A day passes, then two, and Zara is hoping that Eli will text again. On the third day, she lets it go. It’s probably for the best. She’ll be in rehearsals soon, and thinking about Roscoe won’t help.
That’s the only reason Eli wanted to talk to her, anyway.
When she eventually returns to the Aurelia, Zara follows the signs on the wall to the meeting place Leopold picked. They’re not in the studios. She checks every door to see which leads to Storage Room Two. That’s what her call sheet says. Storage Room Two. Evans, Ward.
She’s going to meet Adrian tonight.
Ariston.
But Zara’s call time is a half hour earlier than his. A half hour with the director — doing what? Zara feels a sick wash of nerves and excitement.
Storage Room Two is as tall as a warehouse, with the same concrete slab floors. Every inch of space is packed tight with props. There are no neat aisles — as Zara picks a direction and walks, she realizes there are no aisles at all. She passes trunks of age-stained photographs and artwork in a strange array of styles. Daggers drip from the walls. She bumps her hip on an old-fashioned painted carousel horse.
Leopold is supposed to be here, but Zara doesn’t even know where to start looking for him. It would be easy to lose a person in this mess. Does the props master — Barrett — keep it this way on purpose? Zara tries to picture him, with his dark hair and his perfectly sliced smile, stuck in this room all day and night, only props for company.
Zara makes four wrong turns before she clears an ornate paper screen and finds Leopold in a bare spot among the mess, like a clearing in the woods.
He is sitting on a bed.
A huge, rough-hewn bed with the sort of posts that must remember being tree trunks. Work lights have been set up around the space, throwing hard shadows. There is no script in sight. No stage manager or AD. Not even Leopold’s assistant, Meg. This isn’t a traditional rehearsal. But after that audition process, why would she expect a traditional director?
Leopold pats the spot next to him, a patch of untouched white sheet. “Come. Sit.”
Zara tells herself that this can’t be what it looks like. She’s heard about casting couches, but a casting bed? To wait until she already had the part is a bit of brutal genius. Leopold must know how grateful she is right now. How little she wants to loosen her grip on this role.
Zara puts down her purse. Takes out her script. She doesn’t know what else to do.
Leopold sighs. “I suppose you don’t have to follow the first direction I’ve given you.”
Zara dismisses her worries. They’re just a product of the strange room, the surprise of finding him here alone. Leopold is her director. She has no reason to think that he’s doing anything other than directing her.
“Have you forgotten how to use your voice as well?” Leopold asks, teasing her. “A lack of words will give us some difficulties in rehearsal.”
“No,” Zara says. And then, because the sound came out much too small, she tries again. “No.”
Leopold changes, like a wind hitting her from a new direction. “You look beautiful down here. Something about the broken light.” Zara can feel his eyes taking a slow path up and down her body. She crosses her arms. His attention is making her awkward, twitchy. She should be used to it, though. Being an actress means people take stock of every inch of her.
“Is this the bed for the love scene?” Zara asks. She’s trying to keep her head in Echo and Ariston.
“This is my hope,” Leopold says, touching the sheets. His smile is edged with boyish charm. “If Barrett can make it look like driftwood. He’ll have to bleach it to that special bone color, if he can manage.” There is a scrape of disgust in Leopold’s voice. Zara stands up a little straighter, a prickle at the base of her spine. She never wants to give Leopold a reason to talk about her like that.
Zara walks into the bright circle cast by the work lights. “Why are we meeting down here?”
“Questions instead of trust,” he says. “Is that really how you want to start?”
Zara’s worries gust inside her, gathering force, changing direction. All of a sudden she feels desperate to prove herself. “A studio is a blank page. This bed gives an actor more to work with — right?”
“A bed is more than just a prop,” Leopold says. “This is the center of the story. The focal point of Echo and Ariston’s passion for each other. I thought you, of all people, would be able to see that.”
Zara can’t let Leopold find out how little she knows about love. She has to keep this part of herself away from him. Safe.
She edges onto the bed.
They’re not sitting any closer than they were at the read-through, but there is a soft shock in this closeness. Maybe because they’re alone. Maybe because Zara still has the faintest worry that he might touch her.
But no touch comes.
“Was that really so hard?” he asks, and the teasing is back. But he drops it quickly, putting on his most brisk and professional manner. “Now before we begin, you and I have something important to talk about.”
Zara nods. She is sitting in profile, his face at the very edge of her vision.
“There’s very little I can do about Adrian Ward and his movie-star ways. The production schedule is a disaster; we’ve had to carve around his promotions and events. This play cannot thrive, it cannot be anything close to perfection, unless you are different. I will have to depend on you in a way that I can’t depend on Adrian. And so I need to know that you have no outside commitments. No distractions.”
Yes. This is what Zara wants. This is why she’s here. To throw herself into this role.
To drown in it.
“Of course,” Zara says, turning to face Leopold. “I’m here to work.”
His hand falls on her wrist. She forces herself to stay perfectly still. Leopold smiles, and she can see pores in his skin, dark hairs running wild through his gray waves, and pinpricks of light in his eyes. “Good girl.”