Despite the canvas shades, the apartment was not entirely dark at eight o’clock. The amber twilight filled the living room with an audience of soft brown ghosts. The first performance of 2B began.
Dwight blanked on the first line and Frank had to feed it to him. Boaz screwed up a song cue, so “Losing My Religion” played too soon and too loud. Melissa fell over a chair. Boaz missed another cue, and a mopey Moby song played too long, blasting the room while Chris and Melissa shouted their dialogue. None of the funny stuff seemed all that funny, and the biggest laugh came when Allegra jumped up on Dwight and he went down flat on his butt. Luckily he wasn’t hurt. The march back to the bedroom created a traffic jam in the hall. Dwight and Allegra, naked for the first time with strangers, pulled on their clothes much too quickly and efficiently, killing the comedy. Only Toby’s scenes passed without mishap.
It was like a classic dress rehearsal where everything goes wrong. Except this was a performance and the catastrophe had witnesses. The audience was all friends and fellow acting students, but Frank wanted their approval, not their pity. Watching it fail, and fail so publicly, he suffered more than he thought was possible. The show was only an hour long, but it felt like an eternity.
Finally it ended. There was applause, but it sounded like desperate charity. Most of the audience cleared out as quickly as possible. Only a few friends lingered to offer condolences, including Mrs. Anderson from P.S. 41.
He was embarrassed to see her here tonight, a wry old black lady with iron gray hair, thirty years older than anyone else in the room. But he was touched too. They had shared a lot on Show Boat.
“Sorry you had to see that,” he told her.
“Oh no. I’ve seen worse. And not always from kids.” A city public school teacher, Harriet Anderson was adept at finding silver linings. “I like how you use this apartment. The blond boy was nice to look at.”
Frank laughed. “You want a date?”
She smiled and shook her head. “Seriously. He’s got something. But the rest of it wasn’t so bad. It’ll get better.”
“It can’t get worse.”
“Oh no, it could get worse,” she assured him. “Much worse.”
She left with the last of the witnesses. Only the criminals remained at the scene of the crime. There is nothing sadder than a stage after a bad performance, but this was also an apartment, a home. All joy had been sucked from these rooms. Frank gathered everyone for a postmortem that wasn’t entirely post. A second performance was scheduled at eleven.
“I’m not going to beat a dead horse,” he began. “We all know this did not go well. There’s little we can do before the next show except eat and rest. So let’s think of this as an extra dress. We made lots of mistakes, but we know what our mistakes were and we’ll learn from them. Okay? I have just a couple of notes, but you’ll already know what they are.”
His chief “suggestions” were that Allegra and Dwight get dressed more clumsily, and that Boaz lower the volume so the songs would not compete with the actors.
“Yeah, our show is about actors,” said Allegra. “Not about your great taste in music.”
Boaz remained by the stereo, on the stool where he had sat during the performance. “My music? My music?” He bared his teeth and gums at her. “This show stinks, so you blame my music?”
“Your music’s great!” Frank said quickly. “But you created a very complicated set of cues for yourself. We need things simple. K-I-S-S,” he said. “Keep it simple—” He left out the last s word.
“So it is my fault tonight is dud?” Anger flattened his English and sharpened his accent. “After all the things you did to my play.”
“Your play?” said Allegra. “It’s our play. All of us.”
“No. I wrote it. And it was great. Before you and everyone else started fucking over my words. People hate this script. They would love mine.”
“Your script,” said Allegra, “was TV dog shit.”
“Guys!” said Frank. “We’re not going there. Nobody’s blaming anybody. Okay?”
“Dog shit? Dog shit? I’ll show you dog shit.” Boaz got up and walked toward Allegra. “You.” He pointed. “You and your cheating heart. Your dog shit lies. Your dog shit love.”
“Bo-eeee?” Allegra leaned back in alarm. She shot a worried look around the room.
The others watched Boaz fearfully, all except Dwight, who watched Chris. Frank wondered what they knew that he didn’t.
“You never loved me,” Boaz sneered. “You used me. For sex and rent money and my script and my music. I am just a writer to you. Just a man. And you are a man-hating lesbo.”
Allegra let out a gasp like a silent cough. She covered her eyes with one hand, then lowered the hand to her mouth.
“Fuck you with a spoon,” said Boaz. “Two spoons. Anything but my meat. Because you’re not going to use my meat again!” He stormed over to the door, threw it open, and charged out. His boots banged down the stairs.
Allegra dropped her hand from her mouth. “Wow,” she said dryly. “Wow, wow, wow.”
“Is anybody going to tell me what this is about?” said Frank.
“You don’t want to know,” Chris said sadly.
And Frank got it. “Oh shit.”
“It’s not like it sounds,” said Chris. “It’s not nothing, but it’s not like it sounds.”
“Hey. Thanks for the public declaration of love,” said Allegra.
Chris faced her. “I told you. I’m sorry. But I don’t feel about you the way you feel about me.”
“You still don’t trust me?”
“No! Because I still think you’re straight.”
“Didn’t that prove anything?” Allegra pointed at the door.
“Yeah. It proves straight girls are trouble.”
“Guys?” said Frank. “Guys? Can we finish this later? We still got another performance.” But this was more interesting than their crummy little play. Frank wished they could drop the play and reenact the fight for the next show.
“Yes!” said Toby. “Henry Lewse is coming! Remember!” He was eager and enthusiastic, as if he hadn’t noticed any disasters.
“Right, right, right,” said Allegra. “I’m cool. First things first.”
Henry Lewse was more important to her than either Boaz or Chris.
“I suppose Boaz won’t be coming back,” said Frank.
“I hope not,” said Dwight.
“Okay then,” Frank continued. “I’ll do the music. Let me look over the CDs. Why don’t the rest of you go get something to eat?”
He wanted to be alone; he needed to be alone. He sat on the stool by the stereo while the others drifted out.
Things could not get worse, he told himself. He wanted to believe in a Zen of failure, that once you hit bottom, things can only get better. But Harriet Anderson was right: anything can get worse.
“Frank? Frank? Do you like the stuff I added? Does it work?”
Toby, of course. He squatted down beside Frank like a farm boy, looking up at Frank, hopefully, needily.
“Works fine, Toby. If the rest of the show worked half as fine, we’d be in great shape.” He continued to shuffle through the clatter of CD cases. Boaz had actually picked out some good songs. He just had too many of them.
Toby was nodding and thinking and nodding some more. “I just hope Henry likes it.”
“If he doesn’t,” said Frank with a shrug, “I’m sure he’ll understand. I bet he’s done his share of turkeys.”
“Henry Lewse? Oh no, not Henry.” Toby thought a moment longer. “You think the show is a turkey?”