AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“She’s drunk.” Sam shrugged from his spot beside his dancing partner, an ensemble member named Miranda.
“And extremely jealous,” Leo added. They had been practicing the sequence of events that led up to an all-out brawl in a Cuban bar and had finally reached Leo’s favorite part of the entire musical. Sky Masterson got whisked away by a dancer while on his date with Sarah Brown, and Sarah, after a few dulce de leches, got fired up enough to wage a dancing war. The script summed up the whole encounter in a short paragraph and said to take liberties with the brawl, and Leo was planning on doing just that. There would be breakaway props, a choreographed fight, chairs flying, and enough chaos to make the audience feel as if they were smack dab in the middle of the bar. “Haven’t you ever met someone who makes you go insane enough that you want to punch someone?”
“Yes.” Piper fixed Leo with a hard stare that said she was mentally replaying the moment she had dumped ice all over him at the karaoke bar.
Leo refrained from rolling his eyes. “I meant because of love, Piper. She’s having this incredible night with this man where she gets to be free for once in her life. She’s finally let loose a little on her good-girl behavior, and this random woman is trying to threaten that.”
Piper got up from her seat with a new look of determination. “Okay.”
“Okay.” Leo bobbed his head. He had thought there might be more resistance on her end, but he had been right to assume that Piper was a professional. Despite their issues, they could get through this without an actual brawl. “So you and Ian,” Leo gestured to Piper’s dancing partner, “are going to salsa back to here.” He pointed to a taped X on the ground that marked the spot. “This is when you’ll be close enough to reach Miranda, and you’ll take a drunken swing at her. Sam, come demonstrate with me. Piper, go stand a little behind Sam so you can see what I’m talking about.”
They both complied, and Leo reached an arm out to test the distance between his fist and Sam’s face. “You’ll want to keep an entire arm’s length between you and Miranda when you swing. And when you do so, you’ll have your arm bent the whole time until the follow-through. Sam will clap a cupped fist to his chest when he reacts. Ready?”
Sam nodded, and Leo swung at the air between them. Dramatic as ever, Sam made the hollow clap noise against his chest and dropped to the ground, writhing around like an idiot as he clutched his face.
“He hit me!” Sam cried out in fake agony. Leo could hear Moreno quietly chuckling from his seat as he observed in the audience.
Piper launched forward and dropped to her knees in a panic at Sam’s side. “Oh my God! What the fuck, Leo?”
“Honestly, I think that was a bit overplayed,” Leo drawled. “The knap was solid, but you look like a professional soccer player trying to get a penalty kick.”
Sam dropped his pretense of agony. “Damn, really? I thought it was pretty good. She fell for it, at least.” He gestured to Piper, whose mouth dropped open. Her eyes shifted between Leo and Sam as Sam hopped back to his feet, dusting off his legs.
“He didn’t hit you?” Piper asked.
Sam dusted himself off and flicked an invisible speck of lint off his shoulder. “Nah, I’m just really good at knapping.”
“What does sleep have to do with anything?”
“K-n-a-p, princesita.” Leo slapped a hand against his chest, making a quieter version of the sound that had Piper convinced Sam was injured earlier. “It means he hit himself out of sight of the audience and timed the noise with my missed punch. If I had hit him, Sam would be knocked out, not wiggling around on the floor.”
“I would argue, but I’ve seen him actually knock someone out,” Sam said.
“Hit people often?” Piper asked Leo.
A roguish smirk took over his face. He didn’t know why he liked Sam informing Piper that he could win a fight, but he did. “I box,” Leo explained and stepped toward her. “Can I touch you?” he asked.
“W-what?” Piper’s eyes blew wide, and he held back a laugh.
“To show you how to execute the punch,” Leo said quickly. “You can say no.”
“Oh.” She nodded and glanced down at his hand. He wondered if she, too, was stuck on the strange intimacy they had accidentally stepped into when he touched her after she fell. “Yeah, of course you can.”
“Perfect. Miranda, come stand where Sam was originally.” Any tension Leo was feeling dissipated as he flipped back into his directing role and watched as Miranda immediately followed his instruction. He reached down to Piper’s side and held her arm out straight in front of her to measure the distance between her and Miranda. “This is just right. Now, when you swing, bend this elbow.” He suspended her arm, gently bent it to the right angle, and moved it in front of her so she could see how her arm would swing during the real thing. “It’ll be right… here,” he stopped her arm on a swing, “when you straighten out to make it look like you connected with her jaw.”
“Are you going to teach me proper boxing form?” Piper’s face was so close to his when she asked the question, his hands still on her arm, that he could smell the mixture of sugar and lemons in her shampoo—because even her hair had to radiate sunshine.
He cleared his throat. “No, Sarah Brown isn’t a boxer. She doesn’t know what she’s doing, and she’s also tipsy. It’s okay if you make the swing a bit sloppy as long as you’re the right distance away from Miranda and you don’t actually hit her.”
“Okay.” Piper nodded.
“Great.” Leo dropped his hands away and paced behind Miranda to both put space between himself and Piper and get the right angle to watch. “Miranda, when you take the hit, time it with a knap and a reaction like Sam did, but, for the love of God, stay upright, and don’t roll around on the floor like he did. Just reel back like you would if you’d been punched and stumble a bit.” Miranda gave him a nod and practiced the motion once before Leo continued. “After you recover from the hit, you’ll step toward Piper. Sam will come around this side,” Leo pointed over Miranda’s right shoulder, “and he’ll block you, shielding Sarah while also squaring off with Sarah’s dance partner. Ian, you’ll take one hit from Sam, the same way I showed Miranda, and go for a chair.”
Sam and Ian moved in sequence with Leo’s directions, and they continued to block the fight scene, practicing it several times in slow motion before Leo felt comfortable enough to move on. Piper took to her role quickly. By the time they’d finished the first chunk of choreography, her motions looked more realistic and less forced. While Leo thought she could fine-tune the drunken behavior a bit, her acting had only solidified his decision to cast her.
“Sam, you’ll then throw Piper over your right shoulder so the crowd can see her, and Sky and Sarah will escape stage left. And Piper,” Leo turned to face her directly. “When he has you over his shoulder, I want you to squirm a little, flail your limbs around like you still want to be there and you’re vaguely annoyed that he’s taking you out of the fight.”
“So, throw a tantrum like a petulant child?” Piper said.
