Harmony (17 page)

A wan smile was still the best he could manage. “I wouldn’t have been able to, either, not right out in front of them.”

“Now we’ll finally hear what happened,” I murmured.

Marie drew Micah aside to talk about color. Sean sauntered in, a roll of blueprints under his arm. He saluted us from across the hall but chose a route that would take him past the greatest number of pretty women. Kim snagged him briefly when he paused at the coffee table to load up with goodies. I watched them both turn on the flirty charm. Sean’s stubby, sensuous hands always caught my eye. He handled a piece of machinery or a woman’s body with the same sure respect and appreciation. When Sean moved on to his next stop, Kim came our way, noting my amusement.

“He’s got to get in his quota of suggestive remarks to the stage managers,” she offered wryly. “Otherwise his ass will be grass when he needs stage time come tech week.” She greeted the model with enthused circlings of her arms. “Micah, it’s a beauty! At last, scenery that won’t cost us the entire season’s budget!”

“It is beautiful,” agreed Marie hastily, having forgotten in her preoccupation with the lack of measurements even to look. “It’s so clean, so simple, so… exposed. You’re very brave, Mi. Wait ‘til Lou sees it! Looks like you designed it just for her!”

Louisa Pietro was the lighting designer, and this particular set
was
a lighting designer’s wet dream.

Micah searched the crowd vaguely. “I don’t suppose she’ll be here?”

Kim snorted. “You gotta be kidding.”

Louisa was a constant globe-trotter and characteristically unavailable until the final week of rehearsals. But she caught on fast once she arrived and she was well worth the wait.

More Arkadie staffers drifted in, the publicity and subscriptions departments and the head of the costume shop. They cruised the model table, nodding and smiling, then moved on. I noted a few raised eyebrows.

“They don’t know what to say.”

“They’ve never seen so little scenery in their lives,” whispered Crispin. “They’re wondering if he’s forgotten something.”

The Barn filled up with people and shop talk. A noisy clot formed around the coffee urn for the usual exchange of gossip. Howie’s voice boomed at the stage managers’ table. The hubbub seemed louder than usual, the laughter shrilled by more than the normal first-rehearsal excitement. I was about to get coffee for Micah and myself when Hickey Kirke slouched up, wearing his habitual sober face and a striped pullover that looked like he’d slept in it.

He surveyed the model. “So where’s the props?”

Micah was fussing, arranging and rearranging some little half-inch-scale rocks, unable to settle on a way that suited him. He waved one in front of Hickey’s long nose. “Here.”

“Unh-unh,” said Hickey. “Carpentry does rocks.”

“These rocks get moved about like furniture.”

“Props does rocks at the RoundHall,” teased Crispin.

“No way.”

Micah bent his head to hide his grin. “I really think these’d be a good project for you.”

“Sean and I will have a discussion about this.” Hickey moved around to peer into the rear of the model, putting his back to a nearby conversation. “Any more word on who caused the Incident?”

Micah shrugged, noncommittal.

“Reede,” murmured Hickey. “He benefits the most.”

I had to lean in close to hear. “You’re saying they planned it? The gun and everything?”

“Reede,” said Hickey. “It’s not Howie’s style.”

Cris had suggested the Incident had been staged, but I couldn’t believe that. “But someone was actually hurt!”

“Did you see any blood?” Hickey inquired loftily.

Micah turned his head to gaze at him. “In fact, I did.”

Hickey blinked. “You did? Really? Jeez, he’s worse than I thought.”

Sean finished his rounds and joined us, coffee and donut in hand. He pointed a sugared finger as Micah again bent over the model. “Uh-unh, Mi. Too late. The drawings are in. You can’t change it now!” He eyed Hickey drolly. “Friggin’ designers! Never leave well enough alone! This guy’s worse than Eider!”

Micah straightened with a wounded look.

“Only a joke, Mi. I remember, this here’s the one where we all get to go home at four o’clock.” Sean held out his cup. “Coffee?”

His laugh seemed strident, but only because the loud shop talk and gossip had fallen suddenly away. Reede Chamberlaine stood murmuring into Howie’s ear. People were staring while pretending not to. The staffers were as curious about our imported producer as they were about the Eye. I certainly gave him a closer look, after what I’d just heard.

He was a handsome man, tall and impressive, but it was his polish you noticed, his clear, expensively ageless skin, the tight grays of his palette. His precise business tailoring made Howie’s brightly casual director suedes look self-conscious, almost frivolous. I was so intent on trying to overhear his conversation that I didn’t notice the small crowd that slipped in behind him.

Then the undercurrent of chatter died into real silence, and there they were. Ten of them, sticking close together.

I didn’t want it to be them, no fanfare, no grand entrance. Just, you know, walking in like that.

“Well.” Crispin’s murmur was flat with disappointment.

They were tall and short, dark and light, four women, six men, in blue jeans and mirrored sunglasses, with classy dance bags slung over their shoulders. They wandered into the room not like magical strangers at all but like any other actors walking into any other rehearsal hall. One already sported a T-shirt that read, H
armony
S
ings
in rainbowed letters, the one where a
W
was careted in above the
S
and the
I
. The women wore chic, luxuriant hairdos. The men sported the latest and most expensive athletic shoes. They all looked healthy, rested, well-fed, and extremely up-to-date.

“Not quite what I expected…” I heard Marie hiss to Micah.

I wondered what Micah had expected. Feathers and nakedness? Like I’d assumed that they’d all be black? I felt premature envy of the troupe’s white members, that they should be included in the mystery and not me. But what mystery? No matter how much I’d said about them being actors and such, I hadn’t expected them to look so… normal.

By now no one was pretending not to stare. The pause in the room lengthened uncomfortably, we hoping they’d do something weird to satisfy our heightened expectations, they no doubt awaiting some reassuring gesture of welcome. It was the urbane Reede Chamberlaine who broke the impasse. He gestured grandly toward the ten. “Ladies and gentlemen, may I present to you, the Eye.”

With equal ceremony he led Howie over for the introductions that had never taken place in the confusion of their arrival. When fluent, crisply accented English accompanied the actors’ smiles and handshakes, the long breath held in the hall relaxed.

Then I noticed one of the young women had her arm in a sling.

“I’ll let the troupe introduce themselves.” Chamberlaine had taken complete charge, but Howie didn’t seem to mind. “Don’t worry about remembering names—you’ll get to that later, and Tuatuan names are a little complicated at first.” He nodded to the woman standing nearest him. “Omea?”

She dropped him a playful curtsy, then smiled around the room with perfect poise, to Howie, to the office staff hovering at the coffee urn, to the production staff clustered around the model. She was a buxom, pleasant-looking woman of about forty-five, with crackling black eyes, a cloud of dark wavy hair, and a resonant performer’s voice. “I am Pirea-Omealeanoo, but as Reede says, don’t worry about names. Call me Omea.” Her smile invited our complicity. “I’ll know who you’re talking about.”

She flattened her palms together in a way that might have been personal mannerism or ritual gesture. “I will be your translator and encyclopedia. I will speak of and for the Eye… that is, when it isn’t speaking for itself.”

Polite laughter rose and fell.

Omea continued, “And my first job is to say how grateful we are for the chance to work in an atmosphere that supports creativity and experiment. Your welcome for these few months will allow us to grow into the richer, more dramatic material we have been longing to try our hand at.” She saluted the gathering with her joined palms. “Our deepest thanks. And now to our introductions.”

She turned to her right, where a sober and beautiful young man stood beside a shorter, somewhat crabbed older fellow with a dark, mobile face.

“This fine one here is Te-Cucularit, who we call Cu. I will tell you our titles with our names, though you will find we all do a little of everything. Cu is named our archivist and company historian.”

Proof of strong links with the past, I noted. Domers were not often into preserving the past. It was a bad memory to them. Even a theatre as large as the Arkadie didn’t have a company historian.

The young man nodded silently and looked down.

“And this gentleman: our choreographer, No-Mulelatu.”

“No gentleman,” grinned the older man. “I’m Ule the Mule.” He did a little leap and kick. “You’ll know me.”

Next was a sultry girl-woman who already had the eye of every straight man in the room and some of the women.

“And this, Telea-Muatamuatua,” Omea supplied.

“Just Tua,” smiled the girl with lowered lids and a willowy toss of thick black hair. She was the sort of girl men always say reminds them of a deer or perhaps a flower, but I suspected steel and ambition beneath her silky brown skin.

“Guess they don’t list ‘sexpot’ as a job title,” muttered Sean aside to Hickey.

“Bet she’s high on the Muchee Taboo list,” Hickey returned.

Omea moved on. “Pili-Peneamanea, or Pen.” She grinned maternally. “Our movie star. Pen has given up a big holo contract to be with us on this tour. For the play, you see, because he feels it’s so important to do.”

I was working hard to store away names and faces. The company was younger than I’d expected. Half of them would have still been children when the Eye was founded. This Pen, I guessed, was about my age. His mirrored lenses flashed as he nodded with preening grace. He was smoothly handsome and defensive, a bantam cock.

“Trouble,” murmured Sean.

“You just don’t like the competition,” Hickey returned.

“You wait. You’ll see.”

The two women next to Pen, girls really, were identical in the perfection of their height, weight, and proportions, except that one was pink and blond, and the other creamy dark and wearing the sling.

“Lucienne LaGrange,” nodded Omea, “and Dua-Tulinooribil, called Tuli.” Tuli gave no indication of being upset or in pain, and the sling was not mentioned.

Marie whispered, “Isn’t it wonderful how dancers are the same the world over?”

Micah eyed her glumly. “Is it?”

“And that’s Sam next along, just Sam,” Omea continued with a smile, “our other paleface. Sam is our consulting Magic Man. When the Ancestors cannot do it, Sam usually can.”

Sam took a half step forward and bowed with casual flourish. He was close-cropped and solid, with a watchful eyes-on-the-horizon manner. He could have played an old-time sailor without changing a thing except his spanking new sport shoes. Though Omea called him paleface, his skin was closer to Rachel Lamb’s color. When he rose from his bow, he held a shimmering red bird which he sent winging with a presentational flick of his wrists. It flew three perfect circles above the heads of the troupe, singing what Micah later swore was
Pagliacci
, and landed on Sam’s sturdy shoulder.

Howie was the first to applaud, and it was a few minutes before Omea could continue her introductions. I looked, and the bird had vanished.

“There’s hope for these guys yet,” Crispin declared.

Of the last two, the first was a huge and spectacular black man of obvious African descent, but it was the second who caught my interest. He was tall and thin, with long arms and spindly legs and a lifetime’s experience packed behind his eyes. He lifted his chin faintly to acknowledge his audience and my heart contracted.

How had that simple move communicated all the sufferings of the world?

“That’s him,” I murmured. “He’s the tribesman.”

Cris looked at me sideways. “As opposed to the rest of them?”

“I mean, he’ll play the guy who gets killed.”

“Our musical director, Moussa N’Diaye,” Omea was saying of the smiling African, “and Sa-Panteadeamali. Moussa and Mali.” She pressed her palms together a final time. “And there you have us.”

More applause, then after a brief hesitation, the Eye relaxed out of formation and the Arkadie staff surged around them. The groups mingled for the usual coffee and small talk before sitting down to read the play, but in less than a minute, a problem developed. I watched Liz Godwin take Howie aside.

“They don’t drink coffee?” Howie could not imagine this.

“I’ll send Ted out for fruit juice,” said Liz. “And by the way, Reede grilled me about lunch and made me cancel the beer.”

“What the hell for?”

Liz looked embarrassed. “He says, um, they’re not good with alcohol.”

“They? Oh,
they
. Christ, that paternalistic son of a bitch!”

“I didn’t think it was worth an argument.”

“No, not at the moment. Later, yes.” Howie already looked tired. He shook his head as if he did not consider this an auspicious beginning, then waved to Micah, and came in our direction. “How ’bout we show them the model?”

Something very like terror fleeted across Micah’s face, then disguised itself as gruff readiness. All my allegiance was his at that moment. He cares so much, I thought.

“All right, everyone! Over here!” Howie gathered the room into a semicircle in front of the model, except Reede Chamberlaine, who had drawn Rachel Lamb aside to talk. “For the sake of our honored guests,” he boomed, “and for anyone here who’s spent the last twenty years in a cave somewhere, I’ll introduce our master scenic designer, the great Micah Cervantes.”

He laid a proud hand on Micah’s shoulder. “We are more fortunate than I can possibly express to have him with us on this production. And there, to his right, another of Harmony’s national treasures, Marie Bennett-Lloyd, who will be helping with the costumes.”