“No,” I say.
She closes it easily—I feel how easy, as I lie here, staring at the ceiling—and for a brief, brief moment, I hate her. I hate Grace. I long to slide into Grace’s pockmarked skin and live there instead of here. How easy. How lovely. How lightly I would live.
She takes the dead cigarette from my fingers, the column of ash sprinkling over me like so much fairy dust, and tosses it into the garbage. She hops onto my desk. Pulls a cigarette from my pack and lights it. This is a bond, a small defiance Grace and I silently share, illicit smoking in the office, in the theater. Basically, wherever we can get away with it. I watch her booted foot swing to and fro over my face.
“Well, they’re waiting for you, Miranda.”
“Okay,” I say. “Just trying to give my back a break before rehearsal. Just need a few minutes here.”
Long pause. Should she ask or shouldn’t she? Dare she open that can of worms?
“Are you all right?”
“Fine,” I lie. “Just you know. The usual.” I try to smile, to put an eye roll in my voice, but I fail miserably. I hate the crack in my tone, the whining simper. If I were Grace, I’d crush my own face.
“Right.” She takes a sip from her water canister and looks down at me, lying on the floor, with my legs on the chair seat and my feet dangling in their holey tights, my bare, unclipped toenails there for her to examine.
“Well, whenever you’re ready,” she says.
“I’m ready,” I say. But I don’t move.
“All right. Well. I’ll leave you to it, then.” She’s about to get up. Panic flutters in me, briefly.
“Grace?”
“Yes?”
“How are they tonight?”
“What do you mean?”
“Do they seem… how do they seem?”
“How do they seem?” she repeats.
“Well… are they… mutinous?”
Grace considers this. “Maybe. They’re down there, at any rate.”
“Miranda, do you want one of us to do the talking today? We can, you know. There is that option. You can give yourself… a break.” This from Fauve, who has apparently been standing silently in the doorway all this time. I look over at Grace. Why didn’t you tell me she was there? Grace merely looks down at me lying on the floor. I can’t help but feel like a deer she has just shot. She’s looking at me to see if I am a clean kill or if she needs to put one more bullet in me for good measure.
“Is it your hip?” she asks.
“Yes.”
“Oh. I thought it was your back?” Fauve ventures. She is invisible to my eye, but I can feel her hovering in the doorway, the chimes and feathers of her. Clutching that silvery-blue notebook in which I imagine she records all my inconsistencies, my transgressions, with an ornamental pen that dangles from her pendant-choked neck. All false concern that is also taking literal note in shimmering ink. Sharing her findings with Grace.
She told me it was her back.
She told me it was her hip.
“It is,” I tell them. “It’s both.”
Silence.
“I’ll be right down, all right?” I say.
“Do you need help up?” Grace asks.
It’s like she doesn’t even ask for help.
It’s like she’s always asking for help.
Well, nothing helps Miranda.
“No. Thank you though.”
“Well,” Grace says, mashing her cigarette into my teacup, “I better get down there.”
Fauve says nothing about Grace’s cigarette. If she just found me in here smoking, as she often does, she’d cough and cough. Wave her hand violently in the air as though attempting to swat at a swarm of flies. Scribble scribble in her notebook. But Fauve just smiles at Grace through the smoke.
“I’ll go with you,” Fauve offers. “I have to photocopy something.”
“Great.”
What sort of a name is Fauve, anyway? I once asked Grace at a bar after rehearsal. Sounds like an alias to me. Grace looked at my nearly empty wineglass and said nothing.
They leave together. Hand in hand, I imagine. Surely Grace’s ancestors would have burned Fauve’s ancestors at the stake, wouldn’t they? Pale women who cast wispy shadows. All feathered hair and cryptic smiles. Reeking of duplicity and mugwort. How Fauve and Grace became friends is a true mystery to me. Not a mystery exactly, I know when it happened. It happened, I suspect, after my falling-out with Grace. Fauve insinuated herself then, of course she did. Stepped right in on her soundless sandals.