AllFreeNovel
Share Us
38
Islump against the front door as it slams behind us, my head buzzing from all that had been endured tonight. The beeping horns of standstill traffic. The riot of noise at the theater. We will never find out what happened toTosca, in all her tragic glory. Rory tosses his keys onto a shallow dish on the half-moon table by the door. There are raised but happy voices in the rooms beyond — I make out Danny screeching something, followed by Finlay’s gleeful hoot of laughter.
Rory gives me a meaningful glance when I refuse to budge from the door, and then, after muttering how knackered he is, stalks into the living room without me.
I take a moment to hang up Finlay’s jacket on the coat stand. My hands skim the soft fake leather, and I inhale it deeply, trying to gather my bearings, trying to get the buzzing out of my head.
I overhear sounds of surprise at Rory’s appearance.
“You’re early,” Luke observes with a note of concern.
“Did somethin’ happen?” Finlay asks, urgent and bright, all trace of his earlier laughter now gone.
“I’ll stick the kettle on,” Danny murmurs, and there’s the comforting jet of water from the tap, the slam of cupboard doors, the clink of spoons against porcelain, as the kettle begins to boil. “Where’s Jessa?”
“I’m here.” I step into the living room, searching him out. The room’s in disarray, chairs in every direction. Finlay’s sprawled out along the sofa, his tablet in hand, but he meets my gaze as soon as he sees me. A chessboard is positioned on the table where Luke sits, but all its pieces have scattered and rolled across the tiled floor as if they’ve decided to march away on strike.
Danny smiles at me but worry lines his face.
“They got into the theater,” Rory explains tiredly, dropping onto the sofa with a soft flump. Finlay shifts closer to him, the better to hear news from the frontline. “Antiro. They got in.”
Finlay taps at his tablet, scrolling rapidly, his expression darkening with seriousness as he scans the screen. “Fuck,” he says, confirming it. He turns the tablet toward Luke and Danny. An image of the huge flag draped from the circle stares back at us. Black, with a blood-red letterA, the flag so giant it consumes the entire stretch of the balcony and dangles almost halfway beyond it and down into the stalls.
“What an ugly flag,” Luke remarks blandly, as though it has nothing whatsoever to do with him. “You know a movement gets sinister when it has its own flag.”
“That isnae true,” Finlay mutters, but without any heat. “How did they get in?”
“I don’t see how they could,” I say. Danny passes across a mug of sugary tea, which I accept gratefully. “Security was tight.”
“We were discussing it on the way back. Someone already working there must have snuck it in. It’s the only way.”
Because the giant unfurled flag hadn’t been the end of it. In every section of the theater, people had stood, singing together as one:
Antiro till I die
We will forever vie
With the darkened lies
To always survive.
If it had been one or two people, it would have been stupid. But this had been multiple people dotted throughout every part of the theater, singing almost as loudly as the performers on stage had been — and others had joined in.
It had been chilling.
Management hadn’t been able to round them up, and in the end the show had closed early with the promise of full refunds.
Rory unwinds his cashmere scarf, folding it over his forearm, and scoops up his leather gloves with an air of fatigue. He takes a large, single gulp of tea, and then dumps the remainder in the sink. “I’m going to bed,” he mutters, and I don’t miss his raised eyebrow, as though I have something to do with that predicament.
“It isnae even ten,” Finlay says in surprise, watching Rory’s departing back. “Oh, okay. Fine. You dae that.” He turns to me the moment Rory’s footsteps retreat upstairs. “So whit else happened? Ye know, the full, juicy details.”
I don’t give Finlay the full, juicy details, though it feels like what happened between Rory and me in the theater is all over my guilty face. I’m still trying to untangle all the thoughts in my head when Luke says, “I wouldn’t worry about it.” His deep voice sounds so mellow that I could bathe in its warmth forever. “The more stupid stunts Antiro pulls off like that, the more they’ll end up annoying people and eventually disintegrate.”
“You sound certain,” I tell him, wishing I had Luke’s innate sense of belief. But he hadn’t been there. He hadn’t seen the way they’d all stood up, hands firm across their chests, singing loudly and proudly Antiro’s anthem like Benji’s good little foot soldiers, that giant bloodyAhovering behind them.
And the voices that had joined in, as though it had all been a jolly fun lark… The applause that had followed, drowning the jeers, as though this too had been part of the opera…
“You can’t shove politics down people’s throats like that,” Luke notes. “Eventually, to put a crude point on it, it gets vomited back up. You alienate the silent majority who disagree, when it’s them who are in charge of the speed of the pendulum’s swing. The Overton window. The ultimate rebalancing.”
