The news hits me harder than I thought it would. “Good for you,” I mutter, sardonic spice sprinkled back on. I can’t help my injured instincts. It’s not like I hadn’t suspected this was coming, and it really is good to see Tara taking such big leaps. Her choices are reflecting her hopes, not her fears. But I still put up a good pout because this means I’ll have to move out of the Inn. I have no interest in finding a new roommate; it would be too much of a letdown after the Redstocking era, and I can’t swing the rent on my own even being the savant of a stock trader that I am. Equities have been tumbling down recently, a ruthless bear market.
“You don’t need to move out,” Hal says as we’re talking about it over dinner one night, chowing down on falafel and breadsticks. “You just need to find a way to monetize the Inn. It’s basically a historic landmark as the Redstockings’ headquarters. You could charge people for tours.”
“Yeah, I anticipate massive crowds lining up to pay big moneyto see a grimy basement apartment where four unknown women lived,” I say wryly.
“Hal’s onto something, though,” Tara pipes up. “This garden is incredible. You could open up a restaurant.”
“Except for the fact that I hate cooking and our kitchen would never pass the health and safety exam.” I feel myself withdrawing behind my armor. I hate the habit, but it’s one I don’t think I’ll ever fully get over. Even now that I’m enlightened, I don’t feel light all the time. The darkness is still there; I just have greater peace that it’ll pass soon if I let it, which I don’t always want to.
“You could turn it into a bar,” Tara goes on. “Recruit the Lone Wolf crowd over and have your own speakeasy. I’d bartend for you.”
“I appreciate the help, but I’m going to start looking for a studio apartment. Or maybe I’ll just rent out someone’s closet and put a sleeping bag in there,” I say to elicit maximum sympathy. “It won’t be that bad.”
It feels bad, though—very bad. The Inn is the first place where I’ve ever really felt at home. The only place that’s made me feel truly safe and like I was enough. It’s how the walls wink joyfully at me, how the floorboards never make me feel like I’m taking up too much space, how the sun gushes through the tiny windows to illuminate the shadows, how the double lock on the front door never falters.
“I’ve got it,” Jenni says. She’s looking around the garden like she’s seeing it for the very first time. “You can turn this place into an outdoor theater.”
The rest of us stare at her for a second, trying to digest the suggestion.
“I can’t believe I never thought of it before,” Jenni prattles on. “The stage can be there.” She points to a spot in front of the ivy-lined wall. “And then some folding chairs here. And then we can serve drinks back there.”
Jenni’s swiveling her head this way and that, and Tara’s noddingalong. “It’s perfect, EJ,” Tara says. “You can write the scripts and then see them come to life right here. Charge people for tickets. You’ll have your own theater company.”
“A one-stop shop,” Hal says, joining in. “You’ll stick it to the bureaucratic theater industry for shutting you out for so long. Just like you skipped over gatekeepers to bring stock trading to the masses. You can call it the Populists’ Playhouse.”
“The Populists’ Playhouse,” I repeat, peeling out of my bad mood like a ripe banana.
So I start planning it out hypothetically. I run the numbers and determine that to cover rent plus utilities, I’d need to sell eighty-three tickets a month at thirty dollars a pop, and that’s not even counting the cost of the chairs and stage and all that. The garden could probably fit twenty people, maybe twenty-five, and I could write a new script every month and perform the same show one or two nights a week.
But I don’t find the answer in the math; I find it in the aftermath. How I’m bouncing off the walls like a kid on a sugar high. I’ve got to go for it and if I fail trying, it’ll still be less of a failure than not trying. Or at least that’s what I keep repeating to myself.
My first play will be a short, I decide. It’ll just have two actors and be about fifteen minutes. Start small and scale up from there, as Hal says. This also means I won’t have to pay for a cast because Tara and I can do it all ourselves.
With this grand plan underway, Tara feels less guilty about leaving me. She and Niles move into their own place in East Williamsburg. It’s not far away, but I shed some tears because it still marks the end of a chapter I wasn’t done reading.
On my first day as the Dunge Inn’s lone resident, I go into the garden and do some yoga on my own to adjust to the new energy. It’s not as lonely as I thought it would be because the divine woman is still there. I can never shake her and that’s one of my favoritethings: how I can’t sabotage our relationship no matter how hard I try. She’s EJ-proof and that’s no small feat.
During a wobbly tree pose, my mind wanders to how many years I spent accidentally imprisoning the Redstockings. I start getting all self-critical, but then the perspective shifts and I can observe it from the outside without the icky attachment. And it hits me that this is the greatest plotline for a play.
After savasana, I open up my computer and type up a ten-page satire from the perspective of a zookeeper who gets some cheetahs to believe they’re living in the wild African savannah when really she’s keeping them trapped in a tiny backyard in central Florida. The dialogue is between me (the zookeeper) and Tara (one of the cheetahs who’s caged). It’s this amazingly self-aware critique, totally brilliant.
Tara isn’t sure what to make of the script at first, but once she sees me laughing about it, she starts laughing too and can’t stop. “I wasn’t sure if you meant it as a comedy or not.”
“Of course I did,” I say. “I’m very self-aware these days. It makes for delicious satire.”
“Proud of you,” Tara says, and I know she’s not just talking about the script.
Opening night is the beginning of November, that lovely time of year when the leaves are still tacked on the trees but the air is crisp and cool. I’ve sold twenty-three tickets and budgeted a 10 percent no-show rate, per Hal’s recommendation, but everyone who RSVPs shows up, and even two more buy tickets at the door. I guess it should be a vote of confidence, but it makes me nervous instead.
Jenni has arranged the garden perfectly. She’s brought back theChristmas lights that she stole and strung them again. Instead of chairs, we decided on cushions on the ground for people to sit on. It’s more relaxed and helps everyone in the back see better since we don’t actually have a real stage. Tara and I are just going to imagine we have a full-blown set and trust the audience to catch up.
It’s a motley crew that shows up, a bunch of locals I recruited. It wasn’t hard with a name like the Populists’ Playhouse; there’s never been anything more Bushwicky. Elijah the trumpet player is there and my landlord comes too. I gave him a free ticket so he can see how I’m turning our building into a cultural mecca and in hopes that he won’t put a stop to all the fun or evict me if it’s a total bust and I come up short again for rent.
Then there’s the Manhattan crowd. It’s easy to spot them, all collars and ties. Chris bought tickets for the eight people he manages at his accounting firm. It’ll be a good team-building outing, he’s told me—more inclusive than golf, right?
It’s pretty great to see how he’s supporting me, though I’m not sure I want him here. It makes the stakes feel higher. He wishes me luck and sits down on his cushion and doesn’t even look too worried about his pristine suit getting dirty. He’s come pretty far, Chris has.
Hal’s cousins are there too, visiting from South Dakota and soaking up the satisfaction that comes from experiencing a locals’ night out rather than falling into the Times Square tourist trap.
