Little Disquietude

C.E. Case

* * *

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright 2011 C. E. Case

Smashwords Edition

Supposed Crimes LLC

Falls Church, Virginia

* * *

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Prologue

Leah went to Adam's apartment because he had a piano and because he had invited her. He had invited her because she had what he wanted--the high cheekbones and gaunt figure and a smoky alto voice that let her land semi-leading roles as mysterious femme fatales Off-Broadway, even though it never got her anything in Beauty and the Beast.

Especially not since she'd turned thirty.

At the apartment, all he had was the piano. A full grand sat magnificently in the center of the room. A twin mattress lay in the dining nook. Leah settled herself in the lawn chair and waited for Adam's cat to leap into her lap, but Adam took her hand and pulled her to her feet. He thrust sheet music at her. He peered intently, as if he'd never seen her dark brown eyes and her limp, lighter brown hair pulled back in quite that way before. He tsked while examining the faint laugh lines that creased her pale skin around her eyes.

Like he was some prize, a barely-twenties choirboy with a shiny, bald head and a quintessentially angelic, narrow face that said, "I am a young, black, gay composer. Envy my beauty and talent."

He was some prize.

Despite the career-stalling tragedy of Leah turning thirty, he still considered her his favorite muse. He insisted he would compose the musical that would win her a Tony. She always thought that would happen in her fifties, when she outgrew her gangly stage and became the next Patti LuPone. But maybe, considering his scrutiny and the unnaturally crazed look in his eyes, a star would be born right now.

"Sing this," he said.

"What is it?" she asked, annoyed he'd made her stand up but already reading the notes, licking her lips and humming along, trying to find the tempo.

"You'll know when you sing it."

"Adam."

He promised her lunch in exchange for her voice and since Care Bears in the Park ended last week and she was out of work she couldn't quite turn down turning tricks for food.

"We'll go someplace with waiters," he said.

She glanced at the lawn chair, now occupied by cat, and did her breathing exercises, ignoring the delight in his eyes as her diaphragm tightened. He began to play the piano and she watched him, letting the melody, a bit haunting but with a little flourish in the upper register, seep into her. When he nodded, she sang. She missed the timing on the first note. Then it was a scramble to get each word out on each beat, without knowing the words or the beats. He urged her on, his notes carrying her upward, until she found the song.

Or the song found her.

"Up shadowy long-forgotten bowers of sculptured ivy and stone flowers... Up many and many a marvelous shrine..." The words were archaic to the point of tacky. They stumbled out of her mouth to fill the apartment. Adam smiled. "The viol, the violet, and the vine," she sang to him.

Despite the corniness, so far from Adam's usual soulful, light compositions, the imagery evoked was immediate and tangible. She could feel the light and the turned earth of a garden around her. And something more elusive that she wanted to discover.

She reached the end of her sheet and Adam stopped playing. "Not bad."

"What is this?"

"I've only sung it for myself. A woman singing this instead of a man--yes, I think that works better." He hadn't really answered her question, but he prompted another one.

"I'm the first person to sing it?"

"Yes."

"Adam, tell me."

"You like it enough to want to know?"

She loved it. She traced the names of the flowers with her thumb and turned the sheet music sideways. And then, with a sinking sadness, realized, "You didn't write this."

"No."

"But it's lovely."

He smiled. "Edgar Allen Poe did. I'm setting his poetry to music."

Dark, gothic images came to her from school English classes and movies she'd seen. She considered them, and then asked, "Like 'The Raven'?"

"Yes."

"Like, a concept album?"

"Yeah, maybe." He folded his arms and leaned on the piano.

"Adam," she said. "I want to sing them. All the songs."

He smiled, closed his eyes, and looked for a moment like a bashful little boy. "Let's talk about it over lunch."

Chapter One

Three Years Later

Adam's phone call woke Leah up well before noon. "Meet me at Zarth's."

"Garth's?" Leah, eyes still closed, sprawled on her back with the phone somewhat near her ear, tried to remember the Garths she knew. Garth Brooks? He didn't live in New York City. Unless he’d moved recently and she'd just forgotten to read the right tabloid. Who was he seeing? Was he--

"Zarth's," Adam said impatiently, stressing the Z, bringing to her mind the tiny, indistinctly European restaurant that required reservations weeks in advance, even for lunch.

"Now?" She rubbed her eyes. Her bedroom came into view. Theater posters, wood paneling, and boring cotton sheets. She'd bought the second floor one bedroom condo six years ago, earning the down payment via a series of six corporate training videos where she played a clumsy secretary. She loved her bedroom. But it was not Zarth's material, and neither was she.

"Tonight at eight. Wear something fabulous," he said.

"So you can drool at me? How does that work?" Leah imagined reading in Time Out: Unknown stage actress and freelance songwriter caught in tryst at a restaurant they couldn't afford. Maybe she was still dreaming. She was too sleepy to pinch herself.

"Because they have a dress code," he said.

"Oh."

"See you then."

"Wait--"

The phone clicked off. She listened to the silence until her bladder, her hunger, and her hangover told her she wasn't going to fall back asleep. The phone's clock read 11:06. She had nine hours to figure out what Adam meant by fabulous. Maybe she should buy a new dress. A dress would cost less than a meal at Zarth's and she knew Adam, who lived in an efficiency basement with a piano and lawn furniture in the Lower East Side, would only be paying if it were worthy.

New dress worthy.

She did have that thing she wore to the Off-Off-Broadway benefit luncheon last month, but Adam had been there. He would complain. Nothing like trying to dress to please a gay composer.

* * *

"What?" Leah asked over the amuse bouche.

Adam obnoxiously crunched what she'd tentatively identified as squid. She ate her own with more grace. Zarth's décor seemed too kitschy for the elegant, expensive food. She stared at a caricature of Ronald Reagan on the far wall, to keep from staring at the red and white checkered table. No tablecloth. Just squid.

"Why are you wearing a suit?” he asked. "Didn't we discuss a dress?"

"I looked at my bank account." The black suit she wore was ill-fitting. To match it, she'd pinned up her dyed driftwood-blonde hair back. She had been hoping for a severe corporate shark style. Adam, though, was mismatched. He wore a sports coat and a dress shirt with the top three buttons unbuttoned. He actually looked stylish.

"And you traded up?"

"And I couldn't afford a new dress. Even for you."

He pouted and examined his fingernails.

"So, this." She gestured at herself.

"Is that your interview suit, Leah?"

"Yes."

"How long have you had it?"

"My father brought it for me."

"Of course."

She kicked him under the table.

He grinned. "Well this is an interview, so I suppose it's fashion-appropriate."

She put down her napkin.

The waiter appeared. "Drinks, ladies?"

Adam giggled. Leah kicked him again.

"Champagne," Adam said.

Leah shrugged when the waiter looked in her direction, so he left. Adam's drink order didn't necessarily mean anything; the man loved champagne. She leaned across the table. "Adam, please don't tell me you got a television deal and you're abandoning me for Los Angeles."

"No, but close."

Her stomach sank.

He lifted her hand to his lips and kissed her knuckles. "North Carolina."

"What's in North Carolina? Are you writing the sequel to Shag?"

"That was South Carolina, darling, and no." He squirmed giddily in his seat and said, "They're producing Poe."

"What?"

"They're producing Poe. Our baby, Leah. At the Durham Playhouse. We're the token premiering musical and the token modern piece, between South Pacific, Macbeth, and Side Show.

"Side Show? Really?"

"No, darling Leah. You cannot be in Side Show."

"Because that would require me going to North Carolina. I don't even know where that is, Adam. Is that near Virginia? Or like, down by Alabama?"

She'd wanted Poe ever since singing the first song in his apartment with just him and the piano and no furniture and no food. He'd let her read the drafts of scripts and short stories and record two songs on the demo that went nowhere, and made her read biographies of everyone in Edgar Allen Poe's life until she'd wanted to live in his world.

Adam released her hand. "Darling, you're not going to be in Side Show because you're my leading lady for Poe."

"Me?"

"You."

Ronald Reagan's eyes followed her as she studied the far wall, trying to process. She hadn't realized that his world was out-of-state. He was asking her to pay up for the dream he'd given her and it seemed, as her hopes of the drafty Hilton or the intimate Roundabout burned in her mind, completely unfair to go away from New York. She wanted to beg him to hold out. She wanted to tell him that his dreams should not become such a small reality. That she liked the story better when it was just a story.

Adam just frowned at her.

Leah shrugged.

"Champagne?" The waiter asked, appearing with a bottle and two glasses. He uncorked the bottle and Adam demurred to let Leah taste. The bubbles fizzed up her nose. She coughed. The waiter remained impassive. Adam smiled. She took another little sip, and let the dry tingling invade her tongue.

To the waiter she said, "Whatever he's paying for this, it's not enough."

"Perhaps you would like a case," the waiter said.

Leah grinned and glanced at Adam.

"I can't take you anywhere," he said.

When the waiter was gone, Leah leaned forward. "Adam, don't I have to audition?"

"No."

The word thrilled her. She was chosen. She took another sip of champagne and let the alcohol fall into where the joy pooled in her stomach. "North Carolina?"

"Leah."

"I can't. I can't leave. I have a schedule, and commitments."

"You're an actress."

Her commitments were fleeting. She had a two week gig to dub secondary voices for an anime series--36 episodes--and after Care Bears, she'd finished a three day Off-Broadway play where she sang in the chorus. She had two readings lined up next month, one workshop, and in April she would be doing backup singing for a friend of Adam's first album at an independent label in the Bronx.

She sighed. "I have readings, Adam. They might turn into something."

"You had this reading. It turned into something."

She studied her fingers curled around the champagne glass. Poe had been a crazy idea, a public reading that no one attended at a non-profit theater in New Jersey. Poems set to music hadn't been that crazy an idea, but Adam's orchestrations were wild--Electric guitar to mimic gothic melody, and then moments of light that made her cry when she sang for him.

"Who's going to be Poe?" she asked.

"I cut Poe."

"You cut Poe?"

"There is no Poe. He's the vacuum, the void, the nothingness of the soul, and you, Mrs. Poe, and the other characters, are the reactions, the vestiges, the being born and the dying. I took out what was in between."

The problem with being friends with a playwright was the concept stage. There were not enough drugs in the world for actors at times like this. She took another sip of champagne and set the glass on the checkered table and asked a more practical question. "So, how big's the cast?"

"Two."

"What?"

"We need to find you a man."

Leah quirked an eyebrow.

"Someone local. That's part of the contract with Durham. A good ol' Carolina boy. Remember, Poe grew up in Richmond."

"Where's that again?"

"Virginia. See, it's good you're coming. You need to expand your horizons."

"I didn't say I was coming"

"Leah, you'll be the lead. The star. And it's paid for."

"Fine. I'm coming, I'm coming." As soon as she called her agent.

Adam took her hand and smiled.

"When is it?"

"We leave May 15th. Opening night is the end of June."

Zarth's windows were trimmed with tiny white lights, shining against the cold darkness outside. She exhaled. Summer was too far away to imagine. "Summer. Three months?" she asked.

"The best three months of your life."

"Oh, really."

"Look at where this expense account has gotten us already, darling. So it'll certainly be the best three months of mine," he said. "I'm willing to share."

She raised her champagne glass. "To the theater."

He clinked glasses. "To living dangerously." And then he quoted, "But lo, a stir is in the air! The wave- there is a movement there! As if the towers had thrust aside--"

She covered his mouth, spilling champagne on the table in her effort to reach him.

Chapter Two

"Mrs. Thero is looking for someone to give her son tap-dancing lessons," Margaret said.

Leah contemplated an appropriate response as she regarded her mother. For the three decades Leah had stood in this kitchen, Margaret Fisher had looked largely the same--brown hair turning to grey pulled back into a bun, a worn but warm expression, her hands constantly moving. She'd been a smoker before getting pregnant with Leah, and thirty years later the ghosts of cigarettes lingered. The only thing that had changed was height. A monolith when Leah was a child, Margaret was now her own height and, slightly stooping, seemed smaller. Leah hoped for her father's carriage. She sensed though that she was looking at future self.

"I don't dance, Mom."

"Well, you dance well enough. We saw you in that--what was it?"

"Company? When I played Kathy? And that's not the same as actually dancing, you know. And it was the recital for acting class."

"I just thought if you weren't doing anything..."

Leah put her hand to her face. She knew she shouldn't have this argument for the four-hundred-thousandth time, but she said, anyway, "I have a busy schedule, Mom. I just don't work the same hours as most people."

Margaret brought plates to the table. They may have lived in a Manhattan apartment, but at least they had a full-sized kitchen. Linoleum floor and white pine cabinets and all. "Honey, you're turning thirty-four in a few weeks. Don't you think it's time to--"

"Give up?"

"Honey, I want to see your name in lights as much as you do, but--"

"Mom, I work all the time." Leah leaned against a kitchen chair. Her sister and father were in the next room watching Jeopardy!, and she envied them. She'd wanted to tell them about Adam, but she'd opened with the anime job instead, and that had led to too much explanation.

"I know, but it's not well-paying, is it?"

"It's a little too late to become an accountant now," Leah said.

"You've got your degree in Psychology. You could do all sorts of things."

"I am doing all sorts of things."

"I just didn't expect, when you started singing, that your work would be so--grungy."

"It's fine, Mom."

"How are you going to land a man?"

"Wow, when did we go back to the thirties?"

"When you turned thirty," Margaret said. "Several years ago."

"There are plenty of--people--around, Mom. I meet more people than you do." Leah chastised herself for playing the pronoun game. At her age. In the 21st century, even. But when it came to her mother, she couldn't bring herself to face the inevitable disappointment.

"Someone who's not in theater," Margaret finally said.

Leah sighed.

Margaret went to the doorway and yelled, "Harry! Jessica! Dinner!" Shuffling sounds came from the other room.

"Mom, I got the lead in something," Leah said.

"What, dear?"

"Poe is being produced. Budget for costumes, lighting, music, everything."

Harry walked in and asked, "Poe? The musical your friend wrote?"

"Yes, Adam wrote it," Leah said.

"He came to Thanksgiving?" Harry asked. He was a full head taller than his eldest daughter and had a swarthy complexion that matched no one in the family. He'd once had thick black hair, but was now completely bald. He was, Leah would admit openly, her favorite parent.

"And Hanukkah," she said.

Jessica giggled.

Leah scoffed at her sister, who she was perpetually jealous of. Born when Leah was fifteen, Jessica was the true baby of the family, spoiled rotten by everyone rather than being the mostly-ignored accidental love child of two young, overworked parents. Jessica had gotten her father's dark hair, but her mother's height. Still, she was more beautiful than Leah, even at nineteen.

"That's a relief," Harry said. "I thought Adam was homeless, and Poe was just part of his wild imaginings."

"I sang a song from it at your office's Christmas party," Leah said.

Harry cringed. "Oh. So you did."

Jessica's giggling increased.

"Dinner is served," Margaret said

They settled in at the kitchen table that had been a wedding present. Leah looked at her plate. She tried to guess the meat.

Margaret asked, "So, which theater, dear? Roundabout? Little Theater? Stage One?"

"It's in North Carolina."

Margaret dropped her fork.

"Where's that?" Jessica asked.

"Well, honey, do you know the Mason-Dixon line?" Harry asked.

"You are not crossing that," Margaret said.

"Mom."

"That's where the Germans settled."

"Mom."

* * *

"Happy birthday," Adam sang, wrapping his arms around Leah and dragging her from side to side. The tavern owner brought over a birthday cake with thirty-four candles arranged along the edges. She blew them out, not looking at her mother.

"Did you make a wish?" Jessica asked. Her sister wore a black dress that complimented her hair and made her look Goth and college-y, but no young men had approached yet. Leah was eyeing the edges of the crowd.

"Yes," Leah said.

"And?"

"I want it to come true."

"Why change things now?" Jessica asked.

Jessica stood on the other side of the low, rich wood table, free from her parents, who surrounded Leah instead.

"You're not getting any cake," Leah said

Jessica stuck out her tongue. Her mother went to cut the cake, urging Leah out of the way like she might mess up something. Leah wandered to the restaurant's front window. The night sky glowed. City lights reflected the blanket of clouds hovering over Manhattan, making everything feel warmer and closer, but also bringing snow. The first snowflakes were supposed to fall by morning.

Her next reading with Mark and Naomi was for a new Pixar musical early in development. She would play a singing animal. She hadn't told her mother. The check would barely cover her cell phone bill. Her dating status would be the topic of conversation after her next acting class.

She was tired of the same old people and the same old gossip.

Adam looked happier lately than he had in months. He beamed. He smiled. Derrick leaving him must have taken a harder toll than she realized. The depression had changed him only minimally, but the elation was so drastic that she agonized for the man he had apparently been before. He came to her side, at the window.

"Adam, I'm sick of everybody."

She could see her family in the window's reflection, and the small crowd of friends, the people who came to all her shows. She envied them their belief in her success.

"You had dinner with your mom, again, didn't you?" Adam said. "I mean, alone."

"It's not just that. It's Pixar and my birthday and wanting to do something important with my life. Something important that has my stamp on it as much as anyone else's."

"I wrote Poe for you," he said.

"Oh, Adam."

He tucked himself around her elbow and said, "Happy birthday."

"We should probably get married. My mother loves you."

"But your father doesn't approve," he said. "Is it because I'm gay, or is it because I'm black?"

"It's because he believes in passion."

"Don't we all?"

"Not my mother. Maybe I--"

Leah thought of her passionate, wounding affair with Grace, who had managed to work as an actress in New York ever since without running into her. Grace was playing Mel in Fotosynthesis down the street and Leah could walk by the marquee and feel bitter. She hadn't gone to see the show.

"You're thinking about Grace, aren't you?"

She glanced around to see where her family was before answering, and hated herself for doing it. "It's been five years. I think that part of my life is over. It's time for the settling down and having puppies phase."

"Honey."

"Being in love is kind of like being crazy, you know? And now that they've traced it to a specific biological process, maybe they can cure it."

"Or bottle it," Adam said. "That phase of your life is only over when you die. Think of Poe. He ached and loved deeply."

"He died at forty."

"Then you'd better get started," Adam said.

"I started years ago."

"Then maybe you'll get somewhere."

Her mother called her back, holding out a piece of cake.

Chapter Three

Sophia Medina stood as still as possible. At least a hundred people rushed past her. Someone came up to her with a tape measure, measured her, touched her waist, her breast, her calf. Told her how tall she was, derisively. She already knew 5'8" was too tall to play Lady Macbeth. And with her Haitian mother, and at twenty-five, she was too ethnic and too young. The director had actually listed these characteristics as he bumped her up from Lady Macduff.

There'd been no one else available. Just Sophia from the "also starring" section of the playbill. Her own understudy had taken over Lady Macduff. A forty-something actress, a local like herself, who could probably play Lady Macbeth in her sleep.

Creating an entirely new wardrobe for her at the last minute had already become part of the Scottish curse as far as the crew was concerned. That the dressers were late was only the tenth thing that had gone wrong today. She was terrified of moving. Terrified of breaking the spell that had gotten her to center stage in the central role.

"Stage left, Sophie," the director called. He sat an impossible twenty feet away in the fourth row of seats. She moved to the left.

Grey-haired and manicured, with a distinguished face that graced every program's back fold, the director had been the Shakepeare director at Durham Playhouse for over twenty years. She was nothing to him. Just a problem on a sheet of paper.

"Okay, Sophie. First monologue. Lady Macbeth. Boom."

"Now?" She glanced at a crew member carrying a castle turret past her.

"You do know your lines, don't you?" he asked, glancing at his watch.

Her face burned. She'd been the understudy for months and being bumped up to lead didn't automatically make her an idiot. And yet, she started badly, stumbling over the first line, distracted by the noise around her. "They met me in the day of success--"

The director waved his hand. "Try to sound excited, Sophia. This man is telling you about witches, not that he got a raise at work."

Her eyes stung. She started again, reciting her lines in front of those hundred people, most of whom probably thought they could do a better job than she could as Lady Macbeth. Even the men. The rest just wished she'd get out of the way so they could set up the lighting effects.

"Art not without ambition..."

She closed her eyes as she went on, pretending she'd been on stage for twenty years like her predecessor, the one everyone still thought of as the real Lady Macbeth. She lifted her chin, and tried to show everyone that she belonged.

"Better," the director said.

* * *

The auditorium sat over five hundred people and had no balcony, so Leah could sit on the edge of the stage and look into the back and the chairs would disappear into the darkness when the house lights were off. She was exhausted. The bus ride from New York to Durham had taken ten hours. Plenty of time to ask Adam, repeatedly, what the hell they were doing here.

He'd only taken one ear bud out and turned down half the volume of his iPod before answering for the tenth time.

"It's Poe."

"Who's going to see it?"

"Half the seats are season ticket holders. They'll see anything. And probably complain. Another twenty-five percent, according to the director, who's like one of those local demigods, are students and senior centers. Poe is educational."

She scoffed.

"Come on, all these kids had to learn about it in high school. Anyway, as soon as the reviews come out, we'll sell the rest of the tickets."

"We're getting reviewed? Like, Ben Brantley reviewed?"

"By someone local whose job is to be both the movie and theater critic."

"I don't actually believe you," Leah said.

He showed her the Raleigh City Press and the Greensboro Inquirer. Not only could people read in North Carolina, some of them were kind of artsy. There was an independent summer film festival and some kind of naked Shakespeare at the beach. That prompted her to ask why they weren't at the beach.

"Well, the middle is where you'd want to be in North Carolina," he said.

"Oh, really."

"David Sedaris is from here," Adam said. "Alan Gurganus?"

"Are they actual local gay people, Adam?"

"Only in a sexual sense."

She smacked him with a newspaper.

The bus had gotten into the Durham bus terminal at six a.m. Filled with homeless people and early-morning quiet, the terminal didn't seem that much different than New York, except that it was outside, and she could see buildings between the buildings. She felt exposed and let herself be bundled into the rented car. Then, unwilling to see the Best Western just yet, Leah opted for being dropped off at the theater. She wanted to see if it was an actual theater, or if Adam had found some amphitheater without bathrooms or stage lights where they would prance around like forest nymphs reading poetry.

The set designers for South Pacific let her in when they arrived at seven and then they went back hammering underneath the stage and painting and playing with electronics up in the sound booth, so aside from a few flickering lights, she was left relatively alone.

She had plenty of time and space to reflect on her inadequacy. Singing Poe was daunting. The process had seemed less intimidating back when she'd been in the bare room and Adam was at the piano; when it was just a cool idea that might one day be a concept album. But now the theater was nearly sold out and she wished she weren't the leading lady.

If the music was good and she couldn't sing it, she could ruin Adam.

Her hands felt cold. She hummed a few bars. The theater remained unimpressed by her. She kicked her feet, dangling off the lip of the stage. She was pretty sure her butt was asleep, and the stage, though swept and mopped, had the imprint of a thousand shoes. She cleared her throat and there was no answering echo, no haunting accompaniment from the grand piano behind her, no crash from down below.

"And thus thy memory is to me," she said in a hoarse half-whisper, and forced the next line to be more melodic, "Like some enchanted far-off isle--"

Footsteps sounded in the wings. "In some tumultuous sea," Leah mumbled as a woman approached.

"I didn't mean to interrupt," the woman said. "I didn't know you were here."

Leah got to her feet. The woman before her was younger than she was, taller, weighed maybe twenty pounds more. Her black hair shined in a spotlight and her dark brown eyes caught Leah's reflection. The woman carried herself with grace across the stage but the voice she projected seemed hesitant, apologetic.

Leah felt like an old and tiny stick figure by comparison, and her knee hadn't done her any favors by creaking as she straightened up. "I just got here," she said.

"Where did you come from?"

"New York," Leah said, and then added, "Manhattan."

"Oh. I've always wanted to go." The woman's voice, still quiet, echoed her distant expression, even though she was looking right at Leah.

"You haven't?"

"I don't have my Equity card yet."

"Oh, so you're an actress?"

The woman nodded. "I'm playing Lady M. In, you know--"

"I know." Leah looked furtively at the ceiling. She didn't believe in the Scottish Play curse, but who ever knew in the South. "Aren't you a little young?" she asked, then bit her tongue.

In New York, she never would have asked such a rude question. But then, in New York, she would have known already who was playing Lady Macbeth. She tilted her head, but the woman didn't look too angry.

"It's--" the woman paused. "A long story."

Leah nodded.

"I was coming to work on my monologues--without the crew. It's been so incredibly loud. I'll leave you to your song," the woman said, and turned to go back into the wings.

"No, wait, I'll go," Leah said.

"It's fine. I'm sure you're here for the same reason I am."

"I am," Leah said. "But there can only be one Lady M."

The woman smiled, just as Leah's cell phone rang, a recording of her own voice singing "Memory." Adam's ring. He had programmed it himself. Leah blushed.

The woman stepped back, closer to the wings.

"See?" Leah said. "I'm late for my breakfast date. I'll go."

The woman smiled and gave a wave goodbye. Leah went down the stairs at the side of the stage. She headed for the back of the theater and then turned around to watch. The woman took center stage, and said, in a voice suddenly loud and bold, that didn't seem to match the quiet words from five seconds ago, "The raven itself is hoarse that croaks the fatal entrance..."

Leah tried not to be foolish enough to take that as some sort of portent.

Chapter Four

"So, I want to tell you--" Leah said, and then looked around. "Are we really, actually at a Waffle House?"

The overall motif of the diner was yellow, with pale tiles along the walls and lots of windows. She liked the natural light. She didn't like the smell. Yeast and syrup and sausage. Though her mouth watered. Maybe she did like the smell. Adam had pushed her into a yellow booth and her back didn't quite curve properly against the vinyl.

"Leah, don't stare, you look like a tourist."

"Instead of?"

"An actress. Besides, if someone says, 'Ya'll ain't from around here,' I'm likely to spit orange juice out of my nose and it'll hurt." He shook his pinkie prissily at her.

"Oh, like New York is so cosmopolitan."

Adam giggled.

"Don't do that. They might beat you up, or something."

"Leah, darling, half the people in this Waffle House are gay."

"What?"

"Look around."

She looked around. There were two middle-aged women sitting with a little girl, watching indulgently as the girl drank a milkshake. They had mirrored expressions of motherly love on their faces. Across the room, a man writing in a leather-bound notebook sat alone at the counter, looking ordinary, but Leah heard him order steak and eggs and really, like Adam she could sometimes sense things.

She looked back at Adam. "I'm so disappointed."

"Why?"

"Gay people at Waffle House? Is there no place to get a champagne brunch?"

"Obviously not. Here we are."

"Adam."

Adam leaned across the table and took her hand, and she rolled her eyes and prepared to listen to his speech yet again.

"If you'd just come out when you were with Grace we'd be so over this by now. Your mother keeps leaving me voice mail. I think she suspects something."

"About us?"

"About you."

Leah sighed. "Name one publicly out lesbian actress in New York."

"Rosie O'Donnell?"

"One that works for a living."

He shrugged. "I could name a dozen and so could you. But I'm not even saying you're wrong. I'm just saying it's a pain in the ass."

She was hurt by that and concentrated on her strawberry pancakes.

"What were you going to tell me?" he asked.

"What?"

"Just now, before the shocking gay people at Waffle House expose."

"Oh, that I met Lady Macbeth."

"Sophia Medina? What's she like?"

"Young," Leah said. She took a sip of her coffee. "Isn't Lady Macbeth supposed to be played by some well-regarded actress in her forties or fifties? Usually a ringer or someone of local fame? Like me in 20 years? Not--a kid?"

"They brought someone big up from Charlotte to do it, from what I read in the paper, and four weeks into rehearsal they found out she had breast cancer. Sophia was Lady Macduff. They bumped her up."

"Why not just bring in another ringer?"

"I'm sure they tried. People have schedules, Leah," Adam said. "Remember how hard it was for me to drag you down here? What do you have against Medina?"

"Nothing. She's just... young."

"And beautiful, I hear. Maybe she was actually good enough for the part."

"Young, beautiful actresses often are," Leah said.

"I wonder if she can sing."

"Adam."

"Don't worry, I'm not recasting you."

Leah smiled. "Ironic, isn't it? I'm far too old to be playing a thirteen year old love interest--metaphor or not--and she's far too young to be Macbeth. We should switch."

"I'm crushed," Adam said.

Leah felt a twinge of satisfaction. "It's just business, Adam."

"Honey, it's art."

* * *

The theater was teeming with life when Leah and Adam got back. South Pacific and Macbeth were to rotate for a month in the space, followed by one week of Poe, and then the big finale of three weeks of Side Show. Leah avoided the stage and the dressing rooms and followed Adam around. He explained that they would get stage time later in the week, but that he was joining the casting auditions for Side Show in order to find her Poe. He had dropped the idea that Poe didn't exist. Somewhere in a grave, Edgar was thanking him.

"I want to pick him," Leah said.

"Your feelings will be under consideration. Chemistry is important."

"Will I get to do lines with him?"

"When we do callbacks," he said.

"Adam."

"What? It isn't fun from this side, either?"

"It's never fun until rehearsal."

He shooed her into a chair. Plush red velvet, but very uncomfortable. She squirmed. "Our poor audience," she said.

"Leah, please."

"I mean the chairs, Adam."

He settled in next to her. "Oh."

"See?"

"Well, we'll just have to bring them to their feet, then."

"How, with our action sequences? Our amazing pyrotechnics?"

"We do have a lot of corpses," Adam said.

"That we do."

* * *

Adam chose Edward Whitfield for Poe. Edward preferred to be called Ward and was indistinctly Asian, with deep, luminous eyes and peroxide-blonde hair and a lilting Southern accent that belied his appearance and all the brooding he carried within him.

He'd spoken "The Raven," for his callback, of course, and there was nothing special about his oration compared to the four times they'd heard it already, but his accent and his youth added a sweetness that appealed to Adam.

"It's changing the musical," Leah said. "It's supposed to be old and dark."

"Poe died at 40," Adam reminded her.

"But not his words."

Ward's voice already whispered in her head, "Each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor. Eagerly I wished the morrow--" as she went to the deli down the street from the theater.

A rainbow flag hung from a flagpole on the roof, swaying in a breeze under the oak trees. Inside, it just looked like a deli, with a long counter from front to back and a few tables by the windows, mostly empty at seven o'clock, except for Lady Macbeth sitting at the window, looking out at the sunny street.

"Join you?" Leah asked.

A flash of terror crossed Sophia's expression, and then she recognized Leah. She shrugged. "I'm leaving soon, but go ahead."

Leah settled down and put her food on the table, careful not to invade the woman's personal space, and looked out the window. No one passed by. There were old houses across the street, stately, with yards overgrown and bricks spilling from their retaining walls. "I'm Leah," she said, and took a bite of her salad.

"Sophia. Well--most people call me Sophie."

"I've been calling you Lady Macbeth," Leah said.

Sophia nodded.

Leah ate.

"So, is this different from Manhattan?" Sophia asked.

"Oh, yeah."

Sophia took a sip of her soda. There was mostly ice in the glass, and she captured a piece and chewed on it.

Leah looked out the window, and asked, "Is it different from where you're from?"

"Yes, but--not really. It's just another town." Sophia exhaled. "It just doesn't feel like home. You know? So it feels empty."

"How'd you get the part?"

"Elaine--I knew her in Charlotte, before we joined the cast. She recommended me."

"And now she's--"

"Sick, yeah."

"Is she going to be all right?"

"No."

Leah tried to say, "I'm sorry," but her throat dried up. She swallowed instead and reached for her green tea. But there wasn't anything else to talk about. She didn't know this girl sitting next to her, looking sadly out the window. "So, what's your favorite movie?" wasn't going to break the ice. Leah hadn't read Macbeth since college, and she hadn't been in college in ten years.

Ten years.

"Oh, God," she said.

"It's okay--" Sophia said.

"Oh, no, I was thinking of something else." Leah looked sideways at her. "I'm sorry."

Sophia's face seemed to close. Her expression became impenetrable.

Leah asked, "Will she get to see you as Lady Macbeth?"

"Yes." Sophia relaxed and smiled. "Yes."

Leah smiled, too. Sophia carried an intensity that made Leah's skin tingle slightly whenever she encountered her--both times--and Sophia's smile just intensified it. No wonder she was on stage. The woman had presence. Sophia balled up her napkin and tossed it on her food wrapper, but made no move to get up.

"Where is everyone?" Leah asked.

"There's pizza at the theater for the lighting crew. But I have to go back at eight. They're doing a props rehearsal for Lady Macduff's murder."

"How's she going to die?"

"Come see the play."

"Shakespeare? I don't know. I'd have to read a review first. How do I know the book is any good?"

Sophia chuckled and went back to looking out the window.

Leah finished her salad and said, "We should get ice cream."

"Okay," Sophia said.

"Is there ice cream?"

"I don't know." Sophia furrowed her brow. "But there are donuts."

"We could take some back to your props master."

"He'd like that."

* * *

The Krispy Kreme was a little white and green neon shack in the middle of a run-down industrial strip. Inside it was clean and bright, and smelled like sugar and coffee.

Leah inhaled. "I love coffee."

"It won't keep you up?"

"It's sunny."

Sophia raised her eyebrows.

Leah laughed. "No, I'll be fine." She took her coffee and surveyed the donuts behind the counter. "These aren't New York donuts."

Sophia touched her arm, and then let her hand drop. "You've never had a donut from here?"

"I've only been in Durham two days."

"Krispy Kreme is right here, though. We walked."

Leah looked helplessly at the cashier. He pulled a donut from the rack, tore it in half, and offered a piece to each of them.

"Do I dunk it in my coffee?" Leah asked.

"If you do, they'll throw you out," Sophia said, around the donut piece she'd already shoved in her mouth. She ordered two dozen more.

Leah put the sticky dough into her mouth and chewed. Sweetness filled her mouth. The dough was warm and fluffy. The glaze stuck to her gums and her teeth. She licked her lips after she swallowed, mourning the passage of food from her mouth, and said, "Oh, my God," to keep herself from moaning.

Sophia smirked.

The cashier handed her another donut. She took a bite and chewed. "These are so soft."

"You should try them with the chocolate glaze," Sophia said.

"We have to leave."

Leah bolted for the door. She stood outside, eating her donut and watching the empty street, while Sophia paid and followed her out. "Where are all the people?" she asked.

"People?"

"In New York, you're never alone unless you're inside your apartment, and usually, you have roommates. So you have to lock yourself in your bedroom. But here, it's so... expansive."

"Are you lonely?"

"No." Leah swallowed the last of her donut. "Well. Not because of that."

Sophia smiled.

Leah licked her lips. "Are you a crack dealer? Why did you take me in there?"

"I own stock in Krispy Kreme. How's the coffee?"

Leah took a sip and considered. "It's merely okay."

"You'll have to introduce me to what qualifies as good coffee, then."

"Adam rented a house," Leah said as they walked back toward the theater, thinking of the coffee grinder and the percolator he'd brought from New York and the beans she had shipped from fair trade, supple and dark and staining her fingers in the mornings. No more Best Western, but that didn't make it home.

"What?"

"For the duration. Me and him. And real coffee. A couple of the out-of-towners who came with us got another one down the block. Ours has a piano, so we can do rehearsals. We're going to have a party at some point. For everyone at the theater."

"Okay," Sophia said. She hefted her bag of donut boxes, and gave Leah a wave as she went toward the theater.

Leah looked down the street. The house was two blocks away, just another old, stately empty house rented to theater people in the summer and Duke graduate students in the winter. She set off walking, looking around cautiously. In New York, the bigger the crowds, the safer the woman walking alone. She missed tourists.

Thinking of herself as being one made her feel better.

* * *

"It's so quiet here," Leah said, as she and Adam sat upstairs in her bedroom. He was lying on her bed with his laptop, and she was at her vanity, arranging photographs around the mirror.

"We could put on some music," Adam said.

"That's not what I mean. I mean--I can't sleep without sirens. It's like we're in the middle of nowhere and aliens are going to come to our cow field and probe us."

A car drove by outside. Leah jumped.

"There's a million and a half people around us," Adam said.

"How do you know?"

He turned the computer around. "I looked it up."

Leah leaned her forehead against the mirror. "Where are they?"

"Leah, darling."

She tapped her forehead.

Adam said, "I don't know how it managed to get there, but you have icing on your chin."

* * *

Leah opened one eye. Sunlight streamed through the window. She sighed. Adam was gone and so was his laptop, though he'd draped a blanket over her. She still had her shoes on. Adam knew nothing about comfort.

She went downstairs after her shower and Adam, shirtless, was making eggs in the kitchen.

"Hungry?" He asked.

"Can we have donuts?"

He glanced at her and shook his head. "Do you want to check your email?"

"No." She looked at the coffee grinder. It seemed insurmountable.

"Your mother probably wrote," he said.

"She probably wrote six times. Five times to ask if I've found a man in North Carolina and once to ask if I've found 'someone.'" She made quote fingers.

"Parents," Adam said.

"I like your parents."

"They don't nag you about grandbabies."

"They don't want me to bear your children?"

"They want black babies. They suggest I become famous so I can meet Denzel Washington."

"Not if my mother meets him first."

Adam grinned and waved a spatula at her.

"Grind my beans?" she asked.

"Not in a million years, girl."

"I'll give you a dollar."

Adam flipped eggs onto a plate and set it on the counter next to the grinder. "Eat your eggs."

"What are we doing today?"

"Ward's coming over to do a reading. Then I'm going to go talk to the set guys."

"Great."

"We're finally doing it, Leah," he said.

Maybe when she had some coffee it would sink in.

Chapter Five

Leah realized by their second rehearsal that she hated Ward. She stood with him in the living room, with the oak coffee table and the fading flower print wallpaper. The room was almost time-period appropriate. Ward, however, was insufferable, arrogant, demanding, and young. He touched her too much. He said, "Quoth the raven," like it was his mantra, and his hair--she just hated his hair. He ran his fingers across the blond spikes and smirked.

She wished she were at the theater, or at the deli with Sophia, her only other friendly acquaintance in all of North Carolina. Ward didn't count. They'd done a dry reading at the kitchen table the day before, over Leah's precious Honduras coffee and tiny pancakes with marmalade Adam made. Ward's gentle lilt did make the words come alive. His pace clashed with hers, making her feel guttural and sharp, too Jewish New York for singing love poems.

Adam reminded her that Poe wrote in Boston as they did a second run-through with him at the piano and Leah and Ward standing in the living room. Ward would seize her arms and shake her and sing to her and she'd forget her lines, distracted by the intimacy of a man touching her after months of recording studios and singing alone on stage, or sitting at a computer, repeating words into a microphone over and over.

She'd forgotten what acting was.

"I need you both to know your stuff by the time we start tech rehearsals," Adam said.

"Because it'll all change again?"

"It has to change from something to something. Not from nothing to something."

Leah plunked a key at the piano.

"Just, start from the top," Adam said as he left for another set design meeting.

Ward folded his arms and grinned.

"What?"

"My big number is a Joan Baez song. A song that someone else set to Poe's words that Adam's recycling," he said. "Does Adam do anything original?"

"He's gone two seconds and you badmouth him? Fabulous. At least he didn't use any material from the last Poe musical."

"No one wants to remember that one," Ward said. "I think he's great. But I'm not saying his words."

"It's his narrative. You're singing his notes. Why didn't you try out for Macbeth? I hear that's exciting and fresh."

"I did," Ward said. "I got picked up by the experimental thing instead. It's my first lead, but come on. I've been on stage with--"

"Bigger names than me? If you're such a hot shot, why aren't you in New York?"

"I don't want to go to New York. It's big and dirty and overcrowded and fast and you can't see the sky. I don't want to work on a soap opera or some cop show. I want to stay here. This is my home." His accent was stronger with his passion. He'd have to trim it for the stage. There was lilt, and then there was hick. She looked sadly at him when he said, "I want the leads in North Carolina."

"Well, here you are," Leah said.

He sat down at the piano. "Here I am. Good point, I guess."

"Can we please just sing?"

"Let's start at the finale and work back."

"Won't that fuck everything up?"

"It's time to experiment. To explore each other." He put his hand on her forearm. She shuddered with repulsion and looked forward to the House of Usher sequence.

* * *

Leah went to the deli a few times for dinner but Sophia didn't show up. She wondered, paranoid, if she were being avoided. Maybe Sophia just hadn't liked the sandwiches. Time to stop wondering about total strangers. After all, Macbeth was going into dress rehearsal.

Each night Leah sang by the piano with Ward and Adam. One evening they piled into Adam's car, between dinner and getting drunk on the porch, and gone into downtown. There wasn't much to see. Adam promised her pizza in Raleigh in the near future and Ward tried to explain college basketball. She tried to explain the Yankees, but Adam started in on the Mets, and Ward had to break up their yelling. After that they stuck to seemingly safer topics, like Webber and Sondheim, and then tried to avoid all being in the car together. Leah was used to walking to work anyway. But the summer heat made her sweat and drained her of energy. She drank more water and justified more donuts.

* * *

The rented house had books on the living room bookshelves and Leah perused them, marveling at the eclectic collection developed from a decade of students and theater nuts passing through. There were texts on economics, war, and poetry, along with romances and thrillers and a collection of Garfield comic strips. She had read the Garfield already, using each strip as a reward for remembering her lines or working through a tricky section of the score.

"Coming, Leah?" Adam called from the front door.

She scooped up a Harlequin romance called The Prince of Patagonia and followed him out.

Ward met them at the theater.

Adam sat at the piano stage left, clipboard by his side on the bench. "From the top, all the way. Can we do it?"

Leah gave him the middle finger.

Ward shrugged.

Adam began to play.

Leah got the first four lines of melody. Her voice cracked as she sang.

"Keep going," Adam said.

Ward stepped in and took over the main opening song.

I was a child and she was a child,

In this kingdom by the sea;

But we loved with a love that was more than love-

I and my Annabel Lee;

With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven

Coveted her and me.

Adam had known to open the musical with something the audience would recognize, but not the big number, not "The Raven." Let the audience live in anticipation all night. Leah had moved to the wings, but she had been there, had been, for four brief lines, Annabel Lee herself. Hopefully the audience would remember.

Hopefully the audience would care.

* * *

Ward threw down his sheet music. Paper scattered across the stage.

Adam pinched the bridge of his nose without saying anything.

Leah took it upon herself to react. "Fuck you, Ward."

Ward folded his arms.

"You prima donna. Can't you sing once through? Really? I don't seem to have a problem."

Ward said, "Adam wasn't interrupting you every five seconds."

"I wasn't making mistakes."

"Or maybe you were just too hopeless to deal with."

"I'm not--" The onslaught of fury brought tears. Some deep part of Leah echoed Ward's dismissal and by extension, Adam's. She turned to the piano.

Ward did, also.

Adam frowned and glanced at the sheet music on the stage. "Let's skip to the next song. I want to be out of here by lunch."

Leah stepped to center stage. She ignored Ward and listened to the piano. However poor Ward might think her talent, the song belonged to her.

From childhood's hour I have not been

As others were; I have not seen

As others saw; I could not bring

My passions from a common spring…

* * *

Theater volunteers had brought potluck for South Pacific's final dress rehearsal. Leah helped herself to fried chicken and then went outside to guiltily eat it in the heat of the sun. Maybe if she melted Adam could find a new Virginia for his project, instead of one he had to keep yelling to, "Sweeter. Why can't you look sweeter?"

Reading and eating fried chicken simultaneously proved impossible, so she ate, wiped at her hands as best she could, and then picked up the book. If she got grease on the pages, no one would miss it.

"What are you reading?"

"The Prince of Patagonia," Leah said with flourish. Then she looked up to see who had asked, shading her eyes with the book.

Sophia stood on the top step of the theater, smiling. "Is it hot?"

"I don't know. I promised myself this time I wouldn't just skip to the juicy bits," Leah said. "Maybe they'll be better if they have build-up, or something."

Sophia nodded." I'm late for rehearsal, so--"

"Break a leg."

"Thanks."

Leah put down her book, wrapped her arms around her knees, and tried to guess which house across the street might be a crack house, from the amount of traffic going in and out on a Thursday afternoon.

Chapter Six

South Pacific opened.

Leah sat in the back row with Adam and elbowed him as hard as she could during "I'm Going to Wash That Man Right Out of My Hair." He hummed along.

"Adam," she said.

"What? I like musicals."

She rolled her eyes in the dark.

The after party was at a mostly closed restaurant three blocks away. Leah talked to each person she ran into for about three seconds each and was relieved to spot Sophia across the room. Sophia wore black slacks and a black, low-cut top and looked ready for both an evening of dancing and for a rehearsal. Leah let herself be impressed.

"Some evening, you know? It's like--alluring?" Sophia asked when she drew near, smiling.

Leah wanted to say that she loved that smile, and the words were on the tip of her tongue. Sophia, though, was looking at her oddly, so she licked her lips instead and asked, "How's Macbeth?"

"I don't want to talk about Mac," Sophia said.

Leah nodded. "I hate my co-star."

"Ward?"

"You know him?"

"I've seen him around."

"Oh." Leah exhaled.

"So, how's your book?" Sophia asked.

Leah warmed at Sophia's remembering. "Oh. Demetrius, that's the prince, fell off his horse and into a pond, and that's how he met Brenda, who has no idea he's a prince, she just thinks he's a stupid rider."

Sophia chuckled. Then silence overtook them. Leah knew she should go, that it was polite to mingle, that they'd had their shot at conversation and had been reduced to the romance novel. But Adam came up to them and, as Sophia laughed at something he said, her bare arm brushed Leah's, and a charge went through her, a heat she hadn't felt since the first time she'd worked with Grace. She swallowed hard, unwilling to give up just yet.

Adam went on his way to talk to the director of South Pacific, and Leah turned to Sophia. "Where are you from? I don't think we ever got that far."

"Jacksonville," Sophia said. "My mother's Haitian and never quite got out of Florida. I was in Charlotte, doing post-graduate work in theater for a year, that's how I met Elaine."

"I never knew there was so much going on in North Carolina."

"I've been trying to break into the national tours. Without much success. But I'm making enough to eat. If I don't think about the student loans," Sophia said, and looked resigned. She spoke with a seriousness that belied her age, and Leah could already imagine her onstage, intense, with presence.

"God, how old are you?" Leah cringed. "Sorry."

Sophia bumped shoulders with Leah, which made Leah nearly faint, and said, "Twenty-five."

"And still trying to break in?"

"Trying. You?"

"It's the same in New York. Instead of tours, just Broadway. And us, 'Off.'" Leah said. She noticed she was talking in sentences twice as long as Sophia's, and tried to rein in her chattiness. If Sophia preferred the stillness she herself exuded, Leah's chances were hopeless.

"Adam seems so talented," Sophia said.

"He really, really is. But it's business. And hey, aren't you?"

Sophia pirouetted. "Yes, I am."

"We get enough work to keep going."

"So we'll keep going. It's nice to meet someone from New York. Everyone here is leading a different life than what I want."

Ward was across the room, schmoozing the producers, and Leah thought about his dreams. She understood, finally, homesickness. "To goals, then," she said. She offered up her glass.

Sophia clinked it with hers. "And to not having anything to fall back on."

"Well, except family."

"Except family." Sophia took a sip of her drink.

"I guess nothing makes me want to succeed more than that," Leah said. She made a face, and finished off her drink, and Sophia laughed and leaned into her arm.

They stood together, chatting about far-off places, as people came up to them to introduce themselves.

Later, walking home with Adam, Leah realized that Macbeth opened in two days, and Poe tech rehearsals started tomorrow, and there would be no way she'd have time with Sophia again. The words to "Some Enchanted Evening" stayed stuck in her head until she fell asleep.

* * *

"You're brooding," Adam said at breakfast.

"I'm hung over."

"You had one glass of fruit punch last night."

"Fine. I have a crush on someone," Leah said. She wanted to talk about it, to make herself feel less crazy. This wasn't why she had come to North Carolina. Some people wrote it all out--like Adam, she supposed--some people brooded. She talked. To anyone who would listen, and Adam had been stupid enough to make breakfast.

"On who?"

Leah glared at him. He folded his arms. She stabbed her fork into the eggs. The metal clanged against the ceramic plate. He shrugged and said, "I'll figure it out."

"I'm sure you will."

"Want to read the review of South Pacific?" He tapped the folded copy of the Durham News-Star on the table.

"Just tell me the good parts," Leah said.

"The avant garde staging and the sense of nostalgia in a similarly war-torn era remind us all of the timelessness of our humanity."

"Jesus," Leah said.

Adam nodded. "Sure as hell hope he likes Poe."

"Don't you have the reviews you want written in your head already?"

"Sure. But those will never, ever see the light of day."

Leah covered his hand on the table with hers, and kept eating.

He squeezed her fingers gently and said, "At least the musical will."

"Does it feel like giving birth?"

"I have no fucking clue."

* * *

The set designer yelled at Leah not to break anything. She stood gingerly in the center of the stage, surrounded by fabric. Her jeans and sweatshirt belied the opulence behind her, but Ward, wearing an undershirt and sweatpants, at least kept her company. They sang together. They stopped, they started. Leah began to feel like she knew what she was doing. She could close her eyes and let the century slip away from her.

Adam, conducting the five piece orchestra he'd put together, smiled up at her and she hit the harder notes. Ward's touches were more in the moment than inappropriate and when she ducked his kisses and he sang wounded songs to her, she felt her face grow warm.

"That's a wrap," Adam said at seven, and the crew and the musicians followed them home to sing around the piano and drink, laugh and eat pizza.

Leah settled onto the porch long after the sun had set. She listened to the crickets and the frogs, beyond the singing behind her, and let the heat invade her skin, and inhaled deeply, letting happiness fill her.

* * *

"Jeremy, come on," Leah said, leaning against the ticket window.

"Honey, it's sold out. It's Shakespeare. People dig that shit."

"I'm not just a civilian, you know."

"It's opening night. Next week I can hook you up, girlfriend."

Leah pressed her face against the glass.

"Here," a voice said behind Jeremy. Leah opened her eyes. Sophia slid a ticket toward her.

"Thanks," Leah said.

"You want to see me that bad?" Sophia asked. She had on worn blue jeans and what looked like the same top from the South Pacific party and no makeup. Still, Lady Macbeth lurked within her, somewhere behind her eyes.

Leah grinned. "You're in this?"

"Just like Eve is kind of in the Bible."

Leah tapped the ticket against her lips." Thanks, again."

"No problem. My mom couldn't make it." Sophia's face fell, and she disappeared into the theater. Jeremy looked after her and sighed. Leah gave him a sympathetic look and ran off to find her seat.

An older, gaunt woman in several layers of shawl and overcoat that still managed to show she was too thin was sitting next to her, and Leah ventured to ask, "Elaine?"

Elaine smiled. She had bright blue eyes that met Leah's without hesitation. "Do I know you?" she asked.

"No. Sophia comped me the ticket, and I just thought--"

"She's a good kid," Elaine said.

"I guess we'll finally get to see," Leah said.

Chapter Seven

Sophia shook the stage. Her love for Macbeth was as palpable as her love of power. Her ambition felt like raw need.

Leah feared her. Her cajoling was cruel, and her youth only added to her soulless, vulture-like character; her seduction of an older man, her barrenness.

Leah trembled. Elaine's breathing stopped and started next to her. A gasp. Then silence, so that Macbeth's words thudded without obstacle through the auditorium.

When Leah found Sophia at the after party, all she could think of to say was, "A tale told by an idiot."

Sophia's smile was polite, but not the kind Leah had won from her before, and behind it there was a tinge of sadness that seemed to fade when Leah followed up with, "You were amazing."

"Thanks."

"Really amazing, actually," Leah said, with a rush of headiness.

Sophia laughed. "All right, all right."

The play had made Leah's skin crawl and she'd cried, afraid to wipe her cheeks in case the gesture gave her away. She wanted to seize Sophia and kiss her in gratitude for the emotion, also to have a place to channel it. She knew the swollen, alive feeling would ebb, and that she'd have to seek it out again. Already the scenes replaying in her head had lost their force, like worn photocopies or videotape.

Leah wondered if this is how people would feel if they saw her in Poe.

Sophia gently took her wrist and said, "I'm glad you came. I wanted you to see--" She paused.

"What?"

Sophia dropped her hand and shrugged. "Me."

"The understudies are always good. People forget that," Leah said.

"Even the understudies."

"Please. The only person with more 'tude around here is Ward."

"You haven't met our director," Sophia said.

Leah noticed, as the cast and crew swarmed about, and the press took pictures and asked for quotes, that though people came up to Sophia to congratulate her, even to gush, no one lingered.

When Elaine came, kissing each of Sophia's cheeks, Sophia became shy. Coquettish. Leah thought she recognized the chemistry between them and wandered away, swallowing the bile that rose in her throat. Ward and Adam had already left. She went to the bar and talked to everyone there, and then when she'd run out of new faces she went back to say goodnight to Sophia.

Sophia gave Leah a wan smile, looking tired. "I'm ready to go, too."

"Timing," Leah said, "is everything."

"I read that somewhere," Sophia said as they strolled toward the doors.

"Where do you live?" Leah asked.

"The Days Inn."

The Days Inn was four blocks in the other direction from her house, and through the worst part of their bad neighborhood. Come home with me, Leah wanted to say, thinking it was too soon for any bold statements. And yet, the opportunity was here. "Come home with me," Leah said, and as Sophia demurred, added, "Adam will drive you home from there."

"It's only four blocks. Isn't your place like, twice as far?"

"Further away from the crack dealers, though. It's midnight, and it's Friday, and I'm not going to walk you home."

The fear that flashed through Sophia's expression made Leah feel cruel. "Please. Live a little. See our amazing rental."

Sophia scanned the crowd, presumably for someone else. She shrugged and said, "I'd ask John, but his car smells like pot."

"I assure you that Adam's does not."

"That's good to hear."

"He only smokes inside the house."

Sophia snorted.

Leah put her hand on Sophia's back and, at Sophia's acquiescence, led her out into the night. The walk was too short. Conversation started and then they were climbing the steps to the dark house. Adam's bedroom window had shown no light, so Leah apologetically let Sophia into the kitchen and said she would look for the keys.

She deduced they were in Adam's room and pushed her ear against his door. She heard grunting coming from inside and hoarse, urgent cries. She rolled her eyes and descended the stairs. Sophia had settled at the kitchen table and, though Variety was open before her, had her head on her elbow and seemed mostly asleep.

"Sophia," Leah said, touching her arm.

"Hm?"

"Adam's got someone upstairs. I think you should stay here tonight."

"Hm."

"On the couch."

"It's only ten blocks," Sophia said.

"It'll be a nicer walk on a sunny morning."

"I can't impose."

"It's a leather couch," Leah said.

"I don't even know you," Sophia said sleepily. She straightened up to rub her eyes and squeeze the bridge of her nose. She wore an evening gown and her hair had fallen and her makeup was gone from her cheeks, and smeared under her eyes.

"Get to know me over breakfast," Leah said.

Sophia's lips curved into a smile. "Where's the couch?"

"This way." Leah tugged at her hands. Sophia stood. Leah pulled her into the living room. Sophia opened her eyes. She saw the piano, the bookcases, the television, the couch.

"We have cable," Leah said.

Sophia fell onto the couch. She sighed, sat up, and took off her shoes.

"Do you want tea?" Leah asked.

"Water?"

Leah went into the kitchen. When she came back with a bottle of Evian, Sophia had taken off her dress and folded it on the end of the couch, and wrapped herself in the blanket that had lain along its back. She sat, Buddha-like, and accepted the water.

"Will you be all right?" Leah asked.

"Yes. I'm just going to sit for a while, and think about my life."

"Okay." Leah went to the stairs, and stopped on the first one to say, "I'll see you in the morning."

Sophia raised her bottle in toast. "Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow."

"Creeps in this petty pace," Leah said, going up the stairs, counting each one.

She kicked off her shoes and took off her own dress, and pulled on the nearest robe before she collapsed into bed, ignoring the blankets, letting the fan send feeble waves of cool air over her back.

She waited to fall asleep with a lightness in her chest, an easing, knowing Sophia was nearby.

* * *

Screaming awoke Leah, along with the realization that she'd forgotten to tell Adam that someone else was here, and that she'd forgotten to inquire as to who was in Adam's bedroom. She knew she wouldn't make it to the living room fast enough to take back the screaming.

Robe billowing, she flew down the stairs and nearly ran into Ward. He caught her by the arms. "Morning," he said.

"Hello." She doubled over, panting, and asked, "Is Sophia all right?"

"Sophia is getting some orange juice," Sophia said, walking by them, wearing Adam's bathrobe. Adam, in white T-shirt and shorts, was blushing furiously and staring at Leah.

"You were busy," Leah said.

Adam looked guilty.

Bert, the set designer, came through the front door. "Good morning, ladies." He looked surprised, but Sophia handed him the quart of orange juice, and he shrugged and settled down at the table.

Leah went back upstairs to shower.

Chapter Eight

Leah, Adam, Ward, and Sophia walked to the theater together. Then Sophia went past it, explaining that she was going to sleep in her own bed. Now that Macbeth was playing nightly there were only a few put-in rehearsals in the afternoons.

Adam took Ward and Leah to the prop room.

"I know you can act and sing," he said. "But can you act and sing with stuff?"

"You know I've got stuff," Ward said, shaking his hips.

Adam giggled.

Leah said, "I'm going to get more coffee."

* * *

When rehearsal broke and Leah was soaked with sweat and Ward had finished yelling and insulting her, Adam informed them they had a week and a half off while costumes were sewn and lighting was programmed into computers.

"I hear there are some good plays nearby," he said.

She could sit through Macbeth again. Somewhere Sophia couldn't see her, because that would be creepy. She shrugged. Adam smiled. He brought it up again at dinner. The three of them were together at the house, eating chicken breasts with capers and wild rice.

"Come clubbing with us Friday," Adam said.

"Where?"

"Flamingo," Ward said.

"No thanks. I don't want to be the only woman in a gay bar. You remember what happened last time."

Ward glanced at Adam.

"They thought she was a man," Adam said.

"You didn't have to tell him that."

"It was very unpleasant," Adam said.

"Very."

Ward took another bite of rice.

Leah glared at Adam.

"So go to a girl bar," Adam said.

"Adam. We're in North Carolina."

He pushed a copy of the local weekly newspaper across the table. "I circled some. You haven't been out since we got here."

"Neither have you."

"Well, that's got to change. If you don't go clubbing, at least go to a party."

"We're hosting one," Leah said.

"In a week, and that's for our show. Hardly the event of the century," Adam said.

"Some people are born social, and some have socializing thrust upon them," Ward said. He waved his fork at Leah.

Adam gently pushed Ward's arm down, and said, "Leah never missed an event in New York. She's the toast of the town."

"Have you ever met anyone famous?" Ward asked.

"Your momma," Leah said.

Ward grinned.

"What's wrong, Leah?" Adam asked.

"Nothing's wrong except Jeopardy!'s on and I need to feel smart." She took her plate into the living room.

Ward and Adam finished dinner in the kitchen, whispering to each other, touching benignly. A hand on a thigh, a finger tapping an elbow. Adam came and took the dish from her when he went to clean up. She watched the television silently, her thoughts too much in turmoil to think of the answers to Adam's questions, or hear what Alex was saying.

In New York, she knew everyone. Every star and writer was a friend of Leah Fisher. Even in their most boring iterations of the same stories--the reason she'd left in the first place to try something new--there was camaraderie. A stranger was just someone new in town, new to the stage, to be introduced to her. She got invited backstage to every show on Broadway, and into the dressing rooms of half. She had done what she wanted.

She'd wanted to leave.

Now, to walk into a room and not know anyone felt unreal. Last night's efforts at the bar had been intense and draining and probably futile. She'd been on the scene since she was nineteen. Since she had convinced her parents it was all right to let her minor in theater, because a college degree was a college degree, that it was no worse than English.

Going to the Flamingo with Adam and Ward would not cheer her up. No one would recognize her. She'd be their third wheel and though beautiful young men would probably dance with her, and charm her, and maybe even buy her a drink, there'd be nothing for them to share, nothing to take home. She didn't want to escape, she wanted to be remembered.

But staying home in the empty, large house seemed worse. The drug lords and prostitutes would know, and they'd come for her. They'd steal the piano. She shivered. If that was going to happen, she didn't want to be around for it.

"How am I going to get there?" Leah asked. Adam and Ward were taking the rental car.

"You can walk," Adam said, beaming. "It's ten blocks. Here, let me help you dress."

"I can't dress myself to go to a lesbian bar?"

"Were you going to wear jeans?"

"No."

"Oh, honey."

She sighed.

He put her in her tightest blue jeans and the only pair of high-heeled boots she'd brought.

"I can't walk ten blocks in these," she said.

"I put in insoles."

"Adam."

"Hey, I need you on stage an hour a night. Good foot care is important."

"And gay," she said.

She picked her sluttiest top and did her own makeup, which Adam marked over with brighter lipstick and more eye shadow.

"I look like a tramp," she said.

"A vamp. You look like a vamp."

"Rhymes with tramp."

He grinned.

"Do you expect me to bring someone home?" she asked.

"It'd be good for you. How long has it been?"

She met his eyes in the mirror and said, "Not long enough."

"Who?" He placed his hand on her back, and looked at her earnestly.

"No one," she said, pulling away.

"Leah."

"Just some guy."

"And?" Adam prompted.

And every time he'd touched her, she'd wanted to die. It wasn't his fault. He was the sound technician from her most recent anime gig. They'd joked together about the crazy love story she was recounting, in high-pitched oration. She'd been the one to invite him to dinner, and then a second, and when the kissing had been fine--a little exciting, even, she'd let the rest happen.

He'd been gentle, mistaking her trembling as he undressed her for excitement. And she'd touched him, remembering how it had felt to hold Grace, marveling at how different it was even when all the parts weren't that different. He'd used his mouth, and she cried and begged him to stop, and when he wanted to hold her as he slept she'd felt suffocated, had escaped, had never spoken to him again, despite the flowers he sent, despite his apologies.

He had no idea what he was apologizing for.

Adam wrapped his arms around her waist and held her, and when she relaxed back into him he murmured, "Bring home a girl. Do I have to draw you a picture?"

Chapter Nine

She almost lost her nerve walking the ten blocks. She stopped in the dark, under a maple tree that draped heavy branches over her head. Going back meant the empty house. Ward and Adam were going to a club an hour away. Even if she cried into the cell phone for them, it'd be useless.

Forward lay civilization. Adam promised her that she was hot, and not desperate, and that her hair was really more of a dirty blonde than a mousey brunette and not too straggly in the way it brushed her neck. Perhaps she'd even run into some of the local crew there. She'd have a drink, she told herself, maybe two.

When she arrived, Lost Girls at Sea was packed. The club was one large room, mostly dark with stage lights pointed at the dance floor, flickering, and light above the bar. She paid her ten dollars at the door, and pushed through the crowd toward the bar at the back. There she could sit--the crowd was mostly on the dance floor, or along the back wall. She ordered the special and drank it in one swallow and then ordered another to carry while she mingled.

The crowd wasn't all younger than her, though those on the dance floor looked to be about eighteen. The girls with the piercings and the shaved heads caught her eye first, but mostly everyone wore jeans and held beers. The hair, when present, was poofier than what she usually saw in New York, the accents made her giggle, and finally, after thirty-four years of living, she saw her first mullet.

Despite Adam's promises, she didn't recognize anyone. She smiled sheepishly at girls, all in groups of two or three, who smiled back, but then turned away. She sighed. Women traveled in packs. Lesbians were no exception. She sipped at her drink, hoping to make it last so that her hands were occupied, and surveyed the dance floor.

She caught a flash of Sophia.

"Crap."

No one heard her through the thundering disco music, and Sophia hadn't seen her standing in the dark along the edge. She finished her drink and made her way onto the dance floor. Only when she was two feet from Sophia, about to interrupt, did the awareness of Sophia in a dyke bar, dancing with a woman, reach her. And now it was too late to run.

"Are you--?" Leah asked clumsily, instead of "Hello."

Sophia's eyes widened as she recognized Leah--a good sign, at least--and she asked, "Are you?"

Leah glanced around at the sea of women, and then back at Sophia, and nodded. "I guess, tonight, I am."

Sophia smiled.

"Anyway, sorry to interrupt, enjoy your dance," Leah said, backing away. She decided to head for the bar. A third drink would do her good.

"No, I'll dance with you," Sophia said. She gave her partner an apologetic wave and hug, and then grabbed Leah.

"But--"

"Come on. It's good to see a familiar face."

Leah allowed herself to be tugged into an awkward, swaying hug. Sophia was warm, and her skin shone with faint sweat, and her hair stuck to her face. She was smiling, wider than Leah had ever seen.

"Are you drunk?" Leah asked. She put her hand to Sophia's flushed cheek. The heat burned into her palm.

"Little bit," Sophia said.

"You a fun drunk?"

"Little bit," Sophia said, and lunged forward. Leah stumbled back as Sophia's mouth touched her temple. The spark that shot through her was instant, and powerful, and she held onto Sophia to keep from falling.

"I barely--" Leah started, and then changed her mind and asked, "Did you come by yourself?"

"I come every Friday," Sophia said, shouting into Leah's ear. "I was supposed to meet Jenny and Carlotta from the South Pacificcrew, but they didn't show. One can wonder why."

A startlingly clear picture flashed through Leah's mind. She pushed Sophia's hair out of her face to keep her hands near the burning cheeks, the skin pliant under her fingertips.

"How was the show?" Leah asked.

"Double, double, toil and trouble," Sophia said. "Forget about the show. Let's just dance."

They danced. Mostly apart, and Leah was no Fred Astaire, but she kept to the beat and let Sophia slide down her body, and wiggled her hips. Just to keep moving. Something loosened inside her, and Sophia poured drinks down her throat while they rested between songs, sitting at the bar, knees touching, watching the crowd.

They gossiped whenever they settled at the bar, and Leah was deciding her fifth drink was enough, when someone from another group came over and asked her to dance, even with Sophia, gorgeous and glistening and sweet, sitting right next to her. Feeling beautiful and flattered, she accepted.

The woman smelled of leather, and Leah let hips press against hers, and buried her nose in the collar of the leather jacket, and breathed and moved to the slow, sexy Indigo Girls song playing as hands traveled down her ass. She would never tell Adam, but it had been a good idea to come, to feel desired.

As soon as the song ended, she wobbled back to Sophia at the bar, who was regarding her oddly.

"What?"

"You're supposed to continue with her. She's looking at you," Sophia said.

"What? She's all right. But I--" Leah frowned, and considered. She shrugged and said, "I got what I wanted."

"What, are you a tease?" Sophia asked, lightly smacking her on the back, and then sliding an arm around her waist.

Leah settled her arm across Sophia's shoulders and said, "Nah, just easily pleased."

Sophia elbowed her.

"We have to walk back," Leah said forlornly, because her feet were killing her after an hour on the dance floor wearing the evil boots. She just wanted to be home so she could cut off her feet in peace.

"You should have asked that woman for a car."

"Why don't you?"

"What, and show some innocent native the roach motel? No, thank you."

"Then why did you come?" Leah asked. She dropped her arm to the bar. Jealousy from nowhere, not with Sophia pressed against her side, burned inside her chest.

"I came with friends," Sophia said, cautiously. "And found one."

Leah exhaled slowly, and then said, "If you were really my friend, you'd carry me back."

"If I were really your friend, I'd get you laid."

Leah stopped short. Sophia gave her a little grin. Leah tried to stand upright, and found that she could. "Let's go," she said.

Sophia took her arm and pulled herself up, and then let go. "Sure you don't want to take a cab? It's a bad neighborhood."

"I have high-heeled boots on. I'll kick them," Leah said as they left. The air outside felt cool. She inhaled deeply, and shook her shirt to let the air in against her skin.

"What are you doing?"

"It's the first cool night I've experienced since coming to North Carolina," Leah said.

Sophia nodded.

"You?"

"I like to get up in the mornings, right before sunrise, and go jogging, when the humidity and the dew stick to you. Everything's fresh and cool then."

Leah felt like she was going to pass out.

Sophia said, "Only sometimes. Twice a week. Not lately, since the play opened. I tend to sleep in."

"There's a reason I have a night job."

"What's that?"

"Oh, you want a real answer?"

"Yeah," Sophia said.

They were walking together, in a relatively even line, but Leah's face was flushed with heat and alcohol and she hadn't prepared for the sharing part of the conversation. Sophia waited for her, though, so she finally said, "I liked it, and I was good at it. I wasn't good at much else, you know? Not like that."

"Not like it felt natural?"

"Right. You, too?"

"Like nothing else did," Sophia said, and sighed.

They got to Sophia's hotel first, and Leah looked at the brightly lit sliding doors with drunken interest.

"Want to come in?" Sophia asked.

"No, I--" Leah shook her head. She hadn't been expecting--though now that the idea had entered her mind, arousal entered with it. She swallowed.

"Just for a bit. Or is Adam waiting up for you?" Sophia asked, a teasing lilt to her voice.

"No, I'm sure he's with Ward," Leah said.

"With Ward?"

"They went down to High Point to go clubbing. I don't know when they'll be back." Leah looked down the street. Six blocks away was an empty house. Or one filled with sex and lust and groans that would keep her up all night, make her restless and lonely.

"You don't have go back to an empty house,” Sophia said. "I have the Cartoon Network."

"Do you have a roommate?"

Sophia shook her head. "Ensemble is two to a room, the ones that aren't local--most of them are. But Lady M?" She ended on the question and looked sad.

Leah squeezed her. "I'll walk you to your door, at least. It's only fair," Leah said. She was still drunk, and her feet were not going to allow her to walk the six blocks home.

Sophia led her through the lobby. In the elevator, they stood not looking at each other, not touching. At the door to Sophia's hotel room, Leah said, "It's weird, having a friend. I feel like I've known you longer than a week."

Sophia leaned her temple against the door and studied Leah.

Leah said, "It's hard to make friends. As an adult. Without like, school."

Sophia smiled. "There's always a new show." She pushed open the door, and looked unsure.

Leah said, "Look, I can just go."

"No, come in. If you still want to." Sophia caught her wrist, and then let her go, and went in, holding the door open.

Leah shrugged and went in. She flung herself into the nearest chair, at a small, round table covered in boxes of power bars and flowers, and groaned. "My feet."

"Not much of a dancer?"

"No. What do you do, to avoid this?"

"Insoles."

"I'm wearing them."

Sophia went into the bathroom. Leah saw the light go in the corner of her eye. Then Sophia came out, holding a glass of water and a bottle of Advil. "Take two," she said.

"For foot pain?"

"Whatever ails you."

Leah clutched the bottle. Her feet throbbed. She surrendered and took two. Sophia went back into the bathroom. The water ran. The toilet flushed. When she came out, her face was clean and she'd changed into a T-Shirt reading Durham Playhouse.

"Want a power bar?" She asked.

"Kind of."

"Help yourself."

Leah chose blueberry, and ate, as Sophia made coffee in the machine in her little kitchenette.

"This is like a dollhouse," Leah said.

"Are we the dolls?" Sophia asked.

Leah inhaled the scent of coffee and said, "I don't care if we are. Thank God for coffee."

"It's not Honduran fair trade."

"Next time you come over I'll send some home with you," Leah said. Sophia brought Leah a mug. "Bless you," she said, and drank.

Sophia sat on the bed, far away from Leah, at the headboard, and closed her eyes.

Leah tried not to crunch too loudly. The wrapper, though, crumpled audibly when she threw it away, and went to get more coffee. "Coffee?" she asked, to see if Sophia was still awake.

"Sure." Sophia slapped the side of the bed next to her, and said, "I'm the least entertaining person in the world, I'm sorry."

"And yet, still better than an empty house," Leah said. She went and sat next to Sophia on the unmade bed. The comforter was piled on the floor between beds, and the sheets were tangled. Sophia had stuck her feet under them, and her back was against a scrunched pillow. The sheets were cool and fresh under Leah's palms. She exhaled.

Sophia grinned. "At least I'm not annoying." She sat up when Leah brought the coffee, and took a sip."I don't know a thing about you, except that you're good company."

"What do you want to know?"

"I don't need to know anything," Sophia said. She set the coffee mug on the bedside table and leaned in to kiss Leah. Leah froze, letting Sophia's mouth press against hers. Sophia drew back when Leah didn't move, and frowned. "Was that the wrong thing?"

"No." Leah shook her head. "No, that was perfect." She had no idea how to explain how gentle and sweet Sophia's mouth had tasted, how warm and inviting, how Sophia's rumpled sweatshirt and furrowed brow were unintentionally erotic. She opened her mouth to say something, and couldn't think of anything. Sophia's frown got deeper. Leah said, "This doesn't happen--uh."

"Often?"

There had been other opportunities, mostly with men, or female friends who thought she'd be fun, or lesbians in the industry who had heard about Grace, but she never got past dinner with most of them. There hadn't been anyone new. But she couldn't share that vulnerability with Sophia, and she couldn't kiss her back or she'd fall to pieces. She was too drunk for this, and it was making her too nostalgic.

She settled for brushing Sophia's hair away from her face and asking, "Can I stay here tonight?"

"Yeah," Sophia said.

"Just to sleep, you know."

Sophia looked down at her coffee mug and said, "At least take off your boots."

"If I put them under your bed, there could be a song about it."

Sophia cringed. She sipped at her coffee as Leah laboriously took off her boots.

Leah didn't usually sleep in her bra, or her sluttiest top, or her tightest jeans, and Sophia looked enviously comfortable in sweats, but she decided not to press her luck as she crawled up to the headboard. She glanced at the other bed in the room, which had Sophia's suitcase and scattered dry cleaning bags on top of it.

She settled onto her side, facing Sophia.

Sophia rolled over, away from Leah, and turned out the lamp. She exhaled. "I'm so tired," she said, settling on her side, showing her back to Leah.

"Big Friday night."

Sophia sighed. "No, just in general."

Leah put her hand on Sophia's shoulder, and then moved closer, pressing against her back.

"Is this okay?" Leah asked, carefully settling her hand against Sophia's stomach.

"Yeah."

"Good." Leah closed her eyes.

Sophia patted her hand, and then rolled almost imperceptibly backward, tucking herself against Leah. Leah inhaled and caught the scent of Sophia's hair, straw-like and musky from the night of sweat and hairspray. Just before she fell asleep, she learned that Sophia snored.

Chapter Ten

She woke up before Sophia and found herself in the dark, lying flat on her back with Sophia on her side next to her, one leg over hers. The clock read 4:37--so just a nap, really--and her phone was blinking red with a message.

She stumbled out of bed and checked it, wincing at the white light and Adam's face, staring up at her. He'd called.

And had texted. "Where are you? Having fun? Call!"

Her boots were under the bed. She pulled them out and stuck her feet into them, wincing at the pain that shot through the soles and up her calves. Sophia stirred and rolled over. Leah's chest constricted. She hated to leave, but the thought of an awkward morning was even more daunting. She smoothed hair out of Sophia's face and knelt beside the bed. "I'll see you later," she said, her voice hoarse in the dark.

Sophia's nose wrinkled.

Leah kissed her forehead, hesitated, and then kissed her lips. Sophia murmured something against the kiss.

"Bye," Leah said. "I'll see you at the theater."

She lingered in the doorway, thinking of all the things she could imagine she had, with Sophia asleep, that she would no longer have in the daylight.

* * *

She got home at five thirty with donuts and let them cool on the counter while she went upstairs and tumbled into bed. She didn't emerge until after ten. The piano played downstairs as she showered.

When she went into the living room, she found Adam also freshly showered, wearing shorts, and playing Beethoven.

Leah got a donut and threw herself on the couch.

Adam finished his song and turned around and asked, "You have a good night, too?"

"I really, really did," she said.

"Were you with someone?"

Leah inhaled, and asked, "Adam, what does it mean when you kiss a girl, and you sleep with her, and you don't..."

Adam got off the piano bench and went to the kitchen. He came back with a paper napkin and a pen, and sat down on the couch, slipping under her legs.

"What are you doing?"

"I'm drawing you a picture."

She pushed at his legs. "It was rhetorical."

"You have a very goofy smile on your face."

"I do not." Leah tried to frown. She giggled. That couldn't be good.

"Is this going to be a distraction?"

"A distraction? You're the one who told me to go out." Leah squirmed out from under him to pace the living room.

"Leah, look--"

"What?"

He stood up, and tucked the napkin into his back pocket. "I thought going out would loosen you up a little. Not throw you into a tizzy."

"I needed to be loosened?"

"You've been brooding since we got here."

"It's a dark play, Adam."

He said, "Not about that. You're distracted. You're not fully committed."

"I'm distracted? You're the one doing the star. That's not distracting?"

He shook her, and when she offered no resistance, just flopped like a rag doll in his hands, he let her go and walked back to the piano, rubbing the back of his head. His hands were shaking. "I have a lot riding on this, Leah. On you."

"You can rely on me, Adam. I love this musical."

"I know."

She went and poked him in the chest, and said, "Don't screw with me."

"I know." He sighed. "I'm sorry. I wrote this on you. I always intended you to play the part. It's your show."

"Don't forget."

"You, either," Adam said.

"I'll never forget what it's like to have a musical written on me, Adam. You have no idea."

He sat down at the piano bench. She took her donut and went into the kitchen, where, finally, she checked her email. Adam began to play the Moonlight Sonata, which was about the most depressing thing she'd ever heard. She wondered what it would be like to be waking up next to Sophia instead. Raven hair, sweet smile, Sophia pulling her down for another kiss; laughing at her bad breath, curling so that she could wrap herself around Sophia again and stay, too cold on top of the hotel room sheets, forever. Stopping only to eat and star in regional theater.

"Oh, God," she said aloud.

"What?" Adam called from the living room. His playing didn't stop.

"I think I'm in love," Leah said, too quietly for him to hear. But she'd heard. Her palms felt heavy and hot. Her stomach churned. She went into the living room, and asked, "Are you in love with Ward?"

"Yes," Adam said, looking at the piano, as if he were reading invisible sheet music. A note, a chord, a press of the pedal. Allegro. Sonata. "But we're not going to raise kittens. We're doing a musical, and it's going to be glorious, and if we're really lucky maybe we'll do one again one day. And if we're not so lucky, we'll do readings and workshops and I'll put him on an album and he'll introduce me to investors. And if we're not lucky at all, I'll never see him again, and he'll be a nobody in theater, or I will."

"That's not how I feel," Leah said.

"About what?"

"About Sophia."

"Sophia? Leah, no--"

"I'm going home."

"What?"

"To New York."

"You can't."

"You said I had a couple weeks off."

"Go to the beach. Go to the mountains. But home? That'll screw you up, Leah. What about focus?"

"I need to be reminded of why I'm here." She didn't want to spend a week arguing with him, and she could foresee it if she didn't get away.

"It's not a good idea."

"Screw you. You'll have the house to yourself."

"This is our project, Leah," he said, and sighed. And then he added, "Say hello to your mother."

"I'm sure she'll say hello to you."

Chapter Eleven

Leah stood on the sidewalk and looked up at the left-most window on the second floor. Home. Trading an empty hotel room for an empty walkup didn't seem so grand, now that she was back in Manhattan. But she had missed her things. She wondered if they would be just as she left them, perhaps dusty, smelling faintly of stale air. Or perhaps a burglar had come and her television would be gone, and her clock radio, and the cheap safe where she kept her contracts.

New York was unseasonably cool. Leah felt foolish in shorts and a tank top, like she'd just come back from a winter cruise. She wasn't even tanned. Everyone else had brought their jeans out of storage.

She opened her cell phone. "Want to have coffee?" she asked the voice on the other end of the line.

"Only with you."

Angel met her at the Starbucks on Broadway and 8th and they stood outside sipping lattes, leaning against the brick. He gave her his brightest smile, matching her height and turning on the Latin charm, trying to be young again at thirty-five, but she saw, after a month away, how gaunt he was, how his teeth and eyes had yellowed, how long sleeves in summer hid track marks and bad skin and veins.

"Let's see a show," Angel said. He rubbed his arm and looked at her sideways.

"Oh, come on."

"You're a tourist, now, Leah. Do tourist things. Fall in love with New York."

"Fine. But it can't involve Shakespeare."

"Why not?"

Leah flushed. She shrugged, and said, "So overdone."

"We're going to see a Jew Grows in Brooklyn," Angel said.

"If we're going to see that, I could just have dinner with my parents," Leah said.

"Oh, Leah."

"We're capturing the tourist experience how?"

"Do I really need to explain symbolism and meta and projection to an actor? You're supposed to be an artist."

Leah sipped her coffee and looked south. She couldn't see very far past the closest buildings. She imagined they went on forever. New York was the entire world and places like Durham only existed in old books and fairy tales.

"Do you want to go to Ground Zero?" Angel asked.

"No, I'm good," Leah said. "It's great of you to spend the whole day with me, you know."

"You've been gone. You were missed. You're like an elusive celebrity now. We want you, girl."

Leah chuckled. She glanced at Angel. Angel looked down at the concrete. No roaches, even by the cracks in the building. Giuliani had driven them out like the pied piper. Or maybe it had been the thunderous voice of Broadway, singing out the plague, shaking the stages.

"What's wrong?" Leah asked.

"I got fired from the ensemble. I'm unemployed again."

"Oh, Angel."

"They found coke in my locker."

* * *

Neither Angel nor Leah laughed much at the play, but they smiled, and Leah let herself be immersed in theater that didn't involve Sophia's descent into madness or Ward's trembling fingers as he drank, as he looked at her and sang, so afraid that someone would find out that the darkness in his heart really wasn't all that special.

"Now that's theater," Leah said as the cast took their bows.

Angel took her back to Broadway, and asked, "How could you leave all this?"

"How could you?"

"Let's go to a party," Angel said.

"There's a party?"

"There's always a party."

"I have to meet with my agent in the morning," she said.

But she went anyway. The trick to combating loneliness was to be so worn out that the apartment felt welcoming, so exhausted that she could stumble into bed with her eyes shut, be too drunk, so that the pounding in her head echoed against the bare walls by morning, and filled the space.

* * *

"How would you feel about singing "My Funny Valentine" on a compilation of Broadway's 100 greatest love songs?" Her agent asked over omelets at the Plaza hotel. She wondered briefly if he'd brought her there to impress her. The way he was glancing around, probably more to be seen. Everybody had to be seen in New York.

She raised her glass of orange juice, careful of her pinkie placement, and asked, "That's what you've got for me?"

"That's what I've got. Honey, the anime's recasting your character with another voice."

"Whose voice?"

"It's not--"

"Whose?"

"Gates McFadden."

"What?"

"They feel the only way to really legitimize themselves with an American audience is through Star Trek."

"I've worked with Mark Hamill on dozens of projects."

"Twice. You've worked with him twice, and Gates McFadden is bigger than Mark Hamill."

"In what universe? She had, what, two lines in Patriot Games?"

"It's just business, Leah."

"What else do you have for me?" she asked.

"The End wants you to do a set."

That was something. Leah leaned forward. "Really?"

"Yes. Isn't that awesome?"

The way his eyes lit up made her suspicious. "What's the catch?"

"You'd be opening for someone."

"Not Gates McFadden."

"No."

"Who?"

"The Maguires. They're a Celtic industrial band from Canada."

"No," Leah said.

"You'd get four songs."

"No." Her eggs were getting cold. She stabbed at them.

"So, how's North Carolina?" he asked.

She smiled sweetly at him. "Wish I was there."

* * *

The opening night party for Renegade Tartuffe cooled down after the press left. Joe's Pub had been a good choice; cast settled onto couches, talked quietly, drank cheap champagne. Leah had been seen with everyone. When the pictures went out in the post the next morning, she'd be there. Her parents would complain that she hadn't called them.

Or maybe the editors would ignore her altogether, filter her out, bemoan that she was taking space that could be filled by Hugh Jackman or Jeremy Kushner.

Angel asked, "Renee Zellweger, couldn't she get you a part in a movie?"

"Oh sure. Maybe I could be the caterer. Or second assistant."

"What about your little friend, the one that got discovered by Nicole Kidman when she was on stage?"

Leah sighed. "See, you said it yourself. You have to be on stage, first."

"Maybe you shouldn't spend so much time in North Carolina."

* * *

Enrique from the ensemble had a Blackberry and shortly after one in the morning Enrique, the dark and lithe dance captain, exclaimed that the New York Times had posted its review.

"Ben or Charlie?" Angel asked.

"I believe he prefers Charles," Enrique said.

"That's not what he said when my dick was in his mouth," Angel said.

"Ew, ew. Can we please not slash the theatre critics?" Leah asked. "It's like picturing Republicans naked."

"But theater critics are actually gay," Enrique pointed out, shrugging. He scrolled the text on his handheld.

"I won't believe that until they use 'fabulous' in a review." Angel leaned forward. "Did he say you were fabulous?"

"All right, shut up!" Enrique yelled. He stood up on the couch. The room quieted. The director finished off his drink. The producers settled in at the bar, and hid their faces.

Enrique read, "We gave the French Jerry Lewis--"

"Not a good start," Angel said.

Leah elbowed him.

"And in return, the French gave us this. Set in a time before the bloody revolution--either of them, there's a sense of nostalgia and innocence. In the same way Spring Awakening borrows from an older century's text, Tartuffe draws us in because we want to see something different than the next jukebox musical.

"There are no fake French accents. The attempt to Americanize it, to offer a social commentary on being swindled by the power figures we idolize, doesn't always work, but it works enough. The commentary on the religious right cannot be ignored, and the direction and acting are apt enough to win shameless laughter from us, rather than uncomfortable titters.

"Were this a tragedy, the ending would be quite different, and more familiar, and perhaps more satisfying. This, however, is a comedy, and a reminder that stories don't always end as we expect.

"Part of this surprise is the performance of--" Enrique lifted his head and asked, "Should I go on?"

The crowd threw popcorn and pretzels at him, and he laughed and went on. Everyone cheered as he finished, except for Teresa Rosa, who fled to the bathroom. Presumably to puke. Charles had called her inept.

Angel whispered to Leah that it was drugs.

Leah had gone home with Theresa once and had bad, drunken sex without much satisfaction. She had contemplated trying for that again tonight, but not if Teresa had been vomiting.

"How does she get parts?" Leah asked.

"You mean, when we don't? It's her vulnerability. She should be the perfect Mariane, since she was born as Ophelia. But that doesn't make her funny."

"It just makes her sought after," Leah said.

"Bingo."

Leah sighed. The party was dispersing. Only the people too drunk to stand weren't out on the streets by now, calling their loved ones, quoting the reviews.

"Now see what the Los Angeles Times said," Enrique said.

If the review had been bad, no one would read the other papers at all. The New York Times was the only one that mattered. But in their success, they could be drunk on praise. They could take the fainter blows of the Daily News or the New York Post with more ease. Leah envied them and thought of the little North Carolina paper, that wouldn't have sent their movie critic to New York, because Tartuffe didn't exist in that world.

Even though Tartuffe was the only thing that existed at the moment in hers.

Stefan tapped her. His breath was sweet from gin and tonic, and he said, "Sing for us. I'll play the piano."

"Do you know 'My Funny Valentine'?" she asked.

He did.

Chapter Twelve

"When are you coming back?" Adam asked through the phone.

"Tuesday."

"Why not Sunday? What is there to do in New York on a Monday night?"

"Very funny. Sunday I'm in a studio. They're putting me on another CD."

"Tres delicious."

"Angel got fired from his show," Leah said.

"Because of his nose?"

"Yes."

"I don't know why you hang out with losers, Leah."

"I don't know. Adam."

"Very cute."

"He spent the whole day with me," Leah said.

"That's because he has no other friends."

"He's going to be bigger than all of us someday," Leah said.

"So you say. He's got the voice of an angel. He's the next Euan Morton."

"So why won't he work with you, is what you're saying?" Leah asked.

"I know why he won't. And, Leah, he's thirty-five. He's never going to be bigger than us. He'll never live up to your Hugh Laurie expectations."

"You're projecting."

"Do you hear me, Leah?"

"Yes. Don't do drugs."

"And lay off all the drinking," he said.

"What am I supposed to do, Adam? I'm an actor. I have demons. Demons, Adam."

"So act. Put them into your characters so they won't live in you. Hey, I'm writing that down. Oh, and listen, we're sending a car for you on Tuesday. Look for your name."

She heard him rustling around, searching for paper, and hung up on him.

* * *

She put on her sunglasses before walking gingerly down the gangway to the surface of the earth. The terminal rose up before her. She sweated in her leather jacket, which had seemed appropriate in the cool New York air and the freezing air conditioning at LaGuardia.

Her jeans stuck to her thighs as if they'd been spackled on. She crept toward the terminal, which was too tiny to legitimately be an airport, and through the refreshing air conditioning and onto the street again, where Sophia stood, holding a sign with her last name scrawled across it in purple magic marker.

"What are you doing here?" Leah asked, as Sophia hugged her.

"When I was third witch/understudy, this is what I did," Sophia said.

"You were third witch?"

"I was very scary," Sophia said.

"As if."

"Anyway, Adam sent me."

"Oh, so it's Adam now."

"He's interesting. If I spend any more time talking with the Macbeth crowd I'm going to kill them. I've been hearing I only got the part because I was sleeping with Elaine."

"How is Elaine?"

Sophia's face fell. She met Leah's eyes, and said, "She's in the hospital again."

"I'm sorry." Leah put her free hand on Sophia's elbow and hefted her bag up again with the other.

"It's all right. They're all going to the zoo tomorrow. Photo op. So I thought I'd at least take today and have a change of scenery."

"So I'm scenery," Leah said.

"Very nice scenery."

The low heat that had begun in Leah's abdomen at seeing Sophia spiked into white fire.

Sophia asked, "How was New York?"

"I needed a change of scenery, too."

"Yeah?"

"It made me appreciate why I'm here."

Sophia didn't move as Leah leaned in to cup her cheek. Leah kissed her. Sophia responded to Leah's pressure with her own, nuzzling Leah's lips. For a moment, everything was perfect and still, and then Sophia pulled back to study her face.

Leah 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 Poetry? 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 Sunday best, greeting each other with long-lost joy. They were treating themselves to a show tonight. Some of them might have waited all year.

Each of those watchers would feel powerful, catered to, special. They were paying for the privilege of having people perform for them, just them, something their fellow man would never experience; not on that night, not at that time.

Leah knew the intoxication of being stared at, desired, and loved. She wanted to join the crowd and be a part of its energy. She wanted to see Sophia on stage again.

The crowds thinned, and then disappeared completely into the theater, leaving the street empty in the last vestiges of daylight. She went to the ticket booth, where they were closing up and counting money.

"Hey, Leah," Seth said. "You want a ticket?" A summer intern from the community college's theater department, his nose and both ears were pierced, and he had a chorus part in South Pacific.

"No. Full house tonight?"

"Oh, yeah. Sold out. All the season ticket holders showed up, too. Fatime looked for empty seats, but they were all gone."

Fatime, the overweight, smiling high school girl who had just wanted a summer job that didn't involve the food or retail industries, nodded in agreement.

Leah imagined people waiting months in advance, or maybe years, buying tickets to shows they didn't even care about, just because it might be interesting. And they had no idea they'd be getting someone like Sophia. Only a few knew to hope for Elaine.

"So, what do you do now that everyone's trapped inside the theater?" Leah asked.

"Yell fire?" Seth said.

Fatime shot a rubber band at him.

He winced and said, "Now we sit around and talk for a half hour, then we start getting the food ready. Snacks for the cast, champagne and candy bars for the tourists at intermission. We point people to the bathrooms, organize the lines. You know."

"And you guys volunteer for this?"

Seth grinned. "I get school credit."

"Part of my parole," Fatime said.

Leah's eyes widened.

Fatime winked.

"In New York, you guys would be unionized," Leah said.

Seth raised his fist. "Join us, famous actor lady."

Leah's face grew hot. "I should go," She said.

"Oh, come on, stay," Fatime said. "Tell us about New York?"

There was an eagerness in her voice that compelled Leah, so she went behind the desk and sat in an uncomfortable wicker chair, and let herself feel important to two school kids who handed out playbills because they wanted to act.

* * *

Fatime cracked the auditorium doors as Macbeth died. Leah felt a pang. Lady Macbeth was already dead. Swarms of people left after the house lights went up, like a wave pouring out of the theater. Some lingered, chatting with each other, or waiting for the actors to make appearances in the lobby. Their family, their friends.

A couple had flowers for Banquo.

Sophia walked through the lobby with Oscar, who Leah recognized as Macduff by the boyish haircut and the circles of makeup under his eyes, smeared by his recent anguish. He smiled, leaning in to tease Sophia about something. She elbowed him in the ribs and he danced away, and then circled back, putting his arm around her.

Leah watched, torn between possessiveness and paralysis. Sophia spotted her and smiled.

As they walked closer, Leah moved to intercept them. "Hey," she said.

"Hi," Sophia said. She hugged Leah, and asked, "Did you see the show tonight?"

"No, I was just hanging around after a late rehearsal."

"That's good," Oscar said. "You missed a doozy."

"Oh?"

Sophia glared at him, but Oscar grinned and said, "Someone forgot her lines."

"Someone threw my timing off."

"Well, tonight it wasn't about the seduction of a man," Oscar said. "It was about getting through lines without choking. And yet, dude, standing ovation. People over appreciate us."

"Or there's power in simply being," Leah said. She had her hand on Sophia's shoulder. Sophia leaned into her, just enough to let her know she was pressing back, seeking more. Leah brushed her thumb against Sophia's arm. Sophia flashed her a smile.

"Drinks, ladies?" Oscar asked.

Leah was tempted, but hanging out in the theater for three hours had tempered her exhaustion into mere fatigue. She shook her head.

"Tomorrow," Sophia said. "Tonight I'm going to soak in a hot tub."

"And?" Oscar prodded.

"And read my lines," she said, and scowled at him.

Leah grinned.

Sophia shot her a glance. "Memorizing is hard."

"Everything's hard about Shakespare," Leah said.

"See?"

Oscar shrugged. He squeezed Sophia's forearm and kissed Leah's cheek and went to deign to talk to the crowd waiting for him. To thank him for his Macduff, for pouring out his heart on the stage, and making them think of their children.

"What do you think Shakespeare would have thought of psychology?" Leah asked.

Sophia turned her head to put her chin on Leah's fingers. "He would have a justification for why we are all so much less than we aspire to be."

"Deep."

"I take issue with his barren woman leads to madness idea, though," Sophia said.

"I think you need to take that up with Freud."

"If I'm talking about anything with Freud, I'm starting with my mother."

"I don't know anything about your mother," Leah said.

Sophia frowned. She pulled away from Leah slightly. "My mother's--my mother."

"Let me walk you home," Leah said.

Sophia raised her eyebrows.

"Just to the door of the roach motel."

Sophia smiled. Leah turned to the lobby exit. Once on the street, Leah bumped Sophia as they walked, close enough to brush against each other. Leah grasped Sophia's wrist, and slid her fingers down to intertwine with Sophia's. The answering squeeze Sophia gave her hand thrilled her. She squeezed back. She wanted to win more response in Sophia, to see the pleasure flush Sophia's cheeks, to make her smile, to be the cause of it.

At the sliding doors of the hotel, they stood to the side, away from direct light. Leah turned down an offer of pot and a party from men passing through the doors, and then from Sophia's fellow cast, returning for the night. Sophia giggled.

"I should go have tea," Leah said. "I talked all night. That's probably the last time I can do that for a while."

"Okay," Sophia said. She looked at the door, and then back at Leah.

Leah couldn't think of anything relevant to say. She tilted her head and went with the obvious. "I'm sure you were good tonight."

Sophia chuckled. "I'm sure I'll be good tomorrow night."

Leah leaned in. She waited for Sophia to draw back, to hesitate, but Sophia's smile remained, so Leah kissed her. Sophia's lips gently pressed back. Leah pulled on Sophia and brought her into a hug. Sophia rubbed her back. The kiss remained chaste, and Sophia tilted her chin to kiss the corner of Leah's mouth instead, and then pressed her face into Leah's neck.

The brush of Sophia's lips against her throat made Leah shiver. She was so aroused, so suddenly, that she clutched Sophia until Sophia murmured against her throat, "So, are we dating?"

"Yes," Leah said, because she wanted it to be true.

Sophia nodded against her neck.

Leah swallowed. "Next time, invite me up."

Sophia slid her hand up between them to cup Leah's neck. "Okay."

Leah pulled back to find her mouth again, and kissed her more deeply, so that Sophia's lips parted against hers. Sophia bit into her upper lip, and Leah's tongue flicked out, to protect herself instinctively, and met Sophia's. She shivered, and kissed Sophia harder. Sophia murmured a plea, and Leah broke the kiss, her whole body throbbing with need.

Sophia stepped back, toward the lobby door, and smiled shyly at Leah. She went inside.

Leah exhaled. She closed her eyes against the hot air, and tried to quell her heartbeat, tried to ignore the internalized expectation that this was all fleeting and therefore would hurt her, perhaps too soon, that ruin here would ruin everything around her. Then she surveyed the neighborhood around her, and thought of the time, and began to walk the six blocks back to her house, as quickly as she could.

Chapter Thirteen

"This trip is supposed to be about your big break in a musical, not some romance," Adam said over breakfast.

"Rehearsals are boring."

"Not if you have the distinct terror of failure."

Leah smiled at him.

"Oh, stop."

"Let's go," Leah said, finishing off her orange juice. "I want to sing."

"Sing what?" Adam asked. He reluctantly got up from the table and gathered his portfolio, shoving sheet music into it, loose leaf, and a handful of red and blue pens.

"I was aroused from sleep by the cry of fire. The curtains of my bed were in flames," Leah said, nearly humming the words, sending them up and down the scales.

"That's not actually in the musical. Have you been reading on your own?"

Leah winked. She slung her backpack over one shoulder and went to the door.

"Leah. You do care!"

She stepped out into the sunlight and said, "I do."

* * *

After five hours of rehearsal, she was flat on her back on the stage, panting. Sweat on her arms and palms sealed her to the wood.

"Leah, you're ruining the costume," Adam said.

"I'm supposed to be lying like this," she mumbled. Her throat burned. She swallowed, and the saliva cooled her, and then the pain began anew. She swallowed again, but her mouth was dry.

"Yes, but you're not supposed to lie in it eternally. Come on, Macbeth needs the stage. They're doing put-ins."

Leah rolled to her knees and began patting her hair. Then she frowned at Adam. "Are you just fucking with--"

The auditorium doors burst open and the cast of Macbeth poured in, coming down the aisles. Leah got to her feet.

Adam folded his arms.

Leah came to the edge of the stage and said, "I'm going to shower, then."

"Wait," Adam said. He vaulted onto the stage and said, "I have opera tickets."

Ward eagerly scurried over. "When?"

"Monday," Adam said. "Before South Pacific and Macbeth run their last weeks. It'll be our last chance for anything fun before dress and opening night."

The mention of opening night made Leah nauseous. She knelt next to Adam and breathed through her nose. Even Ward looked green, standing over them. Adam pulled out two tickets and offered them to Leah.

Leah took them and said, "Adam? These are in Charlotte."

"Did you think there was opera in Durham?"

"But--"

"You're not riding with us, either."

Leah shrugged. She stood up and said, "It'll be a nice break. A way to remember there's something else to live for besides Poe."

Adam looked wounded.

* * *

She went to the ensemble dressing room to change, nodding to the Macbethians gathered to gossip and get ready for the rehearsal. Then she slung her garment bag over her shoulder, checked that the opera tickets were in the back pocket of her jeans, and went upstairs to Sophia's dressing room.

There was a sign taped to the door that said Sophia Medina, and another sign that said Joyce Tam and Erica Rosen, the female leads for South Pacific. South Pacific ran that night, after the put-ins and dinner, so Leah knocked cautiously.

"Come in," Sophia's voice called.

Leah turned the knob and swung the door open. Sophia, leaning down in front of the mirror to put her hair in a pony tail, smiled when she saw Leah's reflection.

"I've never been here," Leah said.

"It'll all be yours when we leave."

Something cold settled into Leah's stomach. She put her hand over it and said, "Try to keep it clean, then."

She let the door swing shut as she walked further into the room. Sophia had pictures, toys, and Nutrigrain bars on a high shelf labeled Sophia, and a black bag was next to her feet.

"You can put your stuff down," Sophia said.

Leah let the backpack slide to the floor, and then put her garment bag on top of it. "We got costumes today."

"What does it look like?"

"Come to opening night and see," Leah said.

"Comp me some tickets."

"Sure. I get four. You can sit next to my mother, my father, and my sister."

"They're coming? That's so sweet."

"Didn't yours come?"

"Well...yes. Eventually."

"I'm hoping mine won't be stuck next to any reporters. My dad tends to make comments."

"Does he like musical theater?"

Sophia was standing, facing her, but hadn't moved. She stayed rooted in spot, and so did Leah, feeling awkward, wondering what she was doing there, and what Sophia expected her to be doing.

"In theory. But the things he's seen--the things I've done--I die in Poe twice. That's not going to thrill him. But at least I won't be going topless."

Sophia's eyes dropped to her chest, and then the gaze returned to Leah's face. "Really?"

"I was in college."

"Sure you were."

"Hey, I had a solo."

They both laughed and Leah crept closer to lean against the makeup table. "Do you like opera?"

"In the sense of--being in it?" Sophia asked.

"Just going."

Sophia shrugged. "I've only been to one. My mother took me to Amahl and the Night Visitors when I was four."

"Golden opportunity, then."

"Does Durham actually have an opera?"

"Charlotte."

Sophia frowned. "That's--"

"South. Westish." Leah gestured in a vague direction.

"I was going to say, the home of NASCAR."

"Do you prefer that? Because I didn't get comped tickets to any races."

"Opera it is, then."

Leah realized Sophia had tacitly agreed without even asking when it was, to say she might be washing her hair. She blushed. "It's Monday."

Sophia tilted her head.

Leah dug out a ticket and asked, "Want to come?"

"Yes," Sophia said. There was rose in her cheeks, too, and when she took the ticket from Leah's hand, her fingers brushed Leah's wrist.

"There's a problem," Leah said.

"What?"

"We don't have a car."

"I'll borrow one."

"There's another problem."

"You don't drive, do you?"

"I'm from New York."

"Welcome to the South, honey," Sophia said.

"We could take a train. Amtrak."

Sophia took a step closer. "Don't you trust me?"

"Isn't driving hard?" Leah reached out and took Sophia's hands.

"Not compared to acting," Sophia said, leaning over Leah, pushing against her hands.

"How about singing?" Leah asked, and lifted up to kiss her.

Sophia kissed her back, without comment, sealing their lips and wrapping her arms around Leah's neck. Leah pulled Sophia against her waist. She hugged Sophia tightly, rewarded when Sophia intensified the kiss.

When they broke off to catch their breath, to soothe their racing heartbeats, they didn't speak. Sophia just nuzzled Leah's cheek, let Leah kiss her jaw and her neck, and then they kissed again, tongues stroking, teeth grazing lips, their mouths pressing together and breaking apart and pressing together again with more pressure. Leah could only hear her own panting, and Sophia's, and neither heard the knock on the door until Geoffrey stuck his head in and said, "Sophie, you're late."

Sophia pulled back, breathing hard. Leah's face burned with embarrassment. She didn't look at Geoffrey, but Sophia grabbed her bag and left, her hand brushing Leah as she went.

"Isn't that Leah Fisher?" Geoffrey asked, outside.

"Yeah."

"Holy crap."

Leah crept to the door, to hear them as they reached the stairs.

Geoffrey said, "She's the headliner!"

"Well, I'm not an understudy anymore, Geoff."

"Brilliant."

Then they disappeared down the stairs, and Leah couldn't hear any more. She wrote down her phone number on a stack of stage manager notes, and added, as an afterthought, "Call me."

* * *

Leah went back to rehearsal, in one of the empty rooms away from the stage, just a piano and a folding table. Adam lost his temper. He moaned, raged, slammed his hands down on the keys to make awful sounds.

"It's not you," he said. "It's just not coming together. The costumes aren't what I wanted. The stage is all wrong. The music won't flow into the words. Why can't you make it flow?" This, he directed to Leah.

She turned to Ward, but he was just as terrified as she was. His eyes were wide, and he hadn't said much. Usually he'd boast and annoy her and tell Adam, "I can do this--Don't give me direction, I can do this."

Today he mumbled his lines, stepped on hers, and forgot the lyrics to "A Dream within a Dream." She sat in a folding chair, since there was no wall to hide behind, and felt nothing as he and Adam rehearsed.

Ward glanced at Adam. Adam said, "You stand..."

"You stand..." Ward sang.

Adam cut him off and said, "I stand."

"I stand amid the roar," Ward sang, and though his voice was beautiful enough, there was nothing behind it, nothing in the room with them, to echo the words. "Of a surf-tormented shore."

Adam played the piano louder, forcing Ward to sing over him, to yell, "How few! Yet how they creep."

Leah laughed. Adam banged the keys, and she laughed harder. Ward stopped singing, and fled. He slammed the door, leaving Leah alone with Adam.

"What's so funny?" Adam asked.

"Nothing. Nothing." Leah continued to giggle. She put her cheek against the table.

"Stop it," Adam said. "I need you, here."

"Find someone else," Leah said, and laughed. Hurt flickered across his expression, but she didn't care. She felt nothing, except a sickening sense of dread.

Chapter Fourteen

Sophia didn't call until Friday, after a week of tech rehearsals so endless and exhausting that Leah could barely bring herself to shower each day.

"I've got the car," Sophia said. "If you still want to go."

"That's fantastic. How's Macbeth?" She hadn't seen Sophia, not even in passing, for days. Were they dating? At least Sophia hadn't forgotten her name. Or maybe she just really loved Die Fledermaus.

"Oh, Mac. I just want it to be over. I'm so tired of being so hateful and awful every night."

"Better than playing a victim," Leah said. She felt overly cheerful, elated by the thought of the opera, compared to Sophia's serious, distant tone.

Sophia said, "Elaine says it's the material, not the character's age, really, that makes older women play this part. There's just so much rawness and power here. She says that Desdemona and Lady Macbeth should be flipped, that Desdemona has the layers and Lady Macbeth is driven by one thing alone, but that it's unsustainable."

"Does Lady Macbeth have a name, you think?" Leah asked.

"Like, Sarah Macbeth?"

"Or Jodie," Leah said.

"Her real name was Gruoch," Sophia said. "But I think naming her takes away from her identity being born in her husband's. What she makes of him, she makes of herself."

"That's feminism for you," Leah said.

"That's the best we get. The role of the woman in theater is not especially liberated."

"Hm."

"But I'm working with a four hundred year-old text," Sophia said.

"Well, I'm inhabiting a thirteen year old virgin, and my text is only a hundred and fifty years old. I'm not sure we're making progress."

"Oh, great. I look forward to the opera, then."

"Well, unless it's subtitled, we'll have no idea how subjugated the girls are."

"Oh, I think we'll be able to tell."

Leah smiled. She pressed the phone against her cheek. Warmth radiated through her chest. She'd only known Sophia few weeks and already Sophia was her closest confidante outside of Adam. She couldn't imagine what life was like before meeting Sophia, and didn't want to think about going back to New York, alone, and pretending this hadn't been a part of her life.

She sighed.

"When should I pick you up? Sophia asked. "The opera's at eight, it's at least a two and a half hour drive."

"Will I survive two hours in a car with you?"

"I suppose we'll find out," Sophia said. She cackled into the phone, and then added, "I have no idea where to hide a body, anyway."

"And I could take you," Leah said. Though she doubted that was true. Sophia was almost certainly stronger, and Leah had never been in a fight in her life. Whenever boys pulled her hair in school, she curled up into a little ball and cried.

"Four, then?" Leah asked.

"We'll leave from the theater."

"What kind of car is it?"

"Oh. You'll find out."

* * *

The car was a ten year old Sebring, and Leah, freshly showered and wearing slacks and a blouse with too many black sequins on it that Adam had produced from his suitcase, gazed at the car with trepidation. She said, "It's so...large."

"It's the safest thing on the road," Sophia said. "Unless it breaks down."

Leah bit her lip.

"Can you change a tire?" Sophia asked.

Leah whimpered.

"It'll be fine. I think. I drove you home from the airport, didn't I?"

"True." Leah got into the car. Before she buckled her seatbelt, Sophia got into the driver's seat, and gave her a shy smile.

"Are you wearing lipstick?" Leah asked.

"For a three hour drive? No way." Sophia patted her purse.

Leah leaned across the gearshift and kissed her. Sophia let out a muffled mmpf and kissed her back, reaching up to touch her cheek. Leah's eyelids drift shut. Sophia's lips brushed hers, making them tingle. She pressed harder. Sophia parted her lips. Leah's tongue darted in and found the warmth of Sophia's mouth. Sophia's tongue, strong and pointed, brushed against hers.

Leah pulled back. Sophia smiled. Leah shifted in her seat, balanced herself on her knee, and kissed Sophia again, harder, forcing her tongue into Sophia's mouth. Sophia responded immediately, and hungrily, sucking on her tongue, bringing them even closer. Leah stroked Sophia's shoulder.

Sophia wore a dress, red and sheer, and her arms were bare except for the thin strap that Leah brushed with her palm. She trailed her fingers down Sophia's arm.

A horn honked behind them. Leah lifted her chin. Adam, in the next car, glowered.

"Why isn't Ward leading?" Leah asked.

"Boys are dumb."

Leah fell back into her seat.

"Buckle up for safety," Sophia said, and she turned the key in the ignition. Leah buckled her seatbelt.

Sophia dabbed at her lips. She glanced shyly at Leah. Leah reached up to run her fingertips down Sophia's arm, and the car swerved. Leah grabbed the handle above her window with both hands.

"The interstate's coming up," Sophia said. "Do you want to navigate?"

"West," Leah said weakly.

"It's a north-south highway."

"South."

Leah closed her eyes as the car pulled onto the on-ramp. "Let me know when we get somewhere pretty." Her phone buzzed. She reluctantly pulled it out and read a text message. "Adam says you drive like his granny."

"If he's not good, I'm going to slam on my brakes and turn his car's muffler into mush."

"Go ahead. It's just a rental."

Sophia giggled.

Leah rolled back against the headrest and smiled. The thought of a two hour conversation with Sophia, who'd been the quiet sort in the few weeks they'd been friends, excited and terrified her. Energy buzzed between them in the car, making Leah sweat, making her nervous, wanting to touch Sophia but wondering if Sophia wanted to be touched by someone she hardly knew. So she attempted to make Sophia talk about herself instead.

On Leah's fifth, "Really?" they both lapsed into silence, and trees and lights flew past the windows. Leah turned away from the window and watched Sophia instead, captivated by the curve of her neck, the slope of her nose, and the blush of her cheeks when she caught Leah staring.

Sophia curled her lips over her teeth and bit down.

Retreating now seemed the worst course of action, but neither could Leah will herself to reach out and touch Sophia. Rejection would make it a long night, and an even longer drive back.

The radio was off; to turn it on would be an admission that they had nothing to say to each other. Leah glanced out the back window. Adam was still there. Ward was sitting next to him, too close.

Leah waved.

Adam waved back.

Ward smirked.

Leah rolled her eyes. "Do you hate anyone in your cast?"

Sophia shook her head. "They're all nice."

Leah nodded.

"But the director makes me cry." Sophia said it thoughtfully, as if imparting some bit of poetic information, but rage churned in Leah's chest.

"He what?"

Sophia shrugged. "He wanted to direct Elaine. They're friends. Old friends. Even longer than you and I have known each other," she said, flashing Leah a smile.

"Unfathomable."

"So, yeah. He got me, and he picked me, which means I'm better than everyone else he could have picked. I know that. But I'm not Elaine, I guess."

"You moved me when I saw you on stage. Isn't that enough?"

"But I want perfection--no, that's the wrong word. Perfect understanding."

"Yeah," Leah said.

"But he just wants Elaine." Sophia's voice caught on the last word, like tears were in her throat, blocking her voice. Leah squeezed her wrist. Sophia shrugged and tried to smile. She asked, "What about you?"

"I just want someone to realize how awesome I am," Leah said.

"Yeah?"

"I know that sounds--awful. It does. But I don't want them to talk about Poe's wife when they come to review me. I want them to talk about how well I do it, how beautifully I sing. Like, I guess that's terrible, but--I want my chance."

"To be better than everyone else?" Sophia asked.

"Like you said. To be perfect. To be me."

"I get it," Sophia said.

"But really, I just sing. As I'm told. I can't imagine how hard it is for Adam, wondering every day if he actually sucks at writing music when he hears the songs coming out of my mouth. Is it me who's going to fail? Or him? Or if we're both perfect, is anyone actually going to care? It's the end of tech rehearsals. I don't even care. "

"Remind me again why we're in this business?"

"We're neurotics," Leah said.

"Oh, yeah. In that case, I guess it's our parents' fault?"

Leah thought of her parents, and how much they supported her, and how much she disappointed them, even with her successes, even past age thirty, when they were still coming to see her plays. She let her hand slide down Sophia's arm, and tugged for her hand. Sophia squeezed her fingers.

Chapter Fifteen

The two cars parked side-by-side at the opera house's parking deck. Sophia unbuckled her seatbelt. "So," she said.

"So." Leah said. "Do you--"

Adam tapped on the glass. "Drinks, ladies?" he asked.

Leah unbuckled her seatbelt.

"Wait," Sophia said, lifting up a finger to stop Adam. He stepped back from the car. Sophia looked at Leah and asked, "What were you going to say?"

Leah's cheeks burned. She forced herself to meet Sophia's eyes, and asked, "Do you like me?"

Sophia bit her lip.

"It's okay, never mind," Leah said.

"No." Sophia put her hand on Leah's arm. "My show's ending in a week, and I don't know where I'm going, and…" She paused.

Leah swallowed.

"And I do. I think. I really like you," Sophia said.

Leah grinned.

"Who are you?" Sophia asked.

Leah laughed. She patted Sophia's hand.

Adam tapped the glass again.

"The opera awaits," Leah said. She got out of the car. Adam offered her his arm. Sophia took Ward's. Leah felt like she was playing dress-up. They all giggled together, and went into the opera house.

Ward and Leah opted for orange juice while Sophia and Adam split a flute of champagne.

"Five bucks, do they think I'm royalty?" Adam said.

"You're a famous playwright, darling."

"Still." He took a sip and passed it to Sophia.

"Do you not drink?" Sophia asked Leah.

"I don't drink before shows. Whether I'm in them or otherwise. I fall asleep."

"Or forgets her lines," Adam said.

"I never forget my lines," Leah said.

"Oh yeah? Sing 'Oklahoma'" Adam said.

"Oh come on, I was twelve."

"You were sixteen."

Leah put her hand to her head.

Sophia cast a shy glance at Ward.

Ward said, "I'm Baptist. Aren't you?"

"Catholic."

He raised his orange juice to her. She clinked it with the champagne glass.

"We could make mimosas," Adam said.

"After," Leah said.

Ward finished off his orange juice. He asked, "How long are operas?"

"Long."

He raised an eyebrow.

"Long-ass," Leah said.

"I'm going to have to pee," Ward said.

"Look," Adam said, putting his arms around Sophia and Leah. "Hillbillies. I know that some of you are from around here, but we're at the opera, and we are in theater, so could we please all be a little more stuck-up and pretentious? I'm feeling a little uncomfortable."

"This is about Poe, isn't it?" Leah asked.

Adam sipped his champagne.

Sophia said, "I really hope this version is as good as the one I saw in Amsterdam last year."

Adam smiled. People turned their heads to look at them.

"I hope so," Leah said. "But I predict it will be conventional. Nothing will beat the all gay La Boheme I saw, set in a gritty Americana street block."

Ward leaned in and whispered, "You're just talking about Rent, aren't you?"

Leah grinned. "Maybe I am."

Ward said, "Let me tell you, do not mention Angels in America in this town."

Adam cringed.

Sophia frowned. "What do they have against Mary Louise Parker in Charlotte?"

"The world may never understand," Ward said.

"Oh, I hope you don't think we're like that," a man said, stepping closer to enter their conversation. His eyes meaningfully looked over Ward, as he added, "Anyone's welcome to enjoy the opera."

"Thank you," Ward said. He raised his glass.

"It's our first opera," Leah said. "In Charlotte."

"We're season ticket holders," the man said.

Not to be outdone, Adam offered his hand and said, "We're from New York."

"Don't tourists usually flow in the other direction?" The man asked, smiling and shaking Adam's hand.

"We're producing a play. A musical, actually. In Durham."

"A musical. Regional theater? Working the kinks out?"

Adam nodded. "It's a bit safer. The New York crowd can be... dangerous."

The man smiled. "The last time I was in New York I saw, oh, what's the name... Once Upon a Mattress. Delightful."

Adam nodded.

Ward choked on his drink.

The man patted Ward on the back and said, "I save the serious theater for here. New York is for escaping. Hey, didn't I see you in Death of a Salesman in Columbia last year?"

Ward beamed. "Yes sir, you may have," he said.

"Where's Columbia?" Leah asked Sophia.

Sophia bumped her.

The lights flashed and the man went back to his wife.

Adam said, "I'm writing all that down."

Leah rolled her eyes. She followed Adam to the entrance, walking side by side with Sophia, wondering whether or not to take her arm, or her hand, or if that would be too personal for a public space, or too personal, just in general. She finally settled for brushing her hand against Sophia's back as they descended the steps. Sophia arched her back. She looked over at Leah, and looked like she might purr if they were in another setting.

"Where are we sitting?" Ward asked. "In the movies they always sit in the boxes."

"These are fourth row house seats," Adam said.

"Do we need to sit that close at the opera? They'll spit on us when they sing," Ward said.

"Good. You experience it. You spit on me all day long," Leah said.

Ward frowned.

"They'll see me if I sleep. They'll get all offended," Leah said.

"So don't sleep."

"But it's opera. I'm not sure what else to do."

"Read the subtitles."

Leah perked. "Okay."

They crowded into their row, stepping on people, apologizing, beginning to sweat already from the cramped space. Sophia, then Leah, then Adam, then Ward.

"Are we sharing the arm rest?" Sophia asked.

Leah shook her head. She reached into Sophia's lap, took her hand, and brought it into her own lap, linking their fingers together. Sophia scooted closer, putting her cheek on Leah's shoulder.

"Aw," Ward said.

"Does he really spit on you?" Sophia asked.

"Only when he sings."

Adam said, "And don't forget, it's a musical."

The house lights went down. The orchestra began to play. Leah wondered if she knew anyone in the pit. And then, with Sophia's fingers stroking along hers, and Sophia breathing softly to her right, she wondered if she'd follow any of the opera at all.

* * *

The house lights came up. "Half time," Ward announced. He bolted for the bathroom.

"Why's he rushing? He's a boy," Leah said.

Sophia squeezed her hand.

The last hour had been a blur of affection and German farce. Leah had settled against Sophia's hair until she'd gotten a crick in her neck. In the shifting around, her hand had traveled to Sophia's lap, and settled on Sophia's thigh. Sophia had squeaked. No one had shushed them, but Sophia had blushed and refused to look at Leah for the rest of the act.

Their eyes met in the light. Leah smiled. She leaned in and Sophia leaned in to meet her. They pressed their foreheads together, noses not quite touching. Sophia whispered, "You're fun."

Leah had to bite her tongue to keep from asking, "Is that all?" She instead asked, "What on earth happened in the first act?"

Sophia blinked. "I have no idea."

"It's in the playbill," Adam said.

"Do you need more champagne?" Leah asked, turning around, keeping her hand in Sophia's.

"I had more than enough. Do you want to get a hotel room tonight?"

"Adam," Leah said. "Sophia's right here."

Sophia giggled. She leaned around Leah and peered at Adam.

"The four of us," Adam said.

"Kinky," Sophia said.

Leah tugged on her fingers. "I'd rather go home, if Sophia's up to driving. Be in my own bed."

Adam smirked.

Sophia leaned back in her chair.

"You can join me," Leah said, and Sophia blushed and swatted her away. "Too much?" Leah asked.

Sophia shook her head.

Leah leaned closer and asked, "Not enough?"

Sophia squeaked. She closed her eyes.

Adam smacked Leah.

"Sorry, sorry. Aren't you glad we drove separately?"

"I know what I'm doing," he said.

Leah whispered to Sophia, "We could just go make out in a pretty velvet stairwell or something for the second act."

"Someone will ask us about the opera," Sophia said.

"We can Google it."

The house lights flashed.

"Too late," Leah said, "If we made a run for it, we'd be crushed by the wave of drunk people returning."

"It's just like NASCAR after all," Adam said.

Ward vaulted into his chair and said, "Die Fledermaus!"

Leah flashed him a gang sign.

"Oh, look, chemistry," Adam said.

"Fuck you," Ward and Leah said together.

The opera began.

Chapter Sixteen

"Sure you don't want to stay?" Adam asked as they walked to the car. "It's a glittering city."

It was. The lights reflected off the skyscrapers and created a gorgeous, if small, skyline. The bank buildings rose out of the ground and beckoned. But Charlotte was not old New York, and there wasn't enough cold in the warm reds and pinks and faint blues. There was no water, black and murky, to capture the light and reflect it, to make it all seem colder, more distant. Looking out from the parking deck at downtown, Leah felt she could be anywhere.

She had laughed so hard she was soundless. Her face hurt from smiling. She hadn't breathed for long moments. Sophia kept poking her and she'd laugh all over again. But now streets below were just streets. The opera didn't change that. She said to Adam, "I want to go home."

"We have to do that little musical first," he said.

She saluted. He and Ward got into their car. Leah watched them drive away silently, and then turned to Sophia. "I want to go home with you."

"You'd rather go to the roach motel than your place?"

"You have a more comfortable bed," Leah said. She closed her eyes, imagined falling onto crisp, clean sheets, the too-soft mattress, the puffy pillows, and Sophia's scent, drifting over her. She inhaled and opened her eyes.

Sophia studied her with furrowed brow, a slight pink tint to her cheeks.

"To sleep. All I can think about is sleep," Leah said. Her cheeks burned. She glanced at Sophia's car, picturing the long drive ahead of them, wishing it was over.

Sophia's frown deepened.

"Shutting up now," Leah said.

"Bitch."

"Diva."

"One note actor."

"Which note?"

"I'll, uh, let you know when I actually see you perform," Sophia said. Leah moved closer to her for each word, and now could lean against her, with Sophia's back to the car. Sophia licked her lips nervously, and hesitated.

Leah brushed her lips across Sophia's. Her hand trembled as she clasped Sophia's fingers, balancing herself to lean in for a second, deeper kiss. Her heart fluttered in her chest.

Sophia moaned. Leah's knees weakened with the sound. She leaned into Sophia, moving to kiss her ear, getting a mouthful of carefully sprayed curls and an earring. Sophia giggled. Leah blew into her ear, and said, "Or, we could just stay right here." Sophia clutched her side.

"Hey, you girls looking for a little action?"

The man's voice was too close and too loud. Leah turned around. He was dressed in a tuxedo, and had three friends with him, similarly dressed, similarly male, similarly drunk. Leah's mouth hung open.

Sophia shook her arm. "Ignore them and get into the car."

"What?"

The man said, "Come on. The opera! Wasn't that amazing?"

Sophia squeezed her wrist.

"Don't talk to them. Just get in."

Sophia opened the back seat of the sedan, which forced Leah to step closer to the men blocking the way around the car. But she got in as directed and Sophia slammed the door on her. Leah winced. She was still trying to catch up on what was happening, thinking of dissuading Sophia from whatever threat she saw--after all, they were at the opera--and she was highly embarrassed. She pressed her cheek against the glass.

"Go home," Sophia said, pushing her body between Leah's door and the men.

"We saw you kissing. You want action, same as us. It's too early to go home. Look at those outfits," he slurred. He tried to put his hand on Sophia's cheek. She slapped him away. Leah yelped. She scrambled for her cell phone. The man lunged for Sophia, who let him grab her, and then used the leverage to knee him in the groin and then step on his foot.

He howled. Sophia ducked into the driver's seat and locked the door. Leah looked out the back window. Sophia started the car and eased it back. The men scattered, cursing. She drove toward the ramp.

The whole thing had happened in three seconds, and the men had only tried to touch Sophia once. Leah's anticipation and fear were still churning inside her. She had seen that kind of thing on television, but hadn't thought it applicable in real life. Or necessary. But Sophia seemed to know what she was doing, and Leah shuddered, wondering if it was from experience.

She thought she was going to be sick. She closed her eyes and inhaled, and exhaled slowly, and then inhaled again. The car was still moving. She opened her eyes as they turned onto the street. She wasn't going to be sick.

"Should I call 911?" Leah asked.

Sophia shook her head.

"Should I call Adam?"

Sophia shook her head again. Leah leaned forward and tapped her arm, around the driver's seat. Sophia let out a cry and jerked away. Leah sat back.

Sophia cleared her throat, and said in a small voice, "Sorry. Try that again." She glanced at the rear-view mirror. Leah met her gaze and smiled. Sophia gave a tentative smile back.

Leah scooted forward and gently rubbed Sophia's arm. Sophia didn't flinch. Leah wrapped her arm around Sophia's chest, awkwardly, and said, "I'm not wearing my seatbelt."

Sophia laughed.

"Want to pull over?"

"We're about to hit the highway. We can stop at the next rest stop," Sophia said. Her voice was stronger. Leah lifted her fingers. She brushed Sophia's cheeks, and felt wetness.

"You saved my life," Leah said.

"Oh, don't be dramatic. They were just drunk guys."

"I have to be dramatic. It's in my Equity contract."

"Is it? I don't have a card, remember?"

"Oh, right," Leah said. "Well, they say you have to live life to the fullest, or your characters won't. And since the characters are bigger than we'll ever be--"

"Right. I was just practicing."

On the highway at midnight, the road was open, traffic scarce. Sophia drove with her left hand, and covered Leah's hand with her right. She pulled it back and gently kissed Leah's wrist. Leah closed her eyes.

Her emotions--fear, awe, worry, admiration, and the inappropriateness of how good, how erotic Sophia's lips on her hand felt, when those men had wanted the same thing, for the same reason. She pulled back and curled into the back seat, where she could breathe, slowly, in and out.

"Are you all right?" Sophia asked.

"Are you? They could have--You put yourself between them and me. Who does that?"

"I don't know. It was instinct. It just made sense. The whole thing was over in three seconds."

Leah smiled. She said, "It was...incredibly flattering."

Sophia was quiet. Exit signs, green and brightly lit, passed by them. The numbers had gone down while they were traveling south, and now they went up again. 22... 23... Sophia exhaled and said, "Those guys sat three rows behind us."

"What?"

"Center-left. They weren't random criminals. They weren't even the drug dealers from our neighborhood in Durham. They were rich, classy guys."

"Sophia..."

"Do you think this is the first time I've done that? Or the tenth?"

Leah leaned over the seat and cupped Sophia's neck, stroking gently.

"That's just the way guys are," Sophia said.

"Not all guys," Leah said. Not because she disagreed, but she stubbornly didn't want a world like that for Sophia. She wanted something better, where people were nicer to her friend.

"Adam's gay," Sophia reminded her.

"He still--" Leah fell quiet. She slid back slightly, to tangle her fingers in Sophia's hair.

"What?" Sophia asked.

"You'll fit right in when you come to New York," Leah said.

Chapter Seventeen

The car pulled into the rest stop at 12:45 in the morning. Other cars were there. Men went in and out of the bathroom. One family, seemingly not sleepy, piled out from an SVU with Georgia plates. Sophia got out of the car. She surveyed. Leah got out and stood next to her. A car drove past them and Leah flinched.

"God," Leah said.

Sophia leaned into her.

"I'm so terrified. How are you not?"

"I am," Sophia said. "I always am."

Leah squinted.

Sophia kissed her cheek and said, "I'm a great actress. I picture another reality for the emotion I want to convey, and I bring it to life, in this reality."

"What are you picturing?"

Sophia reached up to rub her cheek, lowering her eyelashes demurely.

"What?"

"You, laughing, at Die Fledermaus."

Leah snorted.

Sophia asked, "What? It's the closest happy memory I had, the most pungent."

"No wonder you can capture such ambition and anguish," Leah said.

"I'm a sponge. And Lady Macbeth will cut a bitch," Sophia said.

Leah slid her hand down Sophia's arm, and captured her hand. "Walk me to the bathroom?"

Sophia pulled her toward the sidewalk.

Leah finished before Sophia, and washed herself in the tiny sink, and then stepped outside, away from the moths smashing themselves against the halogen lights. No one was around outside except for an older custodian, who sat by the drink machines and smoked.

In the streetlights she could see the outlines of trucks and the forest beyond. North Carolina had so many trees, and they weren't even in parks. The excess and the summer breeze were peaceful, even in the middle of the night. She breathed in, hoping to taste pine.

This world would be nicer if it weren't so incredibly humid.

"Hey," Sophia said behind her.

Leah jumped.

"Sorry."

Leah turned around. Sophia stood, half-smiling, with her arms folded. Her hair was limp against her neck. She'd washed off her makeup, and she looked fresher, sweeter. All of twenty-five. Leah stepped closer. Sophia tilted her chin. Leah let her gaze rove down Sophia's body, and then met her eyes. "Let's go back to the car."

"Okay."

Leah took the keys from Sophia, and unlocked the car, and then opened the back seat. "Let talk. Just for a minute?"

"You want me to get into the back seat with you?" Sophia asked.

Leah nodded.

"Are we going to fog up the windows?" Sophia asked.

"Please. In a car? At a rest stop?"

Sophia's face fell.

Leah climbed into the car and then offered her hand through the open door. "Please," she said.

Sophia got in and closed the door. As soon as the door clicked shut, Leah enveloped Sophia in a tight hug. She whimpered slightly, involuntarily, into Sophia's hair. Sophia's hand settled against her stomach.

"I've never had anyone defend me before," Leah murmured. "It was so. Well. Hot."

"Hot?"

"I can't explain how much it made me want to thank you."

Sophia pulled back from the hug to look into Leah's face. Leah kissed her, gently, and when Sophia sighed against her mouth she kissed her again, cupping her cheeks and taking her fill until Sophia sucking on her lower lip became too arousing a distraction.

"Really?" Sophia asked.

Leah kept kissing her, nuzzling the corner of her mouth, exhaling against her eyebrows, rubbing noses with her, until Sophia said, "Um. Uh."

"What?"

"Leah--Am I just some young ingénue to you?"

"What?" It seemed to be the only word in Leah's vocabulary; the whole night, the whole universe, condensed into a confused blur. She waited for an answer.

Sophia attempted to answer, and said, "You're Leah Fisher. You were in the paper before you came down."

Leah had framed the little blurb in the back of the arts section and sent a copy to her mother. "Composer Adam Grenald brings New York leading lady, Leah Fisher, to the Durham Playhouse for the world premiere of his musical, Poe, based on the works of Edgar Allen Poe. For ticket information..." She squinted at Sophia and said, "You got a whole half-paragraph for Macbeth. So?"

"You didn't even have to perform to get into the paper. Everyone couldn't wait to see you. And here you are, beautiful and amazing and, hell, no one even thought you were gay."

"I'm not--" Leah thought of Grace, and the way Sophia made her feel, just by touching her arm, and how no man had ever done that for her, no matter how many she took home from parties, or the ensemble, or from the corner of 42nd St. and Broadway. "I am," she said.

"If you just picked me for your little regional fling," Sophia said, "You can pick someone else."

"No." Leah tried to gather her thoughts. "New York is like that. That's why I left. I don't want to be like that." She leaned back against the seat and closed her eyes.

Sophia's breathing, slow and even, was audible, filling the space between them in the car.

Leah licked her lips and said, "This is the weirdest night. Really?"

Sophia laughed.

Leah rolled her head toward Sophia and opened her eyes. "I had no idea. I was too busy noticing you to see anything else."

Sophia settled back against the window.

"Regional fling? Anyone I want?" Leah asked.

Sophia nodded.

Leah brushed Sophia's hair, sliding her fingers along the curls, scooting closer. "Even you?"

Sophia's blush deepened. Her chest was as flushed as her face.

Leah fingered the strap of her dress. "I love this dress."

"Why do you think I wore it?"

"For me?"

Sophia lifted her foot and rubbed it against Leah's calf. "Yeah."

Leah knelt and braced her hands on either side of Sophia, against the car door, and kissed her. Sophia kissed her back, nipping at her lips. Leah leaned her weight to one side, and slid her free hand over Sophia's shoulder, across the top of her chest, and lower. Sophia murmured encouragement as Leah fingered the top edge of her dress.

She pulled her mouth away from Sophia's to kiss her neck and then her shoulder. Her arm gave way. She toppled sideways, sticking out a foot to brace herself against the floor of the car. Sophia laughed and grabbed her, hauling her back up, and twisting around. They sat side by side. Leah wrapped her weakened arm around Sophia.

"Hey," Leah said. "We really did fog up the windows."

Sophia drew a heart in the window, and then leaned into Leah. "I'm so tired," she said.

"Me, too."

Sophia laughed. She covered her face with both hands.

Leah kissed her hair.

Sophia inhaled sharply.

"Let me get you something caffeinated, and we'll go home."

Sophia patted her thigh, and asked, "Are you sure you can go alone?"

"I'm brave," Leah said.

"Diet, then. Anything."

Leah touched a kiss to her lips, and then got out of the car. Outside, the air was cool against her flushed skin. She shivered.

She came back with soda to see Sophia had moved to the driver's seat, and was smiling at her approach. Waiting for her. She got in the car, and handed a soda to Sophia.

"Two more hours," Sophia said. "What can keep us awake for two more hours?"

"Showtunes."

"You start."

Leah closed her eyes, rested against the headrest, and sang.

Chapter Eighteen

"Wake up," Sophia said.

Leah opened her eyes. "I wasn't asleep," she said but her hoarse, sleep-filled voice betrayed her. She licked her lips. "I was dreaming of--" How to describe the odd figures dancing through her mind. British? Medieval? And yet, not--

"Spamalot, probably."

"God. Yes. Thank you." Leah rolled her head to the side. Sophia had turned off the ignition and unbuckled her seat belt. She reached over to Leah to unbuckle hers.

"Why was I dreaming of Spamalot?" Leah asked.

"I was playing it in the car."

"Were you singing along?"

"Yes. Did you dream of me?"

"No."

Sophia looked disappointed.

"You probably didn't want to be in that dream, anyway. I think David Hyde Pierce was naked. Wait."

"Wait?"

Leah clambered out of the car, nearly strangling herself in the seat belt even though Sophia had unclicked it. She walked around the car and opened the door for Sophia.

"Thanks," Sophia said, as Leah pulled her up.

"Purely self-interest," Leah said. She wrapped her arms around Sophia and pushed her face into Sophia's neck.

Sophia hugged her waist, and said, "Oh." They stood together under the parking lot lights until Leah began to sway, and her eyes drifted shut.

Sophia squeezed her harder.

Leah lifted her head and said, "Maybe I should--"

"Come in."

"Yes." Leah felt her face grow warm. This hesitation, this unknowing what was beyond the next kiss, or the next week, fueled by exhaustion, made her uncertain of where to touch Sophia, and what to expect. She asked, "What time is it?"

"Three in the morning."

"You seem perky."

"That's because your eyes are almost closed," Sophia said.

Leah dropped her arm to Sophia's waist and guided her to the entrance.

Sophia let her into the same room she'd seen before. There were more clothes hanging in the closet, and draped on the dresser, and the suitcase had been put away in favor of piles of clothes, papers, and various lotions on the second bed.

"I wasn't expecting company," Sophia said.

"Really?"

"Okay, I just didn't have time. Are you going to leave because there's crap on the floor?"

"No," Leah said. She went to the bed and sat on it. "But... I didn't bring anything to wear."

Sophia yawned, and then covered her mouth, and blushed.

"I mean, to bed."

Sophia looked her over. Leah blushed under the scrutiny, and found it arousing when Sophia's gaze lingered on her lower regions.

"I'll lend you a shirt," Sophia said.

"Will it fit?"

"Everything I have will fit," Sophia said. She gave Leah a wry grin.

Leah pulled off her shirt and draped it over a chair. She waited for Sophia to toss her a T shirt that said Michigan Summer Stock before turning away and putting the shirt around her neck. She unhooked her bra and then tossed it in the general direction of the chair, and then put the shirt on. When she turned around, Sophia had disappeared into the bathroom. The water ran.

The air conditioner was on. Leah pulled down the blankets on the bed. She couldn't remember how Sophia liked them. Comforter off? On top of sheets or under? She asked, "What do I do with the comforter?"

"The what?"

"The big blanket on top."

"Floor," Sophia called.

Leah shucked off her pants, folded them over her shirt, and then slipped into the bed, under the sheet. She asked, "Right side or left?"

"I really don't care," Sophia said. She came back into the room, wearing a silk robe over what actually looked like lingerie.

Leah rubbed her eyes. No, just a nightgown, which stopped mid-thigh. She tilted her head and looked questioningly at Sophia.

"I like to be comfortable," Sophia said.

"Really."

"You should try it. I feel rich beyond measure."

Sophia hadn't taken a step toward the bed. She looked at Leah, in her shirt, under her sheets.

"Come to bed," Leah said.

Sophia shook her head.

"I'm not going to attack you," Leah said.

Sophia smiled. "I know that. It's just--"

Leah pulled the sheets up to her chin.

"You look kind of ravishing," Sophia finished. She settled onto the side of the bed. "Um, what time do you need to be up?"

"I don't know what day it is."

"Friday--well, Saturday."

"I have rehearsal at eleven. Adam's a sadist."

"He's brilliant."

"He's a brilliant sadist," Leah said. Her eyes drifted closed. The lights went out. The mattress shifted, and a weight settled onto her stomach. She groped for it and found Sophia's hand. She was beginning to anticipate Sophia's touch, to be turned on by the slightest brush of skin. Need tried to wake her up. She opened her eyes.

Sophia was lying on her side, facing Leah, and she seemed already almost asleep.

"Night, Sophie," Leah said.

Sophia's lips worked, but she didn't say anything.

"You have a cute nose," Leah said.

Sophia's nose wrinkled.

Leah grinned, and closed her eyes, and held Sophia's hand.

Chapter Nineteen

The alarm went off. Leah screamed, jolted awake by the sound. Sophia rolled over and smacked the clock, and the blaring sound silenced.

"What time is it?" Leah asked, panting.

"Nine," Sophia said.

"I've got to get home," Leah said.

Sophia nodded sleepily. She snuggled into her pillow.

Leah had a raging headache, but she hoped the adrenaline from being scared awake would get her back to the house where she could shower. Six hours of sleep wasn't that bad.

"Sophie," she called.

Sophia rolled onto her back. Her eyes were still closed.

Leah knelt over her on the bed." I don't know when we'll get to see each other again."

"At work?" Sophia asked.

"I meant, for like a date."

Sophia smiled. Leah leaned down and kissed her. Sophia kept her lips closed, still smiling, and when they parted and Leah drew back, Sophia said, "Come back tonight, then."

"After your show?"

Sophia took Leah's hand and brought it to her breast, and pressed it there, against the silk. Leah kissed Sophia again, and this time Sophia tilted her chin back and offered herself to Leah, her tongue flicking against Leah's. Leah sighed against her kiss.

The snooze alarm went off.

Leah yelped. She turned off the alarm and climbed out of bed, and said, "I'm going, I'm going."

Sophia stretched. Leah made the mistake of looking back when she got to the hotel door, to see Sophia lying in bed, barely covered by the sheer gown, smiling invitingly at Leah. Her hair splayed across the pillow and her bare legs had worked out from under the sheets.

Leah's cell phone buzzed. She waved to Sophia and went out into the hallway and closed the door. She sagged against the wall. The phone was insistent.

"Where are you?" Adam asked when she flipped it open.

"Sophie's," Leah said.

"Are you all right?"

"Oh, yeah."

"Are you coming to work?" Adam asked. He sounded pissy, and Leah tried not to giggle at him. Giddiness was cruel to the non-giddy first thing in the morning.

"Absolutely," she said.

"Okay."

"See you in ten minutes at the house?" Leah asked.

"I'll make pancakes."

"I love you."

"How nice."

* * *

"Again," Adam said. The piano started. The artificial wind blew.

Leah began to sing, "Yearning heart I did inherit--"

"I'm hungry," Ward said.

The stage hands, in the wings with the fan where Adam couldn't see them, snickered. Leah smiled at them. They waved. One mimed eating a hamburger.

"It's a penultimate dress rehearsal," Adam said. "Get it?"

"And I have to pee," Ward said.

Adam sighed. "Take ten, then."

Ward bounded into the wings. Leah went to follow.

"Not you, Leah. Once again, from the top."

The piano started. Leah looked at the back of the room, at the white light shining right into her eyes, a distant sun burning, and sang, "Yearning heart I did inherit the withering portion--"

"Stop," Adam said.

Leah's mouth closed. The piano stopped. The violin player tapped his bow against the sheet music.

Adam leaned on the front of the stage, and put his chin on his hands, propped up by his elbows.

"Was I not yearning enough?" Leah asked.

"You're yearning for the wrong thing. Where's the despair of wanting the unattainable? Where's the Goth?"

"You said the Goth would be cliche for Poe, Adam."

"That doesn't mean go Disney."

Leah sighed. Without the artificial wind the costume made her sweat. She wiped her brow. "I'm doing the best I can," she said, and it sounded like whining, even to her ears.

"You're not focused."

"You mean my life isn't all about your musical?"

"It should be," Adam said. "We open in three days."

"I'll be ready."

"You should be ready now."

Leah's thoughts were far away, on Sophia, even as she looked at Adam. It was like he could see Sophia reflected in her irises, because he added, "I didn't bring you down here to have some torrid affair."

"No? Like the one you and Ward are having?"

"That's different. I don't pine for him."

She laughed, loud and bitter, and hoped the stage hands weren't listening. "I'm not pining," she said.

"She's all you've thought about all day, and damnit, Leah, I need you to think about the show."

"Adam--"

"I fought for you. I could have brought anyone down."

Every word hurt. She walked away from him and began to pace the stage.

"If you're not going to sleep with her, get over her," Adam said.

"How do you know I haven't--?"

"You're not exactly euphoric. You're not thinking straight, and you're not acting, and--" Adam banged the stage. "--I need a break. If we fail, it's all on you, Leah. This was your big chance."

She stopped walking and stared at him. He went up the aisle, to the back of the auditorium. He slammed the door.

Ward came back from the wings with a Coke. He popped the top. "Directors," he said.

She closed her eyes.

"Is he like that in New York, too?" Ward asked.

"This is his first big musical. His break. He finally found the backers. El dinero."

"Hm," Ward said.

"But yes. He's always like this."

Ward nudged her. She opened her eyes. He offered her the Coke.

"Thanks," she said.

"He's right, though. You've got to fall in love with me."

"I can pretend," she said.

"Acting isn't pretending."

She took a sip of Coke.

"I don't mind that you're not in love with me," he said.

She nodded.

"You should still let everything show. Come on. Let it hang out." His drawl was more pronounced, for effect, and he slouched dramatically.

"Are you saying I'm holding back?"

"You are."

"Maybe I just can't do it. I haven't hit those notes in a week," Leah said.

"Did you really come down to North Carolina to get laid?"

"No."

"To reinvent yourself?"

"What are you, a shrink?"

"To escape?" he asked.

"All of the fucking above."

"And Adam Grenald wrote it all down for you. All you have to do is follow along. It's right there. All of your personal crap, adapted for the stage by Eddie fucking Poe."

"Oh, come on. Not just that."

"Yeah. Follow along, and feel. I know you feel something."

"So look at you and think of someone else?"

"If that's even possible, darling," Ward said.

Chapter Twenty

In the weeks they'd been rehearsing she'd gotten used to Ward. He was insufferable and demeaning and petty, but he was predictable and she knew his habits. She'd acclimated to his presence. And he to hers. He didn't do the things that made her cringe, unless directed to by Adam, and he listened to her incessant chatter about New York parties and annoying parents.

He talked mostly about acting, and sometimes about music, and though she felt she'd kill him if he mentioned Stella Adler or the outdoor amphitheaters of the Appalachians one more time, she probably wouldn't know how to act once she got back to New York and he wasn't rambling on beside her.

And Adam could direct him, could make him change and mold himself. Harder, softer, shorter, three seconds more, put his hand an inch above Leah's elbow--no, two inches. Leah had told Ward he'd be a great television actor one day, where everything had to be perfect, instead of fluid.

Adam came back from break. His eyes were glassy and swollen, and he walked with more energy than he'd had before he left, leaning on the stage and attacking Leah with words.

She had tried, in her younger years, to make her blood burn like fire through her body, to scream her commercials and belt her songs, until her throat dried up and she'd lost weight and she felt outside herself.

Ward was right; no pretending.

Adam said, "All right. We're going to go through the entire thing. No stopping, no starting. Full band. Full voices--goat your notes, Leah, if you want, but don't fucking cut them off. Ward, use your whole body."

Leah didn't quite make eye contact with Adam. She looked at Ward, instead, as he went through his breathing exercises. His face loosened, his expression became more vulnerable. He dampened his lips.

"After that, fried chicken," Adam said.

"Finger-licking good," Ward said.

Leah was scandalized.

Ward sighed. "Yankees."

"Overture!" Adam shouted.

The conductor raised his hands.

Leah knew where to stand, where to walk, when to sing. She focused on Ward with her heart and her mind and let her body's autopilot take over. She missed a few cues, and stepped on Ward's lines, and forgot one, but no one interrupted her, or corrected her, or cajoled her. The music led her into scenes, and she sang, how she sang, looking at the conductor or with her eyes closed and Ward's arms around her waist. The microphone crackled, but no one stopped her from speaking. Adam just wrote a note on his pad. The fourth song's backdrop didn't fall, so they sang without it.

She was so relieved to sing the last song that her legs stopped hurting and her throat stopped hurting. Euphoria filled her. Ward sang his last song to her while she stood in the wings, meeting his eyes. She cried.

Ward had to turn away, because he was losing his voice to emotion.

"Brava," Adam said, after they'd finished curtain call. "If you do it with that much passion on opening night, no one will notice that it stinks."

"Fabulous," Ward said.

"Let's eat," Adam said.

After dinner there were stage manager notes. Adam was a cruel master. Leah knew it would only get worse as the hours ticked by toward opening night, but she was feeling as eager, if not as strained, as Adam. Sleep would be in short supply.

Tomorrow was the final dress rehearsal. The press would be there with their cameras and their notebooks, and there'd be an audience. Leah would miss the empty chairs, and the sensation of being alone, which added to the sorrow of the music. She walked back to the house with Ward at ten, leaving Adam to his manic re-writing of the score.

"Want a soda?" Ward asked.

"I'm just taking a shower and going back out."

"Where?"

"To see Sophie."

"The girl from the opera?"

"Yes." Leah rubbed her forehead. "The girl from the opera."

Ward nodded. "I'm going to drink Coke and eat chips and watch basketball."

"It's summer."

"I've got DVDs."

Leah raised her eyebrows.

Ward shrugged and went into the kitchen.

Leah showered and packed a bag and then spent ten minutes deciding on makeup or au natural. She finally settled for lip gloss, and then spent another twenty minutes trying to find something to wear. She called for Ward.

"Bless your heart," he said. "Asking a man to dress you."

"Shut up."

He opened her underwear drawer, tossed her something satin and bikini-cut that he didn't look at too closely, and then jeans and a polo shirt.

"I look like a gigolo," she said.

"Well, if you were a man, you'd look preppy casual."

She sighed. "Shoes?"

"Sandals."

"Sandals?"

"You're just going to kick them off, aren't you?"

"Good point."

He smirked and went back to watching basketball. As she passed the living room, where he was sprawled on the couch, under a homemade afghan, the sight was so appealing that she wanted to stay. The thought of going to Sophia's, having the talk, or not having the talk, or finding that she'd really prefer to sleep alone, or that the show had gone badly and she didn't want to see Leah at all, or that the show had gone so well Leah had no place in it, scared her so much that she opened her mouth and said, "I could stay. If you're--"

The look Ward gave her was so piercing and disdainful, she fled. She was halfway up the block before her humiliation eased enough to guess that he'd done that just to get her out of the house. She put him out of her mind.

Sophia was home and there were candles in her hotel room. They were lit and the second bed had been tidied of clothes and papers.

"You--" Leah started, but Sophia cut her off by saying, "You came," and hugging her tightly.

Leah dropped the bag and held Sophia close. "Ward suggested I'd be safer if I slept elsewhere."

"Is he going to put toothpaste in your shampoo?"

Leah drew back and frowned at Sophia. "Are you?"

Sophia grinned. She backed away from Leah and went into the room.

Leah closed the door and then followed Sophia. "How was the show?"

A shadow crossed Sophia's face. "I don't want to talk about the show."

"Okay. How'd you do all this?" She gestured to the room.

"Oh, in the hour between waking up and going to work," Sophia said.

"You're already a star," Leah said. "Now you just need New York." She put her hand on Sophia's neck, intending to pull her closer for a kiss.

Sophia smiled and moved away. She sat on the edge of the bed, and asked Leah, "What are we doing?"

"Do you mean, are we--"

Leah felt awkward and out of place in the room, in the candlelight and Sophia looking sweet and erotic. Her knees went weak. She sat on the opposite bed, and finished her sentence, trying to be an adult, with Adam's condemnation in the back of her mind. "Are we going to have sex?" She wanted to touch Sophia so much she ached, and ached even more that she couldn't.

Sophia nodded.

"I really, really want to," Leah said.

Sophia looked at the clock, seemingly for something to look at, and then her gaze flickered back to Leah's. "But?"

"No buts," Leah said. She reached across the space and put her hand on Sophia's knee. The gesture was so bold she wanted to pull her hand back immediately, but she didn't, lingering instead, watching Sophia's face.

"We close tomorrow," Sophia said.

"Is that a but?"

"No," Sophia said. She shook her head. "No, it's just--" She looked away again, and didn't look back. She hadn't reacted to Leah's hand.

Leah tried to guess the ailment; bad show, bad day, an attraction to someone new, a realization that Sophia was straight and wanted children, wanted Ward, or just didn't want a one-night stand.

Or maybe she did, and Leah was looking at her wrong.

Leah gave up guessing, and moved to Sophia's bed, and put her arms around her. Sophia sank back into her embrace. Leah forgot her list of insecurities as she kissed Sophia's hair. Sophia exhaled, a sound of release, and became limp in Leah's arms. Leah kissed Sophia's head, just above her ear, and decided, "Sometimes it's nice just to be," and said it out loud, sliding her hands down Sophia's arms.

Sophia turned in her arms, putting her hand on Leah's side. Leah shuddered as Sophia's hand dragged across her. Her stomach fluttered. Her skin flushed. Sophia smiled shyly at her and said, "Be in the moment?"

"Yeah," Leah said. She kissed Sophia, and it was Sophia who continued the pressure against her mouth, as Leah fell back onto the bed. Sophia kept their mouths together, slack and warm. She stroked Leah's waist. Leah raised her knee between Sophia's legs, to trap her, and the resulting sigh against her lips, seeming to come from Sophia's whole body. Need surged through her, demanding more, and she worked her hands down Sophia's back as they kissed. Sophia laughed against her mouth, and pulled back to smile down at Leah.

"I guess we are," Sophia said.

Leah lifted her head to kiss Sophia, but Sophia leaned back further, and waited until Leah put her head back down, and leaned down to kiss her forehead. Leah wrinkled her nose. Sophia kissed each eyebrow. Leah worked her hands under the hem of Sophia's shirt.

Sophia arched when Leah touched her bare stomach. She kissed Leah's mouth, offering her tongue, rubbing herself across Leah's hands. Leah sucked on her tongue, and closed her eyes to the kiss, giving into the sensation of Sophia's skin, the weight of Sophia's breasts against hers, the way Sophia was starting to grind her hips against Leah's thigh.

Somewhere close by, a tinny, mechanical version of "Monday, Monday" began to play.

Sophia groaned.

Leah pulled her into a hug, to keep her on the bed, but Sophia said, "That's my brother. I told him to call. I just hoped it would be earlier." Leah let go, going completely slack, flinging her arms to the side. Sophia climbed off of her, brushing her abdomen in the process, and got the phone.

"Don't go anywhere," she mouthed to Leah, and then opened the phone. "Hello?"

At the sound of the voice on the other end, Sophia's expression became delight. "Hi," she said.

Leah moved up to the headboard and propped herself against the pillows. Sophia sat down next to her, listening to the voice on the other end of the phone. Leah could hear low, male tones, but they were just making a staccato, buzzing sound. She settled her hand on Sophia's thigh.

The male voice offered a laugh, loud enough for Leah to hear and then stopped. Sophia started talking. Leah tried to tune her out, to offer a wall of privacy in the inches between their heads, but Sophia's voice interested her. She rested her head on Sophia's shoulder, listening, as Sophia counseled her brother on love. Leah didn't know if the brother was older or younger; she tried to picture him from his voice, and ended up just picturing Donny Osmond.

Sophia became a different person as she talked to her brother. She was looser, funnier, softer, less demanding with the mess of his life than she was with her own monologues. She seemed completely unselfconscious, and Leah stayed as still as possible not to break the spell.

"Oh, Jackson," Sophia said, and a tear formed at the corner of her eye.

Leah kissed her cheek. Sophia smiled at her and then asked, "What? Yes." She squeezed Leah's hand, and Leah was glad to be there, not only to witness but to give what Sophia needed.

The conversation dragged on and Leah's eyes began to droop. Determined to stay awake, to make love to Sophia, when the arousal had already pooled between her legs, when Sophia's fingers were tracing circles on her thigh, she turned on the television, set it to mute, and watched a talk show. She tried to mimic the exaggerated faces she saw there in the host and the participants. She longed for a mirror. She longed to talk. She was rarely this long in a room with someone without talking. Her jaw worked. She added dialogue to the expressions.

Sophia covered the mouth of the phone and said, "I think they're talking in Spanish."

"It's on mute," Leah said.

Sophia furrowed her brow. She went back to the phone.

The talk show got boring. Leah channel-surfed before finding the news. She couldn't mimic fires or floods or stocks going up, but the graphics were pretty enough. She stared at them.

"Leah."

Sophia shook her. Leah looked over. Rarely had Sophia said her name. It sounded strange and exotic and beautiful coming from her lips.

"I'm off the phone," Sophia said.

"How's your brother?"

"Better. He just needed to talk to someone who understands that he isn't crazy."

"Takes one to know one?" Leah said.

Sophia smacked her side. Then she hopped off the bed and went into the bathroom. Leah frowned, turned off the television, and went to retrieve her bag. She'd brought sexy pajamas--the one pair of sexy pajamas she brought on every trip, just in case, and she changed into them quickly and put on Chap Stick and bounded back into bed. Her hair had dried haphazardly, and she considered lunging for the bag again, and her comb, but Sophia emerged, wearing a white T-shirt that said Evita on it, and boxer shorts that looked like they had belonged to a man at one time. Plaid. Leah looked at her legs, as Sophia came over and knelt on the bed and wrapped her arms around Leah.

"Who were you in Evita?" Leah asked.

"Oh, no one. I just saw it with my parents and loved it. You know. Theater."

"Of course."

"Madonna," Sophia said.

"Don't cry--"

Sophia cut her off with a kiss, sealing their mouths together until she seemed sure Leah wouldn't sing. Leah smiled as Sophia pulled back, and said, "We could..." She slid her hands down Sophia's back and urged her closer.

"We could," Sophia agreed. She pressed her mouth to Leah's. Leah opened her mouth. Sophia's tongue darted inside, small and frustratingly elusive, until Leah put one hand on Sophia's head and urged her to deeper kisses. Sophia knelt next to her, and put one knee between her legs, balancing, and thrust her tongue between Leah's lips.

Leah went from cold to on fire in a matter of seconds. She tangled her fingers in Sophia's hair, trading breathing for kisses, for the touch of Sophia's lips and tongue that made her face feel flushed and her mouth feel swollen. Sophia's breasts pressed against her chest, and Leah's nipples tightened to the proximity of Sophia's body. Leah slid her hand over Sophia's ass, squeezing, and was rewarded with Sophia's moan against her lips. Sophia was in perpetual motion, pushing against Leah's legs, kissing and retreating and kissing again. Her hands moved over Leah's body freely, but shyly, touching a breast, a hip, her neck.

Leah wanted to turn her hips into Sophia's, thrust upward and end it all quickly, before she died of desire. She twisted and fell back onto the bed, pulling Sophia over her, their legs still tangled together. Sophia's weight on her pressed all the right places. She reveled, holding Sophia close, seeking more. She raised her leg between Sophia's. Sophia yelped.

"Too much?" Leah asked.

Sophia sat up, pressing down on Leah, and settled her hands on Leah's stomach. She smiled.

Leah tapped the tops of Sophia's thighs. Then she tugged on the hem of Sophia's T-shirt, pushing it up as far as she could reach, revealing Sophia's toned and pale abdomen. Sophia pulled the shirt out of Leah's grasp and pulled it over her head. She wasn't wearing a bra. Leah settled back on the bed and took in the sight, until Sophia arched over her, and kissed her.

Unable to see Sophia's breasts, she settled for cupping them in her hands, feeling their weight. Sophia rocked against her, biting at her lips, her kisses becoming sloppier, and Leah could tell--could smell and taste and feel--that Sophia wanted her, wanted this. She rolled Sophia to the side so she had more room to maneuver, though she ached with the loss of Sophia's weight and her body urged her to grind into Sophia, to relieve the tension and the need, and Sophia, sprawled on the bed, smiling faintly, half-undressed and rapturous with flushed skin and swollen lips, urged her, too.

She bent her head to kiss Sophia gently. Sophia lifted her hand, cupped Leah's face, and kissed her back. Leah sucked on Sophia's lower lip. Sophia chuckled, taking hold of Leah's satin top and murmuring, "Your turn."

"Help me," Leah said, and Sophia grinned and sat up, sliding her hands under Leah's top, caressing her stomach. Leah arched, and said, "More."

"More?"

"Mm."

Sophia scooted down and pushed up the fabric, and kissed bare skin.

"Sophie," Leah whispered. Sophia grazed her side with her teeth. Leah convulsed. She exhaled with force and hollowed her stomach. Sophia drummed her fingers against her ribs and laughed, then pressed her open mouth to Leah's stomach. Leah would have screamed had she the breath.

Leah's bag began to chime, "It's Raining Men."

Leah did scream, and added, "Fuck you!" but the phone persisted in its jangle.

"Don't answer it," Sophia said.

Leah sighed. "It's like we're in a movie. But it's Adam's ring, and it's three in the morning and he knows where I am. It could be important."

Sophia's expression immediately changed to one of concern. She relented and released Leah, who fetched the phone and answered it with her gruffest, "What?"

"I want to go over your song in Act II again," Adam said, and launched into an explanation of mood and theme.

Leah listened with half an ear, and went back to the bed, where Sophia had pulled on her T-shirt and pulled back the covers. Leah slid into bed, and offered her lips to Sophia. Sophia kissed her, and Leah murmured against her lips as Adam chattered on.

"Adam," she said when the kiss broke and he stopped for breath, "That's what I've been doing."

"But I want you to stand different. And your face, you have this tic, that needs to stop when you sing this line--"

Leah groaned.

Sophia rubbed her back and said, "It is the last night."

"I don't care about the musical," Leah said, and though Adam squeaked, it felt hollow even as she said it, and Sophia gave her an indulgent smile. "I'm listening, Adam." She stretched out on her side, and Sophia settled next to her, draping an arm around her waist, settling a hand over her heart. Leah wriggled back, tucking into the curve of Sophia's body. Sophia snuggled closer.

Leah talked to Adam in low tones, her best stage whisper, and in their pauses Sophia's even breathing touched her ears. Sophia was asleep. Well, lucky her, Leah thought. Sleep would elude her for the next three days, through opening night, through the party and the elation and the tension of waiting for the reviews.

She pitied Adam and his passion, radiating through the phone, and resigned herself to endless late-night calls. She would bow and success or failure would all be on her, her voice bringing forth the lyrics, her face bringing forth the emotion, she didn't have much cause for complaint.

"This is the best night of my life," she said. And Sophia's embrace, in sleep, tightened around her.

Chapter Twenty-One

She left Sophia sound asleep and walked home through the sunny late morning. As she climbed the steps, shouting came from inside the house. Ward's voice. "I can't take this anymore, I need to think."

"Since when do I pay you to think?" Adam said.

Leah opened the door.

Ward saw her and threw up his hands, and asked, "Well, how was your night?"

Leah cocked her head.

Adam grabbed his bag and passed Leah and went out the door. He called, "Whenever the divas show up, we'll have our final dress rehearsal. Don't forget the fucking press will be there." He slammed the door.

"Don't forget the backers," Ward said, with his lazy smile. "They'll be there, too."

"Can't forget them. I'm going to shower."

"Gotta wash off your hot night?" Ward asked.

Leah turned around on the first step and met his eyes. "I hate you, you know."

"All the better to make you cry."

"Bastard."

"It's all Method. What's your style, trial and error?"

"A good director," she snapped back.

He smiled.

She bunched her fists and stormed up the stairs. He was right; Sophia's scent was everywhere. Kisses had dried on her skin. She'd woken up to Sophia's sweat. In the shower she scrubbed with Ivory soap, so that the makeup and costume people wouldn't complain as they primped her, so that Ward wouldn't make comments when his lips touched hers.

But everything inside her lingered. Sophia's tongue in her mouth. The warmth in her stomach. The tingling in her fingertips. Everything Virginia was supposed to feel, that Poe must have felt, writing down the words. If she carried Sophia to the stage with her, maybe it would all work out.

She looked at herself in the mirror after wiping the fog away. She traced the wrinkle at the corner of her eye. The makeup artist would cover it up. Her dresser would wax her eyebrows. There were bags under her eyes. Her lips still felt swollen. She prodded them, and then chewed on the tip of her finger.

Ward was gone by the time she got downstairs, so she went back out into the sunshine alone. The modest houses across the street startled her, the trees seemed indulgent. Never would she get used to not seeing buildings--those comforts of civilization. They were doing Poe in the wilderness.

And it was sold out.

* * *

The final dress rehearsal had gone beautifully. Ward was right there with her, present and hateful and passionate. She'd called upon her voice and didn't miss a single note. When she sang, the audience had been perfectly still. When she sighed, she felt them sighing with her.

"We should have an audience more often," Leah had said to Adam.

"Spoken like a true leading lady."

She'd rolled her eyes. Adam hugged her and said, "The audience is going to come in from now on. Every day." She smiled. He kissed each of her cheeks and said, "Twice on Saturday."

* * *

Leah sipped lemonade. She sat on the front porch, pretending. Trying to let herself melt into the humid, sunny evening. Macbeth was going on in a few minutes. Leah hadn't realized that it started in daylight and ended in darkness. The lemonade rushed coolly down her throat, settled in her stomach, grounded her.

Poe had taken everything out of her, had given it away, and left her feeling hollow, and exhausted, and so tense she couldn't rest. Adam, despite his pages of notes after the rehearsal, felt as if he'd seen something come alive on stage. Something now living. He was so happy. He would give the judgment--good or bad--to other people. For him, creation was enough.

No one else was out on the other porches, though the swings were there, and the lawn furniture, and children's toys and bicycles and the occasional refrigerator. All that stuff, waiting to be inhabited. She took a sip of her drink. A car passed. She raised her glass. The driver waved.

"Neat," she said.

The phone rang. The ring tone was one she hadn't heard in a long time, obnoxious and jarring, and she'd never admit to anyone it was her favorite song, or that Grace had covered it at a benefit, low and smoky, completely belying the original tune, making everyone laugh. Grace had belonged to everyone that night, but she'd kissed Leah in the dressing room, with fresh flowers covering every surface.

"Hello?"

"Leah?" Grace's voice. Leah didn't fall off the chair, or break into a million pieces. She took a sip of lemonade. Except for the low, dull anger in the pit of her stomach, only there if she bothered to search for it, Leah's nerves felt perfectly okay. She exhaled.

"Yeah. Hi," Leah said.

"Is this a bad time?"

"No, no. I'm just--enjoying the night."

"What?" Grace asked. She had that actress voice, that Bette Davis darling voice that made Leah picture long cigarette holders and stage makeup and Times Square. She had three albums out.

"I'm on the front porch. Drinking lemonade. Thinking about life."

"My God."

"Yeah, well." Leah jangled the ice in her glass.

"Look, Leah," Grace said, and that's how Leah knew she was calling about business. She sighed. Grace continued, "I did a reading for this thing, last year, this swashbuckler thing--"

"Hasn't that already been done?"

"Not successfully," Grace said. "Anyhow, they're doing a three week workshop, looking at launching in the spring, and I put your name in for it."

"Doing what?"

"A witch?"

"Like, double double toil and trouble?"

"Yeah. Creepy. Dark. Goth. You'll like the song, though. I can fax over the sheet music. Do they have faxes, um, where you are?"

"Yes. And indoor plumbing. And HBO."

"Leah."

Grace had never liked her wit and during the time they were together, Leah had practiced being kinder and more patient with people. Even though no one knew exactly why. She'd gotten compliments from producers and fans alike--"She's so nice. She's so generous." And then when she and Grace ended their relationship, all the sarcasm came back, released with vengeance upon the world. She'd had a lot to make up for. She smiled grimly and gave Grace the fax number for the house.

"Thank you," Grace said. "I think this part is really you. When can you meet with the casting agent?"

"Next week I can fly up on my day off."

"He'll call."

"Fabulous."

"Well, that's all. Good luck in two days?"

"Thanks, Grace," Leah said, trying not to sound bitter. Her tone was habit more than feeling, just the instinctive stance she went into whenever they talked. She silently asked forgiveness. To ask forgiveness out loud would just cause a fight.

"Break a leg," Grace said, and chuckled.

Leah frowned, remembering what it was like to be nice to people, and said, in her best kind voice, "Thank you, Grace. It's good to go home to the promise of work."

"Like I said, you'll be great for the part. Goodnight, Leah."

"Goodnight, Gracie."

Grace huffed, and hung up. She'd always hated that. Leah smiled to herself. The sun had set, and the light had become grey. Leah went inside. She poured the ice and lemonade into the sink, put the glass in the dishwasher, and leaned on the counter. The tension had left her, and Grace's call, though meaningless, was slightly reinvigorating. She shook herself. In a couple of hours, she'd go to the Macbeth closing night party, but it was too early to start getting ready.

The house was quiet. Adam was still asleep upstairs and Ward was gone. Leah settled in at the piano. She put aside the Poe sheet music and rummaged through the books on top. There were no basic books of show tunes, so she settled for movie themes, and played Terms of Endearment as quietly as she could and hummed along.

She played until the sky outside was pitch black and Adam stumbled downstairs in his rumpled clothing. "Party tonight?"

"Yeah," Leah said.

"You seem--I don't think I've ever seen you play the piano."

"One note at a time," Leah said.

Adam took a beer from the fridge and twisted off the top. "Want one?"

Leah shook her head.

"It's kind of nice here," Adam said, looking at the window.

"Calm before the storm," Leah said. "I was on the porch, earlier."

"Did anyone shoot at you?"

"No. But Grace called. She offered me work."

"Really?" Adam raised an eyebrow.

"Really. I'm going to at least meet with the agent."

Adam nodded. "I've been approached to consult on a reading here. Some guy from the coast. Want in? I don't know if they have any female parts, yet."

"Sure." Leah lowered her voice. "Or I could be a man."

Adam raised his beer bottle, and said, "A consummate actress."

Leah grinned. She put the movie book back on the top of the piano, and got up.

"How's Grace?" Adam asked, watching her.

"I didn't ask. But she sounded fine."

Adam nodded. "And how's Sophia?"

Leah's face broke into a smile before she could even think of a noncommittal response. She blushed furiously, and before she could say, "How should I know?" Adam was already waving her off.

"You'll be there tonight, then?"

"Yes," Leah said. That she could answer, and definitively. She went upstairs, ignoring his grin as she passed.

He called, "Let me do your makeup!"

"I'm not twelve," she shouted back.

"Let me anyway? Tonight's a night to glitter and be gay."

Thanks to Adam, she ended up singing "Candide" in the shower, and still had the operetta stuck in her head as they left for the party. Adam led her to the car.

"Where are we going?"

"They rented a restaurant downtown."

"We're downtown," Leah said, though clearly she saw the houses and trees that surrounded them.

"There's a whole city out there, Leah. Durham." Adam waved his hand with flourish.

"If it's over two miles away it's not the same city," Leah said. She walked to the theater each morning, she'd walked to the club with Sophia, and the donut shop, and she presumed she could walk to the gas station on the corner if she needed survival supplies. Die Fledermaus didn't count because that was in another city--like going to Albany. But driving to a restaurant just...wasn't done. "Can't we take a cab like normal people?" she asked.

"Honey, I promise there'll be food, and you smell exceptionally good, and everything will be all right."

"All right." She got into the car.

Adam settled into the driver's seat. "Buckle your seatbelt," he said.

"What?"

Chapter Twenty-Two

Leah scanned for Sophia as Adam pushed into the crowd at Thyme, but she didn't see Sophia, and instead saw one of the South Pacific producers, with a stage hand on his arm, who said "Leah Fisher, isn't it?"

She shook his hand and nodded.

"Pleased to make your acquaintance. We're all so excited about Poe."

"Are you coming?" she asked, dumbly, still scanning for Sophia. She tugged distractedly at the strap of her halter dress. Velvet in a casual cut made an impression, Adam said, but she was afraid she'd get a rash. The merlot-shaded fabric, though, blended with the crowd dressed mostly in black. Rented tuxes and little black dresses for most of the crowd, black jeans and skin-tight T-shirts for the crew, who didn't care anymore, and just wanted to get drunk on a night when they didn't have to go to work in the morning.

"Opening night, of course," the producer said. She tried to remember his name. Paul?

"You'll have a wonderful time."

"No doubt," he said.

They smiled at each other and he inclined his head, and wandered off to the next celebrity. Leah breathed. She went further into the crowd, and shook hands with an actor she knew, and someone she didn't know who turned out to be a benefactor, there with the mayor. He asked for her vote. She just nodded and smiled.

Meet, greet, go. She used to give out business cards; she didn't anymore. Industry contacts were not made at parties. Impressions were made. If they remembered her, they'd seek her out. She had come for one reason, and it was a better reason than any she'd had in previous parties.

And there she was. Sophia, standing next to Elaine, who sat in a wheelchair, covered in blankets, smiling grandly and sipping champagne. Sophia wore a black gown, floor-length, strapless, that Leah had not seen her wear before. Her hair, a matching shade of black, was piled on top of her head. Leah started toward her, just as Sophia's attention was entranced by a man who seemed to be asking her to dance.

Sophia demurred. Leah felt relief, and then guilt at her own jealousy, but really, who danced at parties anymore? Macduff's henchmen appeared at Sophia's side and said something that made her laugh. She lifted her drink to them. Leah arrived, and let her hand slide across Sophia's back as she knelt to greet Elaine.

"There's only one question to ask a famous actress," Leah said.

"I'm afraid to know, darling," Elaine said.

Leah tugged at her neckline, and asked, "Would you sign my boob?"

Sophia, still talking to Eric, kicked Leah.

"I'm afraid I don't have a pen."

Leah did her best impression of a sad face, which must have worked, as Elaine frowned. She said, "I could touch your boob."

Sophia kicked Leah again.

"Ow. Hey, I didn't say that. Kick Elaine! Kick the woman in the wheelchair," Leah said. She stood, and squeezed Elaine's hand.

Adam shouted, "Leah!"

"Duty calls. It was nice seeing you."

"You, too." Elaine lifted her chin and beamed at Leah. "It's so nice to go to a party and see a new face, for once. The same old scene gets so old."

"I know exactly how you feel. Come to New York sometime, be my show-and-tell."

Elaine sighed, and said, "I would, Miss Fisher, but it's so cold in New York." She drew her blanket around her and her hand shook. She looked away from Leah. Leah brushed Sophia's elbow and went to Adam. When she looked back, Sophia smiled beatifically at her.

Adam said, "Leah, I'd like you to meet Joshua Litton. He's the regional theater editor of the Atlanta New Day."

"You've come a long way," Leah said.

"There's a bit more money for regional theater in Georgia, but I hear North Carolina sure would like to put itself on the map," Joshua said. He was a big, overweight man, with a Southern accent that made Leah think of Senators. She tried not to giggle as she shook his hand. He said, "I'm interested in what compels the New York crowd to come down here, when it's not obviously a try-out situation."

"Why do you think it's not a try-out?" Adam asked.

"Because you don't have those kind of backers, Mr. Grenald. And because Durham doesn't have that kind of audience. I can't imagine any city in North Carolina being able to host an out-of-town."

Adam grinned. "But Atlanta?"

"Absolutely. And is this your leading lady?" Joshua asked.

Leah glanced at Adam.

Adam said, "I already told him the Triangle is where the money was. That's why he decided to ask an actress."

"Because we don't have any money?"

"Exactly," Joshua said. "I can't quite believe Grenald here, when I don't see 'Funded by RTP' on any of your playbills."

Leah smiled and said, "While it is true, Mr. Litton, that Manhattan is the center of the universe, it's a big universe. The same instinct that drives me to act--to be different people, to transport myself and the audience to different places--is the same instinct that compels me to do it all for real."

"And what instinct is that?" Joshua asked.

"The drive for self-actualization," Leah said.

"Thank you. A well-trained woman you have there, Mr. Grenald."

"She sings, too."

They chuckled together, and then Joshua went to talk to Elaine, and Adam and Leah sagged in relief.

"I wanted to say that we vomit our innards onto the page," Adam said, "and the other dogs come and lick it up. How's that for quotable?"

Leah shrugged. Freed from responsibility, however briefly Adam would let her be, Leah turned to watch Sophia.

"She looks lovely," Adam said.

"I'm going to seduce her tonight."

"I don't think you'll have to do that much seducing," Adam said.

"Still, she deserves it."

Adam kissed her cheek." So do you."

She was used to taking compliments from strangers, of course, but from friends, it felt different. She knew for some, like Adam, hooking up at a strange party in a same city was easy. His beginnings with Ward were effortless, even if things were falling apart now. Leah had done the circuit enough to know what felt good and what didn't, and what she wanted, but rarely did she have any chance to stand across the room from someone and ache for them.

She was going to take this chance. She looked at Adam, but he was gone, presumably chatting up someone who could pay for his dreams. She turned back to Sophia, who caught her eye across the room, and then blushed and looked away.

Leah made her way across the room. Eventually the crowd would thin around her; the night would grow later. Those who had been in the show went home to sleep off the exertion and the adrenaline. Only the backers would stay, to celebrate their wealth with the open bar, to clap the composers and directors on the back, and take what credit they could.

Sophia didn't glance her way again, keeping her attention instead fully on the deputy mayor, who had her hand clasped.

"Leah, I'd like you to meet Adrian Foster, and his wife, Teela," Sophia said.

Leah smiled and shook their hands. Adrian Foster had silver hair but seemed young otherwise, smiling and fit and tan. His wife was even younger, and African American, and kept staring at Sophia like she was a statue of Aphrodite come to life.

"We saw Sophia as Lady Macbeth," Teela said. "It makes me want to go home and watch all the Shakespeare I can. I forget how powerful his plays can be."

Leah said, "I know. Theater is about being lucky to be in the right place at the right time to see moments that will never be recreated."

"Exactly," Adrian said.

"Leah's in the new musical," Sophia said. "Are you going to see it?"

The disdain that crossed Adrian's face made Leah's stomach sink, though Teela stepped in to say, "No, we can only really catch one or two performances a season due to other engagements."

"I guess life is picking and choosing your moments of wonder," Sophia said, not unkindly, and Teela patted her, gave her one more wistful look, and led her husband to talk to the owner of Bernie's Hardware, who may or may not question his artistic integrity, but at least it wouldn't be from the perspective of a starving actor he had to look in the eye.

"Hm," Leah said.

Sophia smiled.

"You look beautiful." Leah clasped Sophia's hand. Sophia glanced around, but didn't pull away. She blushed. Pink tinted her cheeks. Leah wanted to take Sophia's chin in her free hand and kiss her. Her lips burned for it. Instead, she squeezed Sophia's hand and said, "Really."

"So do you," Sophia said.

Leah took a step closer, into Sophia's personal space, so that their clasped hands were at her side, instead of between them. She said, "I'd like to ask you to dance, but there's no music." Sophia's blush deepened, and Leah went on. "So can we go home?"

"Leah, should we--talk?"

"Not tonight," Leah said. She unclasped Sophia's hand, and stroked her wrist, and then up her arm. Sophia shivered.

And then Leah thought of something. "How on earth are we going to get home?"

"Adam gave me his keys and caught a ride with Eric," Sophia said.

"Bless him," Leah said.

"How did you get a friend like him?"

Leah considered. "I sang for him."

Sophia smiled.

"Miss Medina!" someone shouted. Sophia turned around. She grabbed Leah's hand, gave it a quick squeeze, and walked off to greet the couple rushing toward her.

Leah sighed. She had been so close. She went to the bar for a drink, to waste time, ended up with a Shirley Temple. No falling asleep drunk tonight. She sipped the sweetness, let the bubbles tickle her nose, smiled at the bartender. He had no idea who she was and Leah was tempted to tell him, as his eyes followed Sophia across the room. She was the one taking Lady Macbeth home.

Sophia came to the bar. The bartender flushed, but she ignored him." I have to stay. There's going to be cake."

"Cake?"

"And photos," Sophia said.

Leah draped an arm along the bar, behind Sophia's back."I'll wait."

"Thanks."

"Do I get cake?"

"Yup," Sophia said.

"Is that against protocol?" Leah dropped her hand behind the bar, settling on Sophia's back, just above her ass.

"I don't care."

Leah squeezed her waist and Sophia sighed with pleasure and took a sip of the drink the bartender handed her. When she turned to Leah, the scent of gin wafted between them. Leah licked her lips.

"Miss Medina!"

Leah was beginning to hate the sound of that.

"Can we get a picture?" Glick Brice lifted his camera, and smiled charmingly at them. "It's for the Daily," he said. Leah frowned at Sophia.

"Independent weekly," Sophia said.

"Ironic, right?" Glick asked.

"It caters to the gay community, you know," the bartender said behind them.

Leah looked over and said, "You can't be in our picture."

He sulked.

Leah tucked herself against Sophia's side and gave Glick her celebrity smile. Sophia wrapped an arm around Leah in turn.

"Fabulous, girls," Glick said. "I can't promise you the cover, but at least a quarter page."

Leah kissed Sophia's cheek. "You'll be famous."

Glick snapped a few more as they sagged against each other, and then let his camera hang around his neck as he pulled out a notebook. "Sophia Medina," he spelled it out. "That's your stage name?"

"Yes," Sophia said.

"And Leah Fisher?"

Leah nodded.

"I'll grab your bios from the playbills," Glick said. "Thanks, ladies. Oh, there's the deputy mayor. Excuse me."

Sophia gave a little wave.

Leah cupped the back of Sophia's neck. "Where were we?"

"Not here," Sophia said, and twisted away, a little.

Leah slumped against the bar. "This is the worst party ever."

Sophia smiled and lifted her drink.

Leah clinked hers. "To us?"

Sophia nodded, and took a sip of the gin and tonic. Leah ran her fingertips down Sophia's arm. Sophia closed her eyes.

Leah said, "In three seconds, someone is going to call your name."

Sophia shook her head. Leah put her glass on the bar, and took Sophia's hand, and tugged.

"Where are we going?"

"The bathroom."

"I don't have to go to the bathroom."

"Neither do I."

Sophia bit her lip as Leah pulled her along. The sea-green-painted bathroom was cramped, and smelled of potpourri. The two tiny stalls were empty, and there was enough space for Leah to wedge herself against the door and pin Sophia against the sink.

"Leah," Sophia whispered.

"Just for a little bit," Leah said. "Or I'm going to go crazy."

She caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror. Her makeup was still intact and her hair, moussed and styled by the men in her life, had not strayed from the setting. She looked perfectly normal in her opinion and not like the sex-crazed maniac she felt like. She swallowed and looked at Sophia.

Sophia parted her lips, panting, and her eyes were wide.

"Too much?" Leah asked, her thigh already between Sophia's legs, and her hand around Sophia's waist, protecting her back from the sink edge. She brushed hair away from Sophia's face, the black strands giving way to smooth skin.

"I'll tell you when it's enough."

Leah leaned in and then hesitated, her mouth hovering just in front of Sophia's. She waited for the cell phone to ring or the knock to come at the door or Sophia to protest. There were no sounds beyond Sophia's breathing, no signals other than the tingling in her hands and the low ache that insisted she kiss Sophia. So she did. Sophia mewled against her lips, a faint cry of need that compelled her. Sophia's arms went around her neck. Leah braced herself with both hands against the sink, leaning into Sophia, offering her mouth for kisses. Already her heart was racing.

Sophia tugged on her lower lip. Leah snaked out her tongue to protect herself and met Sophia's. Warmth turned to heat, tongues met. Leah could only hold herself up by pressing herself against Sophia's body. Sophia squeezed her neck, tangling fingers in her hair and tugging as she enticed Leah's kiss. Leah abandoned the sink and held Sophia close. If she sank, she sank.

Something banged into the door, which only half-opened as it slammed into Leah's hip. She yelped. Sophia bit into her lip and she yelped again.

"Sorry," a woman's voice called.

Leah let go of Sophia and ducked into the passage beside the stalls, and Sophia gingerly opened the door. "It's okay," she said.

"Tiny bathroom."

"Yeah." Leah waved the woman into the stall and then met Sophia's eyes.

Sophia laughed.

Leah went back to the sink. Her hair was now tousled from being pulled, her eyes and lips were swollen, and her lipstick was smeared. But she mostly still looked like herself. Sophia, too, was wild-eyed but not indecent. "I'll see you at the bar?"

Sophia nodded.

Leah escaped. Her drink was gone. She ordered a new one, just water and lime, earning a scowl from the bartender. She put a dollar on the bar.

"When's cake?" she asked.

He went into the back to check. Sophia came out of the bathroom, waved at her, and went over to the Macbethians. Leah wanted to kiss her again so much that she clutched the bar to keep from running across the room. Having a taste, tempting her desire, had been worse than denying herself completely. She gulped her water and made herself not look at Sophia.

Ward came up behind her. "Waiting for cake?"

"I am," Leah said.

"You think they'll let experimental-musical-sters like us partake?"

"You've been getting it, too?"

"Yes. Everyone loves theater as long as they've heard it before a thousand times."

"Works for Shakespeare," Leah said.

"Yeah."

"Sorry you took the part?"

Ward leaned on the bar and shook his head. "Everyone who comes to see me--They'll know. They'll feel it. They'll be the special ones."

Leah pressed her forehead against her glass. Waiters wheeled out the cake with blood-red icing.

"Apropos," Leah said.

"Cool," Ward said.

"It's like a wedding. As soon as we eat the cake, we can leave."

"To the happy couple," Ward said, raising his glass of water.

Leah clinked.

Glick was there taking photographs as the director, Macbeth's lead, and Sophia smiled and cut the cake, all three hands on the oversized knife. And then the waiter took over and Sophia took the first two pieces and struggled through the mass of people.

"I hope one of those is for me," Ward said.

"Go away," Leah said.

He slunk toward the cake and Sophia came to her side.

"No forks?" Leah asked.

"I thought we could eat back at the hotel," Sophia said and then looked away, as if avoiding the way Leah's expression changed.

"Do you need to say goodbye to anyone?" Leah asked.

"Nah."

Leah took the cake from Sophia. "Lead the way."

Sophia raised her eyebrows. "You have the keys."

"Oh, right."

They headed straight for the door, ignoring all cries of "Miss Medina!" and "Miss Fisher!" and refusing to talk to anyone.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Sophia drove to Adam's with Leah's hand resting on her thigh. When the car stopped, Leah looked longingly at the house. The lights were on in the living room.

"Would you--um," Sophia started.

"I was just thinking, a shower, maybe some more makeup... I'm fine. Right? I'm fine," Leah said, mostly to herself. She glanced at Sophia as they got out of the car.

Sophia tilted her head. She took the cake.

Leah turned away from the house and put her hand on Sophia's back. "Let's go," she said.

They walked together down the street, too enchanted by each other, too worked up, too expectant, to worry about muggers or drive-bys. The theater was dark as they strolled past. They held hands, walking together, listening to the crickets and frogs and the distant traffic. A block past the theater, just before the lights of the hotel became visible, Leah pulled Sophia to a stop. Sophia looked at her curiously. Leah hesitantly leaned in toward her mouth until she could feel Sophia's breath against her lips. She swallowed.

Sophia said, "Um."

"Yes?"

"Okay."

Sophia licked her lips reflexively. Leah kissed her gently enough to not spill the cake, firmly enough to taste those lips, to try and still the trembling in her own body. Sophia hugged her with one arm and kissed her back, letting Leah see her hunger too. She was surprisingly strong even one-armed. Leah broke the kiss when Sophia threatened to rob her of breath.

And the ability to stand.

She opened her mouth to say something, couldn't think of anything reasonable though a thousand mumblings were in her mind. She looked toward the hotel.

"Too much?" Sophia asked.

"I'll let you know when it's too much," Leah said.

Sophia grinned and squeezed Leah's side and resumed walking.

* * *

Leah stood nervously between the beds in Sophia's hotel room. Beige carpet, white sheets, cheap paintings on the wall. The motel didn't seem worthy of her moment. She glanced toward the exit, thinking of them going back home, to the house with the piano.

Sophia had closed the door and then kicked off her shoes.

"Right," Leah said. She sat on the bed and lifted up her foot, bending it onto her knee to undo the strap.

"Let me," Sophia said.

"Really?"

Sophia sat down on the opposite bed and gestured. Leah extended her foot. The touch of Sophia's fingers on her skin sent lightning up her calf. The dull ache that followed her wherever she was with Sophia became urgent, hot desire.

She gasped.

Sophia ran her thumb over Leah's toe.

Leah unwittingly remembered her first time with Grace; awkward, lustful, bad. They'd been drunk and had given into unspoken flirting of a month's duration. Only after several more attempts did they really look at each other and acknowledge what they wanted.

"I want you," Leah said.

Sophia smiled and got the strap undone and loosened Leah's shoe. She looked shyly at Leah, peeking out from under lidded eyes. Leah offered her other foot to Sophia.

Sophia worked off the shoe. Then she dropped her hands to her lap, looking down, and said, "I want you, too."

Leah stood up and took Sophia's hands. Sophia stood with her. Leah tried to control her heartbeat. Standing should be easier than this. They kissed, only lightly.

Then Leah asked, "How does the dress come off?"

"The same way it got on."

"Ripping and tearing?"

"I've never had anyone rip off my clothes before."

"Is it an expensive dress?"

"I--" Sophia halted. She breathed audibly, and quickly, and looked down at her dress. "I can afford a new dress."

Leah sat on the bed and pulled Sophia down beside her. She pressed a quick kiss to Sophia's lips. Sophia kissed her back, coquettishly, but made no move. Leah gathered enough boldness to urge her back on the bed. Sophia smiled. Her longing for what Leah had to give was palpable and Leah wanted to surge forward. She hesitated, considering. Heat pooled. Her chest constricted. Desire was taking her over, making her yield to need.

She knelt over Sophia and captured her lips. The kiss became hard and passionate. Sophia whimpered as Leah's tongue plundered her mouth. She breathed hard between kisses, and then urged Leah back if they paused for breath too long.

Leah grabbed the neckline of Sophia's dress, right above her breast, and yanked.

"Ow!"

Leah ducked Sophia's involuntary kick and tugged again, more gently. The fabric didn't budge. Disappointment warred with frustration as Leah considered. She decided not to try again.

"This always works in the movies."

Sophia brought her down for another kiss. "I think they use a different fabric."

"I think they use Velcro." She resigned herself to kissing and accepting that she lacked the barbarianism her fevered imagination had suggested lurked inside her. She'd had animalistic sex before, but with Sophia she--She buried her face in Sophia's neck and sucked at her throat, and kissed her collarbone and at the underside of her chin.

Sophia squirmed. She tugged at Leah's dress, leaving nail marks on her skin. Leah found her mouth again. Sophia arched back, giving more of herself to Leah's kiss. Leah settled against shifting body, wanting to pin Sophia down and keep her still enough to kiss each part of her face.

She hadn't expected Sophia to be like this; to yearn for her touch. To pull her close with strength that could not be undone. To make such high-pitched, keening sounds Leah could feel vibrating in her throat. She kissed Sophia's neck, trying to provoke more of Sophia's desire.

Doubts pressed Leah's mind. Only one night of this might tear her to pieces. And trying to build a life from it might be worse. She couldn't tell what was in her own heart beyond lust. She was afraid to look past herself to Sophia. She assessed. Sophia was lying on her back. Her eyes were closed and her lips were parted.

Leah's heart told her it would be stupid to turn away. Stupid to ask questions or to pretend, as she had with Grace, that it wasn't really happening; stupid to try and get it over with. There were moments on stage in Poe when she'd felt a rush of arousal go through her. That heat carried thoughts of Sophia and she'd let Ward touch her, caress her and brush kisses along the curve of her ear. She'd sought to extend the moment into something real. But she'd feel nothing from him. The embers of arousal would diminish and gust away.

Sophia cupped her cheek, urging her up, trying to meet her eyes.

Leah blinked, and focused on her face.

"Hey," Sophia said. "Stop thinking."

"I'm not thinking." She was feeling everything at once, unsure which instinct to follow; to mate, to fight, to flee. She said, "I'm afraid--"

"I'm not afraid." Sophia playfully rotated her hips under Leah's.

Leah grasped her wrist and nipped at Sophia's thumb. At Sophia's intake of breath, at the widening of her eyes, Leah drew it into her mouth and sucked.

Sophia stopped breathing. Her lips remained parted, her eyes focused on Leah's face. Leah met her eyes and felt for the first time, they were linked. They were together in this. She ran her tongue along the underside of Sophia's thumb.

Sophia twitched.

Leah moved Sophia's wrist and nuzzled along fine blue veins.

Sophia shuddered. Leah moved to the hollow of Sophia's elbow and Sophia let out a shuddering breath. So responsive, and they were just beginning. "Just beginning," she said out loud. Sophia closed her eyes.

Leah wondered how many others had made love to Sophia. Were they gentle? Rough? Did they take or give? Had Sophia had enough experience to know what she wanted from Leah? Did she have enough boldness to tell her? Leah draped Sophia's arm behind her neck and kissed her. Sophia responded eagerly, squirming to get a better connection with her mouth, using her arm like a weight to hold Leah against her.

Leigh wanted to ravish her, but found herself constricted by clothes. She could take Sophia and complete their passion in a matter of seconds, but not fully clothed.

Not even partially clothed. They were meant to be naked.

She left the bed. Sophia reached out for her blindly and then opened her eyes. Leah winked.

"Is it over?" Sophia asked. Her lips twitched into a smile. She tucked her hands behind her head.

"Oh, you'll know."

Sophia smiled with teeth.

Leah reached behind herself to work the zipper.

"I could--" Sophia offered.

"No," Leah said. Sophia raised her eyebrows. "No, lie just like that."

Sophia blushed but settled back on the pillows, the gown riding up to reveal her calf and her ankle and the high-heeled pump she still wore. She kicked it off. Leah lost all focus on the zipper. Her hands trembled. She turned away from Sophia, needing a moment to concentrate. She wanted so badly that she was tangling herself up. She got the zipper down below her waist.

Sophia exhaled audibly.

Leah looked back. Sophia was lying in the same position. Smiling. Leah met her eyes. Sophia licked her lips and dipped her head to give Leah a practiced sexy, smoldering look, which nearly undid her. She turned around again. She pulled the straps off. Her bare back, slightly sore and already marked with Sophia's fingernails, was still guarded by the thin white band of her bra.

"You can do that part," She said, and then held her breath.

Fingers danced down her arms. She shivered. "Tickles." The fingers dug into her arms instead, massaging.

"Better?"

Leah nodded.

Sophia kissed her neck. Leah hissed. When Sophia was on the bed, a few feet away from her, it had been possible to keep her thoughts in order. Now Sophia's fingers and tickling lips robbed her of thoughts and order both. Mercifully, Sophia unclasped the bra and let it fall. Then she pressed herself against Leah's back, slipping her arms around Leah's stomach.

Leah pushed her away. "Not done yet." She felt like she was on fire.

"Clearly." Fingertips stroked Leah's abdomen.

Exposed to the air, Leah's nipples felt as hard as diamonds, tight and demanding more direct stimulation. Leah wanted Sophia's touch on her breast. The slightest brush would be a relief, and it would undo her.

"When I turn around," Leah said, "I want to see you on the bed."

Sophia's caress left her. The bed creaked. Leah bit her lip until it hurt to hold back a squeak from the sound alone. She turned around, baring herself to Sophia, whose dress rode up even further, exposing a knee.

Sophia gave a lingering look to her chest, and then her gaze traveled to Leah's face, not changing expression, taking her in. Leah ached to be closer to her. She pushed her dress off her hips. The thong went with it, pooling on the floor. Her face burned with the shame of the wetness on her thighs. She let Sophia look at her, at the trimmed patch of hair at the crux of her hips, at her belly, at her breasts, which felt swollen. Her nipples were straining for contact and were connected to the pulse between her legs.

She knelt on the bed, and took the hem of Sophia's dress in her hand. "I think I gave up on the tearing too soon."

Sophia slid her foot along Leah's arm. Leah grabbed the arch and kissed Sophia's ankle, reveling as Sophia twitched. Her legs were open and Leah could see the shadowed promise beyond her knees.

She bit into Sophia's calf. Sophia yelped. Leah looked up at her face, worried. But Sophia's expression only showed lust. No shock, no fear.

Leah was naked, but she didn't feel exposed. She felt powerful and limber, crawling up between Sophia's legs, pushing the dress up. Sophia, languid, teasing, stayed mostly still. Leah pressed a kiss to Sophia's knee, and said, "If we had scissors, I could cut it off."

Sophia trembled but didn't break her gaze.

"Would you trust me? Pressing the blade against your skin?"

"Yes," Sophia said, and inhaled sharply.

"Tearing," Leah said.

Sophia didn't speak, just swallowed, her throat rising and falling.

Leah slid her hand under Sophia's dress. She found heat and pressed harder. Being this close to Sophia was intoxicating. She needed to kiss her. She needed to feel more. Sophia's hand covered hers and squeezed. Leah moved up Sophia's body to kiss her. Sophia kissed her back, making keening sounds against her mouth. Leah kept her hand still. Sophia moved against it urgently.

"You're not naked," Leah said.

"Are you a fucking nudist?"

Leah withdrew her hand. She slipped her arms under Sophia and managed to unbutton the four buttons holding Sophia's dress together. Sophia met her eyes and smiled.

"Am I heavy?" Leah asked.

"Hardly."

Leah peeled the dress off Sophia's upper torso. Sophia's breasts made her nearly lose her resolve. She sank down and took Sophia's mouth in a crushing, hungry kiss. Her breasts rubbed against Sophia's. Her nipples tingled as they pressed into skin.

"God," Sophia said.

Leah kissed Sophia's neck sucking, wanting the taste of Sophia in her mouth. Sophia's harsh panting filled her ears. Becoming words.

She lifted her head. "What?"

"Mercy."

Leah brushed hair out of her face.

"I need--" Sophia said, and lost her breath again.

"What?"

"To be naked."

Leah grinned. "Told you."

"Mercy," Sophia pleaded.

Though she was so aroused she felt heavy, saturated with desire that compelled her to push into Sophia, to forget about elegant form, to take her, Sophia had asked for mercy. Leah sat up and pulled Sophia up with her to sit side-by-side. Leah held her hands. Sophia squeezed them, and then lifted them to her mouth and kissed each knuckle. Sophia's dress, half-off, was not torn, but rumpled and twisted around her waist. Leah studied the remnants of the black fabric instead of Sophia's breasts. Sophia sucked at her skin between the first finger knuckle and the thumb. Leah met her eyes. Sophia bit her hand.

Leah stopped breathing.

Sophia bit harder. A surge of fear went through Leah, cancelling and then stoking her arousal. She couldn't wrest her hand away without Sophia mangling her. Sophia's teeth weren't hurting but they transmitted the promise of pain. Leah leaned forward, careful not to push too hard against Sophia's lips, and whispered in her ear, "Mercy."

Sophia held her in her grip. Leah kissed her ear, and then whispered again. Sophia released her. Leah covered Sophia's mouth with her whole hand. She stroked Sophia's cheeks with her fingertips, and then on her jaw and her neck. Sophia arched her neck.

Leah reluctantly pulled back and stood up. Another twinge of fear went through her at being naked. But she was beginning to like the prickling, shivering feeling. She urged Sophia to her feet. The dress, bunched at her waist, did not slide invitingly to the floor as Sophia stepped into her embrace. Leah sighed, hugged her close, and then knelt to pull the dress down.

She kissed Sophia's hip. Sophia touched her hair. They stayed like that, Leah soaking in the intimacy, and then she helped Sophia step out of her dress. She looked up to drink Sophia in. Sophia had smooth and richly tanned skin. Naked, her hips were wider than Leah had noticed in the dress, and her waist was petite. Leah stood carefully, sliding up the side of Sophia's body. Her apple-shaped breasts ended in dark areola and jutting nipples. Leah covered them with her hands.

Sophia's dark and watery eyes met Leah's. Leah couldn't remember why she'd thought Sophia wrong for the classic stage. She was born for Macbeth, for tragedy. Leah wrapped her arms around Sophia and held her close, tucking herself into Sophia's neck and closing her eyes. Sophia settled against her back, and they were together, pushing against each other, toes curling, arches rubbing, as close as they could get and still stand. Sexual energy smoldered and filled the room. There was no space for old lovers. This was neutral territory, a gap between universes, Leah's in New York, and Sophia's in North Carolina. Everything beyond them evaporated. Leah, filled with wondrous joy, wanted to laugh. Her throat closed. Her jaw tightened. She gripped Sophia more tightly.

"I'm not sure where to begin," Leah said.

"Haven't you done this before?"

"It kind of feels like 'no.'"

"Yeah."

Leah rubbed her back and worked her thigh between Sophia's. "Any suggestions?"

"Think of it like a new show. Start at the end, and work backwards." There was something in her voice that revealed to Leah, along with the way Sophia was moving against her thigh, Sophia's desperation. There would be no more pleas for mercy. Leah could have what she wanted. But it wasn't a show. There was no director, no cast. No worrying about compromise. No need to negotiate, to modulate her voice to the seconds someone ticked off for her, no need to change her expression based on command.

Leah stepped back. Her body protested leaving the embrace, wanting her to fall back into Sophia's arms. For a moment she could only walk backward, one step at a time, until she was sufficiently free from Sophia's aura. She was still trembling but she walked around the bed, knowing Sophia watched. She tried not to be self-conscious about how her ass looked, or her breasts, dangling as she bent down and pulled back the covers on the bed. Sophia helped her on the other side. Once the comforter was dumped on the floor, Sophia quirked a brow at her.

"What?"

"I can't help but notice this seems to be starting at the beginning," Sophia said.

"Technicalities." Leah knelt on the bed and extended her hand. Sophia knelt, too, matching her posture. They came together and kissed. No more waiting. Leah's desire flooded through her, warming her, seeking out Sophia. She ached almost wantonly as she covered Sophia's body with her own, pushing her into the bed. Her knee settled between Sophia's legs. This was just the beginning. Her heart pounded. She kissed Sophia, letting Sophia's need for her wash through her, until Sophia's grip on her started to hurt. Leah felt a step behind as Sophia writhed under her, seeking completion. She untangled herself from Sophia's legs, which prompted a cry of protest.

"Don't stop now," Sophia said, just as Leah's mouth settled over her breast. Sophia said no more, just cradled Leah's head in her hands and pushed herself against Leah's lips, trying to find the contact she'd so briefly, satisfyingly had. Leah suckled and the nipple, already swollen, firmed against her flicking tongue. She left it, angry and glistening with saliva, and captured the other one.

Sophia's head arched back. Her eyes closed. She breathed hard, almost panting. Her chest heaved. Leah knew she felt the same way. Ready. Too ready.

She scooted down the bed and pushed Sophia's legs farther apart. They fell open easily, revealing slick folds. Leah stared dumbly and pressed a kiss to the lowest part of Sophia's stomach.

"You shave everything," Leah said.

"For the play," Sophia mumbled, opening her eyes just enough to gaze through the slits at Leah.

"Did I miss something?"

"To make me feel more vulnerable. More bald and connected to my own infertility. My own womanhood and how it defines me."

"Amazing."

Sophia worked her fingers into Leah's hair.

"You don't want to talk about acting?"

"I'm not acting," Sophia said, half-angry, half-breathless.

Leah lowered her head to kiss what beckoned her, what echoed and pulsed in her own body and led her to Sophia's. Sophia held her there. Pressed her closer. Leah licked. Sophia cried out. She licked again, and the resulting cry was more incoherent. The third one, more guttural.

"Here?"

"Higher."

Leah rubbed her lips against Sophia's clitoris and felt Sophia's answering shudder around her, her thighs tightening. Leah settled in to kiss and tease and lap.

Sophia no longer vocalized, just shivered, lifting herself to Leah's mouth. Leah tasted Sophia, all that Sophia was offering, unabashed, licking until Sophia strained under her. Leah stopped moving and simply held her tongue against Sophia.

Sophia cried out and pulled harder. Leah licked, bringing her to a second, slower trembling, and then kissed her thighs and stomach through the aftershocks. Sophia twisted away, but didn't let go of her hair. Leah grasped her wrist. She rubbed until Sophia released her with a long sigh.

"It's been a long time," Sophia said.

Leah waited to see if Sophia would say more, or would grab her hair again, but Sophia merely smiled up at the ceiling. Leah continued to plant kisses on her abdomen, still deeply aroused, sensitized to every touch between them.

"I knew you were a tease," Sophia said, pulling on Leah until Leah crawled up beside her and kissed her.

"I protest."

"I'm sure."

"What about you?" Leah asked, wriggling closer, stroking Sophia's side, becoming more aggressive in her kisses.

Sophia's answer was muffled by her lips until Sophia put her hand on Leah's breast, turning slightly from the kiss, "I'm no tease."

Leah smiled and kissed Sophia's cheek. Sophia squeezed her breast. Leah closed her eyes. She couldn't breathe. Her ability to continue had been predicated on Sophia not touching her, not like that. When Sophia's thumb brushed her nipple, Leah let out a voiceless squeak.

Sophia pulled back to look at her. Her hand moved lower, scratching at Leah's belly. Leah bit her lip. She wanted to seize Sophia's hand and press it against herself, but Sophia was happy, smiling, her fingers shifting mischievously. Leah decided to see what Sophia might do. And she didn't have the strength to move, anyway.

Leah wet her lips, and asked, "Mercy?"

"Mercy?"

Leah covered Sophia's hand on her stomach.

Sophia moved her hand lower. "Leah Fisher doesn't have to ask anyone for mercy. Least of all, me."

Leah grinned and tossed her head, her hair spilling across the pillow, and rubbed Sophia's hand. Their hands moved together with Leah's uneven, excited breathing.

"Especially the night before her show opens," Sophia said.

"I like to concentrate my success in 48 hour segments, and then have a really bad rest of the year."

Sophia cocked an eyebrow and slid her hand down between Leah's legs. She pressed her whole hand against Leah. Leah swallowed hard and braced herself on the bed. Sophia's middle finger worked between Leah's lower lips. Leah cried out.

"I can already tell you're going to be loud," Sophia said as she stroked Leah.

Leah nodded a response and bit her lip. She'd be as loud as Sophia wanted. She panted shallowly. Sophia curled her fingers, dipping the tips just into Leah while increasing the pressure against her. Leah gasped and let out a hoarse cry. Sophia knelt on the bed, keeping her hand against Leah. Leah tried to keep her eyes open. Sophia was playful and radiant. Her breasts swayed just out of reach. Sweat made her skin gleam. Leah wanted her again. She wanted--

Sophia pushed a finger inside Leah.

Leah bucked and groaned. Sophia, watched her intently. "More?"

"More," Leah said.

Leah gritted her teeth as she felt Sophia inside her, stretching her, exciting her with just her hand, her practiced fingers, her eager posture. Leah surrendered, wasn't even jealous that Sophia so obviously knew what she was doing. Just grateful that Sophia's fingers pressed in an interesting place and took her higher.

"Mercy?" Sophia asked.

"More."

Leah contorted in ecstasy. She must look foolish, red and sweaty and so needy, but Sophia smiled, meeting her eyes, looking intense yet pleased as she stroked. Leah's toes curled. She tried to let go. Sophia leaned down to kiss Leah's forehead, and then her cheek, and then whispered in her ear, "Maybe if you closed your eyes."

Leah closed her eyes, which helped free her from the physicality of it all, the visual of how Sophia looked reflecting back on how she must look. Now the universe was made only of Sophia's hand and Sophia's breath on her face. Sophia kissed her lips and then drew back. Leah lifted her chin for another kiss, but didn't find Sophia. Sophia's hand shifted, settling outside her to stroke her swollen folds. Leah could imagine Sophia above her, back arched, hair sweaty and tousled around her face, still grinning.

Then Leah screamed as Sophia's fingers quickly entered her again. There must have been a third, she felt fuller than before. There was more friction. More.

Her cries became constant until she reached the cusp. She was so close and yet she still wanted to see what Sophia would do. Her stomach quivered. Her breasts felt hot.

Sophia said, "You're so beautiful."

Leah let out a rough gasp. She grabbed for Sophia. Sophia settled on top of her, her fingers taking her, hard and slick and slender. Leah clung to her, thrusting her hips in cadence, close. Her eyes stayed closed.

"I think you're the most beautiful thing I've ever seen," Sophia said, in a low and seductive voice.

"I'm almost there."

Sophia covered her mouth in a kiss, robbing her of breath, touching her relentlessly. Leah struggled and then her ears roared and her mind went blank. She came, her senses focused at the point of Sophia's hand, exploding outward. She screamed and Sophia released her from the kiss. Leah bucked as the orgasm rocked her. She fell back against the bed, shaking her head to protest Sophia's continuing touches, now torture to her sensitive, swollen folds, and breathing deep, gulping breaths.

"Okay," Leah said. "Okay."

Sophia settled down at her side and let her hand rest between Leah's breasts. Leah waited until the room stopped spinning before turning her head.

Sophia grinned.

Leah licked her lips. "I have no idea what to say."

Sophia's grin got wider.

Leah closed her eyes. "What time is it?"

Sophia kissed her shoulder, and then shifted to raise herself up far enough to see the clock. "One thirty," she said.

Leah rolled onto her side, and considered. Sophia wrinkled her nose.

"My show is opening," Leah said.

"Tomorrow, I hear," Sophia said.

"That means I don't have to be at work until six in the evening," Leah said.

Sophia raised her eyebrows.

Leah nodded.

Sophia kissed her, and then murmured, "That's wonderful. There are things I haven't done."

"Let's do them," Leah said. She ran her finger down Sophia's stomach. Sophia sucked her breath in, tightening her abdomen. Leah asked, "Showing off?"

"You're tickling me."

Leah slid her hand over Sophia's ribs. Sophia squeaked. Leah trailed her fingers down Sophia's hip. Sophia whined.

"There too?"

"Everywhere," Sophia said.

Leah relented, and cupped Sophia's cheek, and leaned in to brush noses with her. "This time, we're starting from the real beginning."

"What's that?"

"Making out like schoolgirls," Leah said.

Sophia stuck out her tongue, and then stretched it toward Leah. Leah met it with her own, and then sealed their mouths in a hungry kiss. When they parted, Sophia said, "I'm glad we're already naked."

"Me too. It was a good idea."

"Do you have any more good ideas?"

"Tons." Leah rolled onto Sophia and murmured, "Good idea number two..."

Chapter Twenty-Four

Leah studied her expression in the dressing room mirror. She looked younger and fresher than she usually saw herself. Her cheeks were rosy with rouge. Her outfit, from the late 1880s, itched and made her feel like something out of an Edith Wharton movie. She wriggled experimentally. Virginia wriggled back at her. Leah was gone, at least physically. She smiled. Virginia smiled back.

The mental part, she still had to work on.

Adam ducked into the dressing room. "You look beautiful," he said, and it was Sophia's voice that echoed in her mind. She shivered. He asked, "Do you need any last minute preparation?"

She shook her head. "I'm psyching myself up for the crying."

"Dare I ask?"

"I was watching Cold Case on TNT back at home and they had this one about a homeless woman and her daughter."

Adam looked pale.

"And the homeless woman won the lottery--a really small amount on a scratcher, like $25, and she used it to buy her daughter a birthday cake. It was all she could do right. B-plot." Leah's voice faltered as a lump rose in her throat. She inhaled sharply through her nose. "Anyway, her cake got destroyed. It was awful."

Adam frowned at her.

"What?" Leah asked through her choked throat.

"I need to stop asking actors questions."

"It was really sad!" she yelled as he left her dressing room.

She went back to looking at herself in the mirror. Under the scratchy clothes and the silkier underclothes and the layers of makeup to change her into someone else, were the bite marks and bruises and scratches and hickeys Sophia left on her. Under that, the soreness and the aches and the still-simmering arousal between her legs. And under that, her heartbeat, pounding, making her feel alive and desperate.

"Underneath, underneath," she murmured, and Virginia looked sadly back at her, blinking away the tears in her luminous blue eyes.

"Can you sing?" she asked Virginia.

"Like a songbird," Virginia said. "Like a warbler. Like a crow. Like a hawk."

Like a raven.

* * *

Virginia was eight years old when Poe fell in love with her, but Adam hadn't cast a child, wanting to gloss over that in favor of the other tragic figures in Poe's life as the specter of West Point loomed in his future. The widow, the invalid, his brother dying of consumption. Already Poe had seen too much death, too much upheaval, but the musical opened with the first sonnet of "The Bells" sung sweetly by Virginia, with hope and newness and youth between them.

"From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells."

Ward was shaped by experience; charming, belligerent, more intelligent than his betters, witty and doomed. He blended easily with Poe, carrying the essence of a different place and time, and yet echoing the late 20th century commentators, too clever to be politically savvy, all quoting Poe themselves. Leah admitted that he had been well-cast.

Even her hatred of him seemed timely.

And Leah thought, with pleasure and clarity, that the critics would love the meta.

She cried, her back turned to Ward, her face presented to the stage, a full house, but she couldn't see any of them with the spotlight blinding her eyes, making them water. She thought of the birthday cake and a sob escaped her lips. She covered her mouth and ran from the stage.

Ward chased her, seduced her, sang prayers that made her ache with their beauty, fought with everyone else, in clumsy, choreographed duels.

She sat at the piano and bit into the capsule wedged between her back teeth. Fake blood poured from her mouth as she sang. Her voice trembled with the conductor's gestures.

Ward sat beside her, dabbed the blood from the corner of her mouth, and studied her as a detective might a crime scene. With interest and yet detachment.

He began to drink.

She took Adam's artistic license and died, two years too early.

Ward descended into madness.

Hear the loud alarum bells –

Brazen bells!

What a tale of terror, now, their turbulency tells!

In the startled ear of night

How they scream out their affright!

Too much horrified to speak,

They can only shriek, shriek,

Out of tune,

In a clamorous appealing to the mercy of the fire,

In a mad expostulation with the deaf and frantic fire,

Leaping higher, higher, higher,

With a desperate desire.

She came back as a ghost, thought of Macbeth, and nearly laughed on stage. She sang alone, her face powdered white, her clothes wispy and pale suggestions. She wondered if Sophia was in the audience. She knew her mother was. She thought of them as she sang, and Adam, and Grace, and everyone she'd loved seeing her dead on stage, and singing, carrying or breaking the musical all by herself, all at once, all alone. She kept or lost their attention for three minutes and twelve seconds.

The applause at the end of her solo was loud. The language was beautiful, the words pouring out of her mouth set fluidly to the natural, organic music Adam pinned to them. The music was all his, neither apocryphal nor old-fashioned, and she had sung with relish, feeling attached to the past and present, and all of culture, by the connections he had drawn. If only the audience would feel that, too. The everyman condensed into poetry.

They would ache for the ending as Ward stepped into the spotlight, as Leah stood just off-stage as a ghost, as he began to recite the poem they had all learned as schoolchildren.

At first, it was just his voice, monotone, methodical, his drawl completely eradicated: "Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary..."

Leah would be the one to step on stage and say, "Nevermore." The music had started by then, as Ward's desperation and urgency increased. The instruments brought forth a swelling, a terror. No need to reinvent the wheel, the art here, better to dip into nostalgia, into the shared literacy.

Ward whimpered, shouted, paced the stage.

'Prophet!' said I, 'thing of evil! - prophet still, if bird or devil! -

Whether tempter sent, or whether tempest tossed thee here ashore,

Desolate yet all undaunted, on this desert land enchanted -

On this home by horror haunted - tell me truly, I implore -

Is there - is there balm in Gilead? - tell me - tell me, I implore!'

And then the stage changed back to the street where Ward had come to woo her, outside where the crowd milled around, ignoring his madness as he spoke of his memories, his aching love, and he fell onto the street. The music stopped to leave him screaming, wounded and dying, at the ceiling, "And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor... shall be lifted nevermore."

He died, with a shuddering death rattle rising from his chest. Then silence, and the cry of a bird.

The lights went out, leaving the stage in darkness.

* * *

Leah dipped the cloth into cold cream and wiped her face. Her hand trembled as she removed the makeup and unmasked herself. She smiled, though she was starved and exhausted. She had no idea if the show had gone well; it was already a blur. A headache was forming at the base of her neck, traveling upward, radiating.

She left her hair pinned up, regal and exotic, and reapplied makeup, more subdued, just hiding the wrinkles and letting herself look younger. She changed into the velvet gown she'd worn to the last press party, already missing the period costumes. When had she become a little girl playing dress up? She opened the door.

Sophia flew in.

"Hi," Leah said, closing the door again, raising her eyebrows.

"Adam let me backstage," Sophia said. "Should I go?"

Leah shook her head.

"All right," Sophia said. She flung her arms around Leah and hugged her tightly, pressing her cheek against Leah's hair. Leah held her back, trying to keep them standing as Sophia swayed. She shook a little in Leah's arms.

"Are you crying?" Leah asked.

Sophia nodded. She kissed Leah's temple. "It was so powerful."

Leah didn't know what to say.

"You were," Sophia said. "The material was good. And the music. And you." Sophia pulled back and looked down at Leah's face. "I'd never seen you on stage, before. Except the first time we met."

Leah smiled. "Now you know."

"I guess the rumors are true."

Leah reached up and brushed tears off Sophia's face. Sophia kissed her, hard and hungry, turning her around and pressing her against the dressing room door. She lingered, robbing Leah of breath, smearing her makeup. Leah kissed her back, moaning as Sophia sucked on her lower lip, and wondering if she was making too much noise.

Sophia raised her head and sighed. "Another party?"

"It's our job," Leah said.

"My job is over. Even the party part."

"Come on. You might meet someone famous."

Sophia smiled. She kissed Leah again, firmly but briefly. Leah extended the kiss, and then said, "My parents will be there."

"Do you want me to meet your parents?"

"Kind of," Leah said.

"Really?" Sophia brightened.

Leah remembered that Sophia was impossibly young.

* * *

Leah made Sophia wait outside while she fixed her makeup, too afraid she'd succumb to kisses, or sex, or tears. Outside in the hall, with the stage hands and the prop master passing by, as exhausted as she was, she could be demure with Sophia. Calm. She took her hand and they walked side by side to the party. Poe was not Macbeth, and the party was just down the street.

The air outside was humid and enveloping. Leah inhaled, feeling the weight of it settle on her, feeling blanketed. Poe had been intense; the weather washed that from her, reminded her that the rest of the world wasn't as crazy as theater.

Sophia reluctantly let go of her hand as they climbed the steps to the restaurant. Leah took it again. A bouncer looked them over, glanced at the guest list, and waved them through without asking their names.

"Posh," Leah said.

"You're a star."

"Stop saying that."

Sophia grinned at her and nudged her hip. Leah poked her back.

"Ladies," Adam called, waving at them.

Leah let go of Sophia's hand to wave back. He was standing with her parents and her sister. They'd flown in from New York in the afternoon, and not seen Leah before the show. They wanted the purity of the experience.

"This is so quaint," her mother said as Leah hugged her.

"I know, mom."

Adam kissed Sophia's cheek and offered her his glass of champagne.

"We loved you," Leah's father said. He hugged her, and then her sister did.

"Really cool," her sister said.

"This is Sophia Medina," Leah said, and Sophia smiled shyly, looking at them but not quite making eye contact. "She played Lady Macbeth. At the theater. I mean, simultaneously."

Adam stepped in. "She's the fresh young talent in North Carolina."

"Is Macbeth still running?" Leah's mother asked.

Sophia shook her head. "We closed, two days ago."

"I'm sorry to have missed you. Leah, do you want to have lunch tomorrow? I assume you have people to meet, tonight."

Leah nodded. "I'll come to the hotel and pick you up."

"We're flying out tomorrow night," Leah's dad said to Sophia.

Someone called Sophia's name. She apologized and went toward the voice.

"That's the mayor's wife," Adam said, watching her go. Leah, too, watched Sophia glide across the room, her back bare in her low-cut dress, her skin flawless. "She looks so young," Adam said, vocalizing Leah's thoughts. Leah felt warm, thinking of all she and Sophia had done; how impossible it seemed.

She turned back to her parents, and asked the dreaded question, "What did you think?"

Her mother smiled. "I think you'll always be employed when you command a stage like that."

Adam put his arm around Leah and asked, "And me?"

"You, too," her mother said.

"Though," her father said, "I did think the entire thing was over-wrought, Adam. I mean, honestly, I needed a trip to Aruba after all that hand-wringing and grief."

"Point taken," Adam said.

"It's every mother's dream to hear her daughter sing like that," Margaret said. "Whether on stage or off. You have the voice of an angel."

Leah was sure she turned beet-red.

With that, her parents left her, though Jessica lingered, following her around, meeting the actors and the crew, wide-eyed. Then she met a state senator, a pinched, older woman in a flower print dress, decided she didn't care about North Carolina politics, and went to rejoin her parents.

The senator introduced herself as Ann Rickson and said, "You were striking. Amazing."

"Thank you. I owe a lot to Adam," Leah said.

"I'm sure. What are you doing, after the party?"

Leah raised her eyebrows. Surely a senator wasn't hitting on her, patron of the arts or not.

Ann continued, "I mean, do you have someone waiting for you at home? I so often wonder what the lives of true artists are like. To be able to call up such passion."

"I--yes," Leah said, forcing herself not to search the crowd for Sophia, wondering how she'd have answered that question a week ago, a month ago--or would a month from now.

"That's lovely. Oh, there's the season's artistic director. I'd better put in an appearance."

Leah nodded.

Ann smiled and shook her hand and strode away across the room.

Leah made the rounds of the room once with Adam, took pictures with everyone, and then found Sophia at the bar, talking to Glick.

"One more picture?" he asked.

Leah looped her arms around Sophia and smiled at him.

"Fabulous." He took the snapshot.

"Can we go now?" Leah asked.

Sophia nodded.

"To my place."

"Will your parents be there?"

Leah shook her head.

Sophia smiled.

On their way to the door they were stopped by well-wishers and friends. Leah's arms ached from the flowers she carried. She made Sophia carry some and, as they descended the steps of the restaurant, Leah turned around to smile one more time in the general direction of her parents. They were across the room, watching her, and both smiled when she waved her flowers. She turned back around, feeling like they were watching her go.

"My parents are staring," she said.

Sophia looked dumbly at her.

Leah shook her head. It would be too hard to explain.

Chapter Twenty-Five

The house was dark. Leah dropped the flowers on the porch to fumble for her keys. She'd been there in the afternoon to shower, but that seemed like forever ago. The house seemed foreign. She glanced at Sophia as she put the key in the lock. "You don't have anywhere--to be?"

"I am. Where I want to be, I mean."

Leah felt a flush of heat. She pushed open the door and then knelt to gather roses. She led Sophia to the kitchen. Adam had thoughtfully set out a dozen vases and Big Gulp cups and bowls for flowers.

"This isn't going to be enough."

"Some of these are too big, anyway."

"Let's put them in my room," Leah said.

She settled what she could in several vases and put them on a TV tray. Sophia followed her carefully up the stairs.

Her bedroom seemed dusty with disuse, and too quiet. She opened a window. The sound of crickets and frogs got louder.

She smiled. "I don't know how I'll be able to sleep when I get back to the city."

Sophia said nothing, just put the bouquets on the dresser, leaving Leah to put vases on the windowsill and bedside table. The scent of flowers filled the room, mixing with the fresh night air. She went to the window and looked out at the quiet street. Sophia came up behind her and pressed a kiss to her cheek.

"Help me out of my dress?" Leah asked.

"How did you get into it?"

"You don't want to know."

Sophia's hands slid up her back and found the first clasp. Leah leaned back. Sophia tsked, but helped slide the dress to the floor and, before Leah could turn around, unfastened her bra. Leah, naked, turned around.

Sophia smiled shyly and Leah drew her in for a lingering, sweet kiss. Leah's heart beat faster and she was feeling warm and languid. The fear and the urgency of their previous encounter hadn't returned. Opening night made her high; Sophia made her happy. Sophia nuzzled her lips and then her delicate tongue slipped into Leah's mouth. Leah sank against the windowsill, jostling roses.

Distantly, the front door slammed closed, and then Adam's voice called up, "Girls, I hope you're decent."

"Go away," Leah said.

"It's opening night," Adam shouted. "Get down here!"

"I bet he has presents."

"I have presents," Sophia said.

"You do?"

Sophia put her hand on Leah's bare breast.

"Oh," Leah said. She covered Sophia's hand and pressed. "He's not going to wait forever."

Sophia squeezed.

Leah reluctantly slipped away from Sophia and went to the dresser for sweats. She hesitated, wondering if they were at the sweats level of their relationship. Being naked was one thing, but--Sophia was kneeling on the floor, rummaging through the pack she'd brought. She pulled out satin pajamas. Leah put the sweats away and settled for a T-shirt and her most slimming jeans. She didn't bother with anything under them.

Sophia whistled at her.

"Oh, stop."

Sophia slapped her ass.

"Hey!"

They got changed and got downstairs as Adam began his third round of shouting. Ward sprawled on the couch in his tuxedo, tie loosened, limp hair sticking to his face. He smiled lazily.

The conductor and the assistant director and the costume and set designers were there. They all applauded when Leah made her entrance. She bowed graciously and rolled her eyes, and then settled onto a bar stool near the kitchen.

Adam poured champagne. He raised his glass. "To us. Whatever tomorrow's papers bring, this has been the greatest night of my life because of all of you. Thank you."

They drank and he poured for everyone again and opened a second bottle of champagne.

Leah glanced at Sophia and murmured, "This is going to be a long night."

Sophia tapped her glass to Leah's.

Adam began a second round of toasts, and then the conductor stood up, and then the designer. Leah barely listened, thinking instead of what she might say. Her stomach churned. Adam passed her the bottle of champagne, mostly empty, and she took it to the center of the room. There was Sophia, smiling supportively at her, with an enchanting light in her eyes. There was Ward, and Eric, and Daniel, and Adam.

Her friend Adam.

She lifted the bottle to Adam and said, "I know I should have my diva moment now, but all I can say is thank you." She crossed the room and kissed him. "Thank you."

He bowed.

She went around the room, to Ward first, to Sophia last, kissing each one on the cheek, hugging them, and saying, "Thank you." Then she went back to the center of the room, flung her head back to gaze at the ceiling, spread her arms wide, and hollered, "Thank you!"

Everyone whooped and applauded as she drank the last of the champagne straight from the bottle. Fizz ran down her chin.

Ward got a third bottle and uncorked it with flamboyant style, winking as the froth ran over his fingers. "Well, if she's not going to be a diva, I'll be that enough for the both of us." He droned on.

Leah returned to Sophia, who slipped her arm around Leah's waist and whispered, "Thank you for letting me be a part of this."

"Of course."

"Really. This is so... Look at you. Just a handful. It's so intimate. And you guys did something so amazing. All on your own, because you wanted to."

"People paid a lot of money so we could," Leah said. "But that's even more incredible. I know. I know." She kissed Sophia's cheek, and then nestled into her.

After toasts, Adam forbade them from talking any more about the show, promising that they could all look forward to tomorrow night at eight o'clock, when the senior citizens of Rosemont Circle and the paroles of Durham County Jail would be coming to see them, along with the usual ticket-holders. Then he turned to Eric, the assistant stage manager, and asked him about his cats.

Eric's expression lit up with joy. He took the center of the room and regaled them with a story of his wife's phone call to him, which made him glad to be in Durham and not in New York. "Your cat climbed the curtains today," he said, mimicking his wife's voice. "What will the neighbors think?" He shrugged. "She thinks since I'm in the South, I should buy a BB gun. I told her I was an artist, and she said, 'Christ, then buy a pink one.'"

They all talked well into the night, as the alcohol muted their exhaustion and it faded to tiredness, and when they felt they could sleep, people filed out into the night, brave in their intoxication. Adam offered peanuts and DVDs of Andrew Lloyd Webber musicals, but Leah smiled at Sophia, took her hand and said goodnight to everyone else.

Her clothes were off as soon as her bedroom door shut. The waiting had made the room fill with floral scents, heady and strong. Sophia shucked her pajamas, muttering about how satin tore. Leah pushed her down onto the bed, keeping Adam's words about the show at heart, deciding not to care about anything but the naked body underneath her. And how much she wanted Sophia. Already she ached.

She worked her hand down and found Sophia's center, wet and waiting for her searching fingers. Sophia cried out. She offered herself to Leah, spreading her legs. Leah's desire intensified. Her need was no longer relieved by squirming against Sophia's thigh. Her fingertips tingled. Her skin burned. She moved against Sophia's body, seeking closeness. Her hand was ineffectual to mute Sophia's needful whimpers, so she moved down between Sophia's legs and buried her face.

Sophia's hand on her head was bold and her pleading hoarse. This was not a night of exploration. This was need and energy and celebration that had turned to lust and Leah could only succumb. She licked at folds and crevices, tasting Sophia, seeking to be even closer. When Sophia writhed, her fingers tightening in just such a way that Leah knew her own desires were echoed, she stilled lips against Sophia, holding herself still until her jaw ached. When Sophia relented, Leah teased, sliding her tongue inside, lapping and stroking. She became addicted to Sophia's taste, Sophia's heat, Sophia's texture.

Leah refused to leave the intimacy of the moment. Sophia screamed, loud enough to shake the house, quaking enough to shake the bed, making it bang against the wall. Leah winced as Sophia bucked, hitting her teeth, and then Sophia clenched her thighs.

Leah experimentally flicked her tongue. Sophia yelped. Another shudder went through her. Leah smiled.

Sophia let out an exhausted giggle and loosened her grip. She tugged on Leah's hair. Leah crawled up to kneel over her. Sophia met Leah's gaze, and pulled on a strand of hair.

Leah grinned.

"I had plans," Sophia said.

"To put on a show for Ward and Adam?"

"To show you how much I appreciated--loved--seeing you tonight."

"I think that came across."

Sophia blushed. She pulled Leah down for a hug. Sophia's hands moved over her back, stroking, pressing. "Do you have any idea what I can do with my mouth?"

Leah remembered the talent in Sophia's fingers and shivered. Sophia scratched her spine.

"Did you go to Summer Stock for Sex or something?" Leah asked.

Sophia laughed. "My mom always said that something worth doing is worth doing right."

"I love your mother."

"Your mother is a little scary,"

"I know." Leah inhaled. "I'm going to tell her, tomorrow."

"About us?"

Leah shook her head. "That I'm gay."

Sophia rubbed her back.

Leah lifted her head and smiled. Sophia kissed her jaw. "Then you should be as gay as possible, tonight."

"Earn my shame?"

"Believe me," Sophia said, her voice becoming low and seductive, "You have nothing to be ashamed about."

"Let's keep trying," Leah said.

She kissed Sophia, who touched her cheek and stroked the curve of her ear. Leah was still sprawled on top of Sophia, content to marvel in the ways they pressed together, calmer than the last night's nervous explorations. She began to roll off to the side, still kissing, but Sophia stopped her.

Sophia tugged her lip between her teeth, released it, and asked, "How good are your knees?"

Arousal shot down Leah’s spine to pool between her legs. She managed to stammer, "They're fine? I mean, they're--fine."

"It's your night. I want you to feel powerful."

Leah had never felt more powerless, paralyzed and weak from lust, the saliva drying in her mouth as she gaped at Sophia. Sophia stuck out her tongue in an unmistakable signal.

Leah lunged forward, opening her mouth to Sophia's tongue, kissing her until desire overpowered hesitation and she sat up to straddle Sophia's abdomen. Sophia's nipples strained upward, tempted her. She touched one, experimentally tugging. Sophia arched underneath her.

"We have all night," Leah said.

Sophia nodded and closed her eyes.

Her responsiveness, the way she quivered when Leah ran her finger down between her breasts, meant that for Leah sex never been so enjoyable. She resolved to follow Sophia's footsteps along the path of pleasure. She bent her knees into the pillow that framed Sophia's head, and before she could ask, "Really?" Sophia grabbed her ass, yanking her into position.

"God," she said, as Sophia began to nuzzle her inner thigh.

"How loud can you scream?"

Leah clutched the headboard and, at the first touch of Sophia's agile tongue, screamed. She did feel powerful in that position, her hips rising instead of crushed and safe under Sophia as she'd felt last night. Her destiny lay in the strength of her leg muscles, in where she was willing to let Sophia's tongue travel. She pushed her face against the wall and panted.

Sophia's firm tongue stroked her quickly. Leah said, "Inside." Sophia shifted Leah's hips and the tongue flicked inside her, circling her, leaving her clit exposed. Leah dropped a hand between her legs and stroked herself, letting Sophia's tongue penetrate her, slip out and lap at her with soothing strokes before entering again. Leah groaned with every breath, her thighs shaking, hand moving rapidly. The climax came suddenly, sending her thudding against the wall, the wallpaper as textured against her cheek as Sophia's tongue. She screamed. All of her desire and lust and happiness had colluded for this shattering, white hot moment that took her apart and put her back together, shuddering and light-headed. She let Sophia see everything, even the vulnerability that followed like a wave.

She lifted her hips away from Sophia, trembling in the aftermath, afraid if she moved she'd fall off the bed.

Sophia's hands cupped her ass, and then Sophia moved to crouch behind her, wrapping strong, sturdy arms around her. Leah took a deep breath and let herself fall backward into Sophia's embrace.

Sophia kissed her neck, saying, "I have no idea how you keep that all contained on stage."

"I had no idea it was there."

Sophia twisted and brought them down into a sitting, snuggling position against the headboard.

Leah kissed Sophia and said, "Let's stay up all night and make love."

"Okay. As long as we can have champagne between kisses."

Leah squinted at her.

Sophia grinned." I'm thirsty."

Leah flung on her T-shirt and jeans, leaving them unbuttoned, and padded downstairs for champagne. She ran into no one, which meant that it took her a good five minutes to get the bottle open and another five minutes to find where Adam kept the right glasses. She skipped back upstairs to find Sophia still gloriously naked, spread out on her bed, waiting for her.

To stand in the door, drink champagne, and bring herself off again was tempting. But Sophia extended a hand to her. She went back to bed. Sophia drank champagne. Leah blew against the top of the bottle, smiling at the noise, and then set the bottle and her glass on the floor. She felt sticky and grubby and the bedsheets were the same, but there was no thought of cleansing. Not from this. Not yet.

Sophia dipped a finger in her glass and painted Leah's lips. The bubbles made them tingle. Leah licked away the champagne and Sophia kissed her. They kissed languidly, sitting against the pillows, chuckling between brushes of their lips. Sophia's hand settled on Leah's breast, squeezing through her T-shirt. Heat rose anew in Leah, and she asked, "Slower? Because I don't think I can go slower."

Giggling, Sophia kissed the corner of her mouth, and slid her hand under Leah's shirt to stroke. In retaliation, Leah reached between Sophia's legs. Sophia clamped her legs around Leah's hand and shook her head.

"No?"

"I'll come like a rocket."

Leah shifted to bring Sophia into her arms, sitting between her raised knees." I'm not sure I understand the metaphor."

Sophia elbowed her.

"Ow."

Sophia scoffed, and then snuggled back against Leah. "You feel really good."

"The shirt's 100% cotton." Leah ran her fingers up Sophia's thigh, and she dipped toward Sophia's center. Sophia exhaled and then swallowed audibly when Leah's hand settled over her.

"There?" Leah asked.

"There," Sophia whispered.

Wetness coated Leah's fingers. She explored further, fondling Sophia, sliding one finger between her folds and then retreating again to squeeze a thigh and leave slick fingerprints.

"We're going slow," Leah said.

Sophia drank champagne, settled into Leah's arms, and then tried different moans, gasps, and whimpers to coax Leah into breaking her word.

Chapter Twenty-Six

Leah woke to the scent of coffee. She rolled onto her back, and winced as sunlight penetrated her eyelids. Passion had finally given way to exhaustion, but probably not soon enough for the day ahead. She imagined her bedroom awash in white glow. She opened her eyes and so it was. Coffee. She sat up. If the reviews had been good, Adam would have come into her room, pounded on her until she woke up, and shoved the paper into her face.

A feeling of dread sank into her. She got up slowly, wincing at the twinge in her back. Thirty-four wasn't old for that much sex. She protested the universe, and was rewarded by seeing Sophia, sprawled on her stomach across the bed, beautiful with sunlight touching her back.

Leah glanced at the floor, prodded her jeans with a toe, and decided to shower. The room stank of sex. She assumed she did, too. The newspaper would still be there in ten minutes.

* * *

She went downstairs in a corduroy dress she couldn't remember why she packed. Adam sat in the kitchen drinking coffee in his satin bathrobe and Ward was making breakfast.

"This can't be good," she said.

"He's despondent," Ward said.

"Hardly," Adam said and pushed the newspaper toward her.

"Durham News-Star. Filthy rag. Hey, there's me!"

Her picture with Sophia, both beaming at Glick's camera, graced the first page of the art section, below the fold, next to the headline, "Poe's Raven Flies In, Takes Crap on Stage."

"He liked you," Adam said.

Leah scanned the article until she came to, "Leah Fisher (Virginia) proved why she's the ringer in this year's season after Elaine White's retirement. Her voice gave remarkable depth to the lyrics. Her acting, though earnest, wry, and bold, was a strong reminder that the playwright had given her a one-note part." She glanced at Adam.

"I'm sorry for not writing you a better part," he said.

She kept reading. "They liked the costumes. And the ending."

"What, the part where it says I deliver cliché well?"

"Well. Give the people what they want," Leah said.

"No, this is good." Adam snatched the paper from her. "I can learn from this. He's doing me a favor. Poe will be better when it opens again. Maybe we can even do some tweaking during our run." He took his coffee to the piano and began pounding at the keys.

Ward settled at the kitchen table beside her. "Cereal?"

"Thanks."

"How's your date?"

"Upstairs," Leah said.

"Naked?"

"Ward?"

He smiled.

"Drop dead," she said.

"They liked me," he said. "I already got a call from Florida about a part down there."

She'd skimmed the part about him and didn't feel a bit guilty.

Sophia came downstairs, also showered, wearing a white t-shirt and black jeans. She rubbed Leah's back and asked for aspirin. Ward smirked, but managed not to say anything while he got it for her, and let her drink it down with a V8 from the fridge.

"When is lunch with your parents?" Sophia asked.

"In an hour."

Sophia nodded. She glanced into the living room, where Adam played scales." That bad?"

"Like killing kittens."

Sophia cringed.

"What are your plans?" Leah asked. "Or, are you done with--Oh, God, are you done?"

"I have a meeting. I'll be in town tonight."

Leah nodded, swallowing. Sophia hugged her but didn't say anything about tomorrow or tomorrow or tomorrow. Leah tried to content herself with the idea of one last night. She inhaled and kissed Sophia's collarbone.

Ward sipped orange juice and smiled at them politely.

* * *

Leah swallowed down the nausea as she let her father drive the family to Thyme. She chattered on about the Macbeth cast party, about meeting the mayor, about the show. She thought if she just kept talking, the words would come out.

And they did, as soon as the car came to a stop in the parking space, before Harry could put the car in park.

"I'm gay," she said.

No one seemed to hear her. She'd barely heard herself, her pip-squeaking voice not overcoming the roaring in her ears. Harry put the car in park.

"Guys?" she asked.

Everyone turned around to look at her.

"I..."

Her bowels threatened her. Her stomach convulsed. If she didn't come out and say it, she'd have to puke in the bathroom as soon as they got inside the restaurant.

She closed her eyes, and then opened them, looking directly at her sister. "I'm gay."

Jessica raised her eyebrows.

"So, who wants to eat?" Harry asked.

They trundled into the restaurant, Jessica stealing glances at Leah, who looked down at the ground. There was relative silence, punctuated by her mother's cough and Jessica's solitary comment, "They really do have hushpuppies," until the drinks were ordered.

"Doesn't anyone have anything to say?" Leah asked. She had no desire to talk about it, but she still wasn't quite sure they'd actually heard her.

"Why didn't you tell me?" Jessica said. Leah glanced at her and was surprised that she was glaring, and her tone was accusatory.

"I--" Jessica's question was trumped by her mother's.

"Does this have anything to do with that girl we met last night?"

"Sophie?"

"The... ethnic one."

"Mom."

"Well, what do you want me to say? Lady Macbeth? I don't remember."

"She's from--" Leah tried to remember. They hadn't exactly discussed parentage all that much. "--Florida," she finally said.

"She doesn't look Cuban."

"I didn't say she was Cuban, Mom, I just said she's from Florida. Lots of people are from Florida. There are even Jews in Florida."

"There are certainly Jews in Florida," Harry said.

"At least there's a place where you two can live in harmony," Margaret said, scowling at her. "Plenty of freaks in Florida." She covered her mouth and said, "I didn't mean--Not freaks, dear. But, you're an actress. You know what I mean."

"Maybe I can be on CSI: Miami," Leah said, her voice rising.

"Lady Macbeth?" her father asked helpfully.

Leah put her forehead in her hand. Though she no longer felt like throwing up, she kind of wanted to kill someone. She said, "No. Yes. No."

Harry folded his arms and smiled.

"I was--gay--before Sophia."

"Why are you so happy?" Margaret asked Harry.

"Come on, it had to be one of them."

"Dad!" Jessica squeaked.

Leah bit her lip. The drinks arrived. She drank half of hers before turning to Jessica and saying, "I'm sorry."

Jessica didn't say anything, but her expression softened.

"Well, if we're going to talk about it," Margaret said huffily, "What about Adam, dear?"

The waiter came back. He looked to be about twelve, was covered in acne, and carried a pen and paper with shaking hands. "What will you have?" he asked.

"Our daughter is gay," Margaret said, gesturing at Leah.

The waiter got a wild, horrified look in his eyes, and said nothing, just breathed through his slightly-gaping mouth, as if he were praying Leah's mother wouldn't say anything more. Leah prayed with him.

"I'll have the fish and chips," Leah said.

Jessica snickered.

Leah kicked her under the table.

"Me too," Jessica said.

Margaret coughed. The waiter seemed afraid to look at her, but dutifully wrote down her salad, and looked at Harry.

"Fish and chips," Harry said.

Leah smiled.

"Harry," Margaret admonished.

Harry shrugged, and said, "We've got enough vinegar at the table."

Margaret sighed. She took a sip of her drink and asked, again, "Adam?"

"What about Adam?"

"Well, you two seemed close."

"We are close," Leah said.

"Don't tease her," Harry said.

Margaret frowned at him.

He asked, "Is Adam gay?"

"You'll have to take that up with him," Leah said.

Jessica snorted.

Harry blithely sipped at his drink.

Margaret sighed and said, "For years, darling, since you met that man at the piano or whatever--"

"He's not Billy Joel, Mom."

Margaret ignored her. She went on, "We saw the way you followed him around, and never had the heart to tell you that you simply had the wrong equipment. It's almost a relief to know that you--know."

"I know," Leah said. "I knew."

Harry slapped the table. All three women looked at him. Leah felt horror rise up in her chest. She swallowed, but ended up more whimpering. Harry asked, "It was that Grace woman, wasn't it?"

Leah raised her eyebrows.

"Well?"

"That horrible woman," Margaret said.

"Mom, she didn't turn me gay," Leah said.

"No, of course not, but would it have killed her to sit down to one family dinner? Just once? Not even for Thanksgiving. Honestly."

Harry shook his head

Leah considered running to the bathroom to sob, or melting through the floor, but the food arrived, so she settled for eating one French fry at a time.

"You were very good in the play, dear," Harry said.

"Musical, and thanks, Dad."

"You seemed very much in love with Edgar Allen Poe."

Leah nodded and ate another fry.

"You were a convincing heterosexual. That's good acting," he said.

Leah dropped her fry remnant into the basket, and sighed.

Jessica leaned over and whispered, "The universe is punishing you."

"For what?"

"Being gay?"

"Jessie, you know better than that," Margaret said.

"Why do you think the universe is punishing her?"

Margaret looked at Leah, her mouth open as if she were about to offer a whole list of suggestions. Then she closed her mouth, and shrugged.

"Maybe she missed a note or something," Harry said.

"Thanks, Dad."

"Any time, princess."

Jessica snickered.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Leah climbed the porch stairs. A headache made her neck hurt and the pulse behind her left eye twitch. She intended to lie in the dark until Adam woke her for show time. The very bad day of Leah Fisher, Lesbian Daughter, Infamous Actress was--

She heard singing coming from the living room as she opened the door. A woman singing.

--Just beginning. She walked in on Sophia standing by the piano, singing "Think of Me," while Adam played. Her voice was beautifully operatic, soprano, and controlled.

In that moment, seeing Sophia in her spot, singing with her friend, Leah hated her. She blinked. Her eyes blurred with rage. She asked, "What the hell?"

Sophia turned and smiled at her and the happy radiance virtually burned. Leah rubbed her arms, chafing under Sophia's pleasure at seeing her. "What's going on?" She asked.

"I'm trying her out on a few things," Adam said. He half-turned in her direction, but his expression was open. He hadn't noticed her jealousy.

But Sophia had. Her face fell. She said nothing, didn't move from the spot.

"For what show?" Leah asked.

"No show. Just, you know, seeing what she has. I'd like to help her."

Leah fled upstairs.

The piano music resumed.

* * *

Adam came up an hour later, after Leah had stopped crying. She still felt indulgently childish, and was ready to fight, ready to yell at him for taking what was hers, and to yell at Sophia for the same thing.

"She's good," Adam said, leaning in the doorway.

Leah thought of Sophia on stage, of the few lines she'd heard of song in the afternoon, and was soothed by the beauty in her mind. "Of course she's good."

"So are you," he said. He came and sat on the edge of the bed.

"Am I better?"

"You're completely different. You'll never compete for the same roles."

It wasn't a direct answer, but she understood it as truth, and it made her feel less terrified.

"She'll be by tonight." Adam said. "Unless you tell me to tell her differently."

"What, are we in grade school?"

Adam tilted his head.

She scowled. She knew she was acting five. He didn't have to remind her. "I'd rather see her in my dressing room."

"Wearing nothing but a little red bow?"

She smiled.

He patted her leg."How was lunch with your parents?"

"This is the very bad day of Leah Fisher," she said, covering her face with her hands.

"Hey, come on. It's not that bad. Did you read the review they gave me of Poe?"

"That's true." She frowned and uncovered one eye. "I'm sorry, Adam."

Adam nodded.

"Your day totally sucks worse than mine."

"Nah. You still have to go on tonight. I can eat Cheetos."

"You wouldn't."

"From the front row. Where you can hear them. Crunch, crunch," he said.

"Adam."

"Where you can smell them."

She sighed." I'm sorry."

"I know."

Now she felt worse than before. She was ashamed of herself and couldn't look at Adam any more. She stared at the ceiling and tried not to cry, because that would give her another headache. "Am I going to lose her?"

He leaned over and kissed her forehead, and said, "Not to me."

She closed her eyes.

He got off the bed, and said, "See you at six."

The show must go on.

* * *

Anger made Leah a better singer. She didn't care if her voice cracked. But it didn't. She belted her loud notes and her quiet notes held an intensity that vibrated through her. Ward performed exactly as he had the first night, unresponsive to her extra petulance, as tender as before when she finally let him hold her.

When she rejected him at the fifteen minute mark in act one, she wept, because it was a horrible thing to abandon someone. When she coughed up blood, she wanted to apologize for the anguished look in his eyes. He dabbed at her cheek. She reminded herself it wasn't real. Just acting. In real life they couldn't stand each other. Right? Ward began to sing.

* * *

The applause was deafening. Ward squeezed her hand. They bowed together, and then each alone. No music, no fanfare. She went backstage to her dressing room. Adam had instructed her to get back out to the lobby as quickly as she could, to meet potential backers who could take the show Off Broadway.

The door partially open, her name taped to the paint angled, and she pushed it the rest of the way open to find Sophia sitting on the arm of the couch.

"I couldn't find a bow," Sophia said.

"You don't need a bow."

Sophia tilted her head.

Leah closed the door, and went and put her hands on Sophia's shoulders. "I'm sorry," she said.

"For what?"

Sophia's voice had a lightness almost felt sarcastic, but she wore a half-smile. Hopeful. Her hand covered Leah's. Maybe Leah was being tested; evaluated on a scale of tenderness to idiocy.

She wanted to prove to Sophia she was not an ass, and absolve herself of the shame she'd felt later in her bedroom. She said, "I should have stayed to hear you sing. Adam said you were beautiful."

Sophia's smile got brighter.

Leah cupped her neck. Sophia leaned into her touch. "I think my whole family uses insulting humor to cope with life."

"Yeah?"

"Even my father. Just by being above it all, he's condemning the rest of us. Just a little snide," Leah said.

"And you're daddy's girl?"

"Always. My parents like to set my sister and I against each other, to have their fights for them."

"Today?" Sophia asked, her eyes drifting shut as Leah's thumb traced her jaw.

"My sister said me being gay was the universe punishing me with bad karma. Or something."

"But--" Sophia swallowed as Leah's fingers brushed the curve of her ear. "You get to date me."

"That was pretty much my father's opinion."

Sophia took Leah's wrist and brought it to her lips to kiss.

Leah asked, "Your place or mine?"

Sophia tilted her head back and regarded Leah. "What, no party?"

"Nope. I just have to meet some backers, and then go back to my ordinary, non-partying life."

"Thank God."

Leah pulled back and went to the makeup chair to wash her face. "Where are you from?"

"Florida?"

Leah could tell by Sophia's expression, reflected in the mirror, that Sophia had no idea why she was laughing so hard.

* * *

"Where will you go?" Leah asked.

Sophia shifted. Her cheek pressed against Leah's belly, below her breasts, and Leah could only see the corner of one eye. "Miami, first, for a week. After I have an audition on Thursday in Jacksonville. They might want me to join the tour of Reckless."

"Are you reckless?" Leah asked.

"That's going to get old fast."

Leah stroked Sophia's hair. "Then what?"

"Where are you going?" Sophia asked, instead of answering.

"New York."

"Do you miss it?"

"Every moment," Leah said, surprising herself. "I wanted to get away. I guess this is why."

Sophia turned her head and kissed Leah's skin.

"I can't believe after all that rehearsal time, the show's over in a week," Leah said.

"Everything is fleeting," Sophia said.

"Tell that to the Venus di Milo."

"And what is she, when her jewelry has been stolen and her paint faded away?"

"Fucking beautiful," Leah said.

Sophia laughed, and then dragged herself up Leah's body to kiss her.

Every time they made love that night, Leah wondered if it would be the last time.

* * *

Sophia went to Jacksonville. Leah moped. She spent her days in the house, lying in bed, playing the piano, and eating ice cream late into the night with Adam after the performances. She was wan and emotionless in daylight, and at eight o'clock each night she exploded on stage, working through her grief, taking it out on Ward.

He had his own demons to deal with; He was no longer sleeping at the house, and Adam didn't mention him during their late-night chats. One night, Leah turned her back on him on stage, and he left marks on her arm when he pulled her back. Two nights later, she slapped his face, unscripted, improvised, and Adam gasped loudest of anyone in the audience.

Ward bit her ear. They tussled. They sang. She lost her voice on Friday, and spent the whole performance whispering her words into her microphone when she didn't have to sing. Ward softened his voice to match, and though neither of them cried, singing to each other, pale and tired of it all and wishing they were somewhere else, Leah felt whole at the end, with Ward's hand in hers as they took their bows.

Adam burst into her dressing room, and said, "Leave the makeup on."

"And the wig?" she asked.

"Please?"

"Adam."

"It's Girl Scouts. They won't know who you are without the makeup."

"Adam."

He narrowed his eyes.

She sighed. It was probably true. She went and signed autographs and cringed only inwardly when the dumber girls called her Virginia and the smarter girls complained about Ward's bleach-blond hair. She'd heard "Quoth the raven" too much in that week and never wanted to hear it again.

"I'm not doing this Off-Broadway," she told Adam as he passed her a glass of champagne. People filed out of the lobby, some lingering to look at the production shots or read the bad review Adam had placed behind a glass panel.

"What? Why not?" Adam asked.

"Because I dream at night of the word 'Nevermore,' ringing in my ears."

Adam smiled.

"It's annoying. What do you dream of?"

He looked wistful.

She took pity on him and said, "Let's go home."

They walked along the sidewalk together. She wore her garb, promising Loretta she wouldn't ruin the fabric or lose her wig.

"Do you miss Ward?" she asked.

"Not really, but kind of," he said.

"Adam, you're a playwright. Please try," she said.

Adam grinned. "I miss having someone warm and hard to go home with. But--did it have to be him?"

She nodded.

"I'll get over it," Adam said, and sighed. "Eventually. Man, that man was talented. Like a male version of you."

"Please don't tell me that's why you slept with him," Leah said.

"No."

"Or that I'm an ass."

Adam took her elbow and leaned into her and said, "You're kind of an ass."

"Oh, you silver-tongued charmer," she cooed.

"Do you miss Sophia?"

"Um."

Adam frowned, and asked, "Do you have her hiding in your closet?"

"No, no. We just talk every morning."

"Not at night?"

"Well, it's late. She who does not have a play does not stay up until two in the morning to talk to me," Leah said.

"Oh, it'll never work."

"Unless she gets a play."

"Or that," Adam said.

She nodded. A breeze rustled the leaves of the ancient oak trees they passed. She inhaled. She'd miss the night here, the walks, the peace and quiet of one car passing in the distance, and not hundreds. No one ever honked their horns.

"So, how's the phone sex?" Adam asked, breaking the stillness.

"Adam!"

He looked innocently at her.

She exhaled, and said, "It's fantastic."

He wrapped his arm around her as they climbed the porch stairs together. She unlocked the door. He asked, "Who knew you getting laid would make you a moodier actress than ever?"

"Shut up."

"See?"

* * *

The last performance was no more unique than the first or the fourth, except the dialogue was getting stale and Ward was getting hoarse and sweated all over her. The crowd had thinned for the last three nights, but for the last performance, all the schools with theater programs came out. Leah looked into their young, aspiring faces, thought of the crew backstage who went to UNC all day and then hammered things and dressed her at night, and tried not to miss her next line.

Then she survived the cast party and went home and fell asleep, and since no one called, and Sophia was on a plane somewhere else, she didn't wake up until nearly eleven. Adam was in his bedroom, packing.

"We're seriously flying out tonight?" she asked.

"Seriously," he said.

"We rehearsed for weeks, did the show--shouldn't we, I don't know, ease out of things? The way we eased in?"

"Maybe, but it's over, Leah."

She sat on the bed and watched him fold his shirts.

"Don't you want to go home?" he asked.

She did. The thought of New York filled her mind and her mouth actually watered. She couldn't wait to be home. "I'm going to pack."

* * *

The plane was at the gate and Leah was wondering why there wasn't more security at the tiny RDU airport when Sophia called.

"How's Florida?" Leah asked.

"Remind me why I came back to see my family."

"Oh, please don't do that. I'm about to go see mine."

Sophia chuckled quietly against the receiver.

"We're boarding in a few minutes," Leah said.

"New York, New York," Sophia sang. And then she said, "I got a call from my agent about Reckless. I didn't get the part."

"I'm sorry," Leah said. Her heart sank with the sadness in Sophia's voice. "I know you're good enough."

"Sure. Just not what they're looking for."

"Well, you're what I'm looking for," Leah said, and then blushed with the inanity of her mouth.

"I hope so," Sophia said. Her voice was more serious than flirtatious, and Leah pressed her ear against the phone. Sophia continued, "I think I know where I'm going next. I want to take advantage of the real contacts I've made--to use my friends. It's a gamble, but--"

"But?" Leah's heart beat in her chest so hard that it pushed out almost all sound and oxygen. She scarcely dared to hope.

"But it's New York. It's the theater capital of the world."

"And if you fail, you can always play a corpse on Law and Order."

"I won't fail," Sophia said, "If you'll have me. Help me?"

Leah imagined herself asking something like that of Adam. She wouldn't have had the strength to ask outright. And he loved her. Sophia--"I'll help you," she said.

She didn't wonder, "Help you do what? Step over me?" She only thought of the fun they could have on a dozen different stages, of all the things she wanted to show Sophia in New York.

Leah said, "Yes. Come to New York. Come home."

END

* * *

About the Author

C. E. Case is a librarian and musical theater fan in Northern Virginia. Little Disquietude is her first novel.

Discover more at http://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/supposed