The street’s still wet from the storm last night, I’m finding driving in any sort of inclement weather somewhat tricky. I mean, what do you expect? We rarely get any and I've only been at this six months. On top of which, a 1973 Super Beetle isn’t all that easy to maneuver in such conditions, as it turns out. Like, hit a puddle big enough and fucking forget it. I learned that one the hard way. Fucking Matthias, of course, driving him back from the Observatory to his host family's house in Monrovia. It was late, pouring rain, after the Laserium let out. I was coming off the freeway and hit, I mean, I can't even call it a puddle. It was more of a lake, really, covering one whole lane of the offramp. I veered to the left as soon as I saw it, but I still caught so much water you could hear it flooding through the wheel wells. Scared the shit out of both of us. Maybe that's why he flaked on going to formal with me. Or maybe he's just an asshole. Needless to say, I hate having to drive in the rain.
I slow the car a bit coming up to the corner where the crackhouse used to be and can’t help but wonder what's been happening in the Drama room at Nixon since I left, what Sarah’s been getting up to. God, we had fun in that room. More than what is probably legally, or at least regulatory, permissible. It’s funny. Egan used to get so flipping mad at us, the way we’d goof off and carry on in there at lunch time. But she never kicked us out, never forbade us from hanging out there. Even after the milk carton soccer match incident.
The room was bigger than a regular classroom, I don’t know, maybe three or four times the size. It wasn’t a theatre, though, either, just this big, unremarkable rectangle of a room, painted that ugly sort of utility, sky blue that you're likely to see on the walls of any local, suburban American public high school. A plethora of risers, of different sizes and heights, of course, for use in the performance space during class, as audience seating for productions. Egan had already been teaching there twenty years by the time I left last year, not counting her time sitting in a desk as a student. Crazy to think she’s spent so much of her life in that fucking ugly blue room. Really says a lot about the folks around here, now that I'm thinking about it. She made it a home for us, though, in her own grumpy way. ?? God, we wreaked so much havoc in there together.
Turn right onto Firestone and hit that expected red light at Downey Avenue. The red light the reason I favor this route, with its view of the long dilapidated Avenue Theatre, for me to ponder before I make the turn, past the needlepoint store, long since closed, where my mother’s work once hung in the window. Then on past the Avenue, closed long ago now. I hated that place, even as a tiny kid of four. I remember being there this one time with Gabriella and Jenny, not long after she died. We were there to see Pinocchio. I remember thinking kiddie movies like that were so dumb, that I was already so beyond all of that. There was only one screen, walking down the middle aisle, your sneaks would stick to the floor and the upholstery on the seats was so rough it would almost scratch your skin if it touched directly. But then the movie started and it was like I wasn’t even there in theatre anymore, it felt like I was almost inside of it. Inside of the screen, too. Inside of the movie.
I make a right turn, just past the Avenue, pull up and park in front of the library. Cut the engine, run my fingertip over the top seam of my wallet, Marty's library card safely tucked inside. I guess it's kind of poetic, the place where she gave me my words across the way from the place that gave me my freedom. Pull the parking brake up.
Sweet Charity was the first show I worked. Michael Merman had come into Drama class one morning, looking for volunteer ushers to work the three weekend run at the Theatre Company. I was the only one to sign up. And it wasn’t hard to figure out why that first night. Everyone there was old, the whole lobby vibe square, square, square and, like, uber senior citizen. Never bothered me, though, given how close I am to my Grandma?? I’m a smacky kid and it was a smacky thing to do. But, whatever, I could have given a shit. It wasn’t even about the fucking lobby.
“Would you like to come up to the balcony? Watch the actors warm up?”
He showed me up to the balcony. I took a seat high up and off to the right so no one would see. Egan already had us all well steeped in Stanislavski and Stella Adler and respect for the theatre, for the actor, for process. I could see musicians trickling in to the orchestra pit, taking their chairs, the soft lilt of the first few notes of their warm up — random notes or notes from the score of the show, then scales, then maybe a random Sinatra or Benny Goodman, which some of the others join in on. Actors begin arriving, some still in their street clothes, some in their costumes, some with their make-up half done or their hair up in curlers, some looking garish and all looking so odd under the house lights. And then, scales, all together in each of their keys, notes floating out of their mouths reverberating off of the theatre walls like rolling waves, off of the walls and into me. I wouldn’t be honest if I didn’t cop to the fact that part of it was just needing to be fucking away, the more than that so much more, though. That feeling that I had found myself another home, that I was about to become a part of something. Something maybe beautiful.
It was after the show when I first stepped beyond the blue double stage doors, backstage, and stood against the wall with my program, watching the actors greet their friends holding bouquets of flowers. They seemed like such big deals to me.
“You were up in the balcony watching us warm-up tonight.”
“And you were warming up while I watched from the balcony.”
“You work at the theatre?”
“Not really work, I wouldn’t say. Kinda lame, volunteer usher.”
“Hardly. I imagine this set would need a lot of help to their seats.”
“You’d be correct. And also much, much too kind.”
“Lisa.”
We shook hands.
“Yep. Right here in the program. Amanda.”
“Right there in the program, too. Nice to meetcha, kid.”
Lisa played Nickie ultra tough, totally intimidating air about her when she was onstage. Offstage, though. She was. Is. So fucking kind. And not just to me. She totally gave the kids a backstage tour when they came to see Damn Yankees, Ellie and Katie holding each of her hands as she explained what the ghost light is, why we call it the fly rail ?? Even before we found out, I don't know, there was just something about her, something between us, in a way. She’d always have me come along to hang with her and her cast mates at the bar at the Embassy Suites next door, then she’d hang with me waiting for Harry to pick me up in the parking lot afterwards and it wasn’t long, a couple of times, maybe, before she finally asked me the question.
I knew it was coming, I always do and I always dread it. No matter what I say, how I jump around it, no matter the great lengths I take to avoid it, try to steer all talk away, it always. Always gets asked. Just because having a mother. One that’s alive. Is one of the most basic expectations people have about existing as a human being in this world.
“You think I could ask you something?”
“Of course you can.”
“It’s something personal, though.”
“Pretty sure I know what it is.”
“Yeah.”
No one had ever looked at me like that before.
“I know how you know.”
And then this silence. This. Heavy, heavy silence.
“It was cancer.”
“Yeah?”
“I was eight. And it’s just me and him now.”
“I was twelve.”
“Wait…”
“Yes. I’m like you…”
“Such a trip, when you think about it.”
“What’s that, Andie?”
I was going by Andie, then.
“Finding you here. I only know one other person.”
“Someone you’ve been able to talk to?”
“Nah. She tried. I just wasn’t ready yet.”
“I get that.”
“There’s the van.”
“Sadly.”
Until. Until. You find that someone like you. Then you can't seem to talk about it enough. Just because. No one really understands. They think they do. Or maybe that they’ll be able to. But they don't. They just can’t. Lisa was twelve to my eight then and she’s thirty to my sixteen now.
Lock the Club on the wheel, slam the door shut, free now to enjoy the rain, starting to fall again, more dark greys moving in.
“Yo!”
Dylan comes running across the parking lot, floppy sweatshirt hood over his head, umbrella open, his smoke billowing out into the wet from the hand roll dangling out of the side of his mouth. He gestures for me to join him under his canopy.
“Thanks. I love being out in the rain, though.”
“You’re gonna get sick.”
“Rain happens way too rarely for that even to be a logical concern, Dylan. This is a rare gift. Shut up and enjoy it.”
A kiss on my cheek,
“Lunch club isn’t the same with you gone.”
“You working the show?”
“Nah, just this. Michael and Egan have me too busy right now.”
The rain’s picked up and we’re drenched by the time we reach the stage door at the rear of the theatre, off to the side of the loading dock. The magic is still there, in the sound of the handle click and the hard pull the big, blue stage door requires. Inside, August and Bill are already at it, talking their talk, this morning arguing the merits of ska-punk versus first wave hardcore, the fuck if I know, over the customary box of donuts provided for crew on load-in days. Try my best to tune them out, it’s cold in the shop, though, the chill is distracting. I let the musty theatre smell wash over me, wafting through on fresh damp, echoes of talks with her in the shadows of dressing room hallways.
That is until Zachary Keith enters the building. The Artistic Director, all capitalized, please, and kind of hilarious, but I don’t think he means to be. He was kind of a big thing back in the Seventies. And when I say kind of a big thing I’m speaking strictly within the context of Downey. He was quite the professional dancer, enjoyed the bounty of work brought forth by the Travolta/Newton- John disco musical craze of the era. Nice enough, I guess. He’s got a temper, though, so I just try to stay out of his way.
“Lemme get the door.”
I fucking love doing this. Unhook the heavy steel latch, then Dylan hits the big red button. The rain’s falling harder, spray wafting in as the loading dock door begins to rise, revealing a pair of someones on the other side standing in the middle of the driveway. One of whom is Vince Chen in his alligator green coveralls.
“Is he with Vince?”
“Does it look like he would be?”
Cause, like, first of all, he looks fucking terrified. Everyone kind of is, after their first encounter with Vince, though, honestly. He can’t be wearing a dress shirt.
“Is he wearing a dress shirt?”
“He must be working costumes or something.”
He holds his hand flat at his forehead, shielding his eyes from the water and shouts through the torrent,
“The door was locked.”
“Nah. You just gotta pull really hard.”
I offer my hand to give him a pull up. He hesitates for a second.
“Just do it. It’s faster.”
He grabs one of the loading dock bumpers for leverage, places his foot, takes my hand, and pops himself up.
“Thanks.”
“I’ll just go through the door, okay, you guys? Hey, great chat, man.”
He’s not that much taller than me. I don’t know, maybe fix six? And he’s not wearing a dress shirt, but it is a nice shirt, kind of a flannel print, all pressed and nice, a clean white tee shirt underneath, well fitted jeans with a perfect little hole in the knee, his Doc Marten’s seemingly spit-shined. Gotta be costumes.
"Um. I didn’t chat with him. I'm not entirely sure what just happened."
“Vince Chen.”
"Vince Chen?"
“It's a really long story. It's kind of best just to give him his space for now.“
“For now?“
"Like I said, it's a really long story. You working crew?”
“Um. Yeah, yeah.”
“Huh. Well, you should probably find Zachary.”
“Vince Chen, though?”
“Let’s not worry about Vince Chen now, all right?”
“Oh, my FUCK, are they kidding me with this?”
“Here comes Zachary now.”
That terrified look again.
“Shake it off. The whole bark versus bite sort of thing.”
He takes a pause in the midst of his storm, then a quick look,
“Marc, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Just go with her.”
“Amanda.”
“Like she said.”
“Nice to meetcha, Marc.”
There’s something about him. Not just the way that he moves but the way that he is, not exactly feminine, but not masculine, either. He can’t weigh much more than me. Slim, but muscular. Perfectly shaped sideburns and his hair, dark, dark brown. Probably black in certain light or in shadows. Jesus, his eyebrows. He’s perfect. He looks so lost. He’s fucking beautiful. Lost and beautiful.
“We always start with the drops.”
We walk through the shop to the stage, littered with several industrial laundry baskets scattered about, white canvas with hinged wood covers on wheels. I flip one open, stacks of neatly folded muslin nestled in, painted backdrops to take us all back to turn of the century Montmartre.
“You go to Nixon?”
“Orange Grove. I graduated, though. ’87. You?”
“Nixon for ninth and tenth, then transferred to Arts High. I’m a junior. We’ll have to wait for the boys to hang these. Zachary has the schematics. We could probably unpack them, though.”
“In L.A.?”
“Yeah. At Cal State.”
“Sounds fun.”
“It is. It’s pretty serious, though, too. Conservatory shit and that. You gotta keep your average up. Like, they do not dick around.”
He drops a bundle of folded muslin onto the stage, lets it land with a slap.
“So, what’s the deal with that Vince guy?”
“He’s weird. Nice enough, but flipping weird. I’ve caught him, like, kind of drooling whenever he sees a dancer doing a quick change in the wings. And, like, if you, you know, small talk with him, you know, your basic friendliness or whatever, he will just not shut up and he’ll go on and on and on talking about his Makita.”
“Makita?”
“It’s a drill.”
Sure enough, Vince Chen rounds the corner, trusty Makita in hand. I nod to Marc and he follows me like a loving little pup. I imagine once he gets settled in, he’ll never talk to me again.