And then I have no idea. Can’t imagine past that.
Past that, all I see are stars.
I run a brush through my hair, though really it needs no brushing. Went to the salon this afternoon and had my hair done for the first time in years. Got the gray out, got a cut, a conditioning treatment even.
And what would you like today? the hairdresser asked me.
Everything, I told her.
Sitting in the salon chair, I marveled at how I could sit without screaming. I laughed and laughed.
Someone’s happy, the hairdresser said.
Me? No, no, just thinking of a joke I heard earlier.
I love jokes, the hairdresser said, and she waited for me to share.
You had to be there, I told her. It’s one of those.
Now my phone chimes. Text from Hugo.
Meet me in the theater at 9 p.m.
Theater? My heart sinks. A work meeting? It’s a work meeting, of course it is. He never wanted to date me, how could I be so absurd? How could you ever think that, Miranda?
I try to remember the way he was looking at me in the theater after rehearsal Tuesday. How he walked backward away from me, backward so he could still make eye contact, still smile at me with that smile that sent a current right down my spine. And Grace saw. Grace even observed that he was ridiculous, didn’t she? Didn’t his fawning attention make Grace roll her eyes?
I text back, No wine bar? I put an emoji of stars beside two clinking champagnes. Then I feel like a fool. I watch the three dots in their gray bubble appear and disappear, holding my breath.
Theater. I have a surprise for you
* * *
When I reach the theater, the double doors are propped open. I step through them in my poppy dress. My S-shaped hair lightly grazing my shoulders. The light clip of my old heart-shaped heels on the wooden floors. Still dressed as though this is a date. He said he had a surprise, didn’t he? And the smiley. Smileys are suggestive, flirtatious, aren’t they?
But the theater’s empty. Stage dark, red curtains drawn. My heart thrums lightly in my chest.
“Hugo?”
No answer. I walk through the aisles. Hop up onto the stage easily. It comforts me how easy. I look out at the sea of empty seats, the EXIT signs.
“Hugo, are you there?” I hear my voice reverberating in the auditorium. Rich, deep, but shot through with a thin thread of panic. Am I being stood up? Maybe he changed his mind about the venue again.
Suddenly I feel ridiculous. Standing here on the empty stage in the dark in my poppy dress, in my perfume cloud. My waves and my painted lips. Clutching my lip-shaped purse with both hands. A smiling red mouth. I bought it in a moment of elation, sailing through a shop I used to hate, my hands literally itching to buy something.
I love this, I told the saleswoman, pushing the purse across the glass counter.
She smiled. It’s fun, isn’t it?
It is, I said. So fun.
Now the red mouth seems to smirk at me. I think of Hugo gazing through me at the diner last summer. A shot of electricity runs down my spine, flashing down my leg quick like lightning. I feel a hip twinge. Something in my back gives, buckles.
Oh god, I’m a fool. I’m a fool, I’m a fool.
I’m about to walk off when the lights come on. Behind me, the red curtains draw, revealing the stage. Music swells. And then I see it. All around me, a French court. Pillars and tapestry screens featuring black silhouettes of delicate-looking trees, vines, and flowers. Above my head, instead of a ceiling, there’s a bright blue sky streaked with sinewy clouds. Like a dream. Helen’s dream.
Tears fill my eyes.
The set of All’s Well. Act One. Finished. Perfect. Just like I dreamed it. Just like I lived it that summer in Edinburgh. Those production photos from the Playbill sprung to life. It’s the exact same set right down to the pillars on each side of me and the blue painted sky above. I look down and see the floor beneath me is a raised dark spiral, like the iris of an eye. The eye of Helen gazing upward at a fixed sky. And I’m Helen again. Alone on the stage with just the audience. An audience I can’t see in the dark.
“Surprise,” says a voice.
I look down into the auditorium. He’s standing in the aisle, but I can’t see his face because of the lights in my eyes. Familiar silhouette. Tall, broad, longish hair that curls at the neck, making my breath catch. Paul? Paul, what are you doing here? No, not Paul. Hugo. Of course Hugo.
“Well, Miranda,” he says. “What do you think?”
I look around at the set, the impossible, perfect set that takes me back, god how it takes me right back to that moment when I was Helen looking out into the lights and I saw nothing beyond but the watching dark. I look at Hugo, who’s beaming at my face, my tears. Why does he look so much like Paul right now? Trick of the light, surely. Trick of the shadow. Has to be.