Harmony (27 page)

Howie regarded him balefully. “And won’t Cam be pleased. His place is right nearby.”

It did me good to see them both laughing together, so much that I didn’t even resent it when Howie okayed the changes without asking if they’d compromised the design.

“And what does the Eye make of all this?” Micah asked.

“Didn’t tell them. Hard enough getting them to concentrate on their work as it is.”

Well, guess what? I thought. They’re way ahead of you. But what we’d told Mali about the Closed Door League already needed updating.

* * *

We took the model and headed for the shop. The front doors of the theatre stood open, spilling bright sun from the plaza onto the unusually long line at the box office’s advance-sales window. Cam Brigham’s completed display for
Crossroads
was already arousing tourist interest.

Shop noise assailed us from halfway across the lobby.

“I forgot
Three Sisters
was loading out today!” Micah groaned.

The connecting corridor was an obstacle course of Victorian furniture and storage crates piled high with flowery chinaware and gilt picture frames. The fire door was propped open with an upholstered rocking chair, upon which rested a large silver samovar.

The shop was a madhouse. The south wall loading door lay open to the cavernous stage of Theatre One. A logjam had formed between stage and shop, dead scenery waiting to be stripped and recycled. A load of pipe and canvas had just arrived in the vacuum tube bay. Amid the screech of saws and the snap of the cutting torch, Ruth did one-armed semaphore while bawling instructions through a bullhorn.

“Bring that on through! Stack ’em over there for now!” She lowered the horn when she saw us coming. “No room to breathe in here! Gotta get some of
Crossroads
out onstage!”

“Sean around?” I yelled, hiking the model box over my head to squeeze between two loaded dollies.

Ruth jabbed a thumb upward, then spun aside to waylay a shop apprentice who was about to toss his load of scrap onto a carefully cut stack of spacing rods.

The dark-suited figure of Max Eider hovered at the paint frame like a guilty conscience. There were four drops hung on the frame, two full-stage eighty-footers and two smaller, at various levels of completion. All were richly detailed and pictorial, lots of foliage in seventeen different greens, amber sunlight, and late rococo architecture. Very painstaking, very time-consuming, but the stuff that painters love to show off with. Twelve painters were lined up along the frame, happily absorbed in their work.

Micah gazed briefly at this bravura display, then shook his head resolutely and led me upstairs.

Sean was a blur of edgy movement around his office. He had on hard hat and work clothes. His jeans sagged low on his hips, bagged out in the rear. Judging from the condition of his hands, he’d been onstage helping with the strike.

“I know, I know! We’re a little behind. But don’t worry.
Double-Take
loads out of Theatre Two on Thursday. With
Three Sisters
gone, we’ll get some of
Crossroads
off the floor, and that’ll free up men to start on your show. You gotta trust me on this, Mi. We’ll save time building it in the theatre.”

One of the younger carpenters strode into the office and handed Sean a sheet of bright blue paper, so blue it drew your eye and made you smile. “Thought you’d like to see what came in with the luan.”

“What, through the Tubes?”

“Again.”

Sean was not smiling. “What is this shit? Was there more?”

“Four bundles. Already in the recycler.”

“Good. That’s where this crap belongs.” I thought he would show it around and mock it, but he crushed the paper in his fist and a bit of light went out of the room. “Friggin’ advertisers won’t leave you alone these days!”

But I’d caught the headline over his shoulder, bold-faced across the top of the page: T
HERE
I
S A
W
ORLD
O
UTSIDE
. I waited for him to toss it aside and forget about it, so I could retrieve it on the sly. Instead he shoved the wad in his pocket.

Micah was busy projecting helpful concern. “I could ask Rachel for more men.”

“Nah,” said Sean. “She’ll just say we can’t afford it.”

“Never hurts to try.”

Sean snatched up a drawing, tossed it down again, dropped his hard hat on top of it. So early in the day, the clutter was already winning. “They think we’re machines down here! They don’t understand what they do to me when they schedule things this way! One of these days, real soon…” He paced away from his drawing table to glower at the revisions in the model. “You sure Howie’s gonna stick with this? We can’t waste time building shit, then rebuilding it over again.”

“No,” said Micah evenly, “only Max Eider rates that.”

Sean stared at him, then down at the model. He exhaled deeply and grinned. “Okay, you smart bastard. Go talk to Rachel. You’ve always had a way with her.”

We trudged back upstairs.

“This is the boring part,” remarked Micah with what remained of his good humor.

Rachel was fielding a rush of phone calls, nodding and smiling what sounded like excuses into the screen. Kim met us at the door, looking like the latest summer fashion plate except for the baggy cardigan she’d borrowed to ward off the chill of the air conditioner.

“
He
thinks it’s just peachy that Cora Lee’s taken the Eye into her house,” she grumbled cheerfully. “Some of her neighbors aren’t so overjoyed.”

“Why’s that?” asked Micah.

“Well, you know… Cora does live in the high-rent district.”

Micah’s bemusement was a trifle disingenuous. “Actors have been housed in Lorien before.”

“Stars, Micah. They have no objection to stars.”

“What are their objections to the Eye?”

Kim laughed. “Hell, they don’t know. They’ve ‘heard things.’ ”

“Dangerous radicals,” I reminded him.

“You needn’t stand in the doorway,” Rachel called, offering us the same smile she had given the vid screen. Rachel gave the same friendly face to everyone, which because it was so restrained, never seemed totally sincere. Micah said it was the most she could allow to seep through the armor a manager must wear, dealing day in and out with people’s problems, demands, and complaints and never vocalizing her own. When Rachel and Micah spoke together, it was in the shorthand of two people with no relish for small talk. Retreating to a corner to be inconspicuous, I studied the pale blue walls, empty but for three smartly framed eighteenth-century architectural renderings, maybe even the real thing on loan from Cam Brigham’s gallery. I wondered how Rachel managed to fight off the clutter that invaded everyone else’s office.

“We’ve a problem brewing in the shop,” said Micah.

Rachel folded her brown hands on the empty deskpad in front of her. “
Crossroads
is much bigger than anyone expected. We’re hoping it won’t be so late we have to cancel a preview.”

“It’s not
Crossroads
I’m worried about. What’s the chance of putting more men on
The Gift
?”

“Micah, it’s a little premature—”

“The show loads in in two weeks and he hasn’t even started it.”

“Sean assures me that as soon as
Crossroads
is finished—”

“
Crossroads
is a long way from finished. I was just down there.”

“Micah, we really don’t have—”

“The money. What about Reede Chamberlaine?”

“Our deal does not require him to put any money up front.”

“It wouldn’t hurt to give him a call.”

Rachel resurrected the careful smile. “Well, I think Howie would have to do that.”

“Howard has his hands full directing this play. He needs help producing it.”

Rachel’s lips compressed without moving.

“Rachel, if we schedule shows this tightly”—Micah gently stressed the
we
—“then we’ve got to be ready to back Sean up when he’s in a bind.”

“All right. I’ll see what I can do. But I’m not promising anything.”

I left the Arkadie with a bad taste in my mouth.

Part of a designer’s responsibility is supervision. This is bound to involve making sure others are fulfilling their responsibilities, and designers often get accused of throwing their weight around. Micah had total faith in Sean, but he knew a problem when he saw one, one that everyone else was apparently too distracted by the pressure of
Crossroads
to do something about.

It wasn’t until we got back to the studio that I recalled we’d forgotten to ask how the magic trick was progressing. My mind was full of that sky-blue paper and its provocative headline: T
HERE
I
S A
W
ORLD
O
UTSIDE
.

ULE:

I was back at the shop by the end of the week. Te-Cucularit was due to inspect the props Hickey’s crew had built from my prop drawings.

I stopped to check in with Sean. Ruth said he was in conference with Eider and
Crossroads
director Bill Rand. I saw them over in a corner together: Rand, short and balding, more like a rich art dealer than a director, and talking as always; Sean for once quiet, listening as if this natty little man was enlightenment itself.

Being in a shop without Micah
was
enlightening. Some folks had more time for me, some had less. Some saw me as the ear of the prince, others as his spy. In any case, the truth was a little easier to get at. Talking to the right people, I began to realize how far behind
Crossroads
really was.

The crew hadn’t had a day off for three weeks. Now they were working evenings as well. Amazingly, they were still willing. They’d passed through the initial stages of exhaustion and were into adrenaline high. Though burnout lurked just around the corner, their bravado made it hard to tell how far.

“Beats me why he hasn’t gone and thrown your show at us along with everything else,” one of my informants commented as she turned out an elaborate baluster mold in the plastics shop. Her grin was weary but her pace unflagging. Eight dozen newly made balusters lay stacked on the floor by her bench. “That way they’d both be late, but they’d both be done.”

“Or neither of ’em would,” added the guy working behind her. “The flashy one’s gotta come first.”

“F’sure. Upstairs’ll have his balls if they gotta cancel any of those sold-out previews—”

“Sean won’t let it get that far,” I said.

My friend shrugged. “Who’da thought he’d let it get this far?”

* * *

“It’s really unlike him,” I said to Hickey as we waited in his multitiered Cage for Te-Cucularit to arrive.

“Sean’s protecting his crew. He’s tired of burning them out by mid-season.” Hickey wore a baseball cap with “H
ARD
H
AT
” stenciled on it in gold. His black hair stuck out in wings to either side. He tossed a bunch of little cloth bags at me, pointing to the silver coffee service resting atilt on a nearby crate. “Wrap that up for me before somebody steals it.”

“Nobody’ll steal it here,” I protested.

“One of them Tuatuans’ll magic it away.”

“Hickey…!”

“It’s happened. ‘Course, they always bring it back…”

The load-out from
Three Sisters
still clogged his minimal floor space. Lyre-backed ladies’ chairs and turned mahogany plant stands awaited a lift to storage in the upper stratosphere of the Cage. Near the door were gathered what seemed to be every artificial bush, tree, and plant Hickey had in stock.

“What’s all that for?”

“Greenery for the Barn. Emergency request. The Eye can’t stand it in there anymore without.”

I eyed the pile dubiously. “But it’s all fake.”

“What’dya want me to do, cut down Founders’ Park?” He dropped into his old wooden office chair, setting off a chorus of creaks. I perched on an upholstered straight chair.

“Don’t sit on the props.”

I got up and wandered. “So, Hick. Any word on the CDL?”

“Not a peep.”

“You saw yesterday’s e-mail?”

Hickey brandished a rumpled sheet of printout. “ ‘C
ITIZENS OF
H
ARMONY
! B
EWARE
S
UBVERSION
M
ASQUERADING AS
A
RT
! C
LOSE THE
D
OOR
!’ ”

“I don’t think you’re taking this very seriously.”

“Yeah, I am, but you gotta admit, their rhetoric leaves something to be desired.”

“Howie says they’re after the Eye.”

“Mali and Omea agree.”

“Cris says if they’re this hard to smoke out, it means they’re very well organized.”

“Un-hunh. Only pretending to be the lunatic fringe. My friend at Town Square News says it costs a bundle to buy an e-mail widecast if you don’t have nonprofit status.”

“Who does have it?”

Hickey resettled on a stool-sized crate. “Oh, the charities, educational organizations, most of the theatre and dance companies.”

“Like the Arkadie?”

“Sure, we’re nonprofit.” He gestured at his unkempt desk and his baggy, paint-stained clothes. “Can’t you tell?”

“Could your friend at Town Square find out who the CDL ‘cast was charged to?”

Hickey smiled at his fingernails. “She’s already on it.”

“Really? Hickey, that’s great!”

“Don’t expect the right name’ll turn up that easy, though. How ’bout the latest entry?”

“What latest?”

“Probably still sleeping at eight
A
.
M
.”

I made a threatening face. “In the shower. What was it?”

“Ten unbroken minutes of bright blue screen on the public-access channel, at the end of which was superimposed in pearly white: ‘The Color of Open Sky.’ ”

Bright blue. “No shit.”

“Another county heard from. Damn well about time.”

“You think there’s Open Sky sympathizers in Harmony?” I had a sudden image of the dark earth below us seething with underground movement. They say worms are supposed to be good for the soil.

Hickey stirred in his chair, cropped his feet from the desk, and stretched them thoughtfully in front of him. “You know, Sean thinks it’s high time management listened to him about scheduling. Could be he’s chosen
The Gift
to teach them a lesson.”