“Idiot,” she mumbled to herself.
“Okay!” Trevor shouted. “Let’s take a little break! That was great guys…”
Scarlett pulled out the needle and stuck her thumb in her mouth. She was digging around in her bag for something to wrap it in when she felt something bounce off her back and land on the floor behind her. It was a towel, marked with the Hopewell monogram. And it was followed by Spencer.
He sank down to the floor, picked up the towel, and began rubbing his face and neck dry. He was drenched in sweat from the fight.
“What did you do to yourself?” he asked. “Lemme see.”
The normal ease still wasn’t there, but he was talking. He leaned over and examined the injured thumb. That was at least brotherly.
“It’s fine,” he said. He dug around in his bag and produced a packaged hand wipe, the kind that comes with take-out food. “This will clean it up a little.”
He cracked open his water and settled back for a long drink.
“I haven’t seen you do that handstand-flip thing in a long time,” she said, ripping the wipe open and giving her wound a lemonscented cleaning.
“I had a bad experience when Dad waxed the lobby floor,” he said. “Hand grip is pretty key. But it did teach me that falling on your face is a funny way to end that. When you’re faking, at least.”
He drained the rest of the water in one long gulp. The bottle crackled under the suction.
“Okay,” he said, getting up. “Tonight. I’ll go with you. I think Paulette has Band-Aids. She has everything.”
He was clearly trying not to make a big deal about it. He just sauntered off to talk to Trevor as if nothing unusual had happened. Scarlett suddenly felt something in her chest—a real, physical sensation like something horrible she couldn’t see had just been lifted off of her, enabling her to breathe.
She enjoyed the rest of the afternoon, watching how they worked the scenes together, piece by piece. Hamlet stabs Polonius, the king and queen’s spy, through a curtain. Gertrude, the queen, watches this, and thinks he has gone insane. Hamlet drags the body off and hides it. And Rosencrantz and Guildenstern—Eric and Spencer—are given the unwelcome task of making a crazed killer give the body up, which he refuses to do. The fight they made up was over who had to talk to Hamlet, with each move carefully tied to a line of the script.
They slid through the sequence again and again, twisting and tuning each bit, rearranging it endlessly. Scarlett didn’t really need reminding that her brother was good at this, that he was highly trained and professional, but watching him work filled her with pride. Especially now that he was talking to her again.
“I just have to wash up and change my shirt,” he said, when they had finished for the day. “There is no way I can wear this one out to eat, even to wherever we’re going. Be back in a minute.”
He walked back toward the scary bathrooms in the vestibule.
“I’ve been waiting for Spencer to walk away,” Eric said, out of the side of his mouth. “Are you doing anything now?”
He was giving her that look. The smoky one. Sort of the one he used at the end of the commercial, when he was on…well…fire.
“I…”
Spencer was going to be coming out in a minute, expecting to go to dinner with her. Her brother. The one she loved, and the one she had to make up with. He would always forgive her in time. But this chance with Eric…this might not come again.
“No,” she heard herself say.
“Want to meet me in front of my apartment? I’m heading there now. There’s something I really want to show you, but I can’t explain here.”
It took about ten minutes of agonizing wait before Spencer reappeared, wiping himself down with the towel.
“Where is this food I’ve been promised?” he said, throwing himself down next to her in his normal manner. “I’m starving.”
“Um, about that. Can we do it…tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow?”
“I can’t today,” she said, unable to even look at him.
It didn’t take him long to get the idea.
“Another commitment?” he asked coolly.
“Kind of.”
He sat there for a moment, beating out a little rhythm on his thighs with his hands, deciding what he thought of this. He laughed mirthlessly.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s just…”
“Watch the clock this time,” he said, putting his bag over his shoulder and leaving. “I’m not running all over the city looking for you again.”
THAT IS THE QUESTION