“Seriously?” Charlie asks, his mouth moving against Simon’s skin.
It’s from a contact labeled “Lucien from Restoration Theater” and it takes Simon a moment to figure out that he must have made the contact when he and Lucien were in the same class in drama school. Lucien is directing the play Simon’s doing this summer.
“I should take it.” Simon steps outside. Which, since it’s a motel, means he’s in the parking lot. He’s wearing sleep pants and a T-shirt, which will just have to be good enough.
“Hi, Simon? It’s Lucien from the—”
“Right. Good morning. Or—is it afternoon in New York?”
Lucien laughs, and it’s the laugh that gives it away. There are so many kinds of laughs, and so few of them sound apologetic.
“You’re not going to believe this, but Tom Brennan—you know Tom? He’s been cleared by his orthopedist to do the show. He’d thought he’d be in that boot until August, but it looks like he can get around with just a cane. And there’s nothing wrong with Prospero using a cane, you know? Sooo...”
All Simon can think is that this call should have come from his agent. Half the point of an agent is that you get bad news from someone who feels like an ally. They do the whole compliment sandwich thing. It’s literally part of their job. You can cry on the phone, or you can badmouth everyone involved in the project that didn’t want you. Not that Simon has ever cried on the phone to Ken. Ken would hang up and pretend the call got disconnected.
“Of course,” Simon says, using his Jonathan Hale voice: confident, smart, not a garbage pail filled with nerves. “I completely understand.”
“I knew you would.” Lucien sounds relieved, very much like someone who didnotknow that Simon would understand. “Tom isgreat,” he says, “just a great guy.”
Simon doesn’t know if he’s imagining the implication that Simon isnotgreat, which is true, obviously, but not what he wants to hear right now. He keeps thinking of that article inVariety. Tom is great. Simon has difficulties on set.
“Sure,” Simon says. “Tom’s great.” He’s never met Tom.
“I wanted to let you know myself. It would have been fun to have you on board, but...”
The wordfunreignites all Simon’s worries that he only got that part due to a combination of last-minute availability and the juxtaposition of an unserious actor with a serious role. (He knows this can’t be true; he knows he’s done serious acting; he knows that even his work onOut Thereisn’tunserious. He knows these things on a rational level—a level that’s completely inaccessible to him right now in the parking lot of a motel in northern Arizona.)
“No worries,” Simon says, a phrase he’s never before uttered in his life.
He ends the call.
Simon doesn’t know why it never occurred to him that the actor who was originally cast might recover sooner than expected. Somehow, while he’d been busy worrying about everything else, he’d neglected to worry about that. People always say that there’s no point to worrying, but it isn’t true: one real advantage to comprehensive, thorough worrying is that you rarely get blindsided by a disaster you haven’t already considered. That doesn’t make it easier, but it takes the sharp new edge off and makes the problem into something worn in and familiar.
He considers opening the app that Jamie put on his phone, the one that tells you when to inhale and exhale in a way that’s supposed to make you relax. But the idea of swiping through his phone and looking for an app when he doesn’t even know what the icon looks like, then standing there while breathing exercises fail to work, makes him feel even worse.
How in hell is he supposed to go back inside? Charlie’s there. He can’t tell Charlie what happened. He can’t make himself admit that he got... fired, basically. He got fired. He got fired, and it shouldn’t matter, because it’s just one role. But it does matter,because he wanted it. It was supposed to be the start of something. It was supposed to fix things, and without it, everything feels broken.
He can’t tell any of that to Charlie. He can’t even tell Jamie. Sympathy would be unbearable.
He makes himself turn around and use the key card to unlock the door. Inside, Charlie’s already dressed and tossing things into his bag.
In some other universe, there’s a better version of Simon who says something like, “Guess what. I have the next few weeks free. Let’s get in the car and see where it takes us, you and me.”
In this universe, Simon clears his throat. “Slight change of plans.” He thinks he sounds normal. “I need to go right to New York.”
His sublet starts today, technically, even though he hadn’t planned on being there until the end of the week. Going to New York solves precisely none of his problems and probably causes a few extra ones, but it buys him a few days of quiet during which he doesn’t have to talk about this to anyone.
Charlie’s forehead creases.
“It’s not a big deal,” Simon adds. “But could you take me to the airport? I think you mentioned there was one nearby?”
“Do you have a ticket?”
Simon forces a smile. “On it.” He takes out his phone and sees that in two hours there’s a flight leaving for New York. He’ll need to change planes in Phoenix, but that’s fine. The app has his information stored so he can buy the ticket even though his thoughts are jumbled, even though his hands are a little numb.
He remembers Charlie, three days ago, in Dave’s house, saying that his hands were tingling. He let Simon help. There’s somethingwrong, something mean, about the fact that Simon can’t imagine letting Charlie help, can’t even imagine telling Charlie that there’s anything to help with. But Charlie is better than Simon. He’s known that for a while now.
He gets dressed and packs his suitcase, then manages to leave his charger and his pill case behind. Charlie finds them both and Simon crams them into his shoulder bag.
