The Curtain

Theater of Life

The jog Brett took to clear his head lasted until twenty minutes before he was due at the theater.

If the Crescent Bank didn’t have an LED clock outside, he never would have known.

It was too late, too complicated for a bus, but he knew he could sprint and shortcut and maybe in desperation flag down a cab.

Whoever said the show must go on had never had Jeanie Wiseman slam the door in their face and knock the Port Huron Film Festival Best Actor statuette off the shelf.

The show was gonna go on alright because Brett wasn’t gonna fuck over his castmates for any reason, especially not not being able to keep his relationship shit together. 

Somewhere along Magazine, just past Second Line Studios, a weird second wind kicked in, and it got him to the Crawdad Theater only a few minutes late, even if the final sprint did summon a vile wretch from deeper inside him than he knew he had insides.

No one admonished him for tardiness or even teased him.

They knew, of course they did, because the indie theater world is tiny and insular.

There were soft touches on his shoulders, encouraging looks borne on nothing but friendly hope.

But Jeanie was gone and had to be gone from his mind, now, an hour ago, because he had two buckets of dialogue in a Dixie cup head and he was a hack film guy, not a theater guy. 

There would be no second takes, not in the play, and not with Jeanie, whose beauty could peel the fog back from a Finnish hot spring and whose brains could treat Jeopardy like a chew toy.

Brett took a deep breath, then laughed at himself. There were no amount of lung exercises that would change anything now.

Three pin spots hit him in the opening act, and his character was supposed to squint.

After that, it was wide-eyed abandon, what he imagined his life would be like post-Jeanie Wiseman.

All five of them in the cast brought it that night…Donna bled for real during the chair scene and Darian’s ad-lib on the line he flubbed was more acidic than the line in the script and Brett hoped the dead silence in the theater was respect and awe and not boredom, and when he delivered his final line- Catch me, Shenandoah, Catch me- just after he realized his breath still smelled like vomit they roared, the audience roared, and he stumbled off stage as the curtain plummeted, then someone grabbed his hand and dragged him back out, it was the five of them, bowing together, then they backed away and Brett began to go with them, and Donna gave him the look “No, they want you” and someone was pounding their seat to make a deeper noise and someone hooted like a drunken Arizona golf tournament and the applause was a tsunami that couldn’t wash away anything for long and the house lights came up and there was a flash of Jeanie and holy shit was he delirious?

No.

It was Jeanie’s little sister Lizzy, and her hands were making their last clap before she turned to the aisle to leave.

And when the congratulations from cast and tiny crew began to repeat, and after he lied and said he’d join them for an afterglow at Whiskey Bayou,  Brett Irish Goodbyed out a side door and out into the way too warm night air and he didn’t know which direction he was walking in when a text from Jeanie hummed his phone and the words were: I heard you were good tonight and Brett walked deeper into the air,  a man who was only any good when he was playing someone else.

***

Your author respectfully only semi-apologizes for the Selbyan run ons.