CHAPTER

forty-six

Fire extinguishers bloomed like scarlet flowers on the kitchen counter at the Big House and in the foyer of the Red House, which was filling rapidly with actors and stagehands, gaining in population nightly. Backstage at the Amphitheater, rows of extinguishers sat next to trunks filled with Hamlet props, plastic sacks of stage blood, and baskets of silk flowers. NO SMOKING signs took on a new prominence. Riggers were careful to move at least fifty feet from the stage before lighting up, gathering behind a sheltering dune and hurriedly snuffing out butts when the stage manager approached.

The sun warmed the stone benches in the bowl-shaped auditorium, where I huddled in the spot designated Seat P-17, a forty-eight-dollar ticket in season. Carpenters, riggers, and most stagehands were banned from the Amphitheater today. The actors had come hither, hardly “the best actors in all the world,” but a cast of Garrett’s choosing. The major stars were not yet present. The younger of the two potential Hamlets had joyfully accepted the role, but was tied up on the set of his TV show till the beginning of next week. Queen Gertrude was finishing the run of an Oscar Wilde in Stratford, Ontario, but Polonius had arrived last night, joining us for a jovial dinner during which he’d prattled on in the same manner as his character, pontificating on wine and food and Shakespeare, doing everything but launching into “To thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man.”

Later, in bed, Garrett and I giggled and debated whether the man was still auditioning or had ventured so far inside the school of Method Acting that he couldn’t control his Polonius-like tendencies offstage. Garrett seemed splendidly untroubled, undisturbed by Caroline’s visit or Snow’s interrogation, undeterred by the absence of his Hamlet. With his film background, he assured me, he was used to shooting scenes out of order on a variety of sets, filming all the scenes set in one particular location, then all the scenes in another, sacrificing linear flow for considerations of time and money.

This morning he’d overseen swordfight choreography, critiquing slow-motion thrusts and feints, gradually increasing their speed till the sharp clang of metal blades rang crisply in my ears. Then he’d worked briefly with Fortinbras’s army, marching them down the aisles of the bowl. Under his guidance, twelve eager-to-please locals cast flip-flops aside, threw shoulders back, and paraded as though on royal review.

On to Act III, scene 3. A room in the Castle. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, well-cast, neither twins nor brothers, but alike as bookends in height and girth, detailed the plan to escort mad Hamlet safely overseas to England. Puffed with self-importance, Polonius scurried onstage and revealed his intent to hide behind the arras. I’d forgotten how many of Hamlet’s scenes involved eavesdropping.

I was engaged in that same activity, eavesdropping myself, since Garrett kept a closed set. When I’d mentioned auditing a rehearsal, he’d curtly replied that since he was working, I should also work. And I should have; I agreed. I would have been hard at work, writing, except that my mind was clouded with fire, obsessed with images of fire extinguishers and smoky pictures of burning buildings.

O, my offense is rank, it smells to heaven;

It hath the primal eldest curse upon’t,

A brother’s murder!

The rhythmic pulse of Shakespeare’s verse delivered by a master raked my attention to the stage. Compared to this, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, even Polonius, had tossed off their lines like waiters relaying orders to the kitchen staff.

What if this cursed hand

Were thicker than itself with brother’s blood,

Is there not rain enough in the sweet heavens

To wash it white as snow?

Garrett wasn’t filling in for Claudius the same way his PA was filling in for Hamlet, droning speeches to help the lighting tech number his cues. My God, Garrett was going to play Claudius; the role as he’d envisioned it, Claudius the King Slayer, a strong and determined foil for a strong and active Hamlet, was too alluring for the actor to resist. He’d already conceded that he might take on the part of the Ghost. I’d heard him do the Ghost at a table-reading, pitching his voice sepulchrally high. The Perfect Ghost, I’d named him, and we’d laughed because I, too, was a ghost. A matched pair, we could share the spirit role, I as his ghost writer, he as the Ghost of Hamlet’s father. Shakespeare himself is said to have played the Ghost.

Burbage to Burton to Branagh, theatrical history is studded with stellar Hamlets. There are fewer renowned Claudiuses, but Claudius is often double-cast as the Ghost since they never appear onstage together and the eerily lit Ghost wears full armor. Garrett Malcolm playing Claudius would generate as much buzz as the TV-star Hamlet. Draw a crowd. And he hadn’t told me. Another secret, another fact he’d failed to mention.

The guilt-ridden King dropped to his knees mid-sentence to pray for his blackened soul. The ragtag army, slumped in the first row, ceased their whispering and shuffling. The stage manager sank onto a bench transfixed. Kalver, onstage as Hamlet’s stand-in, froze in place and listened, cues and script forgotten.

My words fly up my thoughts remain below:

Words without thoughts never to heaven go.

At the soliloquy’s end, the silence grew, expanding like a bubble till one of the soldiers broke it with a flutter of applause. Others took up the cue and a wave of approval and admiration surged from the wings as well as the seats. Garrett Malcolm, actor, briefly reveled in the acclaim, but Garrett Malcolm, director, swiftly regained control and summoned the stage manager.

“Henry, get this down,” he said. “And Darren, take notes. Where’s the pyro guy? He ought to be here. Tell him I want fire during this speech, small flames at the base of the column first, like a grate, but with a hint of hell, an echo of what we’ll see during the Ghost scenes. He can use the flame projector, focus it in tight. I don’t want anything gimmicky, no flash powder, no flame pots. I want flickering and slowly growing flames, a projection on the column, but low, as though it were a fireplace. The flames of hell glimmering through the whole damn speech.”

He glanced at the house as though searching for the pyro guy, and I willed myself invisible, molded my body to the hard stone bench, so unyielding compared to the velvet seats in Garrett’s private screening room. It was the contrast that made me recall what I’d seen so vividly—the contrast, and the talk of fire and flames.

I’d discovered the screening room in the basement during one of my perambulations, a recently renovated space with three rows of six chairs, each so comfortable I’d been afraid I might inadvertently catnap. I’d secured Garrett’s permission to watch French Kiss and Twisted Silk, review two of his early acting roles. I wanted to make sure I nailed every detail, dotted every “i”—that’s what I’d told him, but you’d have said I was procrastinating, Teddy, snatching at any pretense to delay, indulging my desire to remain enshrined as biographer, guest, and lover.

I’d watched scenes from the two films in quick succession, admiring Garrett’s boyish face and agile body. He’d had facility and charm, but little depth. He’d grown heavier as a man, weightier as an actor; the seeds of Claudius might have been planted in the teenager, but they’d been dormant. I’d fed the disc of Blue Flame, the first Ben Justice film, into the maw of the machine even though I knew the film by heart.

Onstage, Garrett gestured at the stage manager and lectured the now-present and attentive pyrotechnics expert. They lowered a rail and adjusted a Klieg light. But all I saw were scenes from Blue Flame.

Hooded terrorists scaled a wall at a military installation, detonated a blast, burst through a doorway. Face blackened, Ben Justice elbowed his way across an obstacle course. Terrorists broke into the safe room. Justice biked the spindly bridge, legs churning faster than a Tour de France contender. Credits flashed over the opening action montage, and the body of the film began with fire, the first of a series of small-town fires of apparently accidental origin.

The direction was bold and assured and the action flowed seamlessly, the terrorist scenes moving with the clockwork precision of a good caper film. Ben Justice was a measured, nuanced presence. Brooklyn Pierce, young as he was, under Garrett’s direction, told us everything we needed to know with a flicker of his eyes. Suspension of disbelief had settled over me like a wooly blanket, descending naturally despite the number of times I’d watched the film. Dramatic scenes rang vivid and true. Comic scenes defused the tension just when it grew too taut to bear.

After the ending, after the final credit and the music, I’d watched the second arson scene again, in slow motion, recalling Sylvie Duchaine’s interview, her praise of Garrett’s filmmaking skill, his grasp of detail, his expertise in starting fires.

Onstage, Garrett spoke to the pyro expert. “Work closely with sound on this. I want tight coordination. I want the sound strong, but not overpowering. The crackle of flames has to lap at the edges of Claudius’s speech. Okay?”

The idea for a new chapter sprang into my brain as I considered his use of fire and conflagration, not just in Blue Flame, but in other films, and coupled it with his delight in the pyrotechnic possibilities of this new Hamlet. The man reveled in fire, with its antithetical powers of purification and destruction, used it to underline the thematic concerns of his work.

His fascination with fire could have been born during that early fire on the estate, the one the PA had mentioned. Garrett might not want to concentrate on his early years, but early years affect us out of all proportion, no matter what success might follow. I wondered if his cousin James Foley had been living at Cranberry Hill during the fire and, if he had, whether he’d talk about it. I yanked the ever-present three-by-five card out of my back pocket and started making notes, focusing on that early fire, until the memory of McKenna’s photograph interfered, blocking my vision, and making me ponder the fire at the clinic instead.