I hold my breath, feeling my heart beating in my ears. I think maybe I’ve failed or let her down. I could’ve found more useful words to make her feel better. Was not doing so the wrong approach? What I said probably wasn’t helpful. Maybe I did need to show her the silver lining.
Hazel looks up at me with an expression I haven’t yet seen from her. I can’t decipher it or tell if I’ve messed this up for good.
But then she moves closer to me. She wraps her arm around my waist, smushing her cheek against my chest and pulling me in for a hug.
“Thank you,” she says emotionally. She half groans, half grumbles into my shirt. “My detector tells me you’re not bullshitting me.”
I rest my cheek on her head. “Not even a little.”
“It’s all just stuck”—I feel her move her hand over her chest, the pressure of her knuckles against my stomach—“here. I don’t know what to do with it or how to get it out.”
I hold her a little tighter. “Then we need to get you unstuck. I may have an idea.”
“There’s a lot of wood in here,” a voice says below us. We startle, but neither of us falls off the roof, which feels like a minor miracle. An-Ming has been so quiet I nearly forgot about her.
We meet her down at the bottom of the lodge’s stairs. “Can we add some metal weights under that bed?” she asks. “That will help with productivity and moving this project along. Is opening night on an auspicious day, do you know?”
“I… don’t,” I say.
“Okay. Is that something you have control over?”
“Unfortunately not.”
An-Ming tilts her head. “The positioning of the stage is not ideal,” she adds. “But I suppose there’s nothing to be done about that, either.” She waves toward backstage. “It’s too cluttered back there. Tidy spaces allow energy to flow through better.”
“I’ll organize it,” I say.
“Oh, and fire!” she says.
“Pretty sure you can’t say that in a theater,” Hazel deadpans.
“Actually, it’s Macb—” I snap my mouth shut. “Never mind.”
An-Ming looks back at her phone. “The fire element is severely lacking. We need to bump up the visibility and passion in the space. Can you get more lamps back there? Too many dark corners.” She scrolls more. “Also, you have no water. Is that something you can work on?”
“Like water bottles?” I ask. “We have some in the—”
An-Ming gives a firm shake of her head. “Not water bottles. Flowing and moving water,” she clarifies. “A small fountain or water feature?”
In a theater? “That’s not…” I trail off. “Oh! I do have a tank for my goldfish.”
She perks up at this and types into her phone. “Goldfish? Even better.” Hazel and I exchange glances, pleased with ourselves, as though we’ve passed some sort of test.
I have no idea where I’ll put something like that, and there’s no way the theater’s letting me bring in fish. But at this point, getting in trouble for sneaking in marine life is the least of my worries.
Chapter 24
HAZEL
You want me to dowhatwith this pipe?” I ask Logan, who’s standing ten steps away from me. He’s wearing a face shield, goggles, a helmet, gloves, closed-toed shoes, and a long-sleeve navy and purple tie-dye shirt and pants. He looks ridiculous. Which means I also look ridiculous, because I’m basically in the exact same outfit.
“Swing it at that.” He points to what looks like a castle balcony. “Give it everything you got.”
When Logan asked if he could see me after work on a Thursday night, I didn’t anticipate we’d be going out to a New Jersey storage building filled with… old Broadway sets?
This place is the size of a six- or seven-car garage. There’s an open area, where we are, that’s surrounded by sets and props. Some are exposed while others are covered in drop cloths. It’s eclectic, but handwritten signs hanging above various areas of the unit create a sense of organization.
Under one of the cloths, the corner of a grandfather clock—or a coffin—pokes out.
