Harmony (25 page)

Crispin drew his blade along his straight edge with a vicious squeal. I joined him at the cutting table. “Don’t slice off your thumb.” The women stared at my faded coveralls.

The flask man, tall and broad-shouldered, already flushed with drink, leaned in at Micah’s side. When the work on the drawing board disappointed him, he turned to the nearby walls, with their collage of roughs and plans. He pointed at a
Cymbeline
sketch tacked in the upper corner.

“How much for that one?”

“That is a work in progress, I’m afraid,” said Micah politely.

“That’s okay. Looks good to me.”

“I mean, it can’t be sold until the production has opened.”

The man grinned slyly. “But you could just make ’em another one, right? They’d never know.”

The three women were already bored. They took turns with the two chairs beneath the front windows. Two younger couples appeared at the door, boisterous and giggly. Newlyweds, I guessed. Behind them, five elderly Asian men, dressed in identical business suits set off by eye-catching ties with little sayings on them. Our little studio now resembled the Tube at rush hour. The pudgy blond drifted into a technical reminiscence over the computer. The tall drinker pestered Micah to make a deal. One of the new couples introduced themselves heartily to the women in the chairs.

“When do we break out the cocktails and canapés?” Cris grumbled.

I nudged him. “Look.”

Mali stood in the doorway, barefoot, eyeing the crowd as if reconsidering his visit. In his worn jeans and plain black T-shirt, he seemed surreally tall and dark against the pale plaster and the roomful of pasty faces. His eyes picked out Micah, besieged by the would-be buyer. The five Asians had drawn up in an avid semicircle to observe the bargaining.

“Why isn’t he in rehearsal?” hissed Cris. The actors’ workweek at the Ark was the traditional Tuesday through Sunday.

“Maybe he’s not called today.”

“How could he not be? He’s in almost every scene.”

Mali frowned our way. The faintest motion of his head demanded explanation. When I shrugged, he rolled his eyes impatiently. Next thing I knew, he was leaning like a willow in the wind to murmur to the Texas ladies in the chairs. His body seemed to lengthen as he bent over his clasped hands in a continuous curl from head to toe. The ladies pulled away instinctively, but for all they knew he was just another denizen of Harmony, one of those eccentric artists they’d come two thousand miles to stare at like animals in a zoo. A flash of Mali’s brilliant smile won three surprised but willing nods. In a moment they were up on their booted feet, teetering off to urge their husbands toward the door with hushed, excited explications. Mali moved in on the newlyweds.

He had the studio cleared in six minutes. The chatter in the courtyard burbled like water over rocks, the satisfied sound of tourists who feel they’ve gotten their money’s worth. The last of the Asians took his departure under Mali’s companionable arm. The tall Tuatuan waved the little man off with incomprehensible salutations that made him and his four cronies smile and bow in delight.

Mali shut the door and leaned against it. “Phew.”

Crispin raised a clenched fist. “Man! You are hired!”

Micah was as chagrined as I’d ever seen him. “How the hell did you manage that?”

Mali blinked. “Is it like this every day?”

“Sundays are the worst,” I said.

“This is not right. Such distractions to your work.”

“Been much worse since the T.C. raised the price of a tourist visa,” Cris explained. “Now they figure they own us already.”

“What did you say to them?” Micah asked.

Mali relaxed with a modest grin. “Only what they wanted to hear.”

“Please. Enlighten us.”

Mali’s voice softened to an unctuous purr. “Oh, kindest madam, I do so deeply regret this disturbance to your recreation, but I have the inestimable high honor to be First Aide to the Chief Protocol Officer for His Extremely Exalted Magnificence, the Prince of Cairo. I must ask you all to leave, so that His Magnificence might grace Master Cervantes with a royal visit.”

Cris and I broke up. Jane looked bewildered.

“And how was His Magnificence to get in, with that mob in the courtyard?” asked Micah dryly.

“Arab princes always use the back door,” Mali replied.

“Ah, but there isn’t one.”

“Ah, but do they know that?”

Micah chuckled at last. “Shameless.”

“Effective.” Mali smiled with him, then eased away from the door. “And so. How are you coming with the changes?”

Micah’s smile cooled. “Coming along.”

“I thought it might be that, when there was no word in rehearsal.”

I hadn’t noticed before how tired Micah looked. Not just tired, wrung out.

Mali stooped under the slanting eave of Micah’s corner, hands shoved into his pockets. He studied Micah’s face rather than the drawings on the board. “I might offer some assistance.”

The only thing Micah hated more than tourists telling him how to design his shows was hearing it from the actors. But true admiration can overcome such prejudices. He settled back on his stool. “Please. Tell me your idea.”

Mali laughed softly. He picked up the carved bead from Micah’s worktable, dusted it off on his pants, and held it between both palms as if warming it. “No idea, Master Cervantes. I am not so bold. An observation merely. It’s all in the seeing, isn’t it? How you are
seeing
these new things he requires?”

Micah rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Go on.”

Mali put the bead back where he’d found it, then pulled up a stray stool, and straddled it, bringing his eyes to level with Micah’s. “Seeing. If you are seeing Howie’s new demands as objects, you naturally feel they’ll be out of place in an environment of ideas. But if you could see them as ideas, well, then their natures could be moulded to your needs.”

Micah sighed. “Would that reality were so ephemeral.”

“Mine is.” The Tuatuan grinned with sudden mischief. “It is… Mali-able.”

This was either truly profound or total bullshit. I was unsure for which to cast my vote. I looked to Cris. His straight back imitated Mali’s, his mask of sophistication was set aside. He was transfixed.

“If you’ll permit me,” said Micah, somewhat stiffly. “Beyond its philosophical nature, an object’s reality is not so, ah,
maliable
when it must exist in three dimensions in an actor’s hands.”

“Then its nature must be determined before it is real. While it still exists in the realm of ideas.”

“Sophistry!” Micah growled. “The problem is having to change the idea in order to accommodate the new object.” He turned for proof to the confusion on his drawing board. There, something caught his eye. He fingered the frayed corner of a tissue overlay, then snatched it aside, and balled it up violently. He pressed it between both hands, staring down at the board.

“Aha,” said Mali quietly.

“Maybe.” Micah was as stubborn and irritable as ever a badger could be. He tore two more layers free of their tape, balled them up with the first, and tossed the crumpled wad onto his worktable. He laid a fresh sheet of tracing paper over his sketch, lowered himself heavily onto his stool, and braced his head in his hands. “Just maybe…”

Mali sat back. He nodded two or three times, a motion faintly more than breathing, then glanced across at our astonished faces. He shrugged negligently and ambled over. “The rest of you take the day off.”

His audacity made me laugh. “Actually, we already had it off.”

“Take it again. Leave the man to his muse.”

Delivered ever so lightly, it carried the weight of an order. And we were too in awe to refuse him anything.

“You are a magician,” breathed Cris.

“No, that’s Sam. I’m Mali.”

“He knows that,” I said.

“Then he knows more of me than I of him.”

I ticked off our names and we shook hands all around.

“So, Jane and Cris and Gwinn: where do you get lunch in this Birdy Cliff?”

Cris and I cheered simultaneously, “The Brim!”

MALI:

He might have been the Pied Piper, the way we trouped after him so willingly. I feared we’d find the courtyard jammed with tourists awaiting a glimpse of His Magnificence of Cairo, but their chatter had long ago faded down the lane.

“Better lock it,” Mali advised outside the gate.

“Micah doesn’t like that,” said Jane before she could stop herself.

Mali studied a red lizard clinging to the stucco. When he touched an inquiring fingertip to its triangular head, it did not bolt. “You want to help him over the hump or not?”

I locked the gate and pocketed my key with ceremony. “Don’t know why we don’t do it more often.”

Cris placed himself at Mali’s side. “Boy, you sure got Micah going again!”

Mali trailed a long arm through the foliage overhead, blue-green and glossy as silk. “Easy. He only needed reminding that the solution was already within him. While you all sat about with glum faces as if there wasn’t one.”

“Glum, huh? I guess we were.” Cris attempted to match the Tuatuan’s gangling stride.

“Yah. I saw you.”

I prevaricated. “Changes are usually real easy for Micah—”

“In a familiar landscape, sure. Harder in foreign territory.”

“It’s not just the culture,
your
culture,” added Cris. “This kind of design is… foreign for him, too.”

“I know that.” Mali halted at the top of a long flight of shallow whitewashed steps overhung with hibiscus, vermilion, and fuchsia against the earth brown of his ringleted hair. With an actor’s sixth sense, he consistently placed himself in contrast with his surroundings. “But you—you just stand at the border of the known and wring your hands?” He frowned at us paternally. “Venture out there with him! Support his courage with your minds as well as with your skills!”

“Yessir,” mumbled Cris.

“Micah’d never ask us for help with an idea,” I said.

“He’s too proud to ask us,” Jane seconded.

Mali started down the steps. “Are you sure you’ve been listening?”

We slouched after him, sunk in self-pity, while Mali admired the blooming hedges and nodded cheerfully to passing tourists who looked askance at his worn clothing and his bare feet. Finally Cris asked disconsolately, “You still want that lunch?”

Mali returned a surprised glance, then laughed, and clapped him hard on the back. “No one ever scold you before, bro? Well, I don’t live here under this dome, so I don’t have to spoil you like you’re used to. You give me those anything-you-say dog-eyes, you got to be ready to hear it when it comes, hah?”

Crispin’s mouth tightened. “I suppose.”

“Of course I want lunch. Who the hell wouldn’t want lunch? Maybe some overfed boss man wouldn’t want lunch, maybe some fat-cat producer.”

Cris could not hold on to his sulk. “Reede Chamberlaine—”

“… wouldn’t want lunch. But me—”

“We—”

“We want lunch,” I chimed in, unable to resist the sudden lilt in Mali’s step and the jaunty rise of his chin.

“We want lunch!”
we chanted as we clattered down the stairs. The tourists stared. Mali tipped an invisible hat. Jane lagged behind, disclaiming us. I averted my eyes, both embarrassed and delighted by our raucous, childlike behavior. If challenged, I’d have pointed to Mali. It’s him, I’d say. He’s magic. He made me act this way.

By the time we got Mali up the narrow stairs at the Brim, Crispin’s spirits had buoyed and Mali had sobered. A young man in evening clothes stopped us at the door to the main salon.

“Excuse us,” I said, “we’re just heading for the terrace.”

“The terrace is full.”

Our favorite table was often occupied since Gitanne had redecorated. Her landlord, one of the local galleries, had raised her rent. She’d been obliged to put in a fancy sign at street level to encourage tourists to discover the backwater pleasures of the Brim. Mali hummed a little song to himself as we struggled with the realization that the Brim now had a maître d’.

“We don’t mind sitting in the rain,” said Cris suddenly.

The young man turned. A surprise shower was emptying the outer terrace. The kid was new to his job. He couldn’t think what else to do but let us by.

Mali eased among the crowded tables with quiet dignity. I followed, thinking how right he’d been about Cris. Cris hadn’t been scolded much in his life. Not by his parents. Certainly not by Micah, whose idea of scolding was to let slip a dry remark or two and expect the offender to make the adjustment on his own. But this required understanding what you’d done wrong in the first place. Reading Micah was not always as easy as Mali had made it seem.

The rain stopped as we squeezed into a small table along the wrought-iron railing. “That’s better,” said Mali.

Jane squinted up at the high golden arch of dome. I found myself trying to imagine the heat and the summer stink of the slums Outside. Mali leaned over the rail to study the teeming crafts stalls in the market square. Windows and doors were open along the surrounding gallery arcade. Paintings sat outside on easels or propped against the walls, big lush landscape oils framed in gilt and picturesque rural scenes painted last month of a world that hadn’t existed for a century. Below, a street musician doled out Gershwin on the violin. No synth players on the paths of BardClyffe. You had to go over to Amadeus for that.

At the far end of the square, a plastic bubble swelled like a giant blue growth over Francotel’s construction site. Fine white dust dried in droplets on the table and dulled the broad leaves in the terrace flowerboxes.

Mali sighed. “Just one big marketplace.”

“Oh no,” Jane countered softly. “We have all sorts of beautiful homes and museums and parks—”

“Parks you can’t use,” he retorted.

“Parks you can’t sleep in,” Cris amended recklessly.

“Yah.” Mali turned away from the rail as if something smelled bad. We glanced at each other, uneasy and self-conscious.

Gitanne, with the unerring herd instinct of performers, wheeled over to welcome him with iced cappuccino on the house. Mali covered his sourness with a winning grin, and the two of them went to work charming one another, dropping the names of touring houses and sympathetic restaurants around the world. “Bring the others in soon!” she bade him when she was called away to the kitchen.