Zara Evans is distracted. (Adrian can tell.) He sees it in the way that she keeps forgetting to blink. He can feel it, too. Standing with her in the hallway outside the rehearsal space is like hanging out with half a person.
“You good?” Adrian asks, touching Zara’s arm. (Girls love it when he touches their arms.)
“Yeah,” Zara says, still looking completely distracted. “Good.”
Meg, the director’s PA, walks toward them down the hall. Her honey-blond hair is slick in the lights. Her pretty face almost makes up for the khakis and standard-issue cardigan. Each step is more brisk and pissed off than the last.
She holds out a box. Plain cardboard, nothing inside.
“This is for your clothes,” Meg says.
“Are my pants really that bad?” Zara asks, looking down. Adrian doesn’t say anything. (Because, yeah, they are.)
But he doesn’t want Zara to be embarrassed. He wants this rehearsal to go well. And if that means taking off his clothes, he’s not going to ask questions. He moves fast, a whirlwind of fabric, until he’s down to his boxers. “You can stop there,” Meg says, shifting her eyes away.
“Oh,” he says, leaving his fingers hooked in the elastic waistband. “Cool, cool.”
Zara Evans stares at Adrian like he isn’t real. (He’s pretty much used to this by now.) It’s true his muscles aren’t exactly a natural asset. He works out twenty hours a week, sometimes more. People want these muscles when he takes off his shirt. People expect them.
Meg shakes the box in Zara’s direction. “What is this for?” Zara asks.
Bad move, Zara Evans. “Just go with it,” Adrian says. It’s easier that way. And it makes directors want to hire you again.
“This is for act three, scene two,” Meg says evenly.
“That’s not one of the love scenes,” Zara says. “In act three, scene two, Echo and Ariston have just met.”
“This is a rehearsal technique,” Meg says. “It goes back to the method acting studios of the 1960s. Actually, in that case the actors were fully nude.” Meg’s eyes go to Zara and stay there. “Leopold thinks the two of you need to work on intimacy.”
Yes, Adrian thinks. This is what he can offer the play. This is why they cast him.
Zara twitches a look up and down the hall. “Where is Leopold?”
“Not feeling well,” Meg says. “He needed to lie down.” Adrian remembers the vision that hit Leopold in prop storage and adds it to what Meg just told him. It doesn’t take much work to find the connection.
Zara peels off her shirt, and all of a sudden Adrian is looking at her bra. It’s black. Her underwear, on the other hand, is bright pink and cuts into the skin at her hips. She seems aware of it in a painful sort of way.
Adrian covers his eyes and puts out his hand. He lets Zara lead him into the studio. Her hand is warm in his and — can a hand be grateful? Her hand feels grateful. Meg must be staying outside because he hears the lock clunk behind them.
“Ummm,” Adrian says, opening his eyes slowly. “This is embarrassing.”
“At least you have that body to be embarrassed in,” Zara says.
Adrian had already forgotten about being semi-naked. “Yeah, what I meant is . . . I’m still not really off book. It’s hard enough with movies, when I only have to remember lines for the day. I memorize them when I’m sitting in makeup.”
“Really?” Zara asks with a nervous laugh. “I memorized these when I was twelve.”
What does she want from him — an award? It’s not that easy for everyone.
“So how do you do it? For the movies?” she asks.
“I think the ritual is what makes it work,” he says, thinking it through one step at a time. “I can remember a line because it matches up with the way a brush hits my cheek. Or that tugging feeling of an eyebrow pencil. But this play is made up of monologues. Long ones.” He goes to put his hands in his pockets and then remembers that his thighs are bare. “You can only put on so much makeup, even in theater.”
Zara Evans is frowning. “When do you think you’ll be off book?” she asks.
“I’m working on it,” he says with his best apology smile. He’s lucky that Leopold isn’t here. Although it’s possible it wouldn’t even matter. Adrian is famous enough to get a certain number of passes.
Zara is looking at him like she knows that.
She holds her arms around her middle. It’s hard to tell if Zara is shy or self-conscious or just freezing. The studio has an old heater and icy wooden floors. “I have Ariston’s lines memorized, too,” she says. “Maybe I can feed them to you for today.”
“Hey,” Adrian says, ignoring the bitter hint in Zara’s voice. “You know this play backwards and forwards and inside out, right? Maybe you can do more than just feed me the lines. You can help me learn them.” He has a dialogue coach that he meets with on a weekly basis, but that’s not enough. Dyslexia, ADHD, a bad breakup, and a dead Greek playwright have combined forces to ruin Adrian’s life. “I’ll help you, too. With — I don’t know. Whatever you need. Intimacy, right? We’re on this ride together, right, Z? Can I call you Z?”
Zara sighs, then thinks, then nods and marches over to him, which means she has to stop hiding her body. He tries not to stare at her. “This is act three, scene two,” she says, her voice moving in waves of confidence he’s never heard before. “Echo and Ariston meet at the market, and they’re already in love. But they don’t know that they’ve fallen in love with the exact person they were supposed to marry before they ran away.”
“Seems kind of silly, doesn’t it?” Adrian asks.
“Silly, how?” Zara asks, crossing her arms over her chest again. (It only reminds Adrian she has a chest.)
“They could have just stayed where they were and ended up married. Popping out little Greek babies. It seems pretty obvious.”
Zara frowns. “That’s not the point.”
“Oh.” Adrian puts a hand to the back of his neck, which is suddenly hot. “Yeah. Probably not. So what do I say first?”
Zara feeds him lines. Adrian vomits them back up.
“Now say it again,” Zara instructs.
When Adrian goes looking for the words in his head, he finds a thousand other things. Boring ones. Exciting ones. Some of them leap and demand his attention. Others whisper and whisper and won’t stop. And then there’s the scene that’s always playing out in his head these days. A car in a driveway in the middle of the night. Bags, everywhere. A barefoot girl on the pavement, not kissing him. Staring at him with the kind of sadness that you can’t fix, not even with a perfect kiss.
Adrian’s lines are gone.
He shrugs and smiles (people like it when he smiles) and says, “I guess we’re doomed.”