Only in the Movies (12 page)

“I call it
Gone with the Wand
,” I said. “What do you think?”

Vanni pretended to give it some thought. “It’s a dumb idea.”

“Is a dumb idea better than no idea?”

“I suppose you could wait for Godot and ask him.”

“What are you going to do?” I asked Vanni. “Still considering that adaptation?”

“No, a small collection of poems. Cleaver already approved me.”

“What about you, Instant?”

“I’m writing and performing the music for Alba’s play.”

“Daneale?”

“I’m working with Instant.”

So my suspicions were confirmed.

“Alba wrote a play?” I asked.

Vanni let out a snort of derision.

“No,” Instant replied. “She and Chad are going to put on a scene from
The Taming of the Shrew
.”

“What
is
a shrew, anyway?” Daneale asked.

“A nasty, bad-tempered woman. A harridan, a scold, a battleaxe, a—”

“Stop showing off,” Daneale told him with a smile. “We get it.”

“So I’m the only one without a plan,” I pointed out needlessly. “I am alone in a hostile and indifferent universe, and I’m going to fail.”

Vanni rolled her eyes. “And you won’t get into heaven, and no one will ever want to marry you.”

Daneale picked up her copy of
Waiting for Godot
and waved it at me. “Don’t worry, Jake. According to Beckett’s play, it doesn’t matter anyway.”

York’s policy was that as much as possible, performance-oriented BPs—music or drama—were formally presented to an audience of students, usually at an afternoon assembly. The teachers connected to the project would be there and would grade the performance on the spot, with the supervising teacher’s mark counting for 50 per cent and the other staff grades averaged for the balance.

Because the productions were mounted by individual students, they required minimal staging. Alba’s one-act two-hander would need only a plain, dark backdrop and some furniture, not a constructed set, so I had no work to do. But luckily I was co-opted by Call-Me-Saul, the supervising teacher, as stage crew—which meant moving the few pieces of furniture on and off the stage before and after the scene. And being around Alba.

Alba held the first meeting for the whole production team. We got together in the drama classroom after school, moving our chairs into a circle by the window. Outside, fat snowflakes danced on a brisk February wind. Alba, as beautiful as ever in tight mauve jeans and a black shirt, was all business as she took a seat beside Chad and went over our duties. She was director and would play Katherina the Shrew. Chad would take the part of Petruchio, the gentleman from Verona who woos Katherina. Snowy Jenkins—a strange name for a
brunette—was stage manager. Snowy was almost as easy on the eyes as Alba, a fact that was not lost on Chad, who kept sneaking what he thought were stealthy glances in her direction. Only Chad was vain enough to think he could get away with that in front of a group of people. Instant and Daneale were writing and performing the music, and for some reason Emile Dupuis, black-clad from head to shoes and skinny as a strand of spaghetti, was on the lighting panel.

Alba introduced us and outlined our respective duties—she had thought everything through in detail—then turned the meeting over to Snowy, who aimed a big smile at Chad before she led us through a schedule of rehearsals. She handed out sheets of paper containing the same information and broke up the meeting so the actors could begin the first read-through of the scene.

According to Snowy’s schedule, printed out in a flowery italic font that was almost impossible to read, I had no part in the whole production until the first dress rehearsal, so I was a little surprised when Alba came to me about a week later. Drama class had just ended with Call-Me-Saul shouting at us for “not taking this art form seriously enough.” I had a meeting with Pelletier to explain to her why my nonexistent proposal was late again, and I was rushing out the classroom door when Alba took me by the elbow and led me back inside.

“Jake, I need your help,” she whispered dramatically. “I’m in a jam.”

Whatever she asked, I was determined to say no. I reminded myself that the last time I had let her talk me into helping her I had thrown away my chance to win her heart. She looked deep into my eyes, the way she had that day in
the library months before, the way she knew would dissolve any man’s resistance—especially mine—like hot water on sugar, and I urged myself to be strong and inflexible. I straightened my spine. I called up images of power in my mind’s eye—stout concrete pillars, rebar, thick steel girders, those robust braided cables they use on suspension bridges—and waited.

“I fired Snowy yesterday,” she began. “She wasn’t working out.”

Thick oak planks, glued and bolted together. Cast-iron stanchions. Cement roadbeds.

“And I need a new stage manager.”

“I … I’m not qualified,” I almost shouted. I was so relieved. “I can’t do it. I don’t know how.”

“I’ll teach you,” she breathed, stepping closer.

Bridge abutments, marble arches, the Great Wall of China.

“It’s such a short production, it’s over before it starts. You’ll see.”

“But—” My eyes dropped. Her chest rose and fell with her breathing—more than necessary, I thought.

“We’ll be working together,” she said, almost whispering. “Very closely.”

“I—”

She looked up at me. Her lips parted.

Fibreglass, Kevlar, titanium mesh.

“You’re my only hope, Jake. Without a stage manager we can’t go on. Say you’ll help. Please.”

“Well …”

Then she kissed me.

Not a kiss that Bogey would have received from Ingrid
Bergman. Not a hard, long, searching, Hollywood kiss. A peck. Like you’d give your little brother on his birthday.

But it did the trick. “Okay,” I said.

After she had swept out of the room, I stood in the same place, half my mind bristling with self-criticism of the “You stupid jerk, you fell for it again” variety and the other half swamped with sweetness and light. I’d be with Alba a lot. I’d be an important part of the show, and she’d rely on me.

And I now had something to offer—late—to Ms. Pelletier. Stage managing a production counted as a Big Project.

I
HAD A VAGUE IDEA
of what a stage manager’s duties were, but I was still shocked—and a little scared—when I looked them up. The responsibilities were huge. Once the audience settled down and the production began, I would be in control—of everything, from the house lights to the props, from the music to the prompt book to the curtain calls. The more we rehearsed and I learned on the job, the more it looked to me as if the actors and the director got the glory while the stage manager worked like a drone behind the scenes and remained faceless—which was fine by me. As the day of the performance approached, I felt less and less clumsy as I moved about with my clipboard and cue sheets, and I began to like it.

Emile had turned out to be too artistic to operate the control panel. He hated to take the cues I communicated to him through a headset and mike. He said I was giving him orders.

“That’s what the panel guy
does
,” Alba explained patiently to him. “Jake gives you the cue, and you flip the switch or turn the dial.”

“I’m an artist,” he protested. “I won’t be instructed by a carpenter.”

“I could put the cues in the form of polite written requests,” I said, “but it might take too long.”

He humphed and stomped off. The next day Vanni turned up. Alba had collared her. “How could I refuse?” Vanni told me. “I owe it to the Muses.”

I figured she was there for the same reason I was—to be near Alba—but I kept my mouth shut. I was glad she had replaced Emile. I knew I could rely on her.

One of my unanticipated responsibilities was to write the synopsis of the play for the program. Most of the students at York had studied
The Taming of the Shrew
in grade ten, but Alba asked me to assume that they had forgotten it all—which was probably close to the truth.

The afternoon of the show came on quickly. We assembled an hour before curtain. Vanni and I checked and double-checked our cues, even though we’d been over it time and time again. The furniture was in place. Alba and Chad were in makeup. Vanni and I sat by the control panel and drank takeout coffee from the Blue Note in the dim light of the tiny lamps.

“I’ve never been so nervous in my life,” I said.

She smiled. “Relax. You’re the stage manager. If anything goes wrong, it will be totally, entirely and completely your fault. What’s to worry about?”

“Of course I can hear you, you flamin’ eejit.” Vanni’s voice shot through my earpiece. “I heard you last time you checked and the ten times before that.”

“Okay, okay,” I said.

“Calm down,” she advised. “Everything will be grand.”

“Okay.”

Once again I peeked around the curtain, my stomach fluttering. Students flooded noisily into the auditorium, filling the rear seats first, except for the last row, which was reserved for teachers. I checked my watch. Ten minutes until liftoff.

I saw Chad, costumed and made up and unusually jittery, standing behind Vanni at the control panel. She would signal to him when I gave the word for him to come onstage. He kept looking around, as if he didn’t know where he was. Chad was normally very cool under pressure; he had sailed through dress rehearsal the day before without a hint of tension.

I spoke into my mike. “What’s with Chad?”

“You don’t want to know,” Vanni replied.

“I don’t—What’s that supposed to mean? We go on in a couple of minutes!”

“He and Alba had a big fight.” Vanni was whispering into her mike. “It seems she caught him with Snowy earlier today.”

“Caught him?”

“Use your imagination.”

“Great. Fantastic.”

I had suspected that Alba had fired Snowy because she was distracting Chad, as she had at our first production meeting, and now my suspicions were confirmed.

Instant and Daneale were sitting in a corner of the backstage area, their music on a stand in front of them. I held up one hand with my fingers splayed. Five minutes. Daneale nodded. Instant was adjusting the reed on his mouthpiece. They would play a five-minute intro and repeat it at the end of the performance. I left them and took up my position, lowering myself onto a stool in the wings from where I could view the house and the stage at the same time. I clutched my clipboard to my chest.

“Is Alba in place?” I asked. “I can’t see her.”

“She’s right here. Relax.”

“Relax. Right. Why didn’t I think of that?”

I could see the teachers in the back row behind approximately seven hundred kids. Among them were Call-Me-Saul, Pelletier, Locheed and Lewis. Lewis had already graded Instant’s musical score and given it an A+. Today he would evaluate his and Daneale’s performances.

Okay, I told myself, here we go. Clearing my throat, I issued my first direction.

“Cue music,” I said.

A second later, the mellow tones of Instant’s saxophone filled the house and the audience fell silent. Daneale sang beautifully, using her voice as an instrument, for there were no words, and Instant’s saxophone traded phrases with her in a playful flow of jazzy sound. A few stragglers rushed down the aisles and plopped into seats. I kept my eyes on my watch.

“Petruchio, position, please,” I said. “Cue house lights.” The illumination in the auditorium ebbed slowly away until, two minutes later, I gave the next direction. “Cue curtain.” As the curtain rose, the music faded. “Cue stage lights.”

The stage lights came up to reveal Chad sitting at a table in the centre of a living room. He was wearing a loose white shirt with lace-on sleeves under a leather doublet, purple hose and grey “slops”—bloomer-like short pants. He sat casually, his long, athletic legs extended and crossed at the ankles. He kept silent for a few moments to let the anticipation build.

I felt movement at my side. It was Alba, who would enter from her mark a few feet from me. She was excellent in the part of Katherina. I wasn’t the only one to think she was a huge talent, able to make you believe she
was
the misunderstood shrew. I said nothing to her, not just because my eyes darted in a triangular path from Chad to my notes to the audience and back, but because Alba hated anyone to speak to her in the ten minutes or so before she went on. She used the time to centre herself and to focus. But I couldn’t resist stealing a glance her way. Her long, forest green hooped gown trailed the floor. Her velvet, scoop-necked, tightly laced bodice with a froth of white lace against her skin was enough to make any male stop breathing. But her normally serene pre-performance face, though heavily made up, looked as if a thundercloud had parked itself on her brow.