The Rehearsal

censored and removed. This positive definition—that a woman might love another woman simply in and for herself—is what makes me feel nervous.”
    “Nervous, why?” Julia says, and takes another step toward her. Instinctively she reaches out with her thin red hand and catches Isolde’s fingertips in hers. Isolde doesn’t pull away. She looks down, watches their hands for a moment, Julia’s bony ink-stained thumb moving in a light caress over her knuckles. Her hands are cold.
    “You want me to explain this burgeoning something with Brian,” Isolde says, looking up again, “which may or may not ripen to a fruit. But I don’t think I did actively choose between you, representative of women, and Brian, representative of men. Instead I placed myself in a position where I didn’t have to choose. I let myself be his temptation; I behaved as passively as possible and did nothing as he advanced. It was the marshy fogbound unmapped depths of you that made me nervous, darling. What I wanted was something protected, something proved. I wanted a default feeling, not a nervous uncertain forbidden-place of a feeling where everything was overlaid with fear and even guilt. I don’t want to be seduced. I just don’t want it. I want to be comfortable.”
    “How can that be what you want?” Julia says. “How can it be?”
    “It is,” Isolde says. “In the end. It just is.”
    Julia steps forward and kisses her on the mouth, and all in an instant they’re back in the smoky fug of the bar, and the last number is playing, the last song. They’re in the corner and they’ve just got up to leave, to wrap themselves back into their scarves and their coats and turn their smiling faces to the band as a final show of appreciation, a kind of farewell. Patsy turns to the saxophone teacher to say something but whatever she was going to say dies on her lips. Her eyes flicker down to the saxophone teacher’s mouth, and then the saxophone teacher leans over and kisses her, her gloved fingertips against the other woman’s cheek.
    Patsy doesn’t reach out and grab the saxophone teacher’s coat, real fistfuls. She doesn’t slide her hands around and scrabble with the hem of the saxophone teacher’s jumper to slip her hands up and feel the skin of the other woman’s back. She doesn’t step forward so their breasts are touching, so their hips are touching, so the lengths of their bodies are pressed together hard. She doesn’t reach up with her hand and cup the saxophone teacher’s face. She just stands there and receives the kiss, her eyes closed. When the saxophone teacher draws back, she opens her eyes, smiles sadly, gives a nod, and walks away.

FOURTEEN
    October
    “Preliminary thoughts?” the Head of Acting says in the foyer, as the two of them slap their ticket stubs against their wrists and gaze over at the crowd around the drinks counter. “Or apprehensions, even?”
    “Only apprehensions,” the Head of Movement says. He doesn’t smile.
    “They’re a motley bunch, this year,” the Head of Acting says in his darting, distracted way. “I am definitely ready to be surprised.”
    “What was their prop? The playing card,” the Head of Movement says, answering his own question and rubbing the back of his neck with his hand. “It’s too easy. The aesthetic is half the battle in devised theater anyway.”
    “I’m still prepared to be surprised. Let’s go in.”
    The heavy doors of the auditorium have opened finally and the flush bolts are being drawn down by a skinny porter, an underling from Wardrobe who has been dressed as an Ace of Spades. He is stiff in his painted sandwich board and careful face-paint as he bends down to clip open the door. He shoves the bolts into their flush sockets and then straightens and adjusts his headpiece, a tight black bonnet that fits like a swimming cap around his skull. He smiles carefully. The tutors hand him their pink-edged stubs, and one after the other pass under the arch and into the stalls.
    Saturday
    “Thank you all so much for coming,” the saxophone teacher says into the dark. Her voice is higher than its usual pitch, and oddly strained, although she does not look nervous and her hands at her sides are still. “It really is wonderful you’ve all made the time to come.” She looks down to draw a breath, and then continues.
    “Like all the thirsty mothers present,” she says, “tonight each of you will see exactly what you want to see and nothing more. Even