Page 83 of Potion Sickness

“Tell Lily,” Pro says, looking at the drawing.”Tell Lily the queen says thank you, and that this is going in my office, in a frame, next to my diplomas, where clients can see it.”

Emma nods, satisfied, and withdraws. Pru refolds the drawing along Lily’s creases and tucks it inside her script, and then she picks up the crown and turns to me.

“Well?” she says.

I take it out of her hands and set it on her head myself.

“Verdict?” she says.

“Genie called it,” I say. “Very slimming.”

“Places,” Dana calls from the hallway, “means you, Lady Macbeth.”

* * *

The house is nearly full when I slip out front to find my seat. As I’m sidestepping through my row, the doors swing open, and through them comes Ms. Carter, and Skye, and in between them, in a wheelchair borrowed from Hemlock Hill, a man in a bucket hat and enormous sunglasses.

They set up along the back wall. I drift over.

“Mari,” the man in the hat whispers. “You haven’t seen me.”

“You came in a wheelchair and you’re wearing sunglasses indoors. Everyone has seen you.”

“They’ve seen a mysterious man with an unknown disability. Possibly a wounded veteran. Who is to say.” He tips the sunglasses down and surveys the house. “Look at it. Sold out. Standing room only. You know what fills a house like this in a town this size?” He taps the program against his knee. “Press. Say what you want about that article. The article sold tickets.”

“Well, thanks,” I say. “But I can hardly take all the credit. I just wrote what I saw.”

“No, no. Not your article. The tabloid article.”

“Oh,” I say, taken aback. “That’s a strange way to think about your own scandal.”

“It’s the only way to talk about a scandal,” he says. “Ask anyone who’s had a good one.”

Skye tucks the blanket over his knees. She has her phone out, already filming the crowd, and she’s smiling. It seems like an actual smile.

At seven sharp, Vivian walks out in front of the curtain in her tallest heels, and the room quiets for her.

“A few short months ago, this was a basketball court,” she says. “It’s still a basketball court. If you look up, you’ll see the hoop. We ask that you not look up.” She pauses, waiting for laughter, and she actually gets it.

“Every board, every costume, every light — everything in this room was built, sewed, wired, or at the very least paid for by someone in this building. Someone who calls Duskboro home. So whatever happens in the next two and a half hours, we’ll always have that, and that’s something to be proud of.” She smiles. “Thank you all for coming. Enjoy the Scottish play.”

The lights go down. The fog comes up.

Tonight, instead of emitting any strange sounds or clouds that envelop the front row, the fog machine produces a low silver creep, ankle-deep, that arrives when the witches need it and withdraws when they’re done.

Damien Carter walks out of the smoke.

I helped plan this. I stood in the salon when Tiffany agreed to it. I watched the cobbled together run-through this afternoon. I thought I was prepared, but then when Englebert-as-Damien-as-Macbeth comes downstage into the light and says “So foul and fair a day I have not seen,” the hair goes up on my arms along with everybody else’s.

In the back row, the real Damien Carter watches his own face do the best work of his life. During the banquet scene, Skye takes his hand, and he lets her, and neither of them looks away from the stage.

Dana calls intermission and the house lights come up.

* * *

The lobby at intermission is a spectacle. There’s a line for cookies and a longer line for the bathroom. Mayor Blackwood is working the room in full costume. Duncan has been dead since Act Two, which has freed the mayor up considerably. He’s evidently elected to spend his afterlife at the concessions table in burgundy velvet, shaking hands.

“The robes stay on,” he’s explaining to a couple I don’t recognize. “The king dies, but the office endures.”