Page 18 of Potion Sickness

“It’s twenty dollars a day more than you’re currently making, and it’d mean you’ll be at every rehearsal until opening night, which means you can drive Englebert, which means I don’t have to.”

So that’s settled, and that’s how I come to be in the third row of the audience, watching yet another rehearsal.

* * *

It’s two weeks from opening night, and the gym has finished its transformation, or at least gotten as close as it’s going to.

The castle wall still stands. The folding chairs have been squared into neat rows, and the props table has been reorganized into taped zones with labels — DAGGERS, CROWNS, BANQUET, BLOOD.

Dana is everywhere. If the article about Vivian and Damien has followed her into the building, she isn’t letting it show in front of the company. I can’t help but notice, however, that she’s not speaking to Vivian beyond the operational minimum.

“House opens in five.” “Cody needs the cue sheet.” “Viv. Time.”

Vivian, for her part, has stopped saying ‘darling’ to anyone. The two of them are running a smooth rehearsal at a distance of never less than twenty feet.

None of this will go in the blog.

Emma is in the audience with her clipboard because Hannah is on standby with the drill and at this point I don’t think she’d accept being left at home even if it was an option.

“Four days,” she says, when I sit down behind her. “Nobody’s said the name in four days. And nothing bad has happened in four days.” She clicks her pen. “I’m not saying it proves anything. But it’s consistent.”

“Your methods are sound.”

“I know,” Emma says.

The company is mostly in costume, which has done wonders for morale and strange things to everyone’s posture. Jackie wears Banquo’s leather jerkin like she was born for it. Ms. Pelham’s wig has been reinforced with picture-hanging wire. Mayor Blackwood’s Duncan robes are burgundy velvet and honestly look quite nice. He’s already asked whether he can wear them to the Maple Festival next year.

Pru comes out of the storage-room-turned-dressing-room in a deep green gown with her hair pinned up under Hannah’s painstakingly-carved brass crown.

“One word,” she says, to the room, “and I quit.”

Nobody says a word.

To no one’s surprise, Damien is the last one dressed. He emerges in Macbeth’s jerkin and a floor-length cape. The cape was a negotiation. The costume design didn’t include a cape, but Damien sourced one himself from ‘a guy in Queens’, and Englebert brokered a compromise, which is that Macbeth may have a cape after the coronation and not one scene before.

Skye films his entrance from the front row. She’s been quieter this week — the article did its work on her too, I’d imagine — but her smile is on, and when Damien sweeps the cape she whispers ‘yes, babe’ to the phone.

At seven sharp, Vivian stands, and doesn’t give a speech.

“You know what this is,” she says. “No stopping. Whatever happens, keep going. Act One.”

* * *

The witches open on cue and the fog machine produces a dignified amount of haze then quits while it’s ahead. Everyone nails their lines, at least without any noticeable fumbles. Moonbeam has stopped counting ingredients on her fingers.

Damien projects. MAY-be. It seems Englebert finally got through to him. The soap opera face still surfaces, but the words have backs as well as fronts now — whatever that means — and the dagger speech is the best he’s ever been.

The banquet table is fully dressed tonight. Real goblets of mismatched pewter and brass, scavenged from half the sideboards in town, are set at every place. Each one is poured two fingers deep with Dana’s house vintage, which is cranberry juice cut with flat seltzer, mixed in a Gatorade cooler and distributed by ladle backstage. Pru’s goblet is the tall one at the table’s end, because of course Lady Macbeth gets the tallest one.

The scene starts. Jackie-as-Banquo’s-ghost takes her mark in the doorway upstage, hair full of corn syrup blood. Damien works the table of lords, and when the toast comes he lifts his goblet. “I drink to the general joy o’ the whole table.”

Pru raises her cup back with as little warmth as possible. Damien drinks, dramatically throwing his head back.

“Avaunt,” he says, “and quit my sight!”

For a minute, he’s better than he’s been all night. All month, even. He backs away from Jackie with his hand out, hand shaking. His voice climbs. “Thou hast no speculation in those eyes—” He grabs the table edge. A goblet topples over. Ms. Pelham, at the table as a lord, throws her hands up in character. He pushes off the table, and staggers downstage. “Hence, horrible shadow! Unreal mockery, hence!”

His voice cracks and he sits down on the stage, both hands flat on the plywood. Pru’s line is next. She doesn’t say it.