The Summer Set Read online

  Charlie wasn’t wrong, which Nick found maddening.

  “...so someone needed to resuscitate him. Chase was anemic,” she said, twirling the stick he had brought her. Nick watched the lake shimmer. Chase did, in fact, seem terrible at this, at Shakespeare. But anything was better than talking about how their dinner had gone off the rails. “Iambic pentameter just ain’t for everyone.”

  “But he was so excited about it.” Nick had signed Chase without an audition—someone like that doesn’t audition anymore. And Chase had said yes immediately. I’m down to rebuild my image. These new guys coming up are twenty-five and all muscle, so yeah, I’m in, he’d emailed with disarming candor.

  “Timing is everything,” she laughed, adding under her breath, “And he had the time, so I’ve heard.”

  Chase had indeed been dropped from an action film days before the start of production when that film’s director discovered him having an affair with his wife. (Nick despised that director, so it gave Chase extra points in his book.) It all appeared serendipitous to Nick—until now. Maybe, since the whole season was built around this guy, an audition might not have been the worst idea.

  “Shake up the parts,” he sighed, recalling her unsolicited advice.

  “You gotta do something.” She slapped him on the back, took a bite of the marshmallow and hopped off the table.

  17

  YOU COULD DO THIS IN YOUR SLEEP

  Nick wished he’d had the good sense to not answer the phone. He cringed at Taylor’s voice as he pushed through the theater lobby doors, already perspiring from his walk under a burning June sun. A passing glance at the cast headshots he had arranged himself last night, he reached out, pure reflex, fingertips grazing that black and white of Charlie.

  “Sooo, I’m still on the fence a bit with this, Nicholas...” Taylor cooed, needing to be convinced and enjoying the power that came with it. He hated this intense selling, but the number she had proposed was a hell of a lot of money. Enough to fund the rest of the season and then some. Enough for him to get the place back on track, in the spotlight, bring in new subscribers, new contributors, to do all the shit he should’ve been doing the past six years but hadn’t, while trying to resurrect his film career to no avail. It was really a lot, juggling so much failure at once. “How can we set the theater world on fire?”

  “Well, I’m glad you asked.” He tapped his fingers on his desk, gazed out the window. Mercutio was outside, on the phone, smiling broadly. Something about Mercutio reminded Nick of himself his first summer here. Probably the way the boy had marveled at Charlie. He took a deep breath. “You’ll love what we’re doing with Romeo and Juliet...” He couldn’t believe he was about to say this. “Our incredibly gifted company will switch parts throughout the run of the show.”

  “Nooo!” she said, enraptured. He wasn’t sure which would be worse, having to stage the show this way or having to admit to Charlie that he had gone for her idea.

  * * *

  Charlie sprinted through the lobby doors, late as always, but halted at the sight of the framed cast headshots. Her photo looked so official beside the rest of the company, lights trained on them. This woman with the soulful eyes and hint of a smile in the eight-by-ten glossy—this polished version of herself—looked like she belonged here.

  “Not a bad shot.” Nick’s voice broke her out of her thoughts.

  “Could be worse.” Charlie shrugged coolly. Secretly, she was pleased. She had used Danica’s trusted local photographer: He erases ten years but you don’t look like a wax figure, he’s a genius. But I’d recommend using one of my fourteen-karat-gold-infused face masks anyway, that morning, just to be safe.

  “You got my message about your wardrobe for the gala?” he asked. She remembered rolling her eyes at it late last night on her walk back from the lake.

  “Ugh, LaPlage hates me,” she groaned at the mere thought of the costumer.

  “Great, you can go for your fitting after rehearsal.” He ignored her, his voice tense. Mary leaned out through the box office window, not bothering to conceal her interest. Nick nodded at her, smiling, and patted his pockets. “I left my phone,” he sighed, waving for Charlie to follow. “I have to run something else by you too.”

  “Why does that sound ominous?” She followed.

  Once in his office, he crouched on the floor and located his cell by the door.

  “Don’t tell me you’re throwing phones again,” she said.

  He ignored her. “We’re doing your idea, switching parts,” he said like it was no big deal, taking a seat at his desk and pulling up the spreadsheet. “But while I have you—”

  “Wait, you’re serious?” She wasn’t sure she’d heard right. She sat on his desk, absentmindedly grabbed his iced coffee and took a sip.

  “I’m always serious,” he said.

  “And usually that’s one of my least favorite—” She stopped herself, and he looked up from his screen. “I mean—thank you. This might actually be good now.”

  “You owe me one, so you know that silent auction at the gala? Matteo’s taking someone out for live music. Danica’s making aromatherapy candles with her winning bidder. What do you want to do?” he asked, hands poised to type into a spreadsheet. “Do you still sketch? Wanna give someone a drum lesson? Passes to your art house? What do you do in your spare time when you’re not pissing off directors?”

  “This is mandatory?” She folded her arms.

  “Perfect, you’ll take people out for drinks,” he said, exasperated, typing. He scrolled down on his screen. “Hey, does your mom have any memorabilia she’d like to part with or...?”

  “My mom?” she said, irked, walking to the door. “I don’t know, we’re in a weird place right now. Do I have to do this?”

  “Charlie!” he snapped, sharp enough for her to jump. “This is your community service. I’m sorry you’re finding it so torturous here. Why is everything a thing with you? Why can’t it just be easy? I need something to just. Be. Easy. For once. Maybe you’ll be lucky and this place will close before your sentence is over and then we can all leave. And never fucking come back.” His voice had amped up to nearly shouting level.

  “What’s your problem? All I said was—”

  “Do you think I want to beg like this?”

  “Is this begging? This is supposed to be persuasive?”

  “Begging you. Begging contributors, donors, anyone with cash. This place is going to close.” He wasn’t yelling anymore, his tone a mix of desperation and defeat. “Are you hearing me? Before the end of the season, before the last show of the season.” He slumped back, eyes on the ceiling.

  She collapsed into the chair in front of his desk, tone softened. “Is that true?”

  He looked at her, expressionless, and nodded, his eyes weary. “I’m running out of time, I’m running out of money, I’m running out of ideas and I’m...sick of running.”

  “What are you gonna do?”

  “Exactly. What am I gonna do?” he repeated, as though it wasn’t a question he’d been asking himself for months.

  “Who knows about this?”

  “Just Matteo, and I want to keep it that way.”

  She nodded but said nothing else.

  “So until some benefactor arrives with a check that has a lot of zeros, we’re doing this,” he sighed, sitting up in his seat again, back to his spreadsheet. “And you’re going to be overjoyed to entertain three winning bidders with cocktails, coffee, whatever, and sparkling conversation, here or in Boston, I don’t care.” He typed. “You can go. Tell the others I’ll be there in a minute.”

  She stood to leave, feeling compelled to say something more, but unsure what. She paused at the door, watched him typing. “And, I guess, you could toss in monthlong passes to the art house,” she said before letting herself out.

  * * *

  Charlie slunk dow
n, head over the back of her chair, staring up into the beams of the lighting catwalk. She tried not to think about what Nick had told her. She was only here for a fraction of the summer, it wasn’t really her problem. Except, maybe it was: it tugged at her heart in a way she couldn’t quiet.

  It would’ve otherwise been a triumphant day. Nick had announced at the start of rehearsal that he was adopting Charlie’s part-swapping idea, informing the cast that they would try it with Chase as Juliet today, and Charlie as Romeo. “It might be more work, but if anyone here is afraid of that then you’re in the wrong place.”

  The arrangement showed glimmers of promise (she could feel a newfound spark, they had to pay attention, recalibrate, learn new lines, they couldn’t coast). But there were speed bumps too and they grew impatient as the hours wore on well beyond their usual end time.

  Nick had Chase in his crosshairs, past their dinner break. “You keep missing the heat,” Nick interrupted him, agitated. “Again. You’ve got the poison.”

  “If only,” Chase muttered.

  Charlie, exhausted—she had been awake until dawn sketching on her rooftop—felt the same desire to escape she felt as a child trapped at her mother’s rehearsals. She used to climb the ladder at the Globe up to the same little open-air cable car, the pulley system used to change the lights at the top of the stage. It freaked everyone out, her sneaking up there when she was ten years old to watch from above, but Charlie had always been one of those agile circus types. Until the day she jumped. She was thirteen. In the middle of her mom’s rehearsal for Antony and Cleopatra. A clear twenty-foot drop. Charlie couldn’t resist; she thought it might feel like flying. It did. Before she hit the stage with a crunch, sprained her ankle, skinned her knee and was never allowed up there again. She had been puzzled more than hurt. Accustomed to landing on her feet, it never occurred to her that stumbling was a possibility.

  Charlie hadn’t realized she had dozed off, slumping softly onto the shoulder of the castmate beside her, until she opened her eyes to find Mercutio—the apprentice Ethan.

  “This is kind of a cure for insomnia, right?” he joked in a whisper, wide chocolate eyes.

  “Something like that,” she yawned.

  Across the stage, Danica sat knitting, actually knitting, what looked to be a gray scarf, and Matteo scrolled on his phone. The apprentices beside them flirted quietly, bodies turned toward each other, as Nick and Chase continued to argue at center stage.

  “I can wake you when you’re on, if you want,” Mercutio offered.

  “It’s okay.” She stretched her arms over her head and for a moment wondered if she had dreamed her conversation with Nick. But she hadn’t. And it seemed impossible that she could do anything in her brief time here to change the trajectory of this place. She almost didn’t realize Mercutio was still talking to her. She caught the end of it.

  “...you’re a pro, you could probably do this role in your sleep, anyway,” he said, watching Chase and Nick.

  Where else had she just heard that? In her foggy haze, it took a moment to realize: that letter.

  18

  IT’S LIKE YOU, IT’S GOT NO EDGE

  A week into the grueling, part-switching rehearsals that had left him questioning everything, an exhausted Nick opened the auditorium doors to find Charlie, alone onstage, slicing a sword through the air against imaginary assailants.

  “Am I hallucinating or is Charlie Savoy actually early today?” he said.

  “Don’t get excited, just here for the swordplay,” she said, thrusting, parrying, advancing, retreating, not even looking over as he walked up the aisle. “Can’t believe Griffin is still at it.”

  The same fight instructor from their long-ago summer, now an octogenarian, would be training them today. A prospect that did nothing to alleviate Nick’s overall dread.

  “Solid weaponry,” she continued. “Not aluminum anymore. Steel and carbon, I’m guessing?”

  “So you got my voice mail?” Nick’s phone buzzed. He glanced at it, tucked it in his pocket as he hopped up the steps to join her on the stage. “About the gala?” He had put off asking her, but the only advantage of having told her the truth about the Chamberlain’s abysmal financial straits was that she might be able to help.

  “Yeah, I got it,” Charlie said, still swinging.

  “Oh,” he said, equal parts surprise and trepidation. “What do you think?”

  “Sure.” She shrugged.

  “Sure? Like, yes, you’ll do the whole first act? What you did at dinner but more, reciting the entire beginning of Romeo and Juliet? At the gala?” he stumbled, not believing it.

  “Sure,” she said again, and so easily that he felt emboldened. He pushed his luck.

  “There’s something else I’ve been wanting to ask, another sort of favor.” He tested the waters as she continued swiping at the air. “I wouldn’t ask unless I thought it might really make a difference, to investors and things. It would involve, maybe, possibly seeing if your mother might be interested in coming here to—” He was about to finally spit it out but she lunged, thrust the rapier at his heart, halting mere inches from his chest. He took a step back, on reflex.

  “Relax,” she said with a smile. “See?” She pulled back her weapon, tapped the dull tip on her palm. “It’s like you, it’s got no edge.” She stepped back, tossed the rapier at him. He barely caught it. The theater doors opened, Matteo and Danica leading the way into rehearsal. “Seriously? My mom? Here?” Charlie went on, puzzled, as though this proposition defied laws of time and space.

  “Right,” he said, like it was no big deal. “To send a message that we’re doing exciting new things but remind potential investors of the foundation this place was built on too.” He was actually giving her a sales pitch and it felt mortifying, so he tempered it with a casual, “Or, you know, that kind of thing.” He tried to toss the rapier in a breezy way but it dropped on the stage, clanging and echoing just as the doors opened and three apprentice cast members walked in. “We can talk later.”

  “For The Tempest, you mean?” Charlie continued.

  “Or Midsummer Night’s Dream or anytime, really, but—not now...” He meant, he didn’t want to talk about this right now, as the entire drama apprentice class presently began filing into the orchestra seats. He did not feel like having this conversation with an audience.

  “Well, if you want anything from that woman you’re gonna need to have your passport up-to-date because I haven’t been back there in two years and she hasn’t been here in six. So it’ll take some major tap-dancing to make this happen.”

  “Okay, later, we’ll talk later,” he told her again and then turned to face the group, his voice strained. “Oh great, everyone is early today. We’re so lucky...”

  * * *

  Somewhere outside the theater, sirens pierced the air, getting closer.

  “At least that’s fast,” Ethan tried to comfort.

  Three days before the gala, Chase Embers, the star of the summer, lay bloodied on the stage, the cast fanned around him. A hush enveloped the theater. The apprentices in the audience—who hadn’t realized anything was wrong until Chase yelled, What the fuck, man?—had been stunned silent.

  It was Ethan’s first sword fight, obviously. Chase’s too, apparently. And Chase, honestly, had been horrible: timid, useless. Ethan had advanced, thrust and then parried with too much force, inadvertently snapping Chase’s sword and sending a sharp, jagged fragment of it flying right into Chase’s perfect cheekbone.

  “It’s cool, you were too pretty before,” Charlie offered, peering over the group huddled around Chase.

  “Are your cheekbones insured, by chance?” Matteo asked.

  Ethan had heard this of various celebrity attributes—legs, lips, asses, for God’s sake—and found it ridiculous, but now he understood.

  “Happens all the time.” Griffin, their calm, ag
ing fight instructor, reappeared fresh from calling 911. “Doin’ great.” He patted Ethan, who wished for more direction but remained crouched, holding his shirt against Chase’s bleeding cheek to stop the flow, which seemed worthy of hemorrhage status, though Ethan was no doctor.

  “It’ll be okay, baby,” Danica said, cradling Chase’s head in her lap. “My son nearly split his head open at the playground—no, wait, better story, he was running with a stick—”

  “Danica—” Matteo shook his head at her to stop. “Where the fuck did Nick go?”

  “Waiting for the ambulance.” Harlow knelt beside Ethan, leaned her face millimeters from Chase’s. “You’re going to make it,” she said, as though auditioning for a medical drama. She kissed Chase on the forehead. “I’ll be right there with you.”

  “Anyway, he’s totally fine, Gianni is,” Danica went on. “In fact, he’ll be there opening night and—”

  “Is his face his moneymaker?” Chase snapped at her. “’Cause I don’t think you get it.”

  “Oh, well, not yet. He did some catalog work but we’re taking it slow,” she said. “My point is—it’s a happy ending.” Then, turning to Charlie, she said for all to hear, “This is your fault.”

  “Me?” Charlie laughed. “I wasn’t even holding a sword when this—”

  “It’s just your general aura of combustibility,” Danica said, accusatory.

  “That’s not even a thing.” Charlie sipped her iced coffee.

  “And if it wasn’t for you and all the changing parts—you be Romeo! And you be Romeo! And you be Romeo!—we wouldn’t all be exhausted and overworked.”

  “This is my fault, obviously,” Ethan jumped in. Then to Chase he offered, “I’m sorry, man. I didn’t expect it to snap like that.”

  “Dude, Mercutio was not supposed to win this.” Chase glared at him.

  Ethan caught Sierra’s eye in the front row—because of course today’s rehearsal was open for the whole apprentice class to watch—hoping for encouragement, but she just grimaced.