Leopold schedules Zara’s private meeting for the dead of the night, when almost all the company has gone home. As the elevator slides toward the third floor, Zara sends a text, telling Eli that she’s headed back to Kestrel’s.
She’s used to acting, to making people believe her. Even so, she’s still stunned by how easy it is to lie. Even to Eli.
But what was she supposed to do? Say no to Leopold and walk out of the Aurelia? Give up Echo and all the work she’s done with so little time left before the show opens? Tell Eli that she’s going to see Leopold for a private meeting, and watch her perfect, beautiful girlfriend melt down?
She makes the long walk to his office, her shoes sounding lonely notes on the linoleum.
She knocks on the door to Leopold’s office.
“Come in, come in.”
Zara hopes that Meg is going to be there, but it’s just Leopold, standing with his back to her. He doesn’t turn when she walks into the room. The desk between them feels like a magical barrier — like the line of the stage that separates the audience and the actors. She tells herself that as long as they’re on different sides of that desk, she’s safe.
Leopold’s back moves slowly as he breathes. Up and down. Up and down.
Zara knows what happened to Enna, and she won’t let anything like that happen to her. But in some buried part of her brain, Zara knows that this is just another little story she’s telling herself.
“What did you want to work on?” she asks in a small voice, the one that she first arrived at the theater with. Breathy and untrained. She hears herself like a stranger would — she sounds so young. Like adulthood was just a costume she tried on. Now it’s been stripped off and she’s standing in front of him, exposed.
“It’s Echo’s death, I’m afraid,” Leopold says, finally turning to face her.
For a second, she’s relieved that he doesn’t want to talk about love. He doesn’t want to touch her. Then the moment twists and Zara remembers she shouldn’t have to be relieved that the director doesn’t want to touch her. She should be able to take that for granted.
“I need you to close your eyes for me,” Leopold says, trailing his fingers along the surface of the desk. “And scream.”
This is a fairly simple direction. Zara should be able to follow it.
She closes her eyes.
That’s where her feelings are waiting. Down there, in the dark. It isn’t really true blackness behind her eyes. It’s the bloody color of the curtains. The color she saw on the day that Roscoe died.
Here in this closed-in place, she knows how afraid she is.
She screams and screams and screams, bright sound pouring out of her like blood. She screams until her throat is throbbing inside, a secret pain. She thinks of Roscoe on the floor, Enna in the dressing room. Vivi — a girl who sounds too much like her — dead somewhere in the Aurelia.
She opens her eyes and sees how much Leopold loves it, how he’s savoring every bit of her hurt. He doesn’t even try to hide it. He levels his gray eyes and stares at her and she’s still screaming, screaming, and now the sound is a bright ribbon that he is tearing out of her. His tongue comes out of his mouth, and he licks his lips. They are glistening pink, slightly open.
“Very good,” he says.
The sound falters. Dies. Zara puts a hand to her throat. It feels hot to the touch.
Leopold smiles, like she’s made him happy and proud. The look that she used to crave now makes her swallow back disgust. “Much better,” he says. “I believed your fear this time. And there was something new in there.” He searches her for the answer. His eyes have the urgency of fingers, working their way over her. Pushing their way in. “Loss. There is something you are afraid to lose now.” Eli. Eli. Eli. “Can you tell me what it is?”
No. “It’s love. I love this place so much. The Aurelia. I love this show. I love being on the stage. Being an actress.”
He walks toward her, crosses the barrier she picked, the line between his desk and the rest of the room. He sets his fingertips to her warm throat. Will he be able to tell that she’s holding something back?
Will he demand more?
Zara’s body jolts, and it takes her a moment to match her reaction up with the door flying open. Adrian Ward comes in, completely out of breath, his hands slightly curled. “I thought I heard . . .”
He looks from Leopold to Zara.
Zara gave him an entrance to make. Adrian is late — but at least he’s here. The golden boy of the Aurelia. Nothing bad can happen while he’s in the room. He’s too important.
“Miss Evans and I were just working on her death scene,” Leopold says.
“Oh,” Adrian says. “Yeah. That makes sense. You good, Z?”
She’s not good. That feeling is on the other side of a locked door and she has no idea how she’ll open it again.
“I’m afraid that will have to be all for tonight,” Leopold says, holding a hand to his face — a fluttering, delicate hand.
Zara doesn’t wait to watch him collapse into a heap of visions. She doesn’t care about his genius.
She rushes out of the office and down the hallway. Adrian sticks close until she stops on the landing to the stairs. That’s far enough, some vague but necessary distance that makes her feel like she can stop and breathe for a second, nursing the sting in her throat. Trying to forget the way Leopold’s hand felt on her skin.
She slides down to sit on the concrete landing. Adrian sits down next to her, cross-legged. “Hey.” He puts a strong arm around her shoulders and it shouldn’t make her feel better, but it does. “You all right?”
“Yeah. Thanks for agreeing to do this. I know it must have sounded strange when I asked you but . . .”
“It’s no problem, Z,” Adrian assures her. He leans in and stage-whispers, “In case you haven’t noticed, this whole place is strange.”
Zara almost manages a laugh. Adrian keeps getting these half-chuckles out of her at the least likely times. Of course, her muddle of panic and relief probably has something to do with it. “You really did save the day,” she says. “Good job with the whole hero thing.”
He leans in toward her, softly, his mouth so close that she can feel its warmth. Zara pulls back. “What are you doing?” she asks with an edge of hysteria that turns her words ugly.
Adrian’s shrug is hard, defensive. “That rehearsal when you kissed me? The kiss at the gala? Then . . . tonight?”
“That was acting,” Zara says. “I’m an actress.” Her voice sounds weak, even though she’s insisting.
“We have chemistry,” Adrian says. “You can’t fake that.”
Zara didn’t see anything like this coming. She remembers Toby: Adrian Ward, with whom you have about as much chemistry as a cat and a cold bath. Besides which, Adrian is a movie star. This can’t be real. But that’s not even remotely fair to him. Adrian is sitting right here, smelling like sandalwood and boy-sweat, confused hurt brewing in his face as he waits for her to say something. Adrian is a real person — he wants love as much as anyone else. And Leopold has been pushing him, too. Pushing him toward her. Zara owes him something. Not a kiss. The truth. And the truth is, they’re not always a cat and a cold bath. Not when they’re onstage and Zara is channeling the strongest feelings she’s ever had. “I’m not faking it. I’m feeling it for somebody else.”
Adrian’s gray-green eyes cloud with instant misery. “There’s another guy?”
Zara wishes she could tell Adrian the truth — Eli, Eli, Eli — but what if he lets it slip? What if he’s jealous enough to tell Leopold on purpose? “I’m not going to answer that,” Zara mumbles.
“Which means yes,” Adrian says.
“I’m —”
“Don’t say sorry,” Adrian mutters.
He gets up and pounds down the stairs, filling the landing with hard, hollow sound. Zara should go after him. Find some way to explain. If she doesn’t, the play is in trouble. Adrian and Zara have to stand in front of hundreds of people every night and convince the world that they’re in love.
Zara gets up and starts to run. She has to find the one person who can make her feel better. She checks the lighting booth, which is locked. She tries the greenroom — empty. She walks into the wings, and there’s Eli, standing on the stage, looking up.
She walks slowly, neck craned, one arm lifted as she squints. It looks like she’s trying to keep the sky from falling. She’s muttering to herself in Spanish, or maybe she’s talking to the lights.
Zara grabs Eli’s hand. “Hey.”
“I thought you went back to Kestrel’s,” Eli says, stroking Zara’s palm with her long fingers. Even that little brush sings through Zara’s entire body. The locked door inside her eases open.
“Are you okay?” Eli asks.
No.
But if Zara lets out that truth, she’ll have to tell the rest of it. She doesn’t want to admit she was stupid enough to go see Leopold alone. That she lied to Eli. That she let him stand there while she screamed and screamed.
“Hey,” Eli says. “Let’s get out of here. Get some food. Or just go home.” Eli looks beautifully nervous. “Let me take you home.”
Zara is flooded with a new impulse. She pushes Eli toward the wings, but not all the way. Zara wants the stage under her feet. The height of the flies, taking the lid off her sense of possibility. She wants the Aurelia. Not Leopold’s Aurelia. The one that she walked into that first day of auditions, the one that felt like hers. Zara wraps the thick red curtains around them so they’re alone in the middle of the theater.
“Privacy,” she whispers.
Eli is smiling, shaking her head. “The first time I saw you, these curtains . . . It’s hard to explain.”
“Later?” Zara asks, because she wants to know about the first time Eli saw her. She wants to know everything.
But first: this.
She tips forward. Their lips touch. Fingertips kiss, then palms slide. Their breasts come together, pressing. Soft sounds twine with Eli’s breath, which comes faster and faster. Zara wishes she could do this every night, center stage. This is the story she wants to tell. It’s Echo and Ariston, but better.
Eli stops kissing her just long enough to ask, “You sure you’re okay?”
Zara nods. She brushes a thumb over Eli’s lips, turning her worry into a wide smile.
But now, when they start kissing again, Zara has to work to hold herself in the moment. The curtains turn into a musty prison of trapped air and old velvet. Zara presses harder, anchors her hands in tangles of black hair.
A creak comes from the theater — a creak that has nothing to do with their kissing. Zara’s eyes snap open.
“Shit,” Eli mumbles, forming the word against Zara’s lips. One of the doors in the house just opened.
Eli’s body hardens into a plank against Zara’s.
If you have anything to hide, keep it hidden.
The sound of footsteps on the stage holds Zara in place. She can feel Eli’s heartbeat fighting hers, out of time with each other.
That’s when the singing starts.
A soprano is onstage, her voice so high-flung and glittering that it sounds like stars in a cold night. It takes Zara a few words to place the song — “Tonight.” West Side Story. Another tragic play about love. The woman sings about how it is all beginning and the world is falling away.
Zara is afraid to look, and at the same time, she can’t stop herself. There are too many mysteries in this theater, and one is standing right next to her, begging to be known. She uncurls the curtains just an inch. A figure stands downstage center, her blond hair shining in the dim light.
Zara turns to Eli and mouths, Meg.
Eli mouths a string of curse words, one after the other, firecrackers going off without a sound.
Meg is tiny, but she seems to take up the entire theater. Whatever it is that makes people’s eyes stick to certain actors, she has it. Presence, beauty, a balance of human frailty and otherworldly strength.
Zara can’t believe what she’s watching.
Meg moves into the second verse, her voice growing stronger, and it’s like she dropped a stone into the most secret parts of Zara. The impact creates rings, and the rings move outward until they touch her lungs and she is holding her breath; they touch her eyes and she wants to cry.
Then, from somewhere out in the house, Zara hears a sigh rise like steam. “That was beautiful,” Leopold says.
Zara gasps.
Meg turns and looks straight at her.