With nothing to lose, he reached deep into his own well of memory and thought of how he felt one night in France, in the town of Tours during the war, when he and two of his fellow infantrymen, separated from their platoon, couldn’t find their way out of the woods. He remembered looking up into the black night sky and finding a slice of white light in a shard of a quarter moon. Taking it as a sign, he followed it, trusting it was the path to safety.
In this moment, Nicky stood in different darkness, this time on the stage, but just as he had claimed the ground beneath him as his own in the forest that night, he planted himself on the stage floor with all the confidence he could muster. There was something in the physical act of raising his eyes upward to the heavens as he had that night that motivated him. He allowed his body to hold him up, to lead his spirit. His spine fell straight and caused his shoulders to square, opening his chest, which expanded his lungs, which provided the oxygen to give him the breath to fuel his racing heart.
The stage lights pulled on slowly.
Peachy, thumbing through the program in her seat, looked up. She spotted Nicky onstage, but at first she didn’t trust her eyes, having left her glasses in her desk at the office. But she would have known the shape of her fiancé’s head and the line of his lean physique anywhere. She squinted, bewildered; she confirmed it! It was Nicky! She couldn’t imagine her future husband getting up and talking in front of a small group, let alone a large audience. He hadn’t exhibited the nerve. What was he doing up there?
Nicky stood in position, heard the rapture of chimes, followed by the fluttering of newspaper, which the crew used offstage to imitate the flapping of bird wings in the garden.
Nicky looked out into the theater. Light from the stage spilled out into the house and onto the audience. From Nicky’s perspective onstage, the dark pit of seats ruffled by the gray ripple of heads in shadow resembled a turbulent night sky. A few patrons wore eyeglasses. Their lenses caught the stage lights like small mirrors, giving the illusion of the occasional sparkle of a star peeking through the dark.
“This is the air, that is the glorious sun,” Nicky began, as he turned and looked up to the grid of lighting instruments attached to the balcony in a cluster of black metal boxes, bulbs, and wires.
The theatrical sun pulled on in a special spotlight, covered in a gel the color of the pulp of a pink grapefruit. The circle of light was resplendent as it illuminated Nicky before falling into a filmy shadow.
A woman in the audience sighed at the beauty of the tableau, a sound that motivated Nicky to press on, so he directed the line that followed in her direction. “This pearl she gave me, I do feel ’t and see ’t; And though ’tis wonder that enwraps me thus, Yet ’tis not madness. Where’s Antonio, then?”
“Right here, buddy,” he heard Hambone whisper from backstage.
Nicky resumed the speech with confidence.
I could not find him at the Elephant;
Yet there he was; and there I found this credit,
That he did range the town to seek me out.
Nicky flailed his arms, caught himself, and pulled in his performance before it went straight to Hamville. He lowered his voice to a whiskey timber and continued.
His counsel now might do me golden service;
For though my soul disputes well with my sense
That this may be some error, but no madness,
Yet doth this accident and flood of fortune
So far exceed all instance, all discourse,
That I am ready to distrust mine eyes
And wrangle with my reason, that persuades me
To any other trust but that I am mad.
Nicky slowed the cadence of his delivery and stepped forward, engaging the audience.
Or else the lady’s mad; yet if ’twere so,
She could not sway her house, command her followers,
Take and give back affairs and their dispatch
With such a smooth, discreet and stable bearing
As I perceive she does; there’s something in ’t
That is deceivable. But here comes the lady.
Nicky turned upstage. Calla playing Olivia emerged from behind the flat, followed by Enzo, playing the priest. In the haze of pink light, her skin glistened, her cheeks dewy. The gown of soft coral velvet took on a silvery patina, as though she’d emerged from the sea.
As she moved toward Nicky, opening her hands, imploring him, a thick lock of her hair fell forward into her eyes, as naturally as it might in life. When she reached Nicky, he instinctively brushed the hair away.
The intimate gesture caught her off guard. She blushed, or maybe she burned with rage. Nicky couldn’t tell. It didn’t matter. He was in the moment.
The audience was still, except for Peachy, whose coat rustled underneath her as she shifted and craned to see what was happening between her fiancé and the strange princess with the uncombed hair in the big dress. Two deep furrows like matchsticks formed between Peachy’s eyebrows as she observed the sparks between Nicky, wearing a bulky mustard-colored tunic and shrunken pants, and the woman with the kooky haircut. Where in Shakespeare’s England did anyone have that kind of hair? In an instant, what Peachy had assumed to be a surprise from her fiancé turned into something else entirely. Was this a setup to tell her something he couldn’t say in person? Was Nicky breaking up with her and this was his artful way of giving her the brush-off? Peachy began to perspire. She fanned herself with the program.
Enzo stepped back as Calla took a step forward. Calla remembered her blocking well, but now that she was center stage, she realized she should be farther downstage for the speech. Her thoughts were tumbling over one another. Why was Nicky looking at her so intently? Why was Enzo slightly nodding, as if to prod her? She began to speak.
Blame not this haste of mine. If you mean well,
Now go with me and with this holy man
Into the chantry by: there, before him,
And underneath that consecrated roof,
Plight me the full assurance of your faith;
That my most jealous and too doubtful soul
Peachy coughed at the mention of jealousy and doubt. The patron sitting in front of her turned around and glared at her as Calla pressed on, repeating the line:
That my most jealous and too doubtful soul
May live at peace. He shall conceal it
Whilst you are willing it shall come to note,
What time we will our celebration keep
According to my birth. What do you say?
Nicky looked at her. He turned away and took a few steps as if to distance himself from the decision, but then returned to Calla’s side. “I’ll follow this good man, and go with you . . .” he announced.
There was a collective sigh in the audience looking forward to a happy ending.
Nicky, squeezing the moment dry like a sponge in the rinse bucket at the garage when he washed the cars, looked down at his hands, almost as a reflex, and in so doing, realized they were empty, therefore Sebastian knew he had nothing to offer Olivia, so using all his breath, and all the emotional power he could summon, he delivered the line that offered the greatest gift a man could give a woman, the promise of a faithful heart.
“. . . And, having sworn truth, ever will be true.”