747: As the night . . .
What a Piece of Work I Am, Chapter 49 concludes
AS THE NIGHT approached, her first night on stage, her first night on display, she realized that she felt unprepared. She was astonished to find that she was nervous about this—her debut—her exposure. She had gone home and gathered a few belongings, a few changes of clothing, and to calm herself she started unpacking. She thought it would calm her down. She hadn’t brought much with her because she hadn’t had the nerve to tell her parents that she was leaving, really leaving. Nor had she been able to think of a satisfactory way to explain to them why she was leaving, where she would be, or what she would be doing. As she unpacked her things, she kept trying to imagine herself explaining it all—to her parents, to herself, to anyone—and she felt herself getting more and more worked up about it.
A voice called out, from the doorway, “Ariane?”
“I just have to do this!” she cried. She beat her fist on the bed. “I can’t explain why! Maybe I don’t even know why! Maybe I don’t have to know why. Maybe I’m doing this to find out why I want to do it. Oh, but don’t you see that it’s something I have decided to do, on my own, by myself, and can’t you just let it be that for now and wait and see what else it might become? Maybe it’s all about finding out what it will become. Can’t you understand that?” She let her arms fall. She let her head fall forward. She had exhausted herself. She stood silent for a moment.
Panama Red, standing just inside the doorway, wasn’t sure what he ought to do. He looked from side to side. No one else seemed to be watching, but obviously she was performing a part of some kind. There wasn’t any audience, so it must be a rehearsal. She must realize that he was there: she must have heard him call out. So this performance must have been for him. He set his packages down and applauded her.
She spun around. “Red!” she said. “What are you doing here?”
“I brought the sandwiches and rum,” he said. “Remember? You said, ‘If I’m not back by tomorrow evening, send somebody with a bottle of rum and some sandwiches. So, I’m somebody.’ ”
“Oh, Geez, Red,” she said. “You sure are.” She jumped down off the stage. “And you’re sweet, too. You came by to see if I was all right, didn’t you?”
“Well, not really,” Red confessed. “The vegetable man came by, you know. Said you were going to be in a play.”
“Oh.”
“You’re good. I didn’t know you had talent like that.”
“You mean what I was saying—”
“Powerful stuff,” said Red. “It had the ring of truth. It was very—I guess you’d say—lifelike.”
“Yeah,” she said.
“Look,” said Red, “I’ve got to go, but I know some of the guys are going to come by to see you tonight, so—you know—break a leg. That’s what they say, right?”
“I guess so. That’s what I’ve heard.”
“I wish I could see you myself—”
“Come by later, when you close up.”
“You do a late show, too?”
“Red,” she said, “this show never closes,” and as she said it, she began to wonder just how crazy she was to be doing what she was doing.
Red looked puzzled. “I don’t think I get it,” he said.
“I’m not sure that I do, either,” said Ariane, “but you just come by later on and you’ll see.”
Red left. She took a bite of sandwich and a swallow of rum and ran to the bathroom and threw up. She stumbled out of the bathroom, pale and shaking, and threw herself onto the bed and called out, “Denny!”
Denny came into the bedroom from the front of the warehouse, which he now called the lobby, where he had been working on some posters. He was carrying one, concealing the face of it, because he was proud of it and expected Ariane to be pleased by it, and so he wanted to surprise her with it. He was so full of optimism now that he hadn’t heard the panic in Ariane’s voice. In fact, he thought he’d heard excitement, and he assumed that she must have had another good idea, something for what he thought of and referred to now as “the show,” meaning Ariane’s life, which he had begun to think of as a show.
When he saw her curled on the bed, looking frightened and girlish, he said, “What? What’s wrong?”
“I don’t know what to do,” she said.
“About what?”
“About tonight. I don’t know what to do—when people are watching me. I don’t know what to say, how to act.”
“Just be yourself,” he said, and she burst into tears.
[to be continued]
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