Harmony (41 page)

“It’s happening overnight,” I mourned when we had been conceded a rickety table next to the kitchen door.

Cris glared at the waiter, who was ignoring us. “That only means it’s been lying in wait.”

Margaret was from funky Franklin Wells, the jazz-crazy, pseudo-urban anachronism directly across the dome, occasionally referred to as the Underside of Harmony. “Fetching’s a snob town. If it were me alone, I’d hop the Tube to the Maple Leaf. Nikos there was an apprentice. Oboist. Didn’t quite work out for him career-wise, but he runs a great pub.”

Halfway through dinner, Songh appeared with a sandwich and sat down. “I am in deep shit at home.”

I laughed. He’d said it so seriously, but with this satisfied glint in his eye.

“They want me home right after work every night. They said no hanging out after dinner, no more staying over at the dorm. They said, stay away from
those
actors.”

“What did you say?” Jane asked mildly.

Songh flicked his head, very Mark-like for a moment. “I told them that’s fine with me, maybe I’d see them around sometime, and I left. My mother’s probably still yelling at me.”

“Cool,” said Peter. “I’m always fighting with my dad.”

“I never did,” said Songh. “Before.”

Margaret clucked her tongue dutifully. The rest of us cheered. Our waiter swept over to tell us that if we couldn’t behave ourselves, we’d have to leave.

We went back to work still hungry. It didn’t help our grim mood to have to fight our way through the white-wigged and panniered
Crossroads
chorus filling the halls with high-energy chatter and vocalizing. The first act blared over the shop monitor. The evening cleanup had been forgotten in the mad dash to be ready for their first audience. Every drawer gaped open, every cabinet had been plundered of its tools. I found Donny, our erstwhile crew member, sitting on a worktable drinking coffee.

“How’s it going?”

“They’re gettin’ through. Audience seems to like it.”

“You coming back to work for us?”

Donny scuffed his palm through a pile of sawdust. “Not tonight. Got a big shift coming up.”

“So I guess the remotes aren’t fixed.”

“Not yet.” His glance swung toward me, then away. “Some’re saying it’s a voodoo curse on it.”

Later, I overheard Songh and Crispin having an actual conversation-between-equals, maybe their first ever, about parental oppression. Interesting, since Cris had never offered me anything but the highest praise for his father. Jane rattled on dreamily about what her life would be like on Tuatua, with the Eye. What could I do but listen? She’d let float a major sector of her reality, like a balloon on an endless string, and was happier than I’d ever seen her.

Margaret pulled the boys off the back wall when they started dropping heavy tools onto the deck. “No accidents on my crew,” she declared. Too weary to argue, they settled in with Jane and me on the sculpture brigade. When the nine o’clock curfew arrived, no one mentioned it.

Conversation lagged as the hours wore on, and neither the steady tap-tap of Margaret’s hammer nor Peter’s tales of disasters he’d worked on in other theatres could drive the stillness from that empty, half-dark space. But for the patter of voice and music over the monitor, it was hard to believe there were nearly a hundred people watching a show right next door. There were people busy up in Costumes, and Hickey’s crew was still working in the Cage. There were probably people working late in the box office and up in the offices. The
Crossroads
crew banged around in the shop from time to time, going in and out of the rehearsal. No one came to say hello or check up on our well-being. A system going about its business. Within it, our isolation was profound and complete. As if its business didn’t include us anymore.

I really didn’t understand it at all.

Just when our mood hit bottom, the Eye arrived.

They came trouping down the aisle from the lobby, the women a rainbow of bright batik wraps, the men in long, loose-fitting patterned robes except for Sam, in black head to foot like a street mime. Mali loped across the back of the theatre to catch the orange that Sam lobbed his way and toss it back again. The throw was mischievously high. Sam leapt, snagged it easily, as if he’d been nowhere near death’s door five days before.

“It was him, I tell you,” Ule was insisting. “In the lobby right next to the Fat Man. Talking up a storm, they were.”

“How could Deeland be here?” Tua scoffed.

Sam frowned at his orange, both discounting and thoughtful. Suddenly, there were two. He looped one backward over his shoulder. It landed in Mali’s hand.

“You’re saying I don’t know what I see?” Ule complained.

“You might have said something,” Sam replied.

“Ha. You were too busy taking sympathy calls from the ladies.”

The Eye circled and settled among us like birds lighting in the corn. Te-Cucularit knelt to inspect a particularly detailed bit of rock texture that I’d just given up on. Mali wandered about, peeling his orange, testing the solidity of the sloping deck. Omea paddled her legs girlishly in front of her and sent a long look at the backdrop where Margaret was doggedly banging away.

Jane smiled at them as if the sun had just risen in her eyes. Peter charged downstage to greet Moussa. “Hi, I’m Peter. Thanks again, man!”

Moussa and Pen were bickering. Pen held a half-empty wine bottle by the neck, the two-liter kind that caterers use. His arm was around Tuli, hauling her alongside sloppily. Each time the big bottle bumped against her breast, Tuli giggled.

Moussa sank to the floor cross-legged like a giant black Buddha. “Who are you to say what the Work is?”

“The Work,” growled Pen, “is not parking my ass in a fucking rehearsal hall week after week, diddling some fool director!”

“It might be,” said Omea.

Ule stoked and lit his pipe.

“What are you all doing here so late?” I asked.

“Might ask the same of you,” Ule returned.

“The
Crossroads
open dress.” Sam drained a paper cup and tossed it to Pen for a refill. He dropped beside me. His predatory grin seemed out of character and made me uneasy. “We were setting an Eye on the competition.”

Lucienne smirked at him. I wondered where Hickey was and what had happened to the Great Romance. I hadn’t seen them together the past few days.

Tua flopped down beside Cris. “They could use an Eye or two.” She looked ready to leap full-feathered into Moussa and Pen’s argument if only they’d fight about something that interested her. “Big crowd for a dress rehearsal.”

“Open dresses are a favorite tradition in Harmony,” I explained.

“That cast has a lot of friends.” Sam’s limp and stiffness were gone, the stitched-up scars thin and pink with healing.

“You look so much better,” I remarked.

“The fine art of de-lusion.” He pulled a ripe peach out of my glue bucket. It had a big bruise on one side. He sneered at it and flicked it aside. Jane caught it and brushed it off. Her thin hands cradled it possessively.

“I mean, you heal very fast,” I added.

“With a little help from my friends.” Sam tossed back his wine, made a face. “This shit is really bad.”

Mali paused behind him. “Then don’t drink it.”

“I will if I want.”

“How was the show?” Cris asked.

“They got through it.” Mali bent to share Ule’s pipe.

Cris laughed. “Guess you really loved it, huh?”

Holding in smoke, Mali considered. “The show is colorful, detailed, extravagant, rousing, well acted, full of refined grace and totally devoid of content.”

Omea took the pipe from him. “Therefore will be a huge success.”

“Mind you, it pretends otherwise about the content.”

“And therefore is totally boring,” Tua finished.

Mali folded himself up beside Sam. “And so, we thought we’d just come by and see where the numberless resources of this great Palace of Art are not being directed.”

I hunched up a little tighter and sighed.

“Fuckin’ Chamberlaine, anyway!” Pen growled.

“It’s not only Chamberlaine,” said Cris.

“You just have to see the Fat Man’s hand in this,” Ule agreed.

“I do question Howie’s control of his own theatre,” Omea observed.

“Hey, it’s gonna be great!” urged Songh. “When it’s done.”

Omea smoothed his silky hair out of his eyes. “There, child. We’re not blaming you.”

“I mean, walk around on it a little. It’s fun.”

“Maybe we should.” She rose, held out her hand to him. “Show me around.”

Songh scrambled to his feet, still morning-fresh. “Okay!”

Moussa rising was like a mountain levitating. “Show me where I’ll sit.” Pen followed, dragging Tuli along giggling. Jane trailed after Mali. Tua bent her lovely mouth to Crispin’s ear. Beside me, Sam stared into his empty cup. His odd mood leaned on me like a weight.

“What kind of help?” I asked him finally.

“What?”

“Healed you so fast. Can you talk about it?” I watched Te-Cucularit warily as he drifted away to observe Margaret at work. “I mean, is it a secret… taboo?”

Sam gave me a bemused look, intimate and faintly mocking. “Help is never taboo.”

I decided he was a little drunk. “Sorry. I meant—”

“Miraculous powers of recovery, right? So you can decide I’m the Conch after all?”

“I never thought that.”

“Oh?” He laughed harshly. “No, of course not. Not old Sam. Couldn’t be him.”

“You always think people are—”

“Tch! Don’t touch unless you intend to buy.”

“I beg your pardon?”

Ule cackled, sucking on his pipe. “It’s no use, Sammy boy. I tried already.”

Sam passed him a snarky grin. “You mean I gotta stand in line for the privilege?”

I glared at him. “What is with you guys?”

“Sam, Sam, Sammy,” chided Ule softly. To me, he sighed, “Just homesick. Domesick. All of us. Sick and sullen.”

“
Crossroads
is not my fault!” I declared.

Across the circle, Cris said to Tua, “Sure we could, but I can’t get in by myself.” He glanced up, looked at me, looked away.

“Sorry,” Sam muttered. “We had some bad news from home today.”

“Bad news indeed,” Ule echoed.

I waited.

“Explosion in a coffee warehouse.”

“Eighty-three dead.”

“Oh…”

Cris glanced up. “What happened?”

“Your WorldNet/News blamed the boiler units,” said Ule.

“You think it was… ?”

“Always is.”

Mali’s wanderings had returned him full circle. He crouched, staring as if into a campfire. “Blood of our blood.”

“Station Clans?” I whispered.

“Many were.”

Sam crushed his empty cup. “And we sit here safe and sound…”

Mali tipped his head back, eyes squeezed shut. “The Rock my father rebukes me!”

Ule knocked his pipe out and ground the ashes into the stage floor, humming quietly. Mali relaxed and joined him after a phrase or two, then Sam, then Tua, breaking off her murmurings with Crispin. It was a four-line, keening melody, repeated over and over. What was remarkable was how the Eye had regrouped and resettled around us without my noticing. Pen sat stiff-backed and quiet, Tuli sobered beside him. Te-Cucularit added words to the chant and the others joined him one by one until ten voices sang in unison, filling the dark theatre as our complaints and gossip and hammering had failed to all night.

And then abruptly, the singing stopped.

“Sa-Panteadeamali!”
came Moussa’s ringing cry.

Mali answered as if he were miles away.

“Pirea-Omealeanoo!”
Moussa called, and so on through each of them. When the last had answered, he sighed with relief and folded his big hands in his lap. “We are ten. We are here.”

They sat with their heads bowed. Ule and Omea wept quietly. After a moment Te-Cucularit announced, “The tale that the song tells is this. It tells of times when the clans have not listened to the wild music of Wind and Water, of Earth our End and Fire our Brother, and in falling out of step, have fallen.”

“If a typhoon comes,” Mali translated, “or an earthquake or fire ravages a village, we sing this chant when the dust settles. We sing the twelve stations, then call out every name in the village. Those who do not answer are those who are lost.”

“If we knew the names of the murdered at home,” said Omea, “we would call them tonight to show that they cannot answer.”

“And so the Ancestors will know to welcome them,” said Te-Cucularit.

The circle relaxed.

“That is very sad and beautiful,” murmured Jane.

“Sad?” barked Pen. “
Sad
? We are sad, that’s what, the whole sad fucking lot of us, sitting on our asses doing nothing while the shit hits the fan at home!”

“Maybe we should go home?” Tuli ventured softly.

“Oh no!” I protested.

“You can’t do that!” Songh cried.

“Why not?” Sam challenged.

“I… the show…”

He jerked his thumb at the unfinished scenery. “What show?”

“We’ll finish it,” I insisted. “It’ll be there!”

Margaret ambled over, stowing tools in her belt. “None of my business but it will, you know. Somehow it always is.”

Omea rose, hovering like an angry goddess. “For shame, Pen! And you, Sam, of all people! What we do here is not nothing!”

“They don’t want us here,” Pen muttered.

“My dear, we have always known resistance to the telling of our tale. No matter! We must tell it the truest we know how!”

“It is the actor’s job,” said Mali quietly, “to make the truth unavoidable.”

That is the job of Art, I realized. The hard nut of responsibility at the center of every project and the hardest thing to accomplish, because avoidance of truth is what we are most skilled at, both audience and practitioner. It was a good insight and a lasting one, but it was the the dry sound of Mali’s perseverance that stayed with me the longest.

“Time to head home, kids.” Margaret dusted debris off her overalls. “Told Micah I’d see you to the door.”

Omea rose gracefully. “You’ve worked a long day. Let us do it.”

“Safety in numbers,” offered Mali.