The fall semester was a blur of activity. The theater director pitched Noises Off as the main stage production. Erik wasn’t familiar with it. He picked up a copy of the script at the library, took it home to read and blanched. It was a British play-within-a play comedy, dependent on a thousand technical cues and effects. This was no open the curtain, close the curtain affair. He’d have to build a set on a turntable, a set to be viewed from both sides.
“I’m screwed,” he said to Miles on their daily run. “This is way too big an ass.”
“Then you’ll have to build big pants.”
In his small, Spartan apartment, Erik paced, thought and panicked. What would Leo Graham do?
“He’d get to work,” he said. He talked to himself a lot lately.
He made tea, sat down and read the play again. A thought tapped his shoulder and he reached for a pad of paper. An idea sat in his lap. He filled page after page with notes and sketches. The high of creative flow began to creep through his veins. He touched the groove. Took a careful taste. Put one foot on the bedrock of his own capability and tested it. Then the other foot. His talent felt solid beneath him. He trusted it. He could pull this off.
The shop had been a disaster area when Erik arrived, a disorganized mess with safety violations warranting public floggings under Leo’s regime. Erik cleaned house and began to bring order from chaos. He identified his superstars, his weak links and his filler, and from them he crafted a team. Within a month, he had if not a well-oiled machine, then a respectable jerry-rigged motor humming along with an energetic purpose. The shop came alive. Erik came alive, more alive than he’d been in years.
They pulled it off. Noises Off was a smash and kudos rained down on Erik for the set design.
He had arrived.
He collapsed and slept through most of the winter break, reviving for Christmas with his brother. Pete had married at the tender age of twenty-four and had an infant daughter who decided her uncle was a custom-made mattress. Every afternoon Erik napped on the couch with his niece on his chest, her possessive pink fist curled around his finger.
“You’re so her bitch,” Pete said aloud, tossing a blanket over them. He kissed his daughter’s head, then Erik’s head, and tiptoed out of the living room, leaving them to drift off in the light of the Christmas tree.
Refreshed and restored, Erik drove over to Brockport State one January morning, a few days before the student body was due back. He wanted time alone to plan classes and putter around.
He was surprised to find the theater doors open. The work lights were on, throwing a harsh florescent wash on the stage. Someone was in here. A prickling wariness made the hair on his arms stand up and his eyes search for the nearest exit. Caution turned to curiosity when he heard a piano being played: the Bach Prelude in C.
C major, the friendliest key.
Killers didn’t play Bach.
His heart still thumping, he walked down the aisle and up the side steps to the stage. Now a voice was rising over the rolling arpeggios of the piano. The Gounod “Ave Maria” in a rich, clear soprano.
A girl is in here.
The hair on the back of Erik’s neck was up now, but not with fear. Intrigued, he made his way to the stage right wings, where the concert baby grand was kept.
A slim, black woman sat at the keys. Long, cornrowed hair gathered back into a thick ponytail. Her shoulders rolled like waves as she leaned arms and hands into the music. Her head tilted and dipped as she sang, riding the phrases out. Erik stared. And listened. For underneath this woman’s full, sweet voice, he heard another voice speaking to him. A little nudge in the side. A hand pulling at the tail of his shirt.
Who is that?
The woman sang the last “Amen” over the last fluid arpeggio. She lifted her hands, sustained the final note with the pedal and lifted her toe.
Erik let out the breath he had been holding, and a long, slow whistle with it. The woman’s head flicked back over her shoulder. A second of guarded surprise in her face, then a softening. A little bit more of her turned on the bench. Her eyes looked him up and down. Her mouth curved into a smile.
“Hello.”
*