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Ryan barely realizes he’s singing. The music is just another part of the comfort of the room. By the time Caitlin has finished the cut and is washing all the loose hairs out in the sink, preparing him for the bleach and the dye, he is feeling a serene blankness, so peaceful that all his thoughts can take a rest, all his worries lulled into hibernation.
It’s only when he’s upright in the chair, waiting for the dye to set, that the conversation resumes. He tells her more about being grounded, about what it’s like to text with Avery late at night, what it’s like to have someone to wish goodnight. She tells him about her first serious high school boyfriend, Sam, and how each of them would always try to be the last voice the other heard before sleep, to the point that if her mom came into the room to ask her something after she’d already said goodnight to Sam, she’d have to call him back, to hear his goodnight again. There was even this one night—Caitlin can still remember staring up at the glow-in-the-dark constellations on her ceiling, feeling sleep pushing the phone from her ear. And Sam, instead of saying goodnight, said, “I’ll see you in my dreams.” Then he fell asleep—Caitlin could hear it right there on the phone, the shift of his breathing. Instead of hanging up, she fell asleep that way, too. And in the morning, she woke up and the connection had held. She said “Good morning” into the phone, and she could hear the smile in Sam’s voice when he said “Good morning” back.
She tells Ryan all this, and he says it’s an awesome story. She doesn’t tell him she has no idea where Sam is now, or even if he saw her in his dreams that night, because there must have been a part of her, back then, that was afraid to ruin everything by asking.
—
Miles away, playpractice isn’t going well.
Play practice is always hard on Friday afternoons—the thing you look forward to on weekdays becomes the thing standing in the way of your weekend. Avery knows this. He also knows there’s only so much you can do with a play likeDon’t Forget Your Shoes!—a comedy that, if he’s being generous, was much funnier when it was written in 1936 than it is today. He once overheard Mr. Horslen, the drama teacher, tell Ms. Paskins, another English teacher, that the reason they were performing it was because the playwright had never bothered to renew the copyright, so it was free, and thus one of the most produced plays in American high schools. To the students, Mr. Horslen said that performingDon’t Forget Your Shoes!was a way to “demonstrate old tropes while at the same time questioning them.” From what Avery could tell, this meant that Liz Macy could play the spinster aunt as a proud lesbian without Mr. Horslen or anyone else getting upset.
Today they are rehearsing a scene in which Pope, playing an easily flustered matron named Lavinia Stranglehold, is insisting that there is a ghost in her attic, and hergreat-nephew Lucius LeFevre is trying to prevent her from going up there to discover his secret fiancée, Betty Lou Templepot. Avery, playing Lucius’s brother Laurent (who also thinks that Betty Lou is his fiancée), and Liz, playing the lesbian aunt, are waiting in the wings; once a commotion is made, they will storm in to see what the commotion is all about.
The problem, as it has been throughout rehearsals, is that Dennis Travers, who is playing Lucius LeFevre, has yet to comprehend that the play is a dated comedy. He is a senior, currently applying to colleges, and he seems to think that universities send recruiters to high school plays in the same way they’re sent to football games. So, it follows, if he wants to be taken seriously as an actor, he must take Lucius LeFevre very seriously. What are Lucius’s motivations? What did he eat for lunch? Has he ever really gotten over his parents’ death? (Mr. Horslen tried to point out that nowhere inDon’t Forget Your Shoes!does it say that Lucius’s parents are dead; he is merely visiting his great-aunt, not living there. In response, Dennis merely set his jaw, looked Mr. Horslen in the eye, and said, “Look…I justknow.”)
Pope’s understandable vamping as Lavinia and Dennis’s naturalistic rage as Lucius are making for quite a dog-day afternoon.
Clocking the scene from stage right, Liz sighs and tells Avery, “I think we’re going to be here for a while.”
Normally, Avery might suggest they run some lines, but at this point the performances are only a week away, and the lines are as embedded in his recall as they ever will be.
“Got any big weekend plans?” he asks.
“Honestly? There’s a lot of farmwork that needs to be done, so my brothers and I will probably be fixing fences. Very glamorous. How about you?”
“I have a date on Saturday.”
“Well, that sounds like more fun than my plans. I invited Hannah to come over and help, but I don’t think traipsing through cow shit with me and my brothers is her idea of a romantic time.”
“Yeah, that’s not what Ryan and I have planned, either.”
They talk a little more about what he and Ryandohave planned, all while Mr. Horslen is trying to tell Dennis not to deliver the line “But, Auntie, what if it’s the ghost of one of your ex-husbands? There are so very many!” in a “manner similar to Hamlet’s.”
Avery and Liz aren’t friends, but they’re not not-friends, either. They have the basic queer bond, which is often enough to inspire confidences.
After Liz has spoken approvingly of Avery’s Saturday-night restaurant choice, he feels bold enough to ask, “Do you think it’s strange to get to a seventh date without ever talking about sex?”
Without a moment’s pause, Liz answers, “No.”
“Not even a little?”
“Not even a little.”
“If I am to be the host to a ghost, the most I can propose is to offer it some roast!” Pope/Lavinia calls from the stage. This means their cue is near.
“Do you want to be having sex?” Liz asks, her voice so neutral that she might as well be asking Avery if he wants some pretzels.
“No. Not really.”
“And has Ryan said anything about wanting to have sex?”
“No.”
“People who want to have sex don’t tend to be particularly subtle about it. That’s been my experience, and from what I’ve read, I think it’s a universal truth.”
“But, Aunt Lavinia!” Dennis calls, with all the anguish of a thousand Parisian grad students. “Don’t go up there! It’s such an imposition!” For some reason, he puts the accent on the second syllable, so it comes out “im-PAHS-ition.” He’s been doing this for weeks. Nobody wants to tell him to correct it, since it’s the only humor he brings to the scene.
Avery and Liz move into place, ready to step onstage after the next line.
