“I’ll do a quick one for them, Miranda,” Grace says quietly into my ear.
I turn to her, standing beside me now.
“Fine,” I say. “Fine.”
I dissolve into the dark wing. There, I watch their bodies bend and sway. I grab a bottle from my pocket and pop another pill. I don’t even bother to check which bottle.
CHAPTER 3
THE CANNY MAN with Grace. A Scottish pub in our neighborhood where we go after class or rehearsals to discuss the production or if neither of us can face going home. Grace is eating a burger and fries with a vigorous appetite. As if no rebellion has occurred. Just another post-rehearsal night. All’s well. I watch her drink a monolith of dark beer with a thick, creamy head that would slaughter me to imbibe. Beside the beer is a tumbler, which she’s nearly drained, of Scotch. Healthy as a horse. Utterly unkillable. I’m sitting hunched over a white wine spritzer and a green salad. My entire body a throbbing, low-grade ache. Hip to knee in full-on spasm. Back full of fists. On vague fire in various places, all over, all over. Burning too with humiliation and rage.
“You okay?” Grace says.
Okay? How can she even ask me that? Was she not there? Did she not see? I want to protest. To rage at Grace.
“Fine,” I say.
Grace looks at me hunched crookedly over my food. “Haven’t touched your… what is that anyway?”
“Salad.”
Grace wrinkles her nose. Returns to her burger, which appears to have cheese, even bacon, it looks like. Possibly a fried egg. Why isn’t Grace dead? But I know this meal won’t kill Grace. Grace will belch once, quietly, about an hour from now in her living room while watching Netflix. She’ll pat her obediently digesting stomach lightly as though it has been a good dog. She will retreat to her bedroom, which is uncharacteristically feminine in decor, every surface cluttered with tiny, ornate jewelry boxes, each fit for only one ring, each wall foaming pale rose drapery, and there on a cushion-bedecked bed, she will sleep the sleep of angels. Her heart will not drum perilously into her ear. She will not lie awake plagued with visions of her own imminent demise. She will sleep and then wake at a decent hour, and go for a run in the morning. Reinvigorated. Ready to take on life.
She made a face when I ordered my white wine spritzer and salad, then ordered her rich meal and drink, as if to atone for my lameness.
I really shouldn’t drink with these pills, I explained to her.
Grace nodded. Sure. Whatever.
But it’s true that I shouldn’t drink with these pills. I shouldn’t even be taking these pills together, let alone washing them down with wine. Got them from two different physiatrists who, unlike my golf-shirted physiotherapists, have the power to dispense drugs. One was suspicious of me, the other unusually merciful, smiling with the whimsical benevolence of a trickster god I’d happened to catch on a good day—Now why don’t we give these a try, Ms. Fitch, hmm?
Yes, I cried. Yes, let’s!
Now, you don’t want to take anything else with these, Ms. Fitch.
Oh, of course not, I told the good doctor, shaking my head again and again. No, no, I would never. His white coat shone before me like the robes of God. The white so bright I shed tears.
Now I sip my spritzer and stare at Grace, guzzling her beer contentedly as she watches the hockey game on the small TV screen above my head. Oblivious, completely, to this evening’s disaster. Well, she can afford to be.
“Well, that went terribly,” I say at last.
Grace looks at me, unfazed. “What?”
“The rehearsal?”
She shrugs. “It wasn’t that bad.”
“Not that bad? Weren’t you there? Didn’t you see?”
She stares at the TV screen. “I saw.”
“So then you know. They hate me,” I whisper.
Grace rolls her eyes. “Miranda, don’t be stupid.”
“They do. They hate me, and they hate this play.”
“Well, of course they hate the play, Miranda. All’s Well That Ends Well? Come on.”
“It’s a great play,” I mumble.
“I don’t know about great. I mean, it’s fine. But it’s not exactly going to compete with murder, madness, and witches.”
“It’s got a witch in it,” I say.
“Who?”
“Helen. She heals a king.”
Grace shakes her head as if to say, Don’t get me started on fucking Helen. Whenever Grace shakes her head about Helen, fucking Helen, I think she’s really passive-aggressively expressing her feelings about me. Helen is so delusional, she says. Helen is sick, she says. Helen is so entitled, she says, so self-centered. Helen’s always whining, she says. Helen’s pain is really her own fault. And Helen doesn’t even really know what pain is. If only Helen would get over herself. Stop obsessing.