Free Little Disquietude by C. E. Case Page A

let go of Sophia and looked around. If
everyone had seen them, they were politely looking away now. She
shrugged.
    Sophia kissed her cheek.
    Leah smiled. "I think I know why I'm in Poe now."
    "That was some trip."
    "Well. It was some trip back."
     
    * * *
     
    "Hey, Leah," Adam called from the third row.
"What do you think of the name Edgar Allen Poe try? Get
it?"
    She would have flipped him off but the
producers were there to watch the first tech rehearsal. She settled
for sighing. "Ha. Ha."
    "Okay, let's do Dream. From the top."
    Leah went to the wings. Ward stood on stage,
presumably outside her building, waiting for her to come home. She
tried to think of herself in love, scared, thirteen years old, but
all that came to her was Sophia. She inhaled, squared her
shoulders, then let them slump and went on stage.
    Ward caught her arm. He pulled her around.
"Virginia," he said. His voice was low--meant to be a whisper, but
no one could whisper on stage. So, just quiet. Library voice.
Indoor intensity on the outside stoop in Boston.
    "You shouldn't be here," she said. She pulled
out of his grip, and went downstage.
    He was supposed to follow her, but he stayed,
and cried out, louder now, "Virginia."
    "You can't be here. This can't happen. It's
not real," she said. She thought of saying the words to Sophia, and
couldn't think of any reason to say them, not Virginia's
reasons--age and propriety and other loves--and yet, her eyes
filled with tears. She blinked them away.
    Ward, damn him, was still upstage, trying to
force her to turn around and see his pain. His want, his desire,
naked on his face. And the audience wouldn't see the grief on hers.
She said, "Go away."
    "Virginia," he whispered, hoarse and
frustrated.
    She turned around, and stalked past him. With
her back to the audience, she gave him a little smirk. He seized
her arm, and squeezed a little too hard. She yelped.
    "Take this kiss upon the brow," he said, and
kissed her temple. His teeth grazed her skin. It felt like a
violation. She pushed his chest, and when he let her go, went into
the house. Behind the set, she listened to him sing.
     
    Yet if hope has flown away
    In a night, or in a day,
    In a vision, or in none,
    Is it therefore the less gone?
     
    She cried, behind the stage, silently where
no one could hear her, and then she went to the little fake window,
made of plastic. Ward paced the stage, histrionic, brutalized by
her little rejection.
    He clenched his fist, and said, "I stand amid
the roar of a surf-tormented shore, and I hold within my hand
grains of the golden sand."
    Leah watched and listened as the
music--Adam's five piece orchestra--created the sound of the ocean.
Ward never looked back at her. He raged only for the audience.
    "Bravo," Adam called from the seats as Ward's
song ended and he got off his knees. Leah came through the front
door. Adam met her eyes, and smiled. "Not in the stage directions,
but perfect. The agony of your restraint against whatever was
inside you was admirable."
    "She didn't look at me once," Ward said.
    "She didn't have to," Adam said. "You were
always right there."
     
    * * *
     
    Rehearsal broke around seven-thirty. Leah was
so exhausted she'd spent the last two hours crying, off and on, in
jagged shuddering. She'd lost her voice. Adam had yelled at her for
not being more temperate, for not monitoring herself. So she'd
become histrionic, like a rebellious child, never mind that he was
right.
    She was too keyed up to go home. If she did,
Adam would make tea and she'd go to bed early, only to do it all
over again tomorrow morning. That was too depressing to
contemplate.
    She had a dress fitting at three the next
day. That was too depressing to contemplate, too.
    Her back ached. She settled herself on the
brick retaining wall of a yard across the street from the theater
and watched the audience appear for Macbeth . There were
crowds of people--senior citizens, young parents and children,
dating couples--all dressed in