Charlie still had her earbuds in—an aggressive, pounding soundtrack, the kind of thing athletes listened to before winning gold medals in fast solo sports like downhill skiing—when she arrived backstage to preshow mania. Tech crew zipping around in their shadowy black apparel, talking into their headsets. Stage managers and apprentices all boundless nervous energy. Fellow castmates sequestered in dressing rooms; apprentices buzzing in the greenroom where a TV showed live feed of the stage, the audience just beginning to trickle in. And Nick, who appeared to have nothing better to do twenty minutes before opening than to pace outside the dressing room Charlie shared with Danica.
“Almost showtime.” Charlie smiled, about to brush past him to go inside, determined to appear calm, as she usually was on an opening night or a shooting day. Today though, the pressure of returning to this world for the first time in so many years inspired a greater fear than she had expected. You could do something perfectly a thousand times rehearsing in an empty theater, but it was terrifyingly easy to fuck it all up in front of an audience. Even the gala had been more under her control. Here though, there were so many moving parts. Every time on stage felt new and uncertain, this is generally what she had always loved about theater.
“Yeah, it is, thanks for joining us.” He folded his arms across his chest. She pulled out her earbuds, even though she wasn’t sure she wanted to hear him. “Call time was, like, days ago. Maybe come a little earlier tomorrow, before they start dimming the lights.”
“We’ll see.” She winked, earbuds back in, and sauntered into the dressing room.
As soon as she shut the door, she closed her eyes, deep breath. Charlie took opening nights seriously, that was why she arrived when she did. She couldn’t get there a minute too soon. Too much time was poison for her. She needed to breeze in, hair done, makeup almost all on, throw on her costume, touch up her face and land on stage, all in one sweeping motion like an uninterrupted tracking shot. You wouldn’t catch her doing tai chi backstage two hours before showtime like Danica, who did this even for dress rehearsals. (The woman sat on a magenta ikat-patterned floor pillow in full costume now, meditating in a corner of their tight dressing room. She opened one eye briefly as Charlie entered. They exchanged respectful nods.)
A bouquet of long-stem roses in an open box lay at Danica’s vanity. Charlie tried to peek at the card, but Danica’s eye opened again.
In front of Charlie’s own mirror: more roses, twice as many, of all hues, fanning out from a crystal vase. And a note.
Girlie,
Break a leg (I hate even saying that to you with all the trouble you’ve gotten into, but you get it). Wish I could be there. But these flowers are almost as pretty as me.
Kisses and see you soon,
Marlena
Charlie had to smile. Marlena Andes was that best friend you didn’t need to see often to still feel protected by: she always parachuted in at the right time and had called her theater immediately upon hearing of Charlie’s accident and getting no response on her drowned phone. Marlena could be a tough person to get a hold of now that she was living the quintessential LA actor’s life on a hit Hulu show: as fan favorite Dr. Stevens on Terminal Earth ICU, the edgy, soapy medical drama set amid the ravages of climate change on a planet on the verge of death. Charlie and Marlena had been connected like long-lost twin siblings ever since hitting it off on that teen angel film when they were nineteen, back when Marlena was still Marlon. They had been through a lot together.
Charlie tucked the card back into the blooms, reminding herself to call Marlena after the show. She flipped on the lights around her mirror now, surveying what work needed to be done. The mirrors, scratched here and there, had not changed in all these years—only the reflection staring back at her had; it had lived. Charlie felt the full weight of being back. It mattered, being here. This place mattered to her; what she did here mattered to her. She turned up her music to drown her thoughts, trying to remain in the zone.
She pulled on her “Ramona” jeans and T-shirt—designed by Sierra to embody a sense of danger, it was shredded and torn and safety pinned and tied, as though ripped off someone’s body by a savage animal, which Charlie loved. As she lined her eyes again, smoothed her foundation, Charlie kept coming back to what Nick had said to her yesterday at the last rehearsal.
He had already shocked Charlie when he told the cast opening night would feature her as Ramona and Chase as Julian. After he had given his notes and dismissed them, he chased Charlie down the aisle. “Hang on, Charlie,” he shouted for her to stop. They were the last two left in the theater.
“I’m not sure about any of the rest of this,” Nick said, true concern in his eyes. “But you are this show. In case you wondered.” These had been the same words he had said to her the night before his student show all those years ago too.
It had all flooded back for Charlie in that moment, down the rabbit hole: getting to know him here, the first time, how Nick had been on his own like her; his rank above the other directing apprentices meant more work, greater opportunities. How he didn’t like to talk about himself, but Charlie drew his stories out: Nick as a kid who could’ve used a spotlight but didn’t find it in any sport. Nick as a tortured teen, who would’ve liked to create but couldn’t act or sing or dance or paint, finding his way only in college, in his native Indiana, as a psychology major/English minor who happened to take a theater class. He was still that boy.
And so at last night’s rehearsal, Charlie had nodded at his revelation and then did what she had always done: defused his worry.
“We got this,” she had said with a shrug. Then she’d kissed him quickly on his stubbly cheek, whispered in his ear. “It’s just Shakespeare.”
Charlie changed into her cocktail dress and heels—she had enlisted Sierra to acquire an outfit for the after-party, a black Rag & Bone minidress with a keyhole cutout at the solar plexus—but urged Danica to go ahead with her family over to King’s. Charlie just needed a minute. Alone. She had forgotten this, the sublime autopilot of being beneath the lights. A switch flipped on and she didn’t have to do anything. Her body carried her through the scenes.
During intermission she had changed swiftly then escaped through the stage door out into the warm night air. She had needed to protect the space around her, to not have to talk to anyone, to not shatter the bridge she had constructed to the world of the show. When it was time, she returned, finding a spot shrouded in the stage wings until her next scene, hungry to get out there to a place that felt easy, that pulled her from her own universe into one she could navigate better than real life.
It had gone perfectly. She wished she could skip everything that stood in the way of the next night’s show, fast-forward to it, get lost in it, do this again now. She needed that pure escape again.
Though Charlie hadn’t anticipated the thrill to flood back so intensely, one small part of the night she had foreseen: she had suspected that, if the show had gone well, she would feel compelled to make an effort and show up at the opening night party at King’s. Whenever she felt certain she performed her best, she didn’t mind a gathering like that. She almost craved the outlet, to come down from that high.
Before leaving, she pulled out her phone: Opening night, she typed to her mother. Reminded me of Much Ado. Full house. That buzz like everyone’s plugged into the same power source. Went well. You were right, should’ve come back here sooner. You should come see for yourself. xx, Charlie.
Ethan was the first of the cast to arrive. He couldn’t help it. His veins buzzed. He felt drunk on the thrill of the night. He was glad Alex and Harlow had told him not to wait for them. He had too much manic energy to burn off, the flip side of what he’d felt the entire course of the show. He had been terrified actually, but he had done pretty well, could breathe now.
He walked over to King’s with Sierra—who had hugged him the minute he stepped out the stage door—and Fiona and Tripp. Music and the roar of conversation spilled out at them at once. The low-lit lounge and the twinkling outdoor patio had been engulfed by the after-party. Members of the show’s audience, local townspeople, all invited to celebrate.
They posed for a photo on the way in, not realizing at first that they qualified for that kind of attention, and staked out a spot by the bar where they could watch the room. Danica arrived with a woman as statuesque and stunning as she was, but brunette, and a young boy. Soon after, Charlie, Matteo and Chase. A man with dreadlocks in a crisp white suit stood opposite the bar, waving the actors over and giving Matteo a kiss.
“Matteo’s husband is a super famous artist.” Fiona nodded. “Like Banksy but not a secret.”
“How amazing would it be to live in that world where everyone is some kind of creative genius?” Sierra said, longingly.
“I mean, that’s what we are, am I right?” Tripp joked.
Ethan was distracted, looking for an opportunity to say something to Charlie, tell her how amazing she had been tonight. He watched her group, searching for the right break to dart over, but the dynamic now seemed off: Matteo and his husband appeared to be arguing. Meanwhile, Charlie was ignoring Chase, and instead Charlie’s eyes speared the front of the room, where the photo shoot was set up. Nicholas Blunt had arrived with a blonde woman Ethan didn’t recognize. When he looked back to Charlie, she had started walking away, toward the kitchen. Ethan set off through the crowd, keeping her in his sights until she was close enough to reach with his fingertips. He tapped Charlie’s bare shoulder.
“You were amazing,” he said, cursing himself for not coming up with something better.
She smiled, squeezed his arm as though in appreciation and then kept on.
On his way back to his group, Ethan glanced out the front window just in time to spot Charlie emerge from an alleyway. Something in her eyes had looked defeated, which surprised him given the successful opening night, so he ducked out the front door, past the throngs still coming in, and onto the sidewalk. But as he stood there watching her walk away to the end of Warwickshire, someone brushed past him.
Nicholas Blunt, running after her.
Ethan watched until the street grew too dark, wondering if Nicholas had caught up.
Even as Charlie marched on, heels stabbing the sidewalk, she felt ashamed to care this much. The night had been good. She had felt enveloped by her castmates, bonded after making it through this together. She had even spotted the TV interviewer whose show she had walked off. The woman, Grace, gave her a wave and a smile from across the room, and Charlie had returned it. But in the few minutes when Matteo and Sebastian were in deep conversation and Chase flirting with the blonde apprentice, Charlie’s eyes had set on that step-and-repeat backdrop bearing the Chamberlain Shakespeare Summer Theater logo.
There, Nick stood still long enough for a solo photo, all smiles in a blazer and jeans, looking relieved the show had gone well. The seemingly perpetual crease between his brows, eased. But in the next camera flash, Taylor stepped from the sidelines into the shot, attaching herself to him, as though taking a prom portrait.
Charlie’s eyes met Nick’s just a moment. She drained her champagne and, pausing only an instant with kind Mercutio, she found the hallway past the kitchen and out the back door, into the warm, cruel night.