James entered the backstage area, coming into the wings at the left of the stage where fourteen students—a mix of dancers and tech crew—were watching Will and Daisy in their rehearsal. James opened fire, shooting five dead and wounding six others. The remaining four fled the wings.
Erik didn’t hear the gunfire backstage. Between the volume of the music and the glass of the lighting booth, the sound never reached him at the back of the house.
Will said he was aware of some kind of commotion in the stage left wing. But he had been dancing down on the apron with Daisy, where the music levels were most intense. The commotion was behind him. And it had been right at the moment of the difficult lift on his shoulder, so his concentration was especially focused.
Daisy was facing the wings as she ran to Will, the light from the boom stands in her eyes. James was backlit, in silhouette, but perhaps Daisy did see him, although her memory blacked out long before the shots were fired. The rest of her life, she would remember little from the day.
It would be years before Erik could construct the shooting as a linear event. Until then, his mind only island-hopped from one terrifying image to the next, out of order and overlapping. Within the fragments, only his physical memories were clear and intact. If a true mental narrative had existed, it was gone. Later, in the remembering, and the telling, he felt he was making half of it up.
He didn’t know it was James. Not right away. Someone came out of the wings as Daisy ran to Will. Stage left from the vantage point of the performers but stage right from Erik’s perspective. The lift was a lighting cue, number thirty-four: bring up the mid-shinbusters, intensifying the pink wash onstage. Erik was watching Daisy throw her leg and roll over Will’s back. He slid the levers, timing the cue to the both the choreography and the modulation in the music. In his right peripheral, he saw a third person onstage but he thought it was Trevor King, the assistant stage manager. He guessed Trevor had seen an errant screw or nail on the floor and was getting it out of the way.
Except Trevor King was black.
The guy on the stage was white.
Perhaps Erik would have paid more attention to the discrepancy if Daisy didn’t overshoot the roll and teeter a little precariously on Will’s shoulder. A moment of alarm, but then Will’s hand came up to steady her, holding her left leg. He had her. He always had her. She was good and balanced. Will let go and extended his arm again. Just as the white man who wasn’t Trevor extended his arm.
Erik had never heard live gunfire in his life. When a lick of flame erupted from the man’s sleeve and three punching bangs split the Gershwin melody, Erik continued to sit with his hands on the console. An incalculable length of time passed before he could associate sound and action. Even then his mind refused to grasp it, refused further to put a name with the face.
He heard those three shots clearly and he never forgot their rhythm. Two quick bangs. A pause. A third.
Two shots and Will jerked up, back arched, his left arm flying up into the air with a spray of red. All the weight leaning forward on his leg went straight up into the air as well, the force of his writhing body knocking Daisy off his back. Then James fired a third time and Daisy’s scream cut the theater in two.
Erik stood up, his chair rolling back and away. On the other side of the glass, Kees stood up too, coffee in hand. Marie must have jumped up. David said he and Neil both looked over the top of the set before hitting the floor. In the stage right wing, John pushed Lucky to the ground and threw himself on top of her, pinning her tight as she screamed for Will.
Will’s body imploded, crumpling down on the floor. Daisy crashed down next to him, the pastel tones of her dance clothes now stained red.
Erik only just registered she had been shot when the man with the gun jumped off the stage, firing into the orchestra seats. Three shots to the left, four to the right. Then he started coming up the aisle. Erik watched for incredulous seconds before recognizing the close-cropped hair and the gold earrings. Only then did he dive to the floor of the lighting booth with the full realization.