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“I have to pass this class or I’ll get kicked out,” she whined like a grief-stricken child.
“If you want to pass this class,” Rossi continued without acknowledging her misery, “you’ll spend the next four weeks in make-up sessions. I have two other students in the same fix. You’ll retake the final then. Shall I put you on the list?”
“But I had summer plans…”
“Then change them,” he jumped on her remark, quickly silencing the beginnings of another rambling monologue. He sat back in his chair appraisingly, “You need discipline, Miss Henry. If you get nothing else this summer, you will get discipline.” According to the way he framed his words and the quiet force with which he spoke them, there was no doubt in her mind that plans would change, and her summer would alter, not to suit her frivolous fancy, but to suit the professor’s blueprint for her future.
When KC Gable said discipline, I thought I was hearing Professor Rossi that first day. Something quickened in my body then, just as it quickened hearing another man in another lifetime—or so it seemed ten years later—in a totally different kind of body and attitude speak with such plain assurance about me. Neither man knew me well enough to make the assessment. But I took it at face value then, and was feeling just as sure of KC’s appraisal now.
I didn’t like the feelings that were arising with this reminder of the past, but I could hardly ignore them. I preferred, however, to think of KC Gable—as unlikely a disciplinarian as he was—than to go into my distant past and relive what I’d dismissed.
KC was in my thoughts more consistently than I would have ever imagined any man could be. Usually, finding myself attracted to a man with the sort of instantaneous rush of excitement I’d experienced with KC, the impact would slowly drift away in a matter of days. With my leather-clad rescuer, the opposite was true. My desire bloomed like new wildflowers prying their way through the dead grasses of winter. It wasn’t even the dangerous words he interjected into our conversation that lit the fires; but thoughts of his life—his experimental theatre, the leather, his classic Harley and the casual way he could talk about sex. I knew him only one half hour; and I knew I wanted more. I was attracted by his potential for wickedness, his willingness to skirt the usual lines that outlined life, and the way he stopped and lifted me to my feet without increasing my embarrassment—takes a certain class to do that. Perhaps I assumed too much about who he was, but I liked my assumptions. After all, I had no real social life, I wasn’t having sex, and until KC’s face suddenly became the central focus of my mind, I wasn’t even thinking about men—not seriously. I wasn’t living on the edge of anything—except, perhaps, my own sanity. I often called that sanity into question when my dazed life seemed like nothing more than a confused, blank slate of tired days. KC made me think, and fantasize, and feel alive.
I lived with my thoughts for nearly two weeks before doing anything. KC’s theatre card was dog-eared and dirty in my suit coat pocket—it changed from one to the other like a worry-stone I kept with me, or a talisman or charm to keep me safe. I kept telling myself I was going to call him, but I didn’t have the courage. I could only finger the slip of paper, commit the number to memory, and wonder if I weren’t being a little silly. My affections for the man seemed little more than a schoolgirl crush. I was swimming in the world of a child, feeling childish feelings, thinking childish thoughts.
I’m sure it was my subconscious that finally led me to him—that made me turn down an unfamiliar street in an unfamiliar neighborhood off anyone’s beaten path, and find myself staring at the ACT Workshop Theatre housed in an old warehouse. I pulled the card from my pocket as though I needed to confirm that this was the place. But I shouldn’t have needed any more clues as soon as I spotted a vintage Harley chained to the side of the building. The polished silver gleamed almost too brightly to look at, while my body determined the cycle’s owner not from reason and logic but general intuition. I’d never seen his bike but I knew this was KC’s.
I never go to strange places alone. (If it weren’t for a few brassy girlfriends who drag me from my apartment with my legs kicking, I would go nowhere but work.) Wearing my grey flannel suit with the subtle pin stripe, I could be figured for an attorney, insurance salesman or even the stodgy architect that I am. Did I fit in KC’s environment? I felt like an alien on planet Xenon walking into the peculiar building.
On the outside, the aging brick was covered with ivy clinging so closely to the surface that it would never be pried loose. As I opened a brown, painted door beneath a small marquee, an unexpected feeling of emptiness hit my face like a gust of wind. I was in a narrow hallway, propelled down the length of it as though a poker was prodding me at my back. The walls around me were black, the air was black, and the ceiling seemed to stretch above me to a black forever. When I reached the end of the corridor and turned to my left, the blackness only expanded swallowing up an entire room. My eyes adjusted to the vast vacancy, soon making out the details of the space in front of me. It looked more like a warehouse than a theatre. There were chairs stacked in a far corner, and what looked like risers. And on the opposite walls more risers and platforms—these painted black—and a few oddball items I believe were props. My eyes drifted to the ceiling, knowing that it would never end; yet I found some definition to these upper reaches in a spidery web of metal beams and scaffolding where dozens of lights hung, pointed in all directions.
“May I help you,” a voice behind me asked.
I whipped around, expecting to see a ghost. Instead, a woman two feet from my face peered toward my eyes, kindly, wonderingly. She was dressed in a straight, black skirt, which framed her bounteous hips and stopped at her calves, and an odd-looking silky purple blouse, which must have been a remnant from her grandmother’s last garage sale.
“I’m Loni,” she added because I was too stupefied to speak.
“Hi,” I found my voice, “I’m looking for KC.”
“Oh, yeah,” she nodded. “He’s here.” She didn’t sound so strange anymore, but young. She couldn’t have been more than twenty-two. “KC, hon, you have a visitor.”
Her voice echoed through the cavernous nothing, apparently reaching its intended target, as KC appeared a few seconds later looking just as I remembered him.
“Well,” he seemed surprised as he moved toward us.
“Hon, I have to split,” Loni announced in order to excuse herself. “I have a math final I’m going to fail, but I have to take it anyway.”
“At least you tried,” he offered sympathetically. She gave him a hug and a peck on the cheek while he gave her a squeeze; then we watched her leave.
“Your girlfriend?” I asked the first question to enter my mind.
“No. Just a friend. Little daft, but a good actress.”
“And not good at math.”
“It isn’t a requisite for the theatre, only if you’re trying to get a degree.”
I could understand.
“So, you’re here?” He seemed to question my presence, though not to make me uncomfortable. I suppose he was surprised that I showed up, but likely not as much as I was astonished by my own unplanned act. “Want me to show you around?” he asked.
“Sure.” That did seem reasonable and took some pressure off me, as though I were just an invited guest and KC was playing the gracious host.
I learned a good deal about his black box theatre that afternoon, how this shapeless void transformed itself a hundreds ways depending on the requirements of the play. They would be doing Shakespeare soon—a farce in 20th century garb. And after that, One Acts about sexual dysfunction. They could base one on my life, I immediately thought, but I wasn’t ready to say that sort of thing aloud.
I saw the scene shop, the costume racks and make-up mirrors. KC instructed me about stages, lights and the various ways he manipulated the emptiness of his converted warehouse. He even let me peek into the miniscule apartment where he lived. After the tour was complete, we stood in the center of the presidium stage he was about to tear apart. The focus of our conversation transferred to me. He asked no questions, but my appearance that afternoon was so unexpected that it required some explanation. I wasn’t sure what to say. But the energy driving my body felt as though the weight, speed and force of a freight train were barreling through my own empty cavern. It picked up speed the closer it got to its destination—the destination was my need.
“I stumbled here today,” I finally said.
