Chapter 16 - Dorian

Nadia was a boatload of fun.
Honestly, I was just looking for a friend. I’d gotten out of a shitty relationship a few months ago, which was one of the catalysts for moving to NYC and chasing my dream. I’d learned a lot about myself in that relationship. Now I just wanted a friend, a replacement for my sister, filling that gap now that I was in the city instead of Portland.
But Nadia…
Deep down, I knew it was rebound fever. The desire to not be alone, to fall back into a relationship to replace the ones I’d lost. I had to fight down the urge. To keep Nadia at arm’s-length in my emotional space.
But it wasn’t easy.
I found myself showing off for her more than I did when I was alone. I glanced over after every little dance or dramatic outburst to see if she was laughing, or even just smiling. That smile filled me with more motivation than the hundred bucks this crappy temp job paid.
Nadia lifted the empty cardboard box over her head like it was the Stanley Cup. “All done!”
“Woohoo!” I shouted, tossing her box to the ground and grabbing her hands so we could do a little dance. Her smile split her beautiful face and made me forget that I was trying to avoid a rebound. “That wasn’t so bad, huh? Let’s go get our pay.”
I teased her about Cats on the train back to Brooklyn, and then we debated the other great musicals of our generation. She’d never seen Starlight Express, so I insisted I take her the next time it was showing. It was one of my favorites; I’d loved trains growing up. Aside from that, she had a penchant for humorous musicals. Stuff like Avenue Q and Book of Mormon. I loved them too, but it was the dramas that captured my heart. A comedy could take place anywhere. But a drama was made for the stage.
After collecting our crisp $100 bills—which Nadia held with both hands and pulled tight, making a smacking sound while grinning—we headed home. Braden was gone, so we made sandwiches in the kitchen. I groaned when I opened the fridge drawer.
“You see this?” I held up an empty bag of lunch meat. “One of Braden’s negative traits. He puts empty food containers back in the fridge when he’s done.”
Nadia raised an eyebrow. “Oh?”
I tossed the bag in the trash. “Lunch meat bags, milk cartons, even boxes of cereal. So if you see something in the fridge, don’t assume it’s full without verifying first.”
“Good to know.”
“Fortunately,” I said, reaching back into the fridge drawer, “we have black forest ham.”
“Good enough for me.”
Nadia went upstairs after lunch, so I went out to the garden and relaxed with the book I was reading: The Fifth Risk, by Michael Lewis. But my eyes scanned the page without reading. I wanted to do more with Nadia. We had a little bit of time before our rehearsal. We could go for a walk, or maybe go shopping. I needed new shoes since my sneakers were wearing thin. I wondered what kind of invitation would sound totally normal and not at all creepy.
Before I could think of one, she joined me in the garden. She was wearing tight yoga pants and a sweatshirt on top, just as she had the other night. “Hey,” she said. “I don’t want to impose, but do you want to head to rehearsal early and practice?”
I shut my book with a satisfying thump. “Frankly my dear, I’d love nothing more.”
The nice thing about working in a dump of a theater—and one that was new—was that there weren’t other shows or practices scheduled during the day. It was totally deserted when we arrived, which surprised me because I’d expected Andy and Ryan to be here working on the lights. They must have gotten it all finished last night.
I placed a Bluetooth speaker on the edge of the stage, selected the song Nadia wanted to practice, and we got to work.
It was fun rehearsing with her. It was good practice for me too, much better than working by myself. And not just because she was fun and enjoyable to be around. When I practiced by myself, I had to imagine all the other actors moving through their tracks on the stage, and position myself accordingly. Having Nadia there, even though she was just one out of 20 cast members, helped take a load off my imagination. During the third number, Nadia was right there while I was side-stepping across the back of the stage, coinciding with the audio cue from the music right before we changed tempo from a three-step beat to a five. During my two lines of singing I had to saunter across the stage in an open space, and the boundary of that space was easier to visualize with Nadia moving around the outside on her own track.
I gave her helpful pointers in between songs. She was an attentive student, nodding along and clarifying certain points I made. And when we practiced the song again, I could see the change in her steps. Tightening things up, cleaning the sloppiness around the edges.
Most divas were arrogant and overconfident in their abilities. Actors like Tatiana were rarely receptive to advice, especially from another cast member. But Nadia legitimately wanted to improve her craft. To learn, to practice, and to get better. It was refreshing. Especially in an age where everyone pretended they were perfect on social media. The “fake it ‘til you make it” generation.
“How was that?” Nadia asked after one song. “I felt like my feet transition was smoother.”
I put my hands on my hips to catch my breath. “It totally was. Usually it takes a few days for me to hammer in a new change into my muscle memory. You’ve done it almost instantly.”
She blushed, which somehow made her even more beautiful. “I have a good teacher.”
There was a sound up in the catwalks, like metal slamming against metal. We craned our necks, but there was nothing to see except the gentle swaying of a light over by the edge, where the curve of the wall blocked the rest of the walkway. The floor of the catwalks was a solid length of metal, rather than a metal grate; from the ground we couldn’t see through it.
“Shit,” I said. “Maybe Ryan’s right and this place is haunted.”
Nadia smacked my arm. “Don’t even joke about that!”
“Who’s joking?” I gestured. “Unless that was my imagination?”
Nadia shook her head. “No, I definitely heard it too. Hold on.”
She walked to the ladder at the edge of the stage and began climbing. It was at least 30 feet to the catwalks. She took the steps carefully, planting each foot before moving on. When she reached the top she poked her head up so that it was even with the catwalk ground.
“You’re afraid of it being haunted,” I called, “but you’ll still climb up there to check?”
She looked around a few seconds before answering. “I’m afraid of the unknown. That scares me more than any potential ghost.”
“And the verdict?”
She climbed back down, letting go when she was ten feet off the ground and landing softly on her feet. “Nothing that I could see.”
“So the unknown remains the unknown,” I said in a spooky tone. “If you’re too scared to keep rehearsing…”
She jabbed a finger in my direction. “I never said that. Real or imaginary, a ghost isn’t going to stop me from practicing.”
I found myself smiling at her attitude. “Then let’s get back to it. From the top?”
The next few numbers in the show had us on totally opposite sides of the theater. I knew I was fishing for an excuse to be closer to her, but I couldn’t help but say, “How about we practice the lead’s track?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Nadia said. “It’s pointless with Tatiana ahead of me.”
“You never know,” I insisted. “And as understudy, you have to be prepared. Come on, let’s go through it. It’ll help me with my part, too.”
The core story of The Proposition was about a woman—Jane—whose neighbor—Hector--offers her $10,000 a week to have an affair with him. But the secondary story setting up that premise was that the woman’s husband—Marshall—was pursuing a career as a musician. His lack of success left Jane as the sole income for their family, which is what leads her to accept their neighbor’s proposition.
I was playing the role of Marshall, the husband. Which meant I had several songs where I interacted with Tatiana. The song we had just practiced was a duet between Braden and Tatiana, the two leads, where Tatiana sung along with Braden while dancing with me. It was a haunting song of temptation and lust; her character was pining after Braden while dancing with her husband.
I queued up the previous song to play again. Nadia and I stepped up to each other and I took her hands in mine, as if we were beginning a waltz dance. Our bodies were just inches apart, and I could feel the heat coming off her chest. The music played, and then we began moving.
My fingers tingled where they touched hers, and I tried to focus on my steps rather than the heart-shaped face staring back at me, lips puckered and insanely kissable. She stared over my shoulder as we danced, focusing on anything but my face.
I didn’t have any lines in this song, but as a good rehearsal partner I began whispering Braden’s lines to give Nadia a baseline, so she wouldn’t have to imagine them in her head.
“You’re all that I’ve wanted,” I whispered, Braden’s lines.
“You’ve always been there,” she belted out in a singsong voice, glancing over her shoulder as if Braden were there to sing to.
“Your gaze leaves me haunted,” I said.
“My heart cannot bear!”
Her voice was crisp and clear and beautiful. After hearing Tatiana’s mediocre voice, Nadia’s was shocking. Thankfully there were a few moments in the song where I dipped Nadia, bringing my lips close to hers. The urge to kiss her was intense. How could a man hold her in his arms and not kiss those pouty lips?
I lifted her and whispered Braden’s first line of the next verse: “Our love can’t be flaunted…”
Nadia’s voice was like a songbird’s. “A proposition most fair.”
“Your lust is undaunted,” I whispered.
“My body does swear!”
She held the note of the last word as the music rose to a crescendo. I imagined the backup dancers reaching to the sky while Braden extended an arm toward Nadia, and she extended an arm away from me toward where he would be standing, still belting out the final note.
At the end of the song I was supposed to pull her back into a kiss, a reminder to the audience that my character was totally unaware of what was going on. For the first time since being cast for the show, I felt a stab of nervousness. Did she want to kiss during practice? Some actors preferred to perform all stage directions during practice, but others didn’t.
On cue, I pulled her back toward me, cutting off her note. Her chest heaved against mine as she caught her breath, full breasts warm and soft against my body. Her almond eyes bore into mine, wide with expectation.
She wants me to kiss her.
She was waiting for it. Lips slightly apart, eyes lidded and ready. There was nothing to it. The kiss was part of the show. Totally platonic. Not a big deal. I’d kissed dozens of women during shows in my career.
But this felt different.
Finally, Nadia pulled away and the moment was gone. “That was fantastic!” she said. “I hadn’t gotten a chance to really practice my understudy lines.”
I cleared my throat and hoped I wasn’t blushing. “Yeah, you were great. Your range is impressive.”
“I took vocal lessons when I was younger,” she said proudly.
“Better than singing in the shower.”
“Which I couldn’t do in my old apartment, unless I wanted to wake up my roommates at 5:00 in the morning.” She got a faraway look on her face. “Now that I have my own bathroom in a townhouse…”
I made myself laugh to cover my embarrassment. I’d almost kissed her. “That’s between you and Ryan. I don’t mind the sound of someone singing upstairs, but Ryan’s a lot more ornery.”
She got a sultry look on her face. “I’ll just have to use my feminine wiles to make sure he doesn’t mind.”
“Good luck with that,” I said.
“Oh? I thought Ryan’s the one who wants a fuck-buddy?”
Her bluntless did make me blush. But her eyes were locked onto mine and she pretended she didn’t notice.
“Oh, he does,” I agreed. “But he’s also not the kind of guy to let a girl get away with a bunch of annoying habits just because she’s sleeping with him.”
Nadia turned sideways and popped her hip, which made her ass flex in my direction. “Challenge accepted.”
Did she know the effect she had on me? Was it intentional flirting? She was waiting for a reaction, so I chuckled.
I’m the one who told her I just wanted a friend. She was being comfortable around me because those were the boundaries I’d set. I was being stupid for expecting more.
And I’d almost ruined it by kissing her. That would have totally messed up our dynamic from the start.
“You mind if we do another?” she asked. “I want to rehearse Tatiana’s lines for song number four.”
I gave a dramatic flourish and extended my hand to her. “It would be my pleasure.”

*

We had time to rehearse two more numbers—practicing first Nadia’s main dancing track, and then the lead’s—before everyone else arrived for rehearsal. Ryan arrived, waved to us, and then disappeared backstage. He returned soon after and asked if we’d seen the socket wrench from his toolbox, but neither of us had. The others began trickling in after that. Tatiana came walking through the doors a few minutes early, which surprised all of us. She glanced up at the catwalks and blinked, as if she’d seen something.
I considered asking her about it, but then she shook it off and began making demands of Director Atkins.
Rehearsal went well for the first hour. There were no complaints or distractions; everyone put their head down and focused.
After seeing Nadia’s rehearsal, it was difficult to take Tatiana’s seriously. The big-haired diva was sloppy while moving through her track. For example, there was one song where she was supposed to walk toward the front of the stage in a straight line. Instead, she veered off diagonally, causing her to intersect with the track of four of the dancers.
Every time it happened, I glanced over at Nadia. She rolled her brown eyes, which made me struggle to contain a laugh, turning it into a sputter and cough instead. Tatiana glared over at me mid-song, and then Director Atkins commented on my focus between numbers. Of course, he didn’t mention Tatiana’s lazy track work.
Sorry, Nadia mouthed to me the next time we exchanged a glance.
“Andy?” Atkins called to the back of the stage. “I want to see that new lighting set this time around.”
Andy gave a thumbs-up from the tech booth.
“Let’s take it from the top, this time without any distractions,” Atkins said, pointedly looking at me. I nodded somberly and waited as the song replayed.
I tried to focus during the song, but I found myself glancing at Nadia as she moved across the stage. She flowed through her dance, which was clearly an improvement over our pre-rehearsal practice. She finally noticed, and began making faces at me whenever her back was turned such that Atkins couldn’t see her from the front row. A cross-eyed look with her tongue out, then the next time a ghastly expression like a dead body. Soon I was staring straight ahead and trying not to giggle. She was going to get me in trouble.
Then came the part where Tatiana had to walk in a straight line toward the front of the stage. Again, she veered off sloppily, forcing the backup dancers—including Nadia—to adjust their own routes to avoid running into her.
Typical Tatiana, I thought to myself.
CRACK.
There was a snapping noise in the catwalks above. One of the trusses swayed, and there was a blur as an object fell through the air. A spotlight the size of a keg—and just as heavy—smashed into the stage right next to Tatiana. The bulb shattered on impact, sending glass and metal in all directions across the stage.
The music kept playing, but everyone stopped and stared at the light. We were all shocked, as if we couldn’t believe what had just happened. One by one we came out of our stupor as the reality sank in.
“Holy fuck.”
“Dude…”
“A light just fell! How did that fall?”
The light was so heavy that it had caved-in part of the stage; at least a quarter of the light was through the wood and into the substructure.
Throughout it all, Tatiana remained right next to the crashed light without moving. She just stared at it the way someone would look at a spare tire sitting in a living room. This doesn’t belong here.
And then she realized.
“Oh!” she shouted, stepping back and almost tripping over a piece of debris. She paused, still staring at the light. “Ohh!”
And then, in typical diva fashion, she fainted.
Braden was there in an instant, catching her as she fell backwards like a trust fall. Two other dancers rushed to her side and began fanning her.
Andy came sprinting down the aisle. His eyes were wide behind his glasses and his jaw was open.
“I… uh… the…”
“Andy!” Atkins screamed at him. “What the fuck?”
“I started the new lighting set like you asked…”
Ryan came sprinting from backstage. When he saw the light, he stopped and scratched his red hair. “Oh shit.”
Atkins rounded on him. “So you’re the one responsible for this?”
Ryan looked up, and then shook his head. “That’s not one of the lights we touched. The others were replaced.”
“Clearly this one should have been, too!”
“My hair…” Tatiana said as she came to. Braden had lowered her to the ground, but now she was trying to sit up and touch her head. “My hair! Did it ruin my hair?”
Bitch, it almost ruined your skull.
I shared a look with Nadia as Atkins began shouting at Ryan and Andy.