I ride the train in stunned silence, trying to comprehend a life in which I flipped a coin in my mind to either favor my career and go to prison, or abide by the rules of blackmail, and that coin was destined to come up tails, no matter what.
I’m racing to the theater, hoping beyond hope that even though it’s two full hours after his demanded time, my showing up at all will inspire Caspian to go easy on me.
At this point, I assume his version of mercy would be to have me drawn and quartered in Times Square, but even that seems preferable to spending the rest of my days in an orange jumpsuit.
How I sat through the remainder of that interview, pretending not to be horrified by the spectacle of it all over salads, I’ll never know.
Mara—unsurprisingly, given her motivation for contacting me in the first place—said she would be in touch soon to discuss my future with Polar House. Words I’ve waited my entire adult life to hear, and instead of jumping for joy, I had to fight to keep from sobbing as I shook her hand in farewell.
And while all I feel physically capable of doing is limping my bruised ego and crestfallen career ambitions back to Tom’s to nurse those wounds with a pint of ice cream and an equal serving of hard liquor, instead, I’m off to shed what little dignity I’ve managed to cling to over the last few months by begging my blackmailer to have a heart.
An organ I have little evidence he actually possesses.
The crush of people wandering through Times Square is the last thing I’m in a place to maneuver through, but here I am. It’s slightly after the lunch rush, so instead of ten billion people crammed into a handful of city blocks, it’s closer to an even million. Being bumped by tourists as they stare at the screen of their phones taking pictures is something most New Yorkers have accepted as an unfortunate facet of life. The same goes for the topless women adorned in body paint trying to hand out flyers. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I wonder how all the naked folks manage to stand it in this cold weather. I think back to my own shivering in the storage units and have to give credit where it’s due.
At the moment, my coordination is sluggish, and I feel like I’m in a wretched game of pinball, being pinged from topless flyer distributors to a tourist couple from Georgia, into a costumed Woody Woodpecker and back over to a guy wearing a sandwich board for a club opening in Hell’s Kitchen.
It’s not hard to find Caspian’s theater. There’s a giant ten-story-high neon-lit poster above the marquee with his face slapped on it. The show is a modern-day rendition of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, but—if I read the online article correctly—it still contains all the original Shakespearean dialogue. It’s evidently a revival of something Caspian starred in a few years ago for the Royal Court Theatre in Britain, and is now running with various famous folks stepping into the role off and on.
It hits me now that, in my panic to get here, I never actually thought about how I would get inside. There isn’t a show running at the moment, so the front doors are locked up tight. And as much as the idea of texting Caspian to ask him how to gain entry seems like yet another thrilling blow to my self-esteem, I know that would likely end with a sarcastic message from him and me crawling back to Queens with my tail between my legs, living the rest of my days waiting for the sound of police sirens to pull up to Tom’s front door.
The stage door seems to be my best bet. I find my way around and see several people lined up against the theater wall, bundled up tight and holding...pictures of Caspian.
Yep. I’m in hell.
I try to nonchalantly pass the group of ten or so and make my way toward the security guard, ignoring the angry stares of the folks who are sure I’m cutting in line.
“Back of the line, ma’am,” the burly guard says before I even get to him. I glance back and see satisfied looks on the faces of the waiting fans.
Why do people keep calling me “ma’am”? Whatever happened to “miss”?
I stay my course up to the beefy ma’amer and quietly say, “I’m here to see Caspian Tiddleswich.”
The guard—Jared, according to the name tag on his uniform—starts laughing. “Yeah, I figured.” I fight to keep from scowling. “Like I said, back of the line.”
The people in line start laughing as well, and I decide I’ve had enough mocking from the universe today.
I stand up straight and give Jared my most haughty look, hoping it’s at least marginally impressive, since I’ve never once managed to look haughty in my entire life.
“Actually,” I say in my most sophisticated voice, “my name is Clara Montgomery, and I was invited. I’m running late, but Caspian asked that I meet him here.”
Okay, so perhaps haughty was not my best choice here. Irritation plays across Jared’s face, no doubt because a thousand other humans have likely used that exact line to try to wiggle their way into a theater stage door, and right when I think he may be about to throw me out of this alley by the scruff of my neck, a woman behind me gasps.
“You’re his girlfriend?”
I turn and see the awed faces of Caspian’s fans staring at the phone of one of the women. God bless busybodies with Google on their phones. The lady holds the screen up to show Jared, and I try to not visibly flinch at the picture of Caspian and me walking out of the hotel together the other night, hand in hand.
As much as I am desperate to get out of this situation, I don’t have it in me to lie to complete strangers. So I just give them a kind smile and turn back to the guard, throwing him a knowing look with a raised eyebrow for good measure.
He’s squinting, as if debating between risking his job by kicking me to the literal curb, or trusting the Google-fu of a superfan. In the end, he mumbles into the radio clipped to the shoulder of his coat. I have a moment of internal terror when I consider that Caspian may have told the theater nothing about me at all, and him asking me here at all might just be another one of his plays to humiliate me in public, but a few seconds later, after a garbled reply comes back, Jared’s entire posture changes.
“I’m very sorry, Miss Montgomery,” he announces, moving to open the door for me.
Oh, sure. Now I’m a “miss.”
“That’s completely okay,” I say, offering a forgiving smile while also dying a little inside.
“Hey!” the Googler calls after me as I start to walk inside. “Can you tell Caspian we’re out here, and that we love him? Please?”
I turn back, and her expression is so very earnest. All of them are, honestly.
“I will,” I say, warmly. “I promise. And thanks for your help.”
She beams, and I smile back before heading inside, hearing Jared close the stage door securely behind me.
Now that I’m actually inside the theater, I seem to have forgotten why I was so dead set on coming here to begin with. I look around at the veritable labyrinth of tunnels, and just as I start to feel particularly claustrophobic, another security guard appears with a welcoming grin.
“Miss Montgomery?” he asks.
I quickly scan for a name tag. “Yes, hello, Jose,” I say politely.
“I’m here to bring you up to the dressing rooms,” Jose says with genuine friendliness. “It’s easy to get a bit lost down here.”
I laugh. “You’re not kidding. If you hadn’t shown up, I think I would have just stood here looking pitiful forever.”
Jose leads me through eleven thousand twists and turns, and I can’t imagine how people keep these caverns straight at all. I’m a little surprised we don’t see the skeletons of those who never found their way propped up against the walls on our journey.
After what seems like miles of hallway later, we reach a higher floor, and things start to look more like a theater and less like a stone dungeon where I will spend the last few moments of my life. We occasionally pass busy-looking people wearing headsets, either studying papers in their hands or talking to someone we can’t see. No one seems concerned at the sight of Jose and me on our quest.
Eventually, I’m led through a hallway of dressing rooms. There’s the giant group room full of mirrors with blazing light bulbs protruding from the sides, and farther on, we come across the individual rooms. The bigger the part or the name of the actor, I assume, the larger the nameplates.
Sure enough, when we reach Caspian’s door, his nameplate is the biggest of all. Although, if we’re going by the sheer volume of letters that make up a name, Caspian Tiddleswich was always going to take up a lot of real estate, no matter how high his celebrity star might hover.
Jose knocks several times before turning to me and somewhat sheepishly saying, “They said he was backstage, but it’s always good to make sure, you know?”
Part of me wonders how much of that is rooted in good manners, and how much is based on giving whomever is behind the door time to hide a lover who is not a specified significant other from said significant others, or, in a more eighties world, finish up whatever narcotic they happen to be partaking in before the door opens.
After a moment, when it seems safe to assume the room is free of Caspian, mistresses, or cocaine, Jose opens the door and peeks his head in.
“You can wait inside,” he offers. “I’ll have them let Mr. Tiddleswich know you’re here.”
Joy, I think to myself. “Thank you so much, Jose. And thanks for the guided tour,” I add with a laugh.
“Anytime, Miss Montgomery,” he says.
I step inside, and the door shuts behind me. Suddenly, I’m alone in a room that feels like the fairly sacred space of a man I want to punch in the kidneys.
In all my Caspian-focused scenarios, this one feels the most intrusive and cumbersome.
There’s the typical mirror with lights that are created to mimic the surface of the sun, but where the group area was a mash of spots to accommodate a large group of bit players, Caspian’s room is much more spacious, with lush pale gray carpeting; a red velvet couch that looks like it was created years before I was born, and yet still appears more comfortable than Gertrude; a private bathroom; and a coffee table lined with loose papers and an elaborate floral arrangement. Off to the side is a desk, also covered with stacks of paper and, if my eyes are correct, the script I saw Caspian tinkering with last night.
While few things in Caspian’s life have interested me thus far, I have to admit, I am tempted to peek into that script to see what movie it’s for. Then again, I’m also tempted to toilet paper his dressing room before fleeing back out the stage door like a coward, so it’s obvious my judgment is askew at the moment.
Moment.
When hasn’t my judgment been askew lately? I wonder bitterly to myself.
Before I can dig into my bad choices any further, the door opens behind me, and I jump out of the way. I had been too frozen to move anywhere beyond the exact spot Jose left me, so even with my evasive maneuvers, I am nearly bowled over by Caspian as he enters the room.
He seems both annoyed and amused to find me lurking in his doorway.
“I, uh...” I stammer, looking nervously around the room. “I didn’t want to, er, invade your space, so I just...”
“Someday,” he says, moving past me and walking over to his desk to take a seat, “I’m hoping you’ll replay comments like that back in your mind and realize how absurd you sound.”
I blink. “Excuse me?”
He turns in his chair to face me and crosses his legs at the knee, resting his hands in his lap. He’s dressed in navy slacks and a gray sweater that’s the exact same shade as the chair he commandeered at Tom’s, and I find that more than a little unnerving. It’s not the first time I’ve seen him adorned in that color, and I know it’s totally irrational, but I feel like either he or the universe is doing this to me on purpose.
I’m starting to think it’s less about the chair he’s actually sitting in, and more about him just always sort of looking like he’s about to be crowned.
“What I mean,” he says, speaking to me as if I’m too slow to tolerate, “is that you have no problem invading my personal life at all, but you draw the line at sitting on a couch without express, written permission.”
In spite of knowing that I’m on unsteady footing with him for being so late, I glare at him and snap, “Oh, goody. You’re in one of your patented Prince Charming moods. How fun for me.”
He grins at me, and it’s not a friendly grin in the slightest. For a quiet few seconds, I’m not sure what to do. I wind up awkwardly shuffling my weight from foot to foot, waiting for him to say something.
Taking a pointed look at his watch, Caspian says, “I do believe the instructions were for you to be here at noon. As it’s half past two, I have to wonder if you never learned to properly tell time.”
A swell of panic washes through me, and I feel wobbly. “Look, I couldn’t miss that interview,” I say, hoping I don’t sound as desperate as I feel. In hindsight, though, I suppose I could have easily missed the goddamn interview. Another Caspian-touched moment of hell that I didn’t need in my memory banks.
“As I mentioned before, your grandstanding check disposal last night indicates otherwise,” he says, and I realize this must be what mice feel like in front of really big cats.
“Okay,” I say, my hands fidgeting at my sides, “I get that you’re determined to take everything I do in the worst way possible, but I gave you that check because I don’t want it. Not because I couldn’t use the money—I absolutely could. The check was only made out in my name because the person who sold the photo felt so bad about it that they were trying to make it up to me. So do whatever you want with the damned thing, because I’m not going to touch it.”
He opens his mouth—to throw another verbal barb my way, I assume—but I keep going. “Some of us aren’t millionaire movie stars, and we have to hustle to job interviews to try to make ends meet. I’m sorry that the scheduling wasn’t great, but you never give me any notice, and you’ve never made me meet you during the day before, so there wasn’t any way for me to prepare in advance.”
“Your day planner doesn’t interest me,” he says, sounding far too mellow given the circumstances. I regret not TPing his fracking dressing room. “That’s not our arrangement. Any conflicts are your problem to solve.”
“That’s not fair,” I insist, trying so, so very hard to keep my cool. “I’ve done every degrading thing you’ve asked of me while you glibly threaten to throw me in prison for something I didn’t actually do, and you’re dancing around like this is all some super fun game. Well, it’s not. Some of us have lives in the real world, and they don’t always match up with whatever sadistic demands you may make.”
He stands up, and it’s so unnaturally fluid and fast, I instinctively back up a step. I hate that he’s so very freaking tall.
“You don’t get to complain to me about the inconvenience to your life,” he snaps at me. Whatever I said that yanked him out of his Ice King demeanor was certainly effective. Unfortunately, that wasn’t my goal. This time. “That’s the problem with people like you. You think someone like me doesn’t count as a real person because my life is different from yours. This isn’t a game to me, either. I have a family of my own that you didn’t give a damn about when you dug up that information and threatened me with it.”
“Oh my god, I didn’t threaten you!” I cry, exasperated. “Enough with the revisionist bullshit. And between the two of us, who’s the one doing the actual blackmailing here? I made a horrible mistake that I fessed up to, and I have done nothing but try to make it right. You’re the asshole who has spent every minute since getting off on torturing someone he doesn’t even know!”
“Oh, come off it,” he says loudly. We’ve both entered a volume not at all conducive to my original plan of begging. “Your extorting damsel-in-distress act is exhausting.”
“You know what?” I yell. “Nothing is worth this! It’s not my fault you can’t win over a woman in your real life with your dazzling personality, and you have to ransom strangers into pretending they can stand to be around you! You want to talk absurd? How about that you’re so goddamn full of your own magnificence, you haven’t stopped to wonder if there’s a reason you’re alone, you absolute prick.”
Now it’s his turn to take a step back. I can feel the rage and humiliation of the last few days tangoing across my face. Much to my utter frustration, tears soon join that party. “So, fine. Take the voice mail and the paperwork and all of it to the police, and have me arrested. Truly. Have at it. Because no matter what happens to me, no matter how long I rot in a cell for your overdramatized version of the truth, every minute there will suck less than a single second of the time I’ve had to spend with you.”
I turn and yank open the dressing room door, and just before I stomp away, I remember my promise to the people in line, although I doubt this is quite how they intended I deliver it.
I glance back at him. “By the way, if you can pry yourself away from your own magnificence to mingle with lowly commoners, there’s a line of people who have no clue what a depraved piece of shit you actually are wanting to meet you at the stage door.” I head into the hallway and call over my shoulder, “Get fucked, Mr. Tiddleswich.”
I slam the door shut behind me and storm off back the way I came.