Page 84 of Potion Sickness

He spots me. “Mari! On the record: attendance figures like these vindicate everything I’ve said about this town’s potential as a regional arts destination. You may quote the late King of Scotland.”

Bert and Rupert are standing by the door, programs in hand.

“The 1911 boundary dispute,” Bert is saying, “was settled by a hedge. I’ve told you this. The surveyor used the Whitcomb hedge as his line, and the hedge had moved, because hedges do, and half of what’s now the Reagan property⁠—”

Bert catches my sleeve as I pass. “Marigold. Settle something. The gentleman drove seven and a half hours for this production. I say that constitutes the longest journey ever undertaken to attend an event in this building. He claims your grandmother’s cousin came from Halifax for a wedding in 1958.”

“She did,” Rupert says. “It’s in the Grange minutes. I read them in April.”

“By boat and rail,” Bert concedes. “But she was family. It doesn’t count if you’re family. The record is for pilgrims. Outsiders.”

“Then I’ll accept the record,” Rupert says. Bert shakes his hand on it.

Through the lobby windows, out in the floodlit parking lot, two lords are spinning. One of them evidently said the name in the dressing room during the costume change. The other is spinning in solidarity.

Dorcas appears at my elbow with a paper cup of the good coffee, the urn now operating under Dana’s supervision.

“Look at them,” she says, nodding at the crowd. “Eight dollars a head. In this gym. For Shakespeare. A woman asked me to sign her program.”

“The question on the table,” Emma says as we approach the table, “is whether the curse is over.”

“Nothing’s gone wrong,” Dorcas says. “On opening night. That’s basically proof.”

“Nothing has gone wrong yet,” Emma says. “And one good night doesn’t close a file. We have half the show left.” She clicks her pen. “The official finding is inconclusive for now. The file stays open.”

“Until when?”

“Until the data says otherwise.”

She looks up at a woman who has been patiently waiting to buy some concessions. “Cookie? Two dollars.”

Backstage, Tiffany sits on the folding chair Dana has positioned for her in wings, and Annabel is there, pressing a thermos of sustainer potion into her hands. Englebert stands close while she works over the clasp, feeding the picture, tightening whatever needs tightening.

“How is it?” I ask.

“Ask me again after the curtain call.”

On a nearby table sits a bouquet of flowers wrapped in brown paper, unattended.

“Whose flowers?” I ask.

“Unsure,” Dana says. “Is there a card?”

Pru rounds the corner as I’m surveying the bouquet. “They’re mine,” she says, taking them from my hands.

“Secret admirer?”

“No,” she says.

“Damien?”

“No,” she says, and that’s that.

She fills her thermos cup with water from the cooler and walks backstage.

* * *

The next act opens with the cauldron. The fog comes in deep this time, thigh-high and curling.