AJ cackled. “Skatepit,” she said. “As in skateboards.”
Noah scowled. “That is really disappointing.”
The only song that seemed to hold any personal resonance for him was track eleven, “Waiting for Tonight,” by Jennifer Lopez. When it first came on, his entire body went rigid.
“What?” asked AJ, perplexed as his feet ground to a halt.
“We used to do squats to this song,” said Noah.
AJ shook her head, stopping alongside him. “That is…no. Why.”
“Move!” cried Eudora over her clipboard. “Move!”
Noah tilted his head, raising one eyebrow suggestively.
AJ couldn’t think when he looked at her like that. “No,” she said, flushed. “Absolutely not.”
Two minutes later, AJ’s thighs were on fire as she somehow lowered herself into another squat.
“Lengthen your back,” he barked at her.
“It is lengthened,” AJ whimpered, sweat rolling down her spine.
“Longer,” said Noah. “Don’t be sloppy. We’re going double time at the next chorus.”
They moved and moved, song after song, day after day, their shadows stretching long across the flagstone. Then one day, as they moved, AJ felt a tug, and there it was—the connection between them, a thin gold cord. As she concentrated on it, it began to glow.
Noah looked up; he felt it too. Slowly, their hands opened against each other’s. As they focused on that thread, the world began to fade, and they sank beneath their conscious selves.
Down here, AJ discovered another self, an essential self.I know you,this self said to Noah.
Then she felt a feeling as big as the sky.I know you,Noah’s essential self said back.
Ezell’s writings referred to this phenomenon as the Black Room, a state of shared consciousness where two or more improvisers could move through a scene as one.
Initially, AJ and Noah needed kinetic synthesis to access it. The tugs they felt—moments of heightened empathy—were a prelude, a knock. But as they danced, as they let themselves stay tuned to each other, the world would hush, and the door to the Black Room would open.
The first time they managed to get inside while improvising, AJ thought she was hallucinating. Noah had initiated a scene about a librarian—“I’ll never finish stamping these books”—when suddenly AJ found herself at a circulation desk. As if she had walked into Noah’s daydream.
“I’ll help,” she said dazedly. “I don’t want you to get fired.”
Then, they both reached for the same imaginary stack of books. Their eyes collided, and for a split second they broke character.
“Whoa,” said AJ.
“Yeah,” said Noah.
And then he handed her the books, and they never looked back.
Soon playing in the Black Room became automatic. A scene would start, their energy would lock in, and a series of game moves would illuminate before them like a flight path through interstellar space.
This was everything Eudora had hoped for. “Take yourselves out for a spin,” she would say. “And don’t come back until you’ve hit the limits of existence.”
They were sailors then clowns then firemen then trees, on and on until the flight path ended, and they parachuted back into their bodies, silly and spent.
Now AJ was a mermaid and Noah a pirate.
“I don’t normally talk about my treasure,” said AJ, flipping her imaginary tail. “But you seemdifferentthan the other pirates.”
