The theater was packed, with the full audience of the matinee staying behind for the TalkBack: a question-and-answer session with the four Romeo and Juliet professional actors and Nicholas. A collective rustling broke out as at least a dozen theatergoers left their seats to line up at the microphones.
Sierra and her fellow apprentices pooled near the far left orchestra seats. She wanted to ask about Charlie and Nicholas, who sat beside each other on the stage. In the rare instance they made eye contact, both would look away instantly. Was Sierra reading too much into it? Willing something that wasn’t there? It was odd to feel like you could understand the motivations of two people you really didn’t know at all. It was possible to think you knew them, knew what was best for them, just from reading about them, from clips of them together when they had actually been together, from quotes given about each other in articles. All Sierra really knew for certain, she realized, was that the kind of chemistry Charlie and Nicholas had didn’t happen to everyone.
“Are they or aren’t they?” Sierra whispered to Ethan beside her while the actors took turns answering an inevitable question about “process.”
“Are they or aren’t they what?” he whispered back.
“Like, you know, together together.”
“How would I know?” he asked. And then said, “How would I know?”
Because right now Charlie and Nicholas seemed entirely unlike what Ethan had reported from rehearsals. As Matteo Denali discussed character development, on the other end of the stage Nick leaned into Charlie’s ear to tell her something, one hand covering his microphone, the other hand on her back. Charlie smiled, nodded, their eyes connecting a moment, silently, before they returned focus to Matteo.
“Ohhh,” Ethan whispered.
“I can’t take this anymore.” Tripp, who had been listening to Sierra and Ethan, stepped over them to get to the aisle and the microphone with the shortest line.
After a question from one of the directing apprentices about the challenges of switching parts, Sierra heard Tripp’s voice booming:
“This is for Charlie and Nicholas,” Tripp started. “What’s it like working together again?”
As Nicholas snapped forward, Sierra and Ethan, both horrified, exchanged glances, like they had been caught, guilty of something.
“Maybe you should take that,” the director said to Charlie with a nervous laugh that the audience echoed. “I know my answer, but I’m curious if it matches yours.”
Charlie shrugged, not shy. “I’d say it’s good.” She looked at Nicholas, and everyone held their breaths for more. But there was nothing else.
“That was my answer too, so that’s a relief,” Nicholas said to the audience. Then to Tripp, he murmured, “Thank you.”
“They’re madly in love and don’t know it yet, bless their hearts,” a wise Tripp whispered to Sierra and Ethan when he returned.
“Another question for Charlie,” a directing apprentice asked next. Charlie nodded. “You were here last when you were with your mom. Any plans to work together again? She’s such a legend.”
“That’s true. And you’d have to ask her,” she said. “I would love to but she never comes ‘across the pond’ these days. She’s very devoted to her theater school for children and she doesn’t like to leave it. So it would have to happen there, I guess.”
As soon as their talk wrapped, Nick ushered Charlie away quickly, backstage and up the staircase to avoid the crowd. “I have an idea, I think it’s a good one actually—” He swooped her into his office, swung the door shut.
“Really?” she said, a saucy inflection. They hadn’t had even a moment to talk since he’d left the lake, but during the Q&A, when the attention was on Matteo, Nick had whispered, I’m sorry about this morning. She had whispered back for clarification, And last night? Are you sorry about that? To which he’d replied firmly, Absolutely not, that was no mistake. “So, what’s your idea?”
“It’s about your mom,” he said.
“Oh, okay, not what I was thinking.” She shook her head, resetting.
“Sorry, no, I know. I have other ideas, that don’t involve your mom, you know what I mean, never mind, but first,” he sighed, starting over. “What if we sent her the clip of that question today? Wouldn’t she be flattered that she’s being thought of independent of us? Do you think she’s cooled down?”
“Honestly.” Charlie sat on his desk, thinking it through. She so wished that she could give him the answer he wanted. “She’s just stubborn, even irrational.”
His phone rang, and he glanced at it.
“It’s okay,” Charlie said, glad to have a way out of the conversation.
He kissed her quickly, glancing at the door as though they might get caught, but then kissed her once more as if he didn’t mind. Finally, rolling his eyes at his ringing phone, he picked up as she let herself out.
Sierra had to skip the Romeo and Juliet matinee to rehearse for the Black Box one-act. She couldn’t tell yet how it would come together, but at the very least, she worked well with Fiona and Tripp and knew her lines. Now, attired in her jean skirt and fuchsia Chamberlain T, she had to miss the evening Romeo performance too, to man the gift shop—which wasn’t so much a shop as just a pair of large carts packed with Chamberlain T-shirts, sweatshirts, magnets, tote bags, tumblers, autographed cast photos and a phone with a credit card scanner.
All the apprentices had to rotate through these stations, but observing Tripp brave the nonstop chaos of the concession stand made her actively dread her stint there next week. She wished she could just watch the show every night. She still couldn’t quite reconcile the Ethan onstage with the one who routinely stole her bacon at breakfast and stayed up late Netflixing favorite old movies on their laptops (the indie beginnings of Cameron Crowe and Spike Jonze and Baz Luhrmann and Catherine Hardwicke and Kathryn Bigelow and even Tarantino). She studied that cast photo again—Ethan smiling shyly like he wasn’t sure he belonged—then swiped her own credit card, rolled up the photo and snuggled it into her bag.
Midway through intermission, she finally had a lull in customers and spotted Nicholas Blunt, in his usual Chamberlain shirt, blazer and jeans, wander inside from the warm night and roam the lobby, shaking hands, talking to the audience, asking how they liked the show. (He had cleverly placed the intermission early after Romeo and Juliet were married, rather than after Mercutio’s and Tybalt’s deaths in the stagings Sierra had seen elsewhere. This made for a more upbeat audience at intermission time.) He was smart: Nicholas knew the power of letting people be near him, giving them a chance to feel part of this place. As someone who often felt a step outside the circumference of the spotlight, Sierra understood on a molecular level how this mattered, this inclusion. Something about Nicholas’s warm smile and slaps on the back felt genuine too.
She didn’t know him, only what she had seen of him at their lectures and events, but now that the season had launched he looked more alive for some reason—or maybe it was just that she knew how much was riding on this kind of outreach. She couldn’t understand how anyone with the funds at their disposal could be immune to that kind of charm. The theater was worthy of investment too, this show proved that art was being made here that deserved to continue. Maybe Nicholas and the cast just needed more significant time, a more intimate gathering with the people with the cash, the people who could change the fate of this place. More than meet-and-greet minutes between acts. Even the gala, which had been perfectly exciting to someone like Sierra, was still just a large event, a performance. What they needed was something more personal, that let donors feel part of this club. Would it be too far outside their established boundaries for Sierra to talk to Charlie about this? she wondered.
The lights flickered, signaling intermission’s end, and as the crowd trickled back in, a statuesque woman in a gauzy minidress and heels cut a quick path through the front doors, stopping in the dead center of the lobby and shaking out her bouncy caramel mane as though wanting to give everyone ample time to notice her. And they did, staring and whispering, doing double takes.
Jasmine Beijao had just strolled into the lobby of the Chamberlain Summer Theater.
Sierra’s mind almost couldn’t compute it. This was not the kind of place you expected to find Jasmine Beijao. A Hollywood premiere? Sure. The Oscars after that movie she really wasn’t so great in? Yes. The set of the next Bond movie? Absolutely. St. Bart’s in a string bikini? Totally. But a Shakespeare summer theater? Never.
The only person who didn’t seem to notice this strike of lightning was Nicholas, currently preoccupied with a gray-haired couple.
Jasmine sailed straight through, seas parting for her, walked up to Nicholas, wound one arm around his neck, her other hand on his chin, and planted a kiss on his lips. Interrupting his conversation and the conversations of everyone around them and seemingly stopping time for several seconds. Sierra hoped her jaw hadn’t actually dropped. Without a word, Jasmine continued on toward a woman Sierra recognized from the gala. “Right this way, Ms. Beijao, we have a seat in front,” the woman said, leading her into the auditorium.
The chattering began again, the flow of guests, the last blink of lights. And a final glance at Nicholas, the shock still on his face.