16

The Sumner Globe, Felix Haas’s workshop

I took to joining Haas at the theater when I tired of watching Titus rehearsals—there was only so much I could take of the same dramatic mess unfolding over and over again on the boards stained red from all the sugar blood.

The company was doing a fine job of it. Wesley played a brilliant Marcus, but it was purely my own exhaustion that soured me on the show. I much preferred privacy with Haas, where I could watch him work and peruse the costumes and daydream about some of the better memories from my early days.

Before Jensen deemed me fit to go onstage with the Richmond Revue, when I was still just an errand girl sniffing after him like a lost puppy, helping the costumers had been my favorite job—assisting with the whirlwind of a quick-change; fetching this or that piece from the storage closet; hiding backstage during performances, mouthing along with the players onstage and imagining myself wearing every costume in the shop.

I was wandering through the mannequin rows and trying to recall if Ezra’s rentals had ever been so fine as Felix Haas’s handiwork. The sewing machine across the packed-tight room whirred at a steady pace, where Haas was finishing some hemming on several layers of skirts.

“Do you prefer comedies,” I called over the chattering, “or tragedies?”

“Indifferent,” Haas called back. “The costumes are the same.”

“Not true.”

“Oh?”

I peeked over the top of a rack at him, and the machine paused—he angled back to regard me in full. He looked doubtful.

“They’re completely different,” I insisted with a grin. “Costumes for tragedies should be terribly uncomfortable. If the actor is miserable, their character will be, too.”

The sharp chips of Haas’s eyes dug at me, not so much biting as they were seeking. “Is that what you needed to get into character? A costume telling you what to do?”

I ambled along the row of brocaded jackets, running my hand over their shoulders. “A good costume is always telling the actor what to do.”

Haas pushed his glasses up his nose and looked at me without saying anything for a moment. “You haven’t lost any of the love for it,” he asked, “have you?”

I gestured broadly at the workshop, the theater, the discipline itself. “How could I ever?”

“You’d be surprised.”

“It’s worth it. Every inch of misery I’ve ever put on myself, the theater has made worth it.”

“What do you consider misery?”

Haas held my gaze when I leveled a look at him.

I tipped my head at the sewing machine. “Don’t you have work to do?”

“It’s just hemming. I could hem in my sleep.” Haas stood up from his workbench and began tidying it idly. “You seem more highly strung since yesterday.”

The supposition hit me from left field and made me frown—although he wasn’t wrong. I hadn’t taken a dose yet today, as a secret little challenge to myself. Just for fun.

“I’m not highly strung,” I said.

Haas mimicked my look right back at me. “You’ve been pacing the workshop since you came in.”

“I’ve always paced.”

“And your doctor prescribed you an upper?”

“Felix Haas,” I teased him lightly, “you’re more than a bit of a bitch when you want to be.”

Haas shot a small, private smile at me and shut the light clipped to the top of the sewing machine. He crossed the room and drew up close, corralling me a single step backward against a rack of muslin dresses, and took my face gently in one hand. “Allow me to ask again,” he murmured. “Is there anything I can do to help quiet your mind?”

I didn’t have the willpower to look him straight in the eye. If I met his gaze, I would have him right here in the workshop. I swallowed. “I might be in the market for another bit of medicine,” I said as casually as I could make it.

Haas made a small mouing sound, clicking his tongue. He stroked his thumb along the soft hollow below my jaw, the root of my tongue on the underside of my chin. “You wound me, Margaret. I told you, you need only ask. And you know exactly where to find me, don’t you?”

“Room six,” I said lightly, trying not to melt entirely into the dresses parting like petals behind me.

Haas smiled at me before tucking his lower lip neatly under the very edges of his top teeth. “Is this you asking nicely?” he murmured—and I might have had some modicum of resistance left if not for the lightest lope of melodic teasing bending the ends of each word.

“If nice is what you’re wanting,” I said, handpicking the words.

Leaning down, angling my mouth gently to seek his, Haas sensed my brief hesitation—his eyes flashed at the shudder of misgiving, and he proceeded with closing the distance.

His mouth moved with rangy awe as though each time he kissed me was the first, a barely reined thrill that stoked my ego to its very foundation. I was helpless against it, the idea I could render someone so wanting, so eager for the person I was now. He had only known me as Margaret Shoard, never Wolf, but his attentions kicked up the pieces of who I used to be, left behind in the silt deep in my spirit’s reservoir. He made me want to dredge them up and don them again.

Haas pulled me to him and roved a slow path of filthy kisses down the sloping side of my neck. With one hand, he drew another square of paper from his pocket. He slipped the envelope open and licked his thumb before coating it thick with powder.

“Here.”

I swallowed and bent my head sideways to give his mouth more room. “I’m curious, what is it, exactly?”

“Paradise.”

I let him push his thumb through my lips to slowly trace the roots of my teeth along my gums. I didn’t blink, watching him—he stared at the passage of his finger, as though greedily tracking the pull of a thread through the hole made by the tugging point of his needle.

“Good girl,” he breathed.

I shut my eyes. “Don’t call me that.”

My mouth dropped open at the sharp tug of Haas’s hand in my hair. “Aren’t you the one who likes to be told what to do?” he cooed.

An airy laugh kicked shortly from my chest. “Who are you, my director?”

Haas’s grip stung at my roots with just enough intent that it made my breath catch again. “Go ahead,” he said—and roved his other hand under the hem of my skirt. “What was your favorite monologue?”

I laughed again, but it died quickly as Haas’s fingers found me wet past the gusset of my shorts. I fell against him briefly and drew a steadying breath, clinging to his arms.

In the fitting mirror across the workshop, a rickety stand-up of five secondhand full-length mirrors pulled out of someone’s dump pile, I caught my reflection and held my own gaze over Haas’s shoulder.

Come, you spirits

That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here,

And fill me from the crown to the toe top-full

Of direst cruelty. Make thick my blood.

Stop up th’ access and passage to remorse,

That no compunctious visitings of nature

Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between

Th’ effect and it. Come to my woman’s breasts,

And take my milk for gall, you murd’ring ministers,

Wherever in your sightless substances

You wait on nature’s mischief. Come, thick night,

And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell,

That my keen knife see not the wound it makes,

Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark

To cry “Hold, hold!”

I returned to myself with the fishtail darting of urgent pleasure quickening from my toes to my brow, rolling outward on its own tide. The instantaneous release of heavy tension broke with a hitch and made me sag, strings cut, into Haas’s near-trembling chest. He breathed against my neck and worked me through the burn-off.

His eyes were bright and pleased with himself. He still held me fast by the roots of my hair. “You’re stunning, Margaret.”

I clung to the dresses behind me. Before I could gather myself to respond, the twisting progress of the drug persisted to drag me far, far away from myself.

I lost time.

Next I could recall, I was perched on the end of the workbench. The sewing machine was thrumming again, back to hemming. The only evidence of our brief entanglement were my mussed curls, and a few errant strands from the razor-sharp part in Haas’s hair.

“I’ll take care of you,” Haas said without looking up, bent close to the stitching. “All you ever need do is ask.”

I was staring at myself in the mirror. Something in me was different, but I couldn’t tell what. I fussed with a few of the bobby pins at the back of my head. “Wesley takes very good care of me,” I said airily. I smiled.

Everything felt good from here.

“Does he?” Haas hummed, loosened in his frame, and angled a smirk at me. I tried to bite my lips shut around my smile splitting wider, but I couldn’t help it. And Haas didn’t laugh, exactly—but he was smiling, and when I nudged his hip with my toe, he leaned down to kiss my knee.

---

◆ ◆ ◆

A little over four weeks before Titus was set to open, Kline called the phone in my motel room to bid me come meet him at my earliest convenience.

I frowned at the handset. “Do you mean Wesley?”

“Is Wesley’s name Margaret?”

“No, but—”

“One of the boys’ll be there to drive you up,” Kline jabbered. “Knock twice when you arrive.”

When I got there, the actors were milling in the house on a break between scenes. Wesley hailed me from a gaggle sharing a lighter and deposited a kiss on my cheek.

“Summons from Kline,” I said by way of explanation as I returned the kiss, distracted.

“He should give you secretary wages,” Chap sallied. I shot him a cheap smile punctuated with my middle finger to indicate I understood perfectly well he was joking and refused to let it wound me.

Kline’s office was marked by an off-center nameplate on the door that read Boss. I knocked twice.

“Come on in, sweetheart.”

I stepped inside and left the door ajar. Behind a large desk, Kline was sitting in a high-backed red leather chair that looked as though it had been reclaimed from a landfill. To my surprise, Haas stood beside him.

“Glad you could join us,” Kline said. He made no motion to stand. Haas stepped around me and put one hand lightly on my waist as he leaned to shut the door.

I put on my most unbothered air and drew my shoulders back to look Kline in the eye. “What did you want to discuss?”

Kline put his hands flat on the empty desk before him. “Brass tacks! I like it. We’re changing the program. Macbeth instead of Titus. Congratulations.”

I stared at him, his smarmy little ferret smile. I blinked. “What?”

“We’re pivoting. Goodbye, Titus-what’s-his-nuts; hello, Mr. Macbeth.”

Still struggling to catch his intent, I opened my mouth once before pausing to try again. “With all due respect, it—this is a theater, you really shouldn’t say that.”

“Say what?”

“The Scottish play.”

“The what?”

“It’s a superstition,” Haas cut in smoothly. “To say the name of the new production is considered bad luck. It’s cursed.”

Kline scoffed. “That’s ridiculous. Macbeth, Macbeth, Macbeth.” He raised his eyebrows and looked between me and Haas. “See? Nothing t—”

I cried out as one of the lightbulbs above burst with a flash and a snap.

In the silence, Kline looked annoyed to have been humbled. He pursed his mouth and drummed his fingers lightly on the desk in the longer shadows of the new lighting. “Goodbye, Titus,” he repeated tightly, “hello, Scotland.”

I shook my head. “I don’t think—”

“It works perfectly,” Haas said, peering at his own shoulder and brushing at glass dust from the burst bulb. “We can reuse the sets and almost every costume, but none of the women we brought in for Titus are right for the Lady.”

Congratulations.

Oh, shit.

Oh, no, no, no.

“Felix, that’s very—”

“Very what?” His eyes flicked immediately up to mine. “Very astute of me? Of course it is. You’re a wonderful actress, Mrs. Shoard.”

I stared at him. My brain was noise.

“None of the actresses could do this,” I said evenly, narrowing my eyes at both of them; “none of the other women who signed a contract to perform this summer, who are expecting to be paid for it, none of them would be a fit?”

Kline pulled a You’re telling me face. Haas didn’t blink, only twitching up one edge of his left eyebrow as if challenging me to step up to the plate.

“Why me?” I asked. I wished my voice didn’t sound so breathless.

“Top brass heard you never got a chance to finish the production in New York,” Haas said, straightening his sleeve by the cuff and digging his cigarette case from his breast pocket. He pulled out a hand-roll and took his time lighting it. “Is that right? It was the opening night at which your…accident…occurred?”

I clenched my jaw until it sang. The smoke from his mouth smelled deep and herbal with a promise of quiet nerves. “Who told you that?”

Haas smiled at me, perfectly genial. “Your husband and I are very good friends.”

We stared at each other for what felt like an eternity. “If I accept the role,” I asked Kline without looking away from Haas, “will everyone else still make their money?”

“Handsomely,” Kline said. “With bonuses, for the trouble.”

I turned to face him and led with my hand stuck out for dealmaking. When he went for it, I yanked mine barely out of reach and redoubled the intention of my stare. “I will be the one to tell my husband,” I snapped. I looked between the both of them, challenging any pushback. “Do you hear me? Not a word of this gets out until Wesley knows. From me.”

Kline raised both hands in surrender. “Whatever you gotta do, sweetheart. I just need a Lady Macbeth.”

Both Haas and I failed to hold in a wince.

“Seriously?” Kline looked between us, baffled by the rules to a game he didn’t know he was playing. “That one counts, too?”

“They all count,” I said through my teeth and shook his hand.

She was mine again.

Haas ushered me to the door with a hand on my back.

“Can I speak with you?” I asked lightly, and didn’t wait for a response as I led the way down a side hall.

I rounded on Haas as soon as we turned a corner out of view. “How did this happen?” I hissed.

Haas finished another mouthful of his hand-roll and extinguished it neatly on the sole of his shoe. He tidied the burnt-down half and tucked what was left back into his cigarette case before giving me a blank look. “I don’t pretend to know the whims that drive Jesse. You’ll really do it?”

I scowled. “I said I would, didn’t I? Felix, if you knew h—”

“You look peckish,” Haas cut in easily. He furrowed his brow. “Could I buy you lunch?”

I ground my jaw. “You can buy me a very stiff drink.”

He drove us to the restaurant across from the motel, which had become the company’s regular haunt—our tabs were infinite, straight from Kline’s coffers. I beelined for the bar and ordered a whiskey, neat. Haas hailed a coffee with two sugars.

I knocked back one sip, reconsidered the full glass, took the whole thing, and raised the empty for another from the burly bartender.

Haas was either playing perfectly innocent of my dressing-room incident, or truly didn’t understand how badly taking this role might rattle me. He said nothing and waited for me break the silence.

“What do you have to do with any of this?” I asked, cutting a sideways glance at him.

“I’m Vaughn’s dramatic advisor. He trusts my taste.” Haas sipped from the edge of the cup, grimaced tidily, and dropped another of the sugar cubes in. “And you’re to my taste. Obviously.”

I glared down at my hands, fiddling with the empty cup. “It was…messy, the last time I had that role. I don’t think this is a good idea, Felix.”

“What if it wasn’t Kline asking? Would you do it for me?”

I sniffed. “For you.” I dragged a finger along the rim of my glass.

I wanted to itch at my arms and shoved the impulse away.

Haas took another steady sip, peering at the rows of bottles in front of us. The record that was spinning skipped with a shallow scratch, stumbling over its own twang.

I ran the tip of my tongue along my lower lip. “Last time I did it for me,” I said slowly, “it nearly killed me. It is cursed, you know.”

In my periphery, Haas’s gaze roved along my profile. “I told you,” he said, “I’ll look after you.”

Our scattered reflection in the mirror wall behind the bar showed me the way he cataloged me, picking at my seams. How far into my depths could he see? Were there private pieces of my shortcomings I had left visible at the surface this whole time?

“That’s sweet of you,” I muttered. “Although your only other reference point is the world’s most disappointing Desdemona.”

Haas gestured at me with his cup, mocking a toast. “I’ve seen more than enough of you here to know you need something of your own life back—something you can control. You seem…troubled. Purposeless.”

I simmered on that thought. He wasn’t wrong.

It rankled, that my struggle was so obvious.

Haas sipped down his coffee in pensive silence as I stared through the wood grain of the bar. I tried to imagine what it would feel like to inhabit Lady Macbeth again, if I even could—deep down, I really did want to. A significant part of me still ached, hanging open with the unfinished run of her.

But was wanting enough?

“I don’t like feeling as though I owe anyone,” I said with a low voice. “Not a thing.”

Haas peered at me again until I met his gaze. “Who were you, before your adulthood?”

I measured him up. If there was anyone who might understand—uprooted from his own home, thrown into the wilds of the city to find his own way—it was Haas. “Why do you want to know?”

“I’m curious about you.”

Curious. A low warmth bloomed in the cradle of my hips. I drew a soft breath and gave him the short version, as short as I could get it without leaving holes in the story.

My biological father: gone before I was born. Who knows. Mr. Matthews: a savior new to the pulpit of Mama’s favorite First Baptist. My mother threw parties for him, the men he considered colleagues, and their glamorous wives. He passed off thick sheaves of money to the men every Sunday after service, money I helped him count from the collection baskets, and I ran away from home just past sixteen when I caught wind of a man high up on the ladder in Biloxi fixing to propose a marriage arrangement to my mother and Mr. Matthews—a union of the houses.

Then, Richmond. Jensen. I skipped broadly over Hollis, embarrassed at having been bridled. I didn’t want him to think of me like that.

And now I was here, Margaret Shoard, of Wesley and Manhattan and a thousand ruined women in the roles I’d left behind.

“How lucky we all are to have you here then, Miss Wolf,” Haas hummed when I had finished. He pushed aside his saucer and stood with an air of casual ease. Checking the watch face on the inside of his wrist, Haas caught me looking. I was still half-slumped on my bar stool. He smiled. “Besides, you’re much brighter than all that petty depravity. Care to go for a drive?”