74
It was the day of their first practice as a cast. He and Jenna had arranged to meet beforehand at the Medici. He walked past the place and circled the block, then steeled himself enough to go in. He found her in a booth in the back.
“Sorry I’m late,” he said.
At the first read-through, Jenna had been a revelation as Puck, sexy and feral. Connell had read his own lines in a workmanlike fashion that was accidentally appropriate for the role of Francis Flute, the bellows mender given Thisbe to portray in the mechanicals’ play-within-the-play. He liked to think he would have made a good Oberon to her Puck, but the director knew better. Oberon went to an upperclassman whose magnetism attracted the available attention of much of the cast, Jenna included. When the director announced that Thisbe would be wearing a pink prom dress, the loudest laugh in the room came from Oberon.
“It’s okay.” She leaned down to reach into her backpack, her long red hair shifting forward to block his view of her. “Here, let me give you this. We should get going.”
“Hang on a second,” he said, beginning to panic. “Let me sit down.” He creaked in the joints as he bent into the seat. When he squared up across from her, he felt the nervous energy he had been carrying around in his chest settle with a queasy finality into his gut. She was not going to reconsider. If it had been a moment of betrayal that had driven her away, some passionate carelessness in the predawn hours, perhaps he could have pulled her back to him. She had a peculiar tolerance, even a fondness, for the self-absorption of dynamic young men. There had been no regrettable evening though; likely he had been too ready to offer his devotion. The little sedimentary deposits of his need had piled at her feet until they blocked her view of him.
“I think we have time for coffee,” he said, “and to talk a bit.”
“Let’s have some, then.” She signaled to the waiter, frowning in that lovely way she did when she was taking care of tasks. It was something in the way she gave in without a fight: their relationship had already receded into the past for her. “What do you want to talk about?”
“I just want to talk.” He couldn’t say the undiluted truth, which was that he needed her not to leave him. They sat in silence. He dug his knife into the candle wax poured in one of the many grooves furrowed into the table by generations of undergraduates. He couldn’t look at her.
“How’s your father? Are you going home?”
He drummed his fingers on the table. “I don’t have to, if it would make a difference for me to stay.”
“You should go,” she said. “You need to be there.”
“I miss you so much,” he said, finally cracking. “I don’t know what I’m going to do without you.”
“You’re running from something. You need to look at that.”
“I’m sorry,” he said.
Her lips pulled into a little knot. “For what?”
“For not planning anything for your birthday,” he said. “For any mistakes I made.”
She laughed. “The only thing you did wrong was ask me to marry you. The only thing I did wrong was not say no right away.” She looked at her watch and pulled out a sealed envelope. “Can I give this to you now?”
The ring made an airy bulge in the center. He felt his chest tightening.
“We’re too young for this,” she said. “We’re nineteen! I should never have taken that thing. I was in shock, I guess.”
In his silence he was laboring to deepen the groove, but the dull knife had no effect.
“Let’s not be so serious all the time! Let’s have fun.”
“We could make it work,” he said.
“Let’s get the check. We’re late.” She patted his hand, looked for the waiter. “We’ve had some great conversations here.”
He sat, quietly despairing.
“This wasn’t one of them, Mr. Cat-Got-Your-Tongue. Mr. Eeyore. And any other animals I haven’t mentioned.”
He couldn’t help smiling. “Could you try, for one second, not to be so damned adorable?”
“I’m not adorable,” she said. “You just see me that way. That’s the whole problem. I’m fucked up inside, just like you.”
? ? ?
They arrived as the rest of the cast was stretching. It was going to be a physically challenging production, so Dale, the director and a theater professor, wanted them limber. Since it would be performed under the stars, outside the Reynolds Club, they would be practicing outdoors to get used to projecting their voices.
As Connell stretched, he rehearsed what he would say to Dale. He hardly knew the man, beyond taking one of his classes, but he’d already come to see him as something of a father figure, and he dreaded disappointing him. He went to office hours and listened to Dale hold forth about plays. He hadn’t read or seen most of the works Dale brought up, but he tried to nod along at all the right moments, and when he left Dale’s office, he marched straight to the Reg to check them out. He scrambled to read them before he saw Dale next, but he was always a discussion behind.
“This is where we’ll be for the next two months,” Dale said as he called them together. “There’s no intimacy out here. It’s vast, echoless. The acoustics are awful.” He gestured to the heavens. “The open air swallows all but the loudest sounds. There will be no microphones. You will have to fill this space with your voices.”
Connell watched over Jenna’s shoulder as Dale spoke. She was alarmingly buoyant. He saw her exchange a few looks with Oberon.
“Now,” Dale said, “I want you to spread out.” Connell tried to stay by Jenna. “Form two rows. Everyone has a partner on the opposite row.” When the shifting of bodies finished, Connell saw that Jenna was his partner. “Get up real close,” Dale said. “Closer. Put your face right near your partner’s face.”
Connell wasn’t an actor; he knew that by now. He was never sure where to look when he was onstage. He had tried out for this play to let some more Shakespeare run through his head and carve out some shared space with Jenna, who now was staring right into him. He didn’t know what to do with his arms, which swayed awkwardly by his side.
“We’re going to do a little exercise. I want both rows to take one step back. Okay. Do you notice a difference? Look into your partner’s eyes. Are they looking into yours?”
They were. She was laughing with what seemed like genuine mirth at the irony of their pairing.
“Now,” Dale said, “I’m going to ask you to do something a little unusual. I want you to tell your partner you love them. Don’t be shy. Tell them you love them now.”
“I love you,” Connell said, separated from her by a few feet. She said it too, her brows raised, a big smile on her face, as though she were trying to get him to laugh along with her. It occurred to him that she had never said those precise words to him before.
“Now take another step back,” Dale said, “a big one. You have to try harder to see each other. Maybe not much, but a little. What happens when you get farther away? What do you have to do to compensate? Out here, you’ll be trying to reach people a long way off. Now, tell your partner you love them again.”
Connell said it a little louder than before. Jenna seemed to mean every bit of it. There was no denying her talent.
“Now take another step back. Forget about the distance. Say it as if they’re right next to you, only louder.”
“I love you,” he said weakly across the expanse. He didn’t know how to use his diaphragm, and his breath ran out too soon.
“Now two steps. This time shout it! This is love that gives a damn.”
He did as asked, coughing as he did. She was a figure in a row of people.
“Two more steps. Again!”
This time he didn’t say anything, only listened. He couldn’t make out any individual voices, only a collective one making an urgent appeal.
“One last step! Give it your best shout!”
Jenna was a blur on the other side. His throat hurt. He threw his arms back and shouted as loud as he could.