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“It’s an emergency,” I say again.
“You can leave me your name and phone number, and when she checks in, I’ll let her know you came by.”
“Okay,” I say, handing her my business card. “Thank you.”
I leave, determined to go to every classroom in every Tisch School of the Arts building until I find Laura Poitier.
I walk through a hallway to get to the elevator and pass a large sign for a rehearsal schedule taped to the wall:
RentRehearsals
Week of October 11th–15th
Studio Theater #1 721 Broadway
10 am – 10 pm
I exit the building and pull out my phone, typing the theater address into the Google Maps app. When I look up, I vaguely notice a guy who looks like the one I almost bumped into when I left the registrar’s office. He’s standing by a bus stop across the street.
Is he following me?
I push the thought out of my mind, following the app as it guides me through Washington Square Park until I reach Broadway. I scan numbers on various buildings looking for the theater address, when I spot an actor in costume slipping out of a back door in an empty alley, lighting a cigarette. This must be the theater.
I enter through the same back door he just exited. Once inside, I realize I’m in a dressing room. A few actors in costume and makeup that look like they’re part of a nineties Central Casting call stare at me strangely.
“I’m a friend of Laura’s,” I say. “I think I came through the wrong door.”
They nod, like my being here now makes sense.
I exit the dressing room and walk down a long hallway, passing restrooms and an empty concession stand, until I reach the front of the theater and step inside. The lights dim. About a dozen actors are on stage, including those I just saw in the dressing room.
“Actors, mark your place,” a woman with a commanding voice says. She’s sitting in the front row of the audience with her back facing me. All I see of her is a majestic braided hair crown wrapped around her head. “Music, please.”
The music starts, and the actors begin singing the show’s signature song, “Seasons of Love.”
“Stop!” the woman calls out over the actors’ voices.
The music abruptly halts, the actors stop singing, and the house lights come back up.
“The lighting’s off-center,” she says, turning around to face whoever’s in the lighting booth above me.
That’s when she sees me—standing alone in the back of the theater. For a brief moment, our eyes meet, and she stops in her tracks as if she’s seen a ghost.
“Ten-minute break,” she announces.
She stands up in a trance, walking toward the back of the theater, still staring at me.
“Are you Laura?” I ask her as she approaches me.
“You lookexactlylike someone I knew a long time ago,” she says in disbelief.
It’s not the first time I’ve been told I look like my mom.
“Irene Mayer?” I say.
She nods.
“I’m her daughter.”
