Michael Kent rubbed his eyes, sighed, and opened them again. No luck. Eve, the stage manager, was still clutching her headset, her eye twitching in time to the iambic pentameter being reeled off on the other side of the National Rose’s back curtain.
“Are you kidding me?” he asked. The last act of the last matinee of the last play he would ever have to direct, and one of his idiot actors had left the theater to register for a kickball league? “Where’s Jasper? Can’t he step in?”
“He’s already subbing for Stuart. Pink eye.”
“Jesus Christ. It’s like a bloody fucking preschool in here.”
“Language, Michael. Really.”
Lady Velopar, ancient patroness of the National Rose Theater and Michael’s own personal guide through the circles of fund-raising hell, had appeared in a puff of Harvey Nichols perfume, along with her equally irritating companion, Lady Louise Balmaine.
“I beg your pardon, your ladyship.” He bowed.
“I was hoping you’d take Louise on a tour,” she said. “You know how people love those little insights of yours.”
“I would adore it. However—and I do hesitate even to mention it—you may have noticed we’re in the midst of a performance…” He tilted his head politely toward the booming voices beyond the curtain.
Lady Louise clapped her hands. “Oh, how delightful! Is it Lion King?”
“Shakespeare,” Michael said.
“A shame,” the noblewoman said, her spirit pierced but not conquered. “I do like the spectacle.”
“I’d be honored to take you around,” Michael said, “but as we’re in the midst of a performance as well as a small technical crisis, if you would be so good as to take a seat in the backstage lounge…” He forced a smile.
“What’s on?” Lady Velopar asked, peering around the curtains with interest.
“Romeo and Juliet—your request, I believe.” Before she’d fallen pregnant by the heir to the Velopar Biscuit fortune, Constance Velopar had been an actress. Bonny Connie Bells, the Fort William Firecracker. He’d heard she’d played Beatrice to John Barrymore’s Benedick—or had it been John Wilkes Booth’s?
“Ah, Juliet, our fair, doomed Capulet.” Lady Velopar drew herself to full thespian readiness as if turning over an Austin 10 that hadn’t been started since before the war. “‘Come, vial,’” she said, sweeping her arm through the air. “‘What if this mixture do not work at all?’” After a pause so long that Michael worried she’d suffered a stroke, Lady Velopar shook off her dramatic fugue and clapped her gloves into her palm. “An unhappy ending all around, this one is.”
“Actually,” Michael said, “if I can’t find someone to play Friar Laurence and give Juliet the poison, we may have the first Romeo and Juliet that ends with a happily married couple on our hands.”
As if on cue, the actress playing Juliet flounced off the stage and came to a stop in front of Michael. “‘Thus from my lips, by yours, my sin is purged,’” she said in a fair imitation of her leading man. “Yeah, well, tell that jackass if I have to purge the taste of bloody lamb vindaloo from my lips one more time, I’m going to bite off his leathery old tongue.” She swiped at her mouth and added, “Isn’t Romeo supposed to be under forty?”
“His Oscar is the reason we’re packing them in like cordwood, you know,” Michael said politely as she stomped off. “Best Ingenue, York Regional Theatre, doesn’t draw like you’d think it might.”
“Friar Laurence,” Eve reminded him forcefully.
Michael sighed.
“Is there liquor in the lounge?” Lady Velopar asked.
“God, I hope so.”
“We’ll wait for you there then.” The women floated off like mist on the Thames.
“Joy.” He turned to Eve. “Any chance you know the lines?”
“I know all the lines,” she said, then lowered her voice to a whisper and pointed beyond the curtain. “I just can’t say them in front of the audience.”
A stage manager with stage fright. Perfect. “How bad is it?”
“Random jabbering followed by hyperventilation, dry heaving, and tears.”
“Wow. And you’re sure you’re not an actress?” He patted her shoulder. “Don’t worry. We shan’t throw you to the wolves. You’re the only sane one left.” He was glad he’d recommended her for the role of managing director. She was a dependable island of calm in an ever-stormy sea. His only regret was he wouldn’t be there to see her surprise when she heard the news.
“Mr. Kent, I don’t want to rush you, but we have”—she held up a finger to hear the lines onstage—“exactly two minutes and fifteen seconds before Friar Laurence makes his entrance.” She looked at the ball of burlap in her arms, then back at him with a hopeful smile.
Oh Christ.
“You were an actor,” she said.
He took the priest’s habit and unfurled it. “A thousand years ago.”
“You played Romeo. You won an Olivier for it.”
“I played Mercutio too. And Benvolio,” he said. “And the nurse once in sixth form. But that was all before I realized I hated acting and actors, and became a director so I could kick their bloody arses.”
“Michael,” snarled his Juliet, who’d returned even angrier. “There are two old harridans in my dressing room drinking the last of my gin. You know how I look forward to my gin.”
“Take Stuart’s dressing room,” he said, tearing his shirt buttons loose and kicking off his loafers. “And one of those old harridans pays your salary. So button your lip and drown yourself in cheap whiskey like the rest of us.”
She stormed off.
“Do you know the lines?” Eve asked.
“Of course I bloody know the lines.” He threw the shirt under the soundboard and pulled off his socks. “I could do the thing in my sleep—if I ever sleep again.”
He slipped the friar’s habit over his head, and she handed him the sandals and cincture.
“I can’t believe you’re retiring,” she said. “You’ve been such a savior to the Rose. Bankrupt, down at the heels, no artistic point of view—until you stepped in and lifted her from the gutter.”
“And it only took twelve years and fifty-odd pints of blood.” He took the stage beard from her hands, fumbled with it a minute, realized he wouldn’t have time to put it on properly, and shoved it in the pocket of his cassock.
“Don’t joke. You did so much.”
“Yes. From artistic director and fund-raiser to nanny, tour guide, and supporting player. My trajectory has been meteoric—if you think of a meteor on its way to crash into the earth. If I stay any longer, I’ll be cleaning the loo.”
“People love you. The queen called you a national treasure.”
A national treasure but no knighthood. Apparently, they’re saving those for telecommunication billionaires. “One always loves the people who’ll work for glory. Cheaper than a pension.”
He rolled up his pant legs and slipped his feet in the sandals, which were two sizes too small and cut into his instep like a garrote.
Get on with it, Michael. In another week, you’ll be sitting in a pub in Barcelona, sipping Sangria and reading David Copperfield.
“Michael? Yoo-hoo?” Lady Velopar’s call cut through the afternoon like a dagger. “There’s no tonic.”
“Tonic,” Eve said, handing him the bottle of stage potion. “I’m on it.”
He was no longer surprised Genesius was the patron saint of actors, clowns, and torture victims. He only wished the man were the patron saint of spontaneous human combustion as well. What he wouldn’t give to be lifted bodily from the place and spit out somewhere he’d never see an actor or patroness or corporate sponsor again.
“Why oh why,” he said, looking at the bottle, “can’t this be real poison?”