Page 58 of Potion Sickness

Both he and Englebert — and consequently, me, since Englebert can’t drive — arrived an hour before rehearsal officially starts with the intention of hammering out any last details in Gabe’s performance. They’ve been at it for forty minutes so far. Englebert started the evening with real craft notes — “The dagger isn’t just in front of you, Gabriel, it’s in the front of your mind!” — and has been sliding down the ladder of pedagogy ever since.

“The witches have promised you a crown,” he calls from his stool. “Have you ever wanted anything, Gabriel? A parking spot? A sandwich? You must want the sandwich.”

“Thou marshall’st me the way that I was going,” Gabe says, wanting nothing.

“You are speaking to a floating dagger. A dagger is floating in the air. React as you would if it happened in your parlor.”

“If it happened in my parlor I’d assume it was some magical mishap and ignore it and wait for an explanation.”

“Then LIE to me, Gabriel. That is the entire profession.”

The trouble is that the two of them are working from different books. Gabe is treating the text like a eulogy — something to be learned thoroughly and presented respectfully, with a firm commitment to not making any of it about himself. Englebert wants blood and passion. What they’ve produced between them is a Macbeth who could perhaps pass a written exam on his own ambitions, but certainly couldn’t express them aloud, let alone act upon them.

“Gabriel.” Englebert descends from the stool and crosses to him. He sits at Gabe’s feet and looks up. “We will try a new approach. Forget the audience. Forget the verse. Pretend the audience is a casket, Gabriel. You are wonderful with caskets.”

“What does that even mean?” Gabe says, burying his face in his hands.

“I don’t KNOW,” Englebert says. If he had hands, I’m sure he’d be throwing them up in exasperation. “I am running out of ideas, so kindly, just make it work.”

* * *

Pru is late, which has genuinely never happened. At ten past, Vivian stands up, scans the gym once, and lands on me.

“Mari. Get up here.”

“I’m working,” I say. “The blog. I need to take notes.”

“There’s nothing happening to take notes on.”

“You never know.”

“We’re doing the letter scene. Gabe needs a Lady Macbeth to aim at, and everyone else in the room is a witch, a lord, or a child.” She points at the stage with her pen. “Read in. You don’t have to act. God knows nobody up there is going to make you feel self-conscious about it.”

“Marvelous,” Englebert says. “Fresh instincts.”

I climb the steps toward Hannah’s plywood castle while the company arranges itself to watch, which I truly could have done without.

The letter scene, for the uninitiated: Lady Macbeth reads a letter from her husband, decides on regicide with remarkably little agonizing, asks the powers of darkness to fill her with cruelty, and then Macbeth enters and they have their first scene together.

I read the letter portion off the page in what I hope is a neutral, journalistic tone.

“You are reading a grocery list,” Englebert says.

“I’m trying my best.”

“It is a letter from your husband, informing you that the crown of Scotland is loose upon the table. Read it like a leak from a source.”

Irritatingly, that helps.

I get through ‘unsex me here’ by staring at the back wall and refusing to think about the fact that the mayor is watching me demand cruelty from spirits. There’s a ripple of applause from Dorcas’s row. Moonbeam calls out something supportive about my throat chakra.

Gabe enters, crosses to me, and says, “My dearest love, Duncan comes here to-night,” and the entire room leans forward at once. They then have to pretend that they didn’t, because what he does with the line is… nothing. Off stage, we have chemistry. No one can deny it, as much as I’d like to. On stage, though, I am apparently merely a colleague he is informing about Duncan’s travel schedule.

“And when goes hence?” I say.

“Tomorrow, as he purposes.”

“Oh,” I say, “never shall sun that morrow see.”