But that’s my sisters for you. We couldn’t be more different if we tried. They don’t like me very much actually.” Which is fine, because most of the time the feeling’s mutual.

  He snorts. “I think that’s a bit of an exaggeration – I’m sure they love you.” He leans his elbows on the other end of the ironing board and the whole thing creaks alarmingly. George moves his elbows. “It’s just…well, family, isn’t it?”

  I shake my head. “No. It’s Faith and Grace. And that’s fine. We don’t get on, and that’s how it is. You don’t have to like somebody just because you happen to be related. I mean, if it wasn’t for Mum, I’d wonder if I was swapped at birth or something…” I rest the iron on the stand at the end of the ironing board. “You don’t think they were swapped at birth, do you?”

  I whip the jacket off the board and turn it right way round. It’s not perfect, but at least it resembles the Magister’s jacket again, rather than the crumpled rag it had become.

  “That’s not a bad job,” George mutters, slipping it onto its labelled hanger.

  “By which you mean ‘Thank you, Hope, I am eternally grateful. Call on me in your hour of need and I will repay—’”

  “Yes, yes. All of that.”

  “I…umm, don’t suppose you’ve seen Luke back here recently, have you?” I pretend I’m very interested in the ball of lint on the floor under the ironing board, letting the question slip out casually.

  Or perhaps not as casually as I thought, because George tips his head to one side and looks very hard at me.

  “You want to talk to him about the Tommy thing?”

  “There is no Tommy thing. Christ, George. Calling it ‘the Tommy thing’ doesn’t exactly help, does it?”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “Yes, I do. And yes. I do. But I haven’t seen him since he was in tech earlier, and I don’t know where he’s gone, or even if he—”

  George cuts across me. “You two are a thing, then?”

  “What? No!”

  “Really. Because – and fine, what do I know? – you certainly look like you want to be. You’re going all gooey-eyed…”

  “Eeew.”

  “Shut up. You know what I mean – every time he walks into the room, or heaven help us, he gets on the stage. And he—”

  “He what?” I say it just a little too quickly, and George pounces.

  “Why do you care? I thought you weren’t a thing.”

  “We’re not. He’s not. I don’t know. Okay? I don’t know. Just…tell me.”

  “About him? Put it this way – if that’s how a guy who isn’t interested reacts to a story about you and Tommy, I’d love to know how it’d go if he was.”

  I stare at him. “Can you maybe use small words?”

  “I did. But fine. You blatantly, shamelessly like him – so what are you doing standing around chatting with me for, instead of going to find out if the feeling’s mutual?” He waits, then sighs theatrically. “And as I’m apparently going to have to do all the work here, if you did want to go find him, I heard him say he’d be running some lines for college up top in the Heffernan Room…”

  The Heffernan Room, on the highest floor of the main building, is shut; the door closed. But when I peer through the little glass porthole set into the wood, I can see Luke silhouetted against the floor-to-ceiling windows that look over the surrounding roofs.

  “Hey.” I push through the door, letting it swing shut behind me, and I wait for him to turn around.

  It feels like I’m waiting for ever – but eventually, he does, folding a copy of Misterman into his back pocket. It’s become such a familiar gesture to me, him tucking a script away, that it almost makes everything better. Until I really see the look on his face. He doesn’t look at me like we’ve somehow known each other for years any more – or even like we’ve ever met. He looks at me like I’m a total stranger, and it stings.

  No. More than that.

  It hurts.

  “Hope.”

  “Good rehearsal this morning. Rick and Nina were really happy.”

  “Were they?” Is that a thaw in his voice? Maybe if I keep talking, he’ll warm up.

  “They were. Definitely. And even Tommy…”

  I realize that was the very, most absolutely wrongest of all wrong things I could have said a fraction of a second too late – but there’s nothing I can do except watch him turn his back on me again.

  “Tommy.” He says it to the window, not me. There’s real venom in the name.

  I stare at his back.

  Outside, the sun moves behind a thick cloud and the room darkens and cools.

  I didn’t ask for this. Is isn’t fair.

  It really isn’t fair…and I’ve had enough. Everything that’s been boiling up inside me since I got in this morning suddenly rises to the surface – and overflows.

  “What’s your problem, Luke? You’ve obviously got one, and it’s obviously with me – so you can at least grow up and tell me what the hell it is, seeing as we’ve got to spend the immediate future in the same building.”

  “My problem?” All the warmth and softness has gone. He could carve words into the windows with that
voice. “Clearly it isn’t that obvious after all.”

  “No. It’s not. Because I’m not psychic, am I? However much everyone round here seems to want me to be, and I…” This isn’t where I wanted to go with this. “And all I know is that you were fine – we were fine, more than fine – and now suddenly you won’t even turn round and look at me.”

  “You don’t get it, do you?” he snaps, and now he whips around to face me and he’s across the room and standing right in front of me in a heartbeat. “You’re my problem. You.”

  “Me? A problem? Oh, great. Thanks for that.”

  He ruffles his hands through his hair – again, it’s so familiar and yet not. So close and so far away.

  “Do you really not get it?”

  “Yeah, sure. I’m a problem. I think I got it this time.”

  “No. You don’t. I like you, okay? I like you, and I’ve liked you from the first time you spoke to me. And I don’t like many people – not like this. I don’t…” He stops and growls with exasperation, fumbling for the right words. “I don’t exactly open up to people. It’s not who I am, so I don’t. Ever. Until…until you came along. I felt…I don’t know, that I could trust you because you’d understand. That you did understand. And then Juliet showed me those photos of you and Tommy and…”

  I stare at him. This is a lot. A lot.

  “You like me?”

  Really, brain? That’s what we’re taking from this?

  But I’ve lost control and my heart and my mouth are doing their own thing. I’m just along for the ride.

  “Yes, Hope. I like you. I thought you’d have worked that out by now.”

  “Well…”

  No, actually.

  Maybe.

  I hoped…

  I don’t know; I guess I was so busy thinking about me, the fact I like him, that I wasn’t really paying attention to how this might make him feel.

  He sighs. “Look, I’m sorry. Maybe I should have said something, but that’s not who I am. I thought I’d put the figures in the office to try and – I don’t know – show you, and then I was worried it was weird. That I was making things weird…”

  “You didn’t want to make things weird, so you left little cardboard versions of us on the little cardboard stage for me to find? Yeah. That’s not weird.” I try to make it sound cool, but inside my heart is tying itself into a knot.

  “I told you, I’m not so great with words. I know what I want to say, but half the time it comes out wrong – or it takes twice as long as anyone wants to listen. I don’t always get people, you know? They usually take me a while, and I’m always second-guessing everything I say and do and…” He bites his lip and frowns. “But then you…and I thought…and then there’s those pictures of you and Tommy…”

  “You know it’s not true, right?”

  “Do I? I don’t know anything – I barely know you!”

  That stings some more, and the insides of my eyelids prickle. But I will not break.

  I wait for him to carry on, and he does. “I didn’t want to put any pressure on you. We’re working together and…and I’m older than you, and even if that doesn’t matter to you, it matters to me.” He sighs. “But maybe I’m the only one, because there you are, arm in arm with Tommy.”

  “Woah. Just stop.” I hold up my hands. How can I be this happy AND this furious at the same time? “First of all, if you care so much, did it not even cross your mind to ask me about Tommy? Did it not occur to you that I might not actually be desperately into him? Just maybe?”

  Luke stares at the floor.

  “And do you not think that maybe, maybe if you like someone – and you like them enough to get all like –” I flap my hand at him – “this, then you might actually want to let them know how you feel?”

  “I did,” he mumbles. “I am.”

  “Yeah, well. It’s not exactly a Shakespearean declaration of love, is it?”

  I’ve run out of anger, of indignation, of breath – and all I can think about now is the tiny little spark I’ve found in the middle of the fog inside my head.

  He definitely likes me.

  He said so.

  Luke Withakay likes me.

  “I’m sorry,” he says quietly. “You’re right.”

  “Of course I’m right. I’m stage management. We’re always right. You should know that.”

  The corner of his mouth twitches, and I know that’s a smile.

  I know, because I’ve been paying attention.

  I could annotate his gestures the same way he does his scripts. I could draw his face from memory the same way he draws out his lines… But even knowing that, and even after seeing the way he analyzes the smallest pause or shortest word in all those scripts he reads, somehow we both managed to miss this.

  Until now.

  And now it’s up in lights and flashing on and off in giant letters, and suddenly I don’t know how we’re going to keep everybody else in the dark.

  It feels like I fly across the floor to him, until there’s no space between us. No space for weirdness or misunderstandings or whatever it is we’ve tried to put in the way. Now he really is close enough to touch.

  Without a word I lift my hands and slowly, slowly, I bring them up to rest on his shoulders. His eyes are locked on mine and I can see him looking out at me. I see him and I know he’s him and he’s real. He’s not acting; not pretending, not hiding.

  And as I lean in to him and press my lips to his, feeling him tense at first, then relax and give under my touch, neither am I.

  I float back down the stairs and through the corridors, and all of them feel warmer and brighter than before – until I turn a corner and walk straight into Amy.

  She blinks at me. “What are you doing back here? I thought you were out front?”

  “I…thought I saw a mouse?” It’s literally the first thing that comes into my head, but anything is better than letting her know what I’ve really been doing. This – as far as Amy is concerned – would definitely count as “a distraction”.

  “Remind me to speak to the team about getting some traps down here. We’ve had problems with mice before.”

  “What about the cat? Surely the point of a theatre cat is that they actually catch the mice?”

  Amy laughs. “That cat couldn’t catch a mouse if it was lying flat on its back in the middle of his food bowl. Whatever Roly says.” She runs a practised eye over me, over the corridor, then jerks her head back in the direction of the stage. “You’ve not seen Luke, have you? Rick wants a quick word with him.”

  “Luke? Nope. No. Not seen him in ages.” I shake my head, but in my pocket my hand closes around a pair of folded cardboard figures – tiny in scale, but to me they couldn’t possibly feel any bigger.

  When I get back to the creative desks in the auditorium, an enormous sheet of paper has been unfolded on the floor of the main aisle, and Rick and Nina are staring at it. Rick’s arms are folded across his chest and he’s chewing gum again, while Nina is scribbling notes on the sheet in orange Sharpie, occasionally glancing over at the rigging bars, which have been lowered all the way down from the grid and have come to a stop about a metre above the stage. Chris and another of the flymen are sitting on the edge of the stage, swinging their feet back and forth, while a couple of the actors have started what looks like a game of poker in the front row of the stalls. The dress rehearsal may be tomorrow, but apparently this is one of those decisions that Rick won’t rush. Everybody else just has to wait.

  “You’ve got orange pen on your ear,” I whisper at Nina as I edge past her. She shakes her head, glancing up at me from the page.

  “I put it in my mouth earlier – and I can’t remember which way round it was. I’m too scared to go look in a mirror.”

  “No, you’re good.” I give her a thumbs up, and Rick – obviously happy with the new changes to the lighting – shouts to the flymen. They jump up surprisingly lightly, and head back to the fly-floor, while Amy jogs to the front row.
“Two minutes, everyone!”

  I lean back across to Nina, pulling my headset around my neck, and grab her as she goes by. “Everything okay?”

  She rolls her eyes. “Yeah, it’s fine – just the blue light gel being one shade too blue in the end. I think I wrote the wrong one down? Or maybe Clare from the lighting department did? I don’t know. Somebody did, anyway. I don’t even know how he spotted it. I wouldn’t have.”

  Chatter from the fly-floor fills my ears as I slip the headset into place, and I flip on the microphone.

  “Quiet on the channel, please, we’re almost ready to start.”

  They carry on chatting as though they didn’t hear me.

  I know they heard me.

  I try again, clearing my throat extravagantly beforehand into the bargain. “Quiet on the channel, please.”

  They just keep on babbling. Is this another test? It feels like everything is a test with these guys – checking that you’re for real, making you earn every single drop of respect.

  But then, isn’t that what I wanted? To earn it, not just have it handed to me because of who I was?

  I listen to them and I look at the row of switches on the desk. If I flip this one up, and that one down, and then I switch the mic on…

  I slip the headset down to my neck as feedback howls across the system – and when I pull my cans back over my ears, everything is quiet.

  “Are we finished chit-chatting?”

  “Standing by,” says the voice I recognize as Chris.

  Amy settles back in her seat and nods at me.

  “Take the lighting rig out, please?”

  “Lighting rig going out.”

  Slowly, the lights rise from the stage and disappear into the gloom of the grid, high above the stage.

  “Lighting rig out,” says Chris.