TWO

He tore off his beard with the quick deft yank that experience dictated as the least excruciating way to perform a painful task. Then he cold-creamed and tissued the paint off his face, removing the heavy makeup that disguised one of Duke Senior’s courtiers from the man the audience had earlier encountered as the wicked brother, Oliver. Spraggue glanced at the table in front of him to ensure that all was laid out in preparation for his five-minute transformation back to Oliver; fake mustache, dark red lining pencils, brown shadow, white liner, two fine-tipped camel’s-hair brushes, medium powder, one grease stick in standard tan. He wouldn’t have time to blend a particular shade for Oliver.

He smoothed on a light layer of grease and rubbed it in with face-washing motions, then selected the sharpest of his lining pencils by testing each of their points against his thumb. He raised both eyebrows to wrinkle his forehead and automatically traced the most prominent of the resulting lines with red pencil, highlighting each furrow with white. Pretty soon he could forget about the wrinkling ceremony, he thought. The lines were getting damn easy to spot without it.

Just as he’d established a ritual for the makeup table and an order, from hairline to chin, in which to line his face, so there was a structure to his mental preparation for each role. Now was the allotted time to slip back into the character of the evil elder brother: to replay Oliver’s grim encounter with Duke Frederick at the new court; to reconstruct Oliver’s plans to do away with his brother, Orlando; to relive Oliver’s long journey to the Forest of Arden, culminating in his miraculous, plot-saving conversion to sudden goodness. Instead, Spraggue pondered the shooting at the reservoir.

The cops now had the names of some twenty runners who’d witnessed the brouhaha, complete with addresses, phone numbers, and a few addled, unmatching descriptions of the supposed perpetrator. The young woman who had brought up the stocking-mask possibility seemed the most reliable of a bad lot. The old man with the twisted ankle had offered twenty-two different conspiracy theories, the mildest being a plot by the sponsors of the New York Marathon to scuttle the Boston race. He also thought the sniping might be a diabolically clever ploy by the mob to get the cops out of the way while crooks reprised the Brink’s heist.

Spraggue thumbed brown shadow across his eyelids. What bothered him was the reporters. Channel 4’s news team had been on the scene like flies on honey even before the cops had finished flashing their badges. Asked better questions, too. Could they have been tipped off slightly in advance? Was the whole episode some cockeyed publicity stunt? Donagher was up for reelection in November and many were the pundits who claimed his return to marathon running was a cheap way of garnering momentum for his campaign start-up. Instead of shelling out hard won campaign contributions for newspaper ads, would some flunky in Donagher’s organization point proudly to tomorrow’s front page coverage in the Globe and the Herald and chalk up the cash savings for his committee? Spraggue decided that he’d investigate that angle long before he checked out any anonymous crank letters. He wondered what Pete Collatos would do. If Collatos kept his job. Spraggue hoped his friend hadn’t gotten fired for his dereliction of duty.

Deftly, he hollowed out the area under his right cheekbone with dark shadow, edged it with white.

Any flunky responsible for the prank would have wept at Donagher’s low-key reaction. The candidate had resisted every attempt by the cops to single him out as the target. A “random sniping incident” at the reservoir, that’s what Donagher had called it. When pressed for motive, he’d discoursed on random violence in today’s society. Hadn’t mentioned any threatening letters. Out of twenty-five observers of Donagher’s chat with the cops, Spraggue supposed the senator hadn’t won more than twenty-five votes. Getting shot at all across the city seemed an uncertain way to win an election.

He peered up at the ceiling, cheated down into the mirror to line under his eyes. His Oliver makeup was a straight job in contrast to the character makeup he did for the rustic lord. No fancy tricks on this one, no putty noses or bushy eyebrows. Spraggue just reinforced the features he already had, evening out the faint asymmetricality that made his mobile face perfect for double casting.

Right now, Spraggue thought, he could play any age, from twenty to death, but his days as youthful Romeo were fast drawing to a close. On the street, his face never drew a second look. Makeup made a difference. The Globe’s reviewer had called his Oliver a handsome rogue, two words no one would have used to describe Spraggue. Normal was a more oft used term. Average, except for those amber cat’s eyes.

Hurriedly buttoning up his deep red tunic, Spraggue reread the note he’d found tacked to his dressing-room door. “Michael,” it said, “must see you. Finances. Real estate. Tonight. No excuses.” The assistant stage manager had written down his aunt’s peremptory message in appropriate red. He doubted his aunt had been quite so succinct; Mary had a reputation for volubility.

Tonight … Whether or not he made the appointment would depend on the mood of one Kathleen Farrell, the actress who played his beloved Celia. An after-theater snack might be in order: He’d missed dinner due to the cops’ insistence on his testimony at the sniping scene, and his stomach rumbled like distant cannonfire. He’d almost been tempted by the gruesome fare the props crew dispensed for the Act Two rustic banquet scene. And after dinner … well, Aunt Mary might have to wait a bit. Maybe she’d have to forge his signature on whatever moneymaking scheme she was presently contemplating.

He shook himself from his reverie and addressed his reflection in the full-length mirror on the back of the door.

Good morrow, fair ones: Pray you, if you know,

Where in the purlieus of this forest stands

A sheep-cote, fenced about with olive trees?

He spoke those words in Act Four, scene three, every night As You Like It played, which was by no means a simple matter of every Tuesday through Sunday night with Wednesday and Sunday matinees. The Harvard Rep was just what its title proclaimed, a repertory company complete with its own bizarre calendar. This season they were running a three-show schedule: a Shakespeare, a Brecht, and an opera, the latter a new departure for the theater. Spraggue was cast in two out of the three, having neither the voice nor the inclination for opera. This week was more hectic than most: three Caucasian Chalk Circles and four As You Like Its. The opera ran only once. At first, Spraggue had checked the schedule constantly to find out whom he was to play that night; now he took things a day at a time without much anxiety.

The Act Four speech he’d just recited was the opening of his big scene with Celia, a scene played not by the text, but according to Rosalind’s later verdict that the two had “no sooner met, but they looked; no sooner looked but they loved.” Each night Spraggue picked a different point in the scene to fall madly in love with Celia. He wondered how much of an effect that had on his feelings for Kathleen Farrell. Imitation spawning the real thing; art provoking life rather than imitating it. Hard to tell.

Kathleen, a blue-eyed siren with honey-colored hair, was breathtaking in the scene that night. Her voice was tuned to the back of the auditorium, but Spraggue couldn’t rid himself of the notion that her eyes and thoughts were just for him.

He married her in the last scene. Was her curtain-call kiss warmer, longer than usual?

He recalled the first time he’d been shot at, years before, when he’d been a practicing private detective. He remembered thinking: If life is so capricious, if you can be wiped off the face of the earth by a stray bullet fired at a stranger by a stranger, enjoy each day, each moment. Confronting death made him think of pleasure, and pleasure made him think of sex. He wondered how Senator Donagher would pass the night.

Kathleen entered his dressing room still in her Celia garb, although her face had been scrubbed clean and her wig discarded. She carried her street clothes over her arm. Kathleen changed clothes wherever she happened to be—a habit that alternately delighted and irritated him—as long as her bra and panties stayed on. If those articles were to be removed, she retreated demurely to her dressing room like some innocent ingenue. Now she left the door open and began unhooking her bodice. Spraggue hoped the entire cast would not filter in to see which style of underwear she had selected for the evening.

“Hungry?” he asked, wondering if he were the first or the final male in the cast to try this less than novel approach. His was certainly not the only dressing room Kathleen had graced with her postperformance strip shows.

“Starving.”

“The Harvest is still open. Or,” he said, carefully not staring at any of the portions of Farrell’s anatomy that were well worth staring at, “I could fix you some dinner at my place.”

She glanced at him speculatively and said, “That would be nice” in a way that let him know all possible ramifications of his invitation had been taken into consideration.

“Fine” was all he said.

“Stage door in five minutes then.” She vanished, leaving him to think delightful thoughts.

They were abruptly canceled. The hulking figure of Captain Hank Menlo of the Boston Police filled the doorway, blocking the light.