Briana’s smile wavers. I watch her white neck redden, her freckled chest flush, and it’s delicious, the sight, it emboldens me. Even though a part of me feels shame. Because she’s just a child, isn’t she? The lip gloss, the absurd butterfly clip in her hair, the challenge in her green gaze. Just a child, Miranda, remember.
But then I hear chimes clinking. Fauve. Emerging from the shadowy wings with the softest steps. She places jangling white hands on Briana’s shoulders as if she’s her mother. She’s going to make it all right.
“Everything okay here? I heard shouting.” Fauve looks at me. So concerned, so fake confused. But she’s a hack. What did she do, community theater?
I look at Briana, who’s looking away now. Smiling a little to herself. Biting her thickly glossed lower lip.
“Fine,” I say. “All’s well.” I say it meaningfully.
Fauve smiles sorrowfully at me.
“Miranda.” She pauses, like my name is its own sad thing. “Did the dean speak with you?” As if she didn’t already know this. Help orchestrate it. Nudge Briana along. Perhaps she even walked Briana to the dean’s office herself. Come along, dear. You’re doing the right thing. You’re so very brave. Bolstered her story of my steamrolling with evidence. Tapped a talon at the date/time in her silvery-blue book.
“Yes,” I say, “he spoke with me.”
“Oh, good.” I watch her fingers encircling Briana’s neck lightly. I think of the fat man caressing my face. She pats Briana’s shoulder as if it’s all sorted now. The hurly-burly done. The battle lost and won. There, there. Not because she loves Briana, no, no. Because she hates me that much. Doesn’t believe this pain business. Thinks I’m faking. Talk about theater, Miranda. If only I’d put that kind of theater into my work here. We shouldn’t even be doing Shakespeare, anyway. We should be doing Bye Bye Birdie. Meet Me in St. Louis. That’s theater. But if we’re going to do Shakespeare we may as well go, you know, big. Some witches, for god’s sake.
“How’s your hip, Miranda? Or is it your back? I always forget,” she says, “if it’s your hip or your back.”
“Both.” You know it’s both! I look at Briana’s face. Cradled and beaming now between Fauve’s jewel-suffocated hands. Suddenly I’m so tired. To the bone, the cell. Just standing on my concrete leg makes me sweat. I’m losing steam.
“You certainly are standing a little funny, Miranda. Perhaps you should sit down. Take it easy.”
They both smile. They won. Fauve gets to see me in my directorial death throes. Her smile is the smile of the fat man looking at me when his body was a blue sky and I was pinned to the floor bearing the black tar of his pain.
“I’m fine,” I lie.
“Well, if you need my help, you just call. I’m right across the hall, you know.” Watching you. Willing you to fail. Fauve pats Briana on the back, walks away, clinking.
I look at Briana. Who feels protected now. Happy. Relieved. I watch her exhale. Perhaps she was a little afraid of me after all. I look at her cradling the script in her hands, holding it close to her young body, so little and lithe. I look at her rib cage rising and falling, the prideful heart beating beneath.
“I’d love to see the script,” I say. “If you don’t mind. I’d love to take a look.”
Briana looks at me. She hugs the script closer to her chest.
I’m just going to gently take the script from her, that’s all. But Briana draws the pages even closer to herself, away from my reaching-out hand, which is ridiculous, humiliating. I reach out again gently, and she actually blocks me, absurdly, and I grab her wrist tight because this is really ridiculous now, how she won’t let go, won’t yield, can you believe this? How she’s looking at me now like I’m some kind of monster, how she’s pulling her arm away from my grip like I’m hurting her, which is utterly absurd, I’m only trying gently, very gently, to see the script. I squeeze her wrist slightly, looking deep into her leaf-green eyes with their little brown flecks. Her eyes widen. Her skin pales. Her breath catches. I watch the script drop from her hands. The pages fall, scattering loudly across the stage. She looks at me and her mouth makes a noise.
I look down at my hand, my grip on her wrist.
I let go. Or she pulls her arm away quickly. I’ll never be able to remember which. If I let go first. If she pulled away quickly.
We stand there, silent. The felled pages of Macbeth all around us, scattered and fanning their way across the stage, to the farthest reach of all four corners.