“Honestly,” James said, shaking his head, “if they don’t give her a decent role in the spring, I’m boycotting the show.”
When the other girls appeared it was immediately clear that wardrobe had spent more time on them. Wren was in a tasteful navy dress, while Meredith wore something red that hugged her curves like a coat of paint, her hair blown out to its full volume like a lion’s mane.
“Where do they want us?” Meredith asked.
“In the centerfold, I’d imagine,” Alexander said, looking her up and down. “Did they have to pour you into that?”
“Yeah,” she said. “And I’ll need five people to pry me out of it.” She seemed annoyed about it more than smug.
“Well,” James said, “I’m sure there will be no shortage of volunteers.” He didn’t make it sound like something to be smug about.
“James!” Gwendolyn barked. “I need you and the girls over here, yesterday.”
They made their way across the room, Meredith carefully tiptoeing between the tangled extension cords in gleaming patent pumps.
“So,” Filippa said, “I don’t even count as a girl now.”
“No offense,” Alexander said, “but not in that outfit you don’t.”
“Quiet in the hall, please!” Gwendolyn called, without even turning around.
Filippa made a face like she’d just bitten into a rotten apple. “God, spare me,” she said. “I’m going for a smoke.”
She didn’t elaborate, but she didn’t need to. As Gwendolyn and the photographer arranged Richard, Meredith, James, and Wren under the lights, it was impossible to ignore the blatant display of favoritism. I sighed, barely bothered, and watched James—hardly aware of the camera, unintentionally charming—as Gwendolyn jostled him and Wren together. I was only half listening when Alexander leaned close to my ear and said, “Are you seeing what I’m seeing?”
“Huh?”
“Okay, actually pay attention for a minute and then tell me if you see it.”
At first I had no idea what he was talking about. But then I did see something—just a twitch at the corner of Meredith’s mouth as Richard’s hand brushed her back. They stood side by side, turned slightly toward each other, but Meredith didn’t quite look like Calpurnia, the perfect politician’s wife, adoring to the point of distraction. Her hand lay flat on Richard’s lapel, but it looked stiff and unnatural there. At the photographer’s instruction, he put one arm around her waist. She lifted her own arm, just barely, so their elbows weren’t touching.
“Trouble in paradise?” Alexander suggested.
After the Halloween “incident,” as I kept thinking of it, we had all proceeded largely as though nothing out of the ordinary had happened, dismissing it as a bit of drunken horseplay gone too far. Richard offered James a perfunctory apology, which was accepted with proportionate insincerity, and from that point forward, they were rigidly cordial to each other. The rest of us were making a commendable (if doomed) effort to get back to normal. Meredith was the unexpected exception: for the first few days of November, she refused to speak to Richard at all.
“Aren’t they sleeping in the same room again?” I asked.
“Not as of last night.”
“How do you know?”
He shrugged. “The girls tell me things.”
I looked sideways at him. “Anything interesting?”
He gave me a quick once-over and said, “Oh, you have no idea.”
I could tell he wanted me to ask what, so I didn’t. I peeked back through the door, hoping to reach a conclusion on the state of affairs with Meredick, but another small movement distracted me. At Gwendolyn’s instruction, Wren tilted her head to rest on James’s shoulder.
“Don’t they look the perfect American couple,” Alexander remarked.
“Yeah.” The camera flashed. James played idly with a strand of Wren’s hair, but at the nape of her neck, where I was fairly sure the photographer wouldn’t catch it. I frowned, squinted across the room. “Alexander, are you seeing what I’m seeing?”
He followed my gaze with only a vague show of curiosity. James continued winding one lock of Wren’s hair around his finger. I couldn’t tell if either of them even realized he was doing it. Wren smiled—maybe for the camera—as if she had a secret.
Alexander gave me a queer, sad sort of look. “Are you just seeing this now?” he said. “Oh, Oliver. You’re as oblivious as they are.”
SCENE 2
The following night’s dress rehearsal was our first on a finished set. Twelve grand Tuscan columns made a half circle on the top platform, and a flight of shallow white steps led down into what we called the Bowl: a flat faux-marble disc on the floor, eight feet in diameter, where the infamous assassination took place. Behind the columns the scrim glowed softly, cycling through a full spectrum of celestial colors, from dusky twilight purple to the orange blush of sunrise.
A new set always presented challenges we hadn’t anticipated during early rehearsals, and we all returned to the Castle short-tempered and sore. James and I went immediately up to the Tower.
“Is it just me, or did that run somehow take about ten hours?” I asked, falling backward onto my bed. The mattress caught me and I groaned. It was after midnight and we’d been on our feet since five.
“Feels like it.” James sat on the edge of his bed and ran his hands through his hair. When he lifted his head again he looked tousled and tired, even a little bit ill. There wasn’t enough color in his face.
I propped myself up on my elbows. “You okay?”
“Why?”
“You seem really, I don’t know, worn out.”
“I haven’t been sleeping well.”
“Something bothering you?”
He blinked at me, as if he hadn’t understood the question, then said, “No. It’s nothing.” He stood and pulled his shoes off.
“Are you sure?”