“I’m your stage manager.” Vicente gave him a friendly slap on the shoulder. “Don’t talk to me about masochism.”
“Oh hardy-ha-ha. Vis, you know I support you in everything, but right now,have one. I don’t need you agitated out of your mind while we’re trying to win Maria over. Speaking of… Shit! Lighting cues?”
Vicente shrugged, looking at the stage and shaking his head. “Joanna said to wing it.”
“To what?”
“To make it up as I go.”
“I know what it means, Vis. She’s not the director.”
“I know that, but what choice do I have? She’s reworked the choreography from scratch. Evenifwe had a run through before Maria arrived, you wouldn’t have time to work anything out between us. You make your notes and I’ll take them. In the meantime, try to look confident, like it was your idea.”
Alex pinched the bridge of his nose.
“Listen, I know it feels like they’re going over your head, but I’ve been here all afternoon, Alex. They keep talking about your vision, wanting to make this something that’s just you. Let’s just use this run-through to get Maria onboard. We’ll get our show back, then, you and Joanna change whatever you like, and I’ll make it look pretty. Sound good?”
Alex stared at the dim lights hitting the black surface of the stage, letting the silence of the theatre wrap itself around him. “It just feels weird.”
“How the guy died, you mean?”
“All of it, Vis. You don’t think…” He trailed off, again unsure what to say.
Vicente rescued him with another hug. “I’ve got you, man. You know I’ve always got you.”
Not ‘we,’ but ‘I.’ The distinction wasn’t lost on Alex. “Go smoke. I need you back in the box and sharp.”
Vicente grinned, reaching for his back pocket as he withdrew. “Last one today. You’ll hold me to that, mister director.”
Alex resisted the urge to bum a cigarette for himself.
***
On an ‘oh shit’ list that had seemed to grow longer with each passing minute, Alex had barely thought about where to sit for their command performance. Sitting behind Maria might make her uncomfortable, even if he by some miracle managed to resist scanning her body language for any sign of a response. Sitting alongside her, trying to steal glimpses of her face would be worse, while sitting anywhere in front, with her eyes boring into the back of his head seemed no less awful. He’d finally settled for the back far-left corner, as close to the tech booth as possible.
Maria had been polite and kind, of course, but her tired demeanour and barely contained impatience said plenty about her expectations, and the fact that neither Joanna nor Jago had come out to greet her had only frayed Alex and Vicente’s nerves further. Vicente began to dim the lights, pausing as Jago finally came onstage, dressed neat as an usher in top to toe black. He offered Maria a slight bow and a smile, then took his seat next to Alex.
“Hell of a time for you to show your face,” Alex said.
“How about you trust Joanna?” Jago squeezed his hand. “And perhaps, trust yourself to letBlood Weddinggo?”
This hadn’t been a command, but a request, as if Alex’s answer mattered to him. This, in Alex’s short experience of Jago, seemed strange, and request or no, it wasn’t like he had a choice. He allowed Jago to squeeze his hand tight, drawing a strange reassurance from it as Vicente lowered the house lights.
Harsh string notes jarred Alex’s nerves. He didn’t know where Joanna and Jago had managed to find an entirely new score at such short notice, though it wouldn’t have surprised him to learn they’d workshopped it in a hash-soaked fugue that afternoon. He closed his eyes and tried to relax. Jago slid his hand across Alex’s, stroking it before taking hold again. Alex neither liked or disliked the music, but its discordant quality penetrated his body like a vine finding cracks in a decaying wall, wrapping itself around the questions that had spent the day dancing through his mind.
Blood Weddingcouldn’t have been further from it.
He closed his eyes, remembering Joanna and Vicente on that watery stage, the grim pantomime they’d played and the dead faces of the audience members. He focused on Jago’s hand and allowed his discomfort to pass, remembering instead the strange beauty Jago had seen and tried to show him. Much like their strange floating tryst, he’d not been ready. How could one be ready? He’d been on trips before, ingesting whatever substances were on offer in search of that special somethingdifferent. Jago was certainly that, but the sensation that filled him now was well beyond it.
When he opened his eyes again, Joanna was on stage, turning her head, stroking the back of her fingers along her neck. Black-painted nails stood out against her skin, and Alex jumped when for a fleeting instant she appeared to puncture her neck with them. The graceful extension of her arms guided delicate yet confident steps, like she was mapping the stage, moving from platform to platform, like a newborn exploring a world alien to her.
Possessed with sudden assurance, Joanna’s movements became bolder and swifter, each movement and breath an unspoken word, the music mere background noise. Alex felt his heart beat an irregular rhythm and his breath moved with irregular syncopation, in time with each of Joanna’s movements.
He felt Jago squeeze his hand once more before all breath left his body, and darkness erased the stage. A single spotlight returned, revealing Joanna on her knees, looking up as if she’d just spied God. Alex imagined her leaning back toward her heels, chest arching to the ceiling, offering herself up to the spirit that had possessed her dance. And so, she did.
He imagined her sliding her hand along the stage before her body rolled after it. She curled into a ball before abruptly lifting her head, just to see if God was still watching. Yet Joanna was in conversation with something much greater. They both were.
His mind conjured myths of the garden and the tree of knowledge that had unleashed the deadly sin of curiosity, and so Joanna reached for the fruit. He considered the cruelty of a god imagined to disguise the viciousness and solidify the control of the men who’d invented him. He jumped as Joanna screamed the scream of every woman to have lost her own spirit or essence to such men. Together, they summoned the scream of everymother to have lost a child in the name of power, greed, ego, or religion.
