Chapter 84 - Opening the Wrong Curtain
The preview audience was small enough that I recognized too many faces.
That made it worse.
Strangers could misunderstand me anonymously.
People I knew would find me afterward.
I stood backstage while Nina warmed up and tried not to watch every movement.
“You’re doing it again,” she said.
“What?”
“Checking whether I’m secretly you.”
I laughed.
“Sorry.”
“Accepted. Go terrorize a chair.”
The chair had already been inspected.
Twice.
Our stage manager had made it clear that my anxiety did not entitle me to move props after the preset.
I respected her.
I feared her.
Both improved the production.
Duval appeared near the wing with a program in his hand.
“Five minutes.”
I nodded.
For months, January had existed as a distant test.
Now someone in the audience coughed, and it became a room.
Alexander sat several rows back.
Not beside the aisle like a man preparing to rescue the evening.
Beside Julia, listening while she explained something with her hands.
Evelyn had come.
Marta and Sofia were already disagreeing quietly.
Rossi emerged, saw them, and looked offended that an argument had begun without him.
I almost relaxed.
Then Marisol approached.
Her expression made my stomach drop.
“What?”
“There’s a display in the lobby.”
“Our display?”
“Partly.”
I followed her.
Near the entrance stood a promotional board I had never seen.
A photograph from the old rehearsal.
My mother.
Me.
The cardboard house.
Above it, the title:
THE NEXT CHAPTER OF A ROSTOVA LEGACY.
Below, a logo belonging to the group considering The Glass Orchard.
For one second, I could not move.
Then I looked at Duval.
He had followed us.
His face changed.
“I did not authorize that.”
“Then who did?”
The front-of-house manager hurried over.
A representative had delivered it with what appeared to be event materials. Staff believed it was part of the approved production partnership.
There was no partnership.
Not for that project.
Not with me.
The audience was beginning to enter.
I felt the old impulse rise.
Stop everything.
Make the room look.
Make someone explain before another person saw my name attached to something I had not chosen.
Then Nina appeared at the corridor entrance.
Costume on.
Eyes steady.
“Places in three.”
My work waited behind her.
Not a rendering.
Not a promise.
Actual people, paid and prepared, ready to enter a room we had made together.
I looked at the board.
“Remove it. Preserve everything that came with it. Don’t argue in the lobby.”
Duval nodded.
“I’ll handle the immediate issue.”
“Through the proper people.”
“Yes.”
I went backstage.
My hands shook so badly Beth took the water cup before I dropped it.
“Later,” she said.
“I know.”
“No. Say it.”
I looked at the stage.
“Later.”
The lights changed.
Rossi’s music began.
Nina entered.
For the first minute, I watched like an injured animal.
Ready for the smallest mistake.
Then another dancer crossed behind her without looking at the work she carried.
The chair shifted.
Someone waited.
Someone else moved aside.
And the room began to tell the truth we had rehearsed.
I forgot the lobby.
Not entirely.
Enough.
At the final crossing, Nina paused longer than I would have.
My breath stopped.
Then she turned toward the person still standing nearby.
The movement landed with a clarity I had not found in my own body.
Silence.
Then applause.
I stood in the wing unable to move.
Beth touched my shoulder.
“They need you.”
I walked out carefully.
No leap.
No dazzling proof.
Just walking.
Nina took my hand.
The audience stood in scattered places, then more.
I saw Alexander.
He was smiling and crying without trying to hide either.
For one strange, impossible moment, I understood that the applause could reach me even though someone else had danced.
Afterward, there were notes.
Of course there were.
A transition needed tightening. One sound cue had been early. A sightline hid something important from part of the room.
The preview had not become perfect because I cried.
We worked.
Later, Duval showed me the material delivered with the lobby board.
An event-placement confirmation.
Issued by the outside production group.
It described the board as authorized cross-promotion.
Beneath that phrase was a name I recognized.
May you like
Simon Vale.
The man who had returned the first page had apparently begun writing the next one.
