“So I need to learn to be uncomfortable with being bad at my job because I’m in love.”
“As your employer, I’m probably required to tell you not to be bad at your job, but yeah. You have to make room for the other stuff, too.” Mrs. Walker jabs her finger in the air toward a theater we pass by. “These shows come and go. Once-in-a-lifetime love doesn’t.” She taps my arm. “I care more about you than this job.”
“Really?”
“I can’t believe I even need to say it. I also care more about my husband in the ground than this job,” she says, clearing her throat at the mention of her husband. “I met Roman when I was inCats. Something changed inside me,” she says. “I thought my world was going to come crashing down on me. Not unlike theWindfallset.”
“Ha, ha,” I mumble as we make a turn around the corner and away from the crowds. “Is that what happened to your world? Did it crash down?”
“The opposite. Love built me up,” Mrs. Walker says. “My life expanded when I met him. Suddenly, my whole world wasn’t just that one role I played onstage every night. It was so much more.”
I nod, taking in every piece she shares with me.
“As for doing right by me and Roman, you already have, Logan,” she says earnestly. “Don’t you see? You were there for me after he died just as much as I was there for you. It was your excitement about gettingto New York, about getting to Broadway, that reinvigorated”—she waves her hand in front of us—“all this for me. And okay, fine, the biscotti helped, too.”
At this, a boulder lifts off my shoulders. All this time, she had offered me such tangible help—an apartment, a job—that I didn’t think I was giving enough back. Maybe I was.
Mrs. Walker smiles toward the clouds. “As for Roman, he’d be thrilled something he wrote was being mentioned in the same breath as Broadway. Doing this as my last show… it’s one hell of a way to go out.”
“You’ve always known how to make an entrance and an exit.”
She bumps me with her elbow. “Keep up the flattery, and I’ll knock another ten percent off your rent,” she says through a chuckle. We pause for a couple of latecomers sprinting toward a theater. “Sometimes we get too into the weeds with how we think things need to go that we forget to appreciate that they’re even happening at all.” She turns to face me. “There will be mistakes, Logan. They won’t be the end of the world.”
The words hit their mark. Mistakes won’t be the end of the world because they won’t be my entire world.
Once, this job was everything to me. Now it’s not even close to being everything.
“It’s your first show as head carpenter, and maybe even your first time in love. Go easy on yourself. Life will give you enough splinters,” she says. “So will work. Take, for instance, what prompted me needing a bit of fresh air. We have no moon backdrop. In every mock-up I signed off on, there was a moon in the background of key scenes. And what do we have now, just days away from the show opening?”
“No moon.”
“No moon,” she emphasizes. “I’d go out there and do it myself, but do you know how hard it is to paint a perfect circle? What ideas have you got?”
“Not sure that I have any,” I say.
“Oh, sure you do.”
I shrug. “I don’t think I can be much help here. I’m doing more harm than good, honestly.”
Mrs. Walker pulls back and shoots me a disbelieving face. “Do you remember forChicagohow we were missing a letter in the sign onstage? The one with the light bulbs?” she asks.
“Yeah. No one could find theI.”
“And what the hell’s aChcago? You took down one of the dressing room mirrors and did something”—she boxes the air with her hands—“with it to transform it into a usable letter.”
“I lucked out on that one,” I say with a huff. “You know not all dressing rooms have those types of mirrors, right?”
“Luck? No. You made that happen. I think you also enjoy challenges, too,” Mrs. Walker says. “I see a lot of myself in you. You take limes and turn them into key lime pie.”
“Is this your way of makingmego out there and paint an oblong moon?”
“You’re very talented,” she says. “But not paint-a-perfect-circle talented. I’m going to figure it out. It’ll be a nice creative break from all the contracts I’ve been reading.”
As we walk back into the theater, there’s a loud thump as the wobbly canoe topples over.
“We’re not going to be ready for previews,” Mrs. Walker says definitively.
“There isn’t a way to get more time?” I try. “Two weeks? Maybe four?”
