The Summer Set Read online

  Walking along the inside of the walls, she ducked as she passed the long windows of the banquet room. She peeked in just enough to see the smiling faces. Only one exception: Nick, who sat drinking something amber, tense eyes focused in the distance—his typical brooding pose, which made her smile. As though sensing this, his gaze shifted in her direction. She hunched down again, wondering if he had seen her.

  Not chancing it, she crawled to the back of the building, where she found a partial moat, which was more like a narrow half-moon-shaped pond with an arched bridge leading to the fountain: a monstrosity of cherubs spitting water and playing harps. Standing beside the fountain, in a slinky scarlet gown with her back to Charlie and a thin plume of smoke winding up above her, was Jasmine.

  Charlie turned slowly, intending to creep away as silently as she had arrived. But it was too late.

  “They won’t let me smoke in the house, those fuckers,” Jasmine said, her back still to Charlie. “Want one?” She turned around now, her expression stony.

  Charlie couldn’t fault anyone for being wooed by the voluminous hair, the luscious curves. Jasmine was all Amazon Woman-Goddess. Charlie hadn’t smoked in years, but tucked the book under her arm and plucked a cigarette from the pack anyway.

  “The dinner is pretty boring, you’re not missing much,” Jasmine said, dully.

  Charlie smiled. “Glad to hear.”

  “But that’s not to say that you weren’t missed.” She took a puff. Unusually generous, Charlie thought. There must be a catch. “It’s probably just that he’s drunk and you have extremely loyal housemates. Wish I could stay in that cozy little shack with all of you.”

  “You’re welcome to take my room in a few weeks when I leave,” Charlie said.

  “I’ll be taking plenty when you leave.” Jasmine smiled. “But not your room.”

  Charlie sat down on a large rock and took another drag, grateful for the calm it brought her body; she had forgotten that. She had also forgotten that Jasmine always thought they were in a battle for Nick’s affections. But that hadn’t been the source of the problem Charlie had with her at all. It was about being cast aside midcollaboration, being seen as easily replaced—as confidante, counsel, muse, when Charlie thought she held an unshakable permanence in his heart. And it didn’t help matters that Jasmine had mentioned “Charlie’s meltdown” in every interview she did for that film, as though Charlie had been some kind of lunatic leaving that role. When Charlie walked away, she had honestly believed Nick would follow her, hear her out. She had hoped to get his attention, make him understand he needed more time to shape his script. But it hadn’t worked out as she’d planned.

  “This place is so cut off from civilization, don’tcha think?”

  Charlie looked out into the mountains, their silhouette still visible against the night sky. Her gut told her not to speak, to just finish her cigarette and go. But she felt compelled to defend this place that had been sheltering her. “I think it’s within the realm of reason to look out there and see possibility and mystery and endless restlessness.” She pointed to the mountain range with her lit cigarette. “Or I think you could look at that.” She inhaled again. “And that.” She pointed to the range on their left. “And that.” The one on her right. “And feel trapped by it. But I think that would be a shame.” She paused. “I see possibility, but that’s just me.”

  “Maybe some of us have more endless possibility, or whatever, in ourselves,” Jasmine said and paused a moment. “Do you ever get nervous—” she looked at Charlie in the dim glow of the lights strung along the trees, electric torches flipping on “—knowing you’ll be forty someday?” Jasmine deployed the words in a manner between bullet-to-the-chest and taking-an-informal-poll.

  “No,” Charlie said easily. “You?”

  She let out a laugh. “Terrified.” She breathed deeply, trapping the smoke from her cigarette. “But I wouldn’t admit that to anyone.”

  “Why are you telling me, then?” Charlie was truly curious.

  “Because you’re terrified too. Of something,” she said, uncharacteristically thoughtful. “I just can’t figure out what. Not age. But something.”

  “Let me know when you decide,” Charlie said. “So I can sufficiently freak out.”

  “We’re actually a lot alike,” Jasmine said, eyeing her.

  “Oh?” Charlie couldn’t quite conceal her skepticism. “Enlighten me.”

  “Just trying to capitalize on our assets before we’re washed up at thirty-five.”

  “No, not really,” Charlie said. “And I’m thirty-nine.”

  Jasmine whipped her head around to Charlie, appearing devastated. “My condolences.” She looked Charlie up and down like she had a disease she didn’t want to catch, dropped the cigarette, smashing it out with the toe of her stiletto, and breezed back inside without another word.

  Charlie flicked her own cigarette into the fountain, waited a beat, then swept in through the door before it locked behind Jasmine.

  Music, conversation, the clinking of plates. As soon as the silky train of Jasmine’s gown slithered away, presumably into the hallway and back to the banquet room, Charlie emerged into the bustling kitchen, tossing the book back and forth in her hands. Waiters whisked dirty dishes into the sink as white-jacketed caterers plated slices of a fruit-filled cake. A handful of apprentices had an assembly line washing, drying and stacking dishes in the cabinets, Sierra and Mercutio among them. Charlie grabbed a piece of cake off a plate, took a bite and made her way to Sierra’s side by the sink.

  “Hey, thanks for this.” Charlie gestured to her outfit, leaning against the counter.

  “Ohmigod!” Sierra nearly dropped the soapy plate from her hands. “I mean, you look amazing, I knew you—Wait.” She stopped short, looking down. “Where are your shoes?”

  “Possible health code violation,” Mercutio said, injecting himself into the conversation. “Hi.”

  “Hey.” She tapped his shoulder, then focused on Sierra again. “The shoes are outside, long story...”

  “Were you in there? Not that it’s my business, but you know I switched the place cards and put you next to Nicholas and put Jasmine way on the other end of the—”

  “That’s sweet. But, no, I’m not going in there.”

  “Oh.” Sierra sounded disappointed.

  “Just had to give you this.” Setting the remainder of her cake slice on the clean plate Ethan was holding, she wiped the icing from her hand on his dish towel. Charlie fanned the pages of the book until she reached a spot near the end. “Auditions for Midsummer are soon?”

  “Tomorrow actually, one o’clock,” Sierra said, like it was burned in her brain.

  Charlie pointed to a passage, dog-earring the page. “Do Puck’s monologue.”

  “You came back just for that?” another apprentice asked. “I’m Tripp, hi! Nicholas said you had food poisoning.”

  “Wow, he’s even less creative than we feared,” Charlie said, almost to herself. “Yeah, pray for me.” She smiled with a wink, walking away, then turned around again in the doorway. “If you want to work on it together...”

  “Yes!” Sierra practically yelled.

  “Tomorrow at the lake, 11 a.m.”

  On her way out, Charlie overheard Mercutio say, “I think that was actually meant for all of us? Me and Tripp, we can come, right?”

  Charlie slowed her pace by the banquet room, catching Nick just as he glanced over midbrood. She saluted him, and he looked like he’d seen a ghost, which felt gratifying to her.

  She let herself out the front door, collecting her heels at the gate, and walked home, fireworks bursting in the sky behind her. She didn’t bother to watch.

  41

  WHY DO YOU WANT TO DO THIS, ANYWAY?

  Sierra arrived early to the lake, skipping their morning lecture to be there. She found a spot under a shady el
m and tried to keep from jumping out of her skin at the thought of having to perform for Charlie Savoy. She had stayed up half the night practicing, memorizing, trying to make these few lines her own.

  When Charlie emerged from the break in the trees, only ten minutes late, Sierra exhaled.

  Charlie took a seat beside Sierra on the grass. “Showtime, Puck,” she said, no small talk, stretching her legs out in front of her.

  “Absolutely.” Sierra bounced up to her feet, shaking out her limbs, closed her eyes, opened them again. And she began, eyes on a knobby tree in the distance, “‘If we shadows have offended, think but this and all is—’” She made the mistake of glancing at Charlie midperformance. Her stare was so penetrating that Sierra stopped herself. “Just real quick—”

  “Whoa, what are you doing?” Charlie asked, sitting up now.

  “I just had a question,” Sierra tried again.

  “No. First, go. Questions later.”

  Sierra nodded and began again. She made it through the entire thing—that whole long minute—and thought she had done not terribly. But Charlie said nothing, just wound her hair up into a loose topknot; it had already grown hot, even in the shade. Sierra, standing perfectly still, interpreted the action as a bad review: your audience should forget whether they’re hot or cold or hungry.

  “Why do you do this, anyway?” Charlie asked, squinting in the glare of the late-morning sun, hand shielding her eyes.

  “Me? Theater?” Sierra asked, watching a group of students setting towels on the slim strip of sand near the water.

  Charlie just nodded.

  “To feel...at home,” she said, hoping it sounded important enough. It was the purest truth. “Or more than that, somewhere between comfort and thrill or adrenaline and escape. I can’t explain it.” She shook her head, embarrassed not to be able to put something that should be so obvious into words.

  “Sure, transcendence,” Charlie said easily. “That’s why I’m here. That’s what I’m chasing too. Every damn day.” She tossed this out, breezily, but it felt profound to Sierra. That was exactly what she searched for and, on the good days, could find.

  “Yes,” Sierra said solemnly.

  “That’s a good reason, by the way,” Charlie went on, slapping Sierra on the back. “Again.” She gestured. Then, remembering, “Wait, you had a question.”

  Sierra feared it would sound too rookie after this moment of deep understanding between them. But she asked anyway, gently. “It’s just, you do know that this is on every list of audition monologues to avoid because they’re so overdone?” Sierra had discovered that during some research.

  “Yep,” Charlie said, dusting some dirt off the leg of her jeans. “I know.”

  “Then why—?”

  “If you can do something like this and turn heads, then you can do anything,” she said. “And if you saw those lists then so did a lot of other people, so there’s a good chance you could be the only one gutsy enough to try this.”

  “Ohhh.” It was like a light bulb exploding. “Counterintuitive. Reverse psychology. I like that.”

  “Just like, do we think Nick Blunt is the first guy to ever think of staging A Midsummer Night’s Dream in the middle of the summer? No,” Charlie laughed. “So we’re all just fucking hoping he’s got some new ideas for this thing. Think of it this way—we need to inspire him. You need to inspire him. Inspire me.” She shrugged, like this was an easy request.

  “Got it,” Sierra said, though she wasn’t sure she actually did have it.

  “It’s okay, use your neuroses—”

  “Absolutely, neuroses.” Great, now Charlie thought she was crazy.

  “—or whatever you’ve got.” Charlie leaned back on her elbows.

  Sierra closed her eyes, thinking of the last time she felt true peace. Transcendence. She started again, those first two lines, but on the third—“‘That you have but slumbered here...’”—her body propelled itself, without a plan, up into the elm tree, nestling on a low branch just above Charlie. “‘While these visions did appear...’” Stretching out like a sleeping cat, taking her time before the next line.

  Sierra had sufficiently blacked out in the middle, which she hoped meant that that part had worked, and by the time she reached the end—“‘Give me your hands, if we be friends...’”—she was back on the ground beside Charlie, who had held out her own hands for Sierra to take. On the final line, she looked in Charlie’s eyes. They were a lush green she had never noticed before, probably because Sierra had been scared to look directly at this woman—much like the sun—for too long.

  Charlie smiled in a serene way that made the world stop. “Nice,” she said.

  It was one word but so much more. Sierra remembered Ethan describing a compliment from Charlie that way, and now she understood.

  “I told you. Do it again and then I’ve got a stand-in for the tree. We’ll talk after...” Charlie said, anticipating Sierra’s next question: how to translate this to a theater devoid of leafy vegetation.

  As one o’clock approached, they walked back into town together, Charlie telling her simply, “Just do what you just did.”

  “If I could only remember that every time then it would be so much easier,” Sierra said. “I should tattoo it on my arm.”

  “Not a bad idea.” Charlie smiled, watching the shop windows along Warwickshire.

  “Did this one hurt?” Sierra touched the nape of her own neck.

  “Oh, this.”

  “I have no ink, so I know nothing,” Sierra went on. “But maybe if I ever get the nerve...” She felt less cool the more she spoke, so she stopped.

  “It did hurt, actually,” Charlie said like it was a secret, tapping the bird delicately. “But I never tell anyone that.”

  “Nicholas has one too.” Sierra shocked herself by mentioning this.

  “See, that was great acting,” Charlie laughed. “I almost believed you thought it might be pure coincidence that we both have these.”

  Sierra watched Charlie from the corner of her eye, worried she’d offended her. “Sorry, if I—”

  “Nooo,” Charlie said, buoyant enough. “It was a long time ago, first time I was here. We met here.” She put her hands in her jeans pockets, slowed her pace. “It was kind of a secret. We snuck off campus. It was sort of to commemorate the end of that summer...” She trailed off.

  “I think that’s amazing and romantic.”

  “Or maybe insane,” Charlie said lightly. “Either way.”

  They had reached the theater, too soon for Sierra.

  “Do it like you just did,” Charlie said again, turning to leave.

  “Thank you, Charlie!” Sierra called out, though the words didn’t seem enough. But there was one more thing she had to ask. “Wait!” She took a few steps as Charlie faced her again. “Why did you want to help me?”

  “Why did you help me?” Charlie asked, rather than answer.

  “I’m fascinated by how you do what you do. How you make these lines I’ve heard a million times sound new, how somehow there’s you in these parts even though they were written a million years ago when no one like you was around.”

  “No one like me?” Charlie seemed surprised.

  “Fiery and commanding and not caring—”

  “I care—” Charlie said, a statement, not a defense.

  “No, I know, I mean, not caring about what anyone thinks, doing everything your own way.”

  “For better or worse,” Charlie laughed.

  “I once read that experiences, even ugly ones, are useful, a well to draw from—” She had read it in an interview of Charlie’s referencing her arrest in her late teens.

  “True,” Charlie said, appreciative, as though recognizing the words as her own.

  “And also, I don’t know if you know this, but there’s something that happens wh
en you and Nicholas are together, an energy or something—”

  “That’s probably just years of unresolved issues. We should be in couple’s therapy even though we’re not actually—”

  “No. It works.” Sierra felt it was important for her to know. “He’s excited around you—he’s boring anytime he’s ever lectured. But when you’re around, it’s different. It’s the kind of thing I always thought happened all the time in theater, but I’ve never actually seen before now.” She felt she was talking too much. “So anyway, I’m here for anything that facilitates that.”

  Charlie nodded, looked away a moment. “Thank you,” she said sincerely. And added finally, “Now don’t be late. He hates when people are late.”

  42

  YOU’RE BEING EXTREMELY RUDE TO YOUR CAST

  Charlie slouched in her chair beside Nick, who felt tooclose. But maybe it was just the way they were all crowded around this table. Or perhaps, Charlie could admit, she might be feeling a bit claustrophobic in general. This first Midsummer read-through was barely underway, and already she was convinced of one thing: she could not share the stage with Jasmine Beijao.

  At least Charlie was Puck (at her own insistence). And Sierra—who had delivered a fantastic audition, according to Nick—would be the fairy Peaseblossom and Charlie’s understudy, which filled Charlie with as maternal a sense of pride as she had ever felt (with the exception of the brief time she had that French bulldog, before she lost him somewhere between Tower Bridge and Hyde Park).

  Charlie’s phone vibrated, and she flipped it over in her lap as Chase’s Lysander stumbled through Act Two.