The Rehearsal

anything.”
    The real risk was that these dissatisfied students, the whisperers, angry at the comparative insignificance of their parts and sick of the officious prodding from the others in the group, might want so much to disassociate themselves from the performance that on opening night they might intentionally act poorly, calling deliberate attention, through their ham acting, to the distance between the actor and the role. This became a tacit threat; it hung in the air around them, and the actors became wary and mistrusting, hugging their costumes tighter to their chests as if they were trying to hold the fractured shell of their ego in one place with the force of their hands.
    Leaving the Institute after a rehearsal one day, Stanley bundled his bag of take-home props under his arm and threw his head back for a moment to enjoy the pale afternoon sun. He had left quietly, through the backstage area and out the players’ door into the alley, slipping away from his scowling, shadow-eyed classmates who were still arguing as they stacked the chairs away and cleared the rehearsal room for the next morning.
    He rounded the corner into the northern quadrangle and to his surprise came face to face with the girl who had appeared so oddly and suddenly in the wings of the auditorium stage, the wide-eyed schoolgirl who had collided with him in the velvet black. He stalled a moment as he recognized her, again recalling the brief and breathy impact in the dark, the girl gasping and stricken and looking down at him in mute apology as he fell.
    When his scene was over he had returned to the wings to seek her out, but she had disappeared.
    “There was somebody watching,” he had said later to the boy Felix, as in their dressing rooms they wiggled out of their costumes and returned their wigs to the faceless polystyrene heads that lined the top of the dresser. “From the wings. She must have come in by the players’ door. I guess it was open.”
    “Did you tell her to get out?” Felix said, not really interested. He was unlacing his bodice aggressively, and Stanley heard the worn and dirty laces rip.
    “She disappeared,” Stanley said, watching as Felix saw his mistake and swore under his breath. “I guess it’s just weird when people watch from the wings and we don’t know it. It’s like an unfair advantage. If someone had crept in through the foyer and was watching in the stalls I wouldn’t have cared.”
    Isolde was sitting on the slat bench underneath the ginkgo tree. She was wearing her Abbey Grange school uniform, and was swinging her legs slightly as she flicked the pages of a dog-eared novel, curving her body over the book with her hair falling free about her face. As he approached he saw more clearly now how pretty she was, with full cheeks and a pouting mouth and a slender upturned nose that she was stroking absently with one finger as she read. As Stanley neared her she looked up and gave a puzzled start as she recognized him.
    “It’s you,” Stanley said. “From the wings.”
    “Oh, yeah,” the girl said, and drew her lower lip underneath her front teeth. She looked up at him uncertainly, like a puppy waiting to be admonished.
    “You made me miss my cue,” Stanley said, and then they both blushed at his rudeness.
    “Sorry,” Isolde said. “I heard the drum and I just followed the sound. I guess I just wandered in.”
    There was a little pause.
    “It was only a rehearsal,” Stanley said at last. She nodded politely and pressed her lips together in a kind of apologetic smile. Stanley pointed at her music case to change the subject. “What do you play?”
    “Alto saxophone,” Isolde said. “My teacher’s studio is up there.”
    “She must be rich, to afford a studio here,” Stanley said. “The rent is insane. I know because the Drama Institute were going to buy out way more of these buildings than they actually did, but it was too expensive.” He was growing hot with embarrassment now, the unease spreading like a scarlet ink-stain over his chest and into the stippled hollow of his throat. He knew that it would be visible above the open collar of his shirt, spreading up to his chin like an old-fashioned ruff. He wished he had not sought this girl out, that he had walked past her without speaking, maybe even given her a calm and cryptic nod.
    “I don’t know if she’s rich,” Isolde said.
    “Are you any good?” Stanley asked.
    As soon as he said it he felt ashamed at having asked