“I know the feeling,” I admitted. “Every time we think we have some kind of grip on what this show is, everything gets changed.”
“Exactly,” Kathrine said. “I don’t see how we open in four weeks.”
The rest of the afternoon was a bit of a blur. Before we went home for the evening, San Nicolás brought the entire cast into the theater for a quick pep talk.
“I am amazed at how things are progressing. At this speed, we will have an amazing show in absolute shipshape in no time. Give yourselves a round of applause for all your hard work.” He started clapping enthusiastically, so the cast joined in. We may not have been the loudest clappers in the world, but we were at least genuine. “I have some good news for everyone. After talking with the lovely people at Macy’s, we’ve been invited to preview our opening number at the Thanksgiving Day Parade.” I don’t know if he expected us to be thrilled or scared, but the room was silent. “Don’t worry, I have no fear that we’ll have the opening number ready to go in the next couple of weeks. It’s going to be a magnificent time.”
After San Nicolás’ grand announcement, he released us for the day. I headed straight home. I was still a little hungover from the previous night’s drinking, so I wanted to take a bath, have dinner, cuddle with Bootsy and go to sleep, which is precisely what I did.
Chapter 16
Thenextmorning,Irolled out of bed, ran on the treadmill, got ready, and was outside the theater with ten minutes to spare. I was prepared for a brand-new day of adventures and whatever else life threw my way. A guy in an orange vest and a white hardhat blocked me from getting into the building. The construction crew was placing the theater’s name above the main entrance,Maurer Theatre. The whole building was called the Eldridge Plaza, named after Rebekka’s late husband, Bernie.
“I sure hope they do this quickly,” a voice said behind me. “My job is to make sure we stick to the union regulations.”
I glanced behind me. Maeve McKenna was decked out in a black pantsuit, oversized black wide-brimmed hat, a fur coat, and a pair of sunglasses that covered half her head. She looked like a caricature of Hollywood actresses of yesteryear.
“Good morning, Maeve,” I said.
“Good morning, dear,” she responded. “Do you know how long this is going to take?”
I shrugged and said, “I just got here.”
The woman let out a slight harumph sound. She stared at the construction worker in the orange vest. “Excuse me, young man, how long with this take? We have a show to put on.”
“Sorry, Ma’am. This will take as long as it takes.” He looked up at the people working on the side of the building above the door. “Shouldn’t be more than five minutes, I’d guess.”
Maeve let out a short puff, the steam exited her mouth in the cold air.
“Maeve,” I yelled over the noise of the crane, drawing her attention away from the poor construction worker. “Do you know why they’re calling it the ‘Maurer Theatre?’ I can’t figure out why.”
“Young people and their lack of theater history,” she mumbled loud enough for a city block to hear. “Erika,” she said, drawing out my name like it almost pained her to say it, “Michael Maurer directed the 1986 musicalInto the Lightabout the Shroud of Turin.”
“A musical about the Shroud of Turin?” I started to laugh, but she wasn’t smiling. “You’re serious.”
“As a heart attack,” Maeve said in her maudlin tone. “I saw it at the friends and family preview. I was understudying a witch inThe Scottish Playat the time. Our play was next door.“ She leaned her head to the side and gazed upward as if looking back in time. “The musical wasn’t horrible, but it wasn’t good either. How any investor put up money for that turkey is still beyond me.”
More of the cast and creative team were huddled around us now as they moved the crane away from the front of the building. Once it was clear the theater name wouldn’t crash into the ground below, the construction worker signaled that it was safe to enter. We all proceeded to the escalators and made our way up to our rehearsal space.
We all quickly found our seats. New binders sat on the table in front of us.
“Asier,” Maeve said, speaking to the director. She was the only person I’d seen call him by his first name. “When are we going to stop getting new materials? It’s getting old. Every day we mark up the script or score only to have them replaced the next day. This is no way to rehearse.”
“Señora McKenna, I think this will be the last major set of changes. Going forward, I only envisionminorchanges. We’ll be switching out pages instead of giving you a completely new script and score daily from here on out.”
Maeve didn’t look too convinced. She took off her glasses, looked at San Nicolás and raised a single manicured eyebrow. “In my day, we would never have this many changes. It would have been impossible. The score had to be hand-copied, and the scripts had to be typed out using carbon paper, which meant a bank of typists would have had to stay up all night making these kinds of changes.”
“Yes, the artistic process was definitely more constrainedwayback then,“ San Nicolás replied with a thin-lipped smile. I could tell he wasn’t exactly happy with Maeve’s complaints. Still, he moved away from her, leaving her looking slightly aghast. She quickly found her seat.
San Nicolás walked to his spot in the room’s front. “I have some unfortunate news. Ryan Devan Butcher had an accident last night and broke his leg. He thought it would be fun to join the,” San Nicolás stared at a piece of paper sitting on the table before him, then looked back up, “Polar Bear Club in Central Park. Is this some kind of fraternity?” San Nicolás asked, looking around the room for an answer.
“Um…sir,” Caiden Wynter Jeanes said, raising his hand as if he was in school. “The Polar Bear Club is when a group of guys, who are often drunk, decide to go jump in a frozen river or lake.”
“The real polar bears would never be drunk, and they don’t jump into the pond at Central Park,” Peeter said to the right of me. “The real Polar Bear club runs out of Coney Island, and they swim in the Atlantic Ocean.”
“Do I even want to know why you know this?” I asked.
“I did it on a dare in college,” Peeter said. “Me, my hairless body, and a neon green Speedo took the plunge.”
