Chapter 44 - Andy

I was going to tell her I loved her.
Hugging Nadia by the door, I was ready to say it. The words were right there on the tip of my tongue, waiting to be set free into the world. To forever change the new relationship Nadia and I were building.
But something held me back. A look in her eyes, perhaps. Maybe she wasn’t ready. My instincts told me it wasn’t time.
Which was probably for the best, because if I had said it, we would have delayed in front of the door longer, and might not have seen the saboteur trying to access the theater via the fire escape.
After a brief attempt at pursuit, Nadia picked up the letter and held it out. The word Tatiana was scrawled on the front in cursive handwriting.
We shared a look and went back inside.
“The fuck was all that shouting?” Ryan asked. He’d pulled his jeans on, but was still bare-chested. “Another homeless junkie shouting at people?”
“We saw him,” I said excitedly. I practically skipped down the aisle to the stage so I could extend the card toward him. “We found the saboteur! He was trying to break into the theater. He dropped this.”
“Oh shit,” Ryan said, for once in awe. “He was breaking in to leave that letter for Tatiana?”
“I guess?”
Ryan looked at Andy. “How’d he get away? You didn’t stop him?”
“He was quite fast. Nadia chased for half a block but it was pointless.”
Ryan smirked. “What I’m hearing is that Nadia has more guts than you.”
Andy shook his head. “I don’t doubt it. That’s not even an insult—she took off without thinking.” Andy grabbed my arm. “He could have had a weapon!”
The reality of the situation sank in. I had chased after a potentially dangerous person who was trying to kill one of the cast members, and I’d done so with zero thought for my own personal safety. I shivered at the thought of the saboteur suddenly turning around with a knife…
“Wait here,” Andy said, rushing backstage.
Ryan frowned. “Where are you going?”
Andy returned a moment later with a notepad and pencil. “We need to take notes while it’s fresh in our heads. I listened to a podcast about how memory during traumatic events can be warped after a few minutes.” He paused and furrowed his brow thoughtfully. “It had something to do with the way the short-term memory parts of the brain interact with the long-term memory while under extreme stress. One scientist from Stanford claimed that adrenaline is the culprit…”
Ryan snatched the notepad out of his hands and looked at me. “How tall was he?”
“Um.” I blinked. I’d never gauged someone’s height before. “He was about my height, I think. It was tough to tell.”
Ryan scribbled on the notepad. “And you’re sure it was a man?”
I looked at Andy. “I think? He was wearing a hoodie with the hood up. It could have been a woman, I guess. He wasn’t as muscular as you, for example.”
“Bonus points for slipping a compliment into the description,” Ryan grinned while writing. “What else?”
I told him what little information I could. They’d worn black pants and shoes—they might have been dark jeans and might have been slacks. The street was too dark to tell.
“They were spry,” Andy chimed in. “They jumped from the second flight of the fire escape, at least 20 feet. Probably 25. We should measure it later.”
Ryan glanced at the ceiling. “We sort of knew that since they climbed into the rafters to set the sandbag trap, but it’s good to get confirmation. Anything else?”
Andy and I shook our heads. All in all, I felt like a failure for not getting a better description. A fast person wearing a hoodie. That narrows it down to, oh, about half of New York.
Ryan pointed at the card on the table. “What do we do with that? Call the detective?”
“So he can accuse us of planting it?” Ryan barked a laugh. “Fuck that. Let’s open it.”
“Shouldn’t we dust it for fingerprints first?” Andy asked.
Ryan stared placidly. “With what? Did you have a Junior Officer Detective Kit for your eighth birthday? Because mine is long gone by now.”
“Oh, I know!” I said.
I ran backstage to the dressing room, which had been stocked a few days before with makeup for the show. I returned with a canister of stage powder and a brush.
“Will that work?” Andy asked.
“Got a better idea?”
“I like it,” Ryan said. “Do it.”
I had no idea what I was doing, so I dipped the brush in the powder like I was about to apply it to my cheeks, then carefully brushed it across the surface of the card. The white powder settled on the paper. There was a smudge near the edge where my finger had gripped the sides, but otherwise it was featureless.
To be safe, I tried the other side too, but was equally as unsuccessful.
“Not surprising,” Andy said. “If they intended to break into the theater to leave that letter for Tatiana, they would not have been careless enough to leave prints.”
“At least we know that calling the detective would’ve been pointless,” I said. “Can we open it now?”
“You sound like every kid on Christmas morning,” Ryan joked. “But I’m just as eager. Open that shit up.”
“Why me?”
“Because you’re the one who had the guts to chase the dude off. You get the honors.”
While both of them watched, I carefully slid my finger in the gap by the fold, then used my nail as a makeshift knife. I cut along the top, then turned the envelope over.
A single folded piece of paper slid out onto the table.
“Oh thank God,” Ryan breathed. “I was afraid there might be anthrax or something inside.”
I whirled on him. “What! You thought that and still let me open it!”
“I didn’t really think anything was in it,” he said defensively, but I could see the color returning to his face. I punched him in the arm a few times for good measure while he shouted and protested.
While we did that, Andy retrieved a pair of work gloves and then unfolded the letter. He laid it flat on the table for us to read.

**Tatiana Vandercant, **
**A successful, wealthy woman like you does not need the star role in The Proposition. If you are playing the role of Jane in the show on opening night, you will regret it.**
**Resign from the show and save yourself.**

“That’s about as clear as someone can get,” Nadia said. “They’re targeting Tatiana specifically.”
“They mention her last name, and wealth,” I said. “They know who she is beyond this specific role.”
“Guess that eliminates the theory that it’s an enemy of her grandfather trying to get revenge through her,” Ryan added.
Nadia nodded. “More importantly, they’re giving her a chance out. Which means they only want to threaten her to get her out of the show.”
It didn’t make any sense to me for a number of reasons. “They could have mailed this letter to the theater. Why break in after hours to place it inside—assuming that is what the saboteur was doing?”
“To flaunt his power?” Ryan suggested. “To make her feel less safe?”
“Maybe.”
I pulled out my phone. “We are all in agreement that we should tell Atkins. Right?”
Nobody disagreed, so I dialed the number. Atkins answered on the fourth ring.
“What?”
“It’s Andy. We’re at the theater. We have something to show you.”
“It can wait until morning,” he replied. There was traffic noise in the background.
“I’m not sure it can. It’s important.”
“I’m busy,” Atkins spat, then hung up. I stared at my phone.
“Huh. Guess he’s doing something more important.”
Ryan narrowed his eyes, but said nothing.
“I’m going home,” Nadia said with a sigh. “You guys coming with me now that the saboteur tried to strike, and failed?”
“I want to stay,” Ryan said. “Maybe the saboteur will return.”
“It would be awfully stupid to return so soon after being seen,” I said carefully.
“You’re right, it would be stupid. Then again, so is everything this jackass has done so far. I’m staying just in case.”
“I’ll join you. Might as well see this through to the end.” I turned to Nadia. “But first I’m walking you to the train station.”
She smiled. “I’ll happily accept. I’m kind of shaken up after seeing the guy.”
We held hands all the way to the station, and kissed goodbye before she went down the stairs. I walked back alone, glancing nervously at every shadow and person who walked by. When I got back, I found Ryan sitting in the front row with the bottle of scotch in his lap.
“It’s weird that Atkins wouldn’t come,” he said without watching me approach. I sat on the edge of the stage across from him. My legs were long enough that they almost touched the ground.
“It’s late,” I said. “I wouldn’t want to rush out here at the drop of a hat either. And it can wait until morning.”
Ryan had a suspicious look on his face. He scratched his jaw and said, “Or our director is hiding something.”
I didn’t feel like arguing about Atkins’ guilt or innocence again, so I said nothing.
“You weirded out about what happened?” he asked after a pause. “The threesome.”
“I already told you I liked it.”
He gave me a patient look. “You said that in front of Nadia. Now it’s just us. Everything peachy?”
I nodded. “I was being completely honest. I… loved it. I would like to try something like that again. If both of you are into it.”
“Oh, trust me: we were,” Ryan grinned. “But you’re acting weird. And it’s not just the fact that you saw the saboteur.”
“I almost told Nadia that I loved her.”
Ryan leaned forward. “Oh shit. Really?”
“Yeah. When she was about to leave the first time, right before we saw him. I wasn’t even thinking about it. The words almost slipped right out of my mouth.”
“Do you mean it,” Ryan asked carefully, “or are you doing that thing you do?”
I frowned. “What thing?”
“That thing where you get overeager and obsessive about something.”
“I don’t do that.”
“Dude,” Ryan replied. “The model airplane kick you went on. Or the month where you set up $5,000 worth of train sets in the basement. You dive headfirst into things without thinking, whether you’re ready or not.”
It would have been easy to automatically disagree with him, but I considered myself a thoughtful person, so I took a moment to consider it. Most of my hobbies were like that, sure. Even my music tastes: I discovered a new band, listened to them non-stop for a month, and then once I was sick of them I dropped them forever. Was it the same way with Nadia?
She had been on my mind for weeks. I went to bed thinking about her, and she was the first thing in my head when I woke up the next morning. I spent hours planning the perfect dates, to the point that I scheduled out how the date should go in five-minute increments. I was headstrong. Obsessive even, in a good way.
“It’s different with Nadia,” I said. “It’s fine.”
Ryan didn’t call me out on the lie. Instead he asked, “Have you ever said it to someone before?”
“Once,” I admitted. “But I didn’t mean it. My girlfriend said it to me at senior prom, and I repeated it back to her because it would have been too awkward not to. We broke up two months later when I graduated.”
Ryan stared off at nothing. He started to lift the bottle of scotch for a drink, then stopped himself and set it down on the ground. “Don’t do anything you would regret,” he said softly. “Take it slow, just in case. Nadia is…”
There was something in my friend’s eyes I’d never seen before. Affection? Concern? It was a strange sight from the normally hardened man. Finally he shook off the daze.
“She’s special,” he said. “So don’t fuck it up.”
I spread my hands. “I’m trying.”
We took one-hour shifts keeping watch outside in the alley by the fire escape. It was cold and boring, and creepy in the New York night. I was terrified someone would see me lurking in the alley and call the police. It was the kind of sketchy behavior you’d expect from a purse thief, waiting for a victim to wander by.
The night passed slowly as we alternated tasks, taking turns sleeping on the stage while the other person kept watch. The sleep I got was light and not refreshing. I wished I had a pot of coffee.
I was sleeping soundly on the stage when I was woken by a noise.
I sat upright in my sleeping bag, straining my ears in the silent darkness. Ryan was asleep next to me, snoring softly, but that’s not what I heard.
There. Another noise backstage.
I shook Ryan awake. When he rolled over and glared at me, I put a finger over my mouth and pointed backstage. The sound was constant now, like the shuffling of feet on a dusty floor. Sweep sweep sweep.
I glanced at my watch. It was 5:00 a.m.. Far too early for someone to be here.
Silently, we both crawled out of our sleeping bags and tip-toed to the edge of the curtain. The swath of backstage that we could see was completely dark. After a few moments of our eyes adjusting, I could just barely make out the outline of a stack of crates by the electrical box. Grey against black.
And then a person-shaped shadow moved toward it. The crates shifted as they reached out and touched them.
My first instinct was that Nadia might have come to bring us breakfast. I dismissed that theory when I remembered we’d locked the door behind her when she left. This was someone else.
Ryan patted me on the back, then put his mouth right up to my ear to whisper. “Go around the other side to surround them.”
I slipped away from stage right and exited stage left, curling around the curtain in a wide arc that would take me around the back side of the person. I moved as slowly as I could, planting one heel and rolling the rest of my foot down to the floor silently. The person was still up ahead, making a rustling noise that I couldn’t quite place. As I moved along the row of crates, the edge of the person came into view.
I stopped. My eyes had adjusted enough now that I could tell who it was: Director Atkins. He had a plastic shopping bag in one hand. Relief flooded into my body like coolant.
Before I could call out to him, Ryan roared and leaped forward. He slammed into Atkins, tackling him to the ground. The shopping bag went flying through the air.
“Wait!” I shouted, running forward. I flipped on the lights by the electrical box. “It’s Atkins!”
Ryan gripped Atkins by the collar while using his other hand to shield his eyes from the sudden light. “The fuck are you doing here?” he asked.
Atkins groaned and replied, “What are you doing here, asshole? Get off me!”
While Ryan helped him up, I picked up the shopping bag. It had a Fry’s Electronics logo on the side. I glanced back at the director suspiciously. The remote controlled carabiner that had dropped the sandbags could have been bought at Fry’s.
Ryan saw the bag and my reaction. “What electronics did you buy?” he asked carefully.
Atkins snatched the bag out of my hand, then reached inside. The box he pulled out had a picture of a mounted IP camera on the side.
“I got the funding from John Vandercant for a security camera system.”
I felt a moment of guilt for suspecting the director. “How’d you convince him to give you the funding?” I asked.
Atkins grabbed his hip and winced. “After the detective left last night, I drove to Vandercant’s condo and gave him a piece of my mind. Ranted for at least ten minutes about the lack of funding for the show, all the cost-cutting measures he’s taken, and how I think he doesn’t really want the show to succeed. He wrote me a check for the funding then and there. After buying the cameras I came over here early to set them up so you guys didn’t have to…”
He tossed the bag at me. I caught it in the chest.
“But since you decided to try to break my spine, you can fucking do it. You’re welcome.”
“Thanks,” Ryan said begrudgingly. “Sorry for tackling you.”
Atkins ignored his apology. “Set the cameras up however you want. But make sure you cover every entrance and the equipment most vulnerable to tampering. The reason Vandercant caved to my demand was because tonight’s rehearsal is a big one.”
Ryan and I looked at each other. “What’s tonight?”
Atkins rubbed his grey hair. “Vandercant told me the New York Times show critic is stopping by. He’s going to watch the rehearsal, do a few interviews, and then write a piece about The Proposition.” He jabbed a finger at us. “So make sure the cameras are set up right.”
“We will,” I promised.
Atkins nodded like there was no other option. “Now, that thing you wanted to show me last night? Bring it to my office along with an icepack.”
Ryan and I shared a look while the director limped down the hall.