“All of them.”
“All of them?” He raises an eyebrow.
“The one where she becomes his,” I say quickly. My skin is feverish. The heat is cranked too high in this room. I look around. “Can we turn the heat down?”
He stands up, walks to the thermostat, adjusts the lever and turns back. He’s near to me on his return path, so near that even though I force myself to stare hard out the window, I can sense him as he passes me. As if he’s mere inches from me. For a brief moment, I expect him to trail a hand across my lower back. Make me shiver. I close my eyes as the image flicks by, and then I open them.
He hasn’t touched me though. Maybe he doesn’t have to for me to feel this way, because I’m a livewire already.
He sits down at the bench, and plays the opening notes to Ava’s signature song, Show Me The Rebel. “Show me the rebellious bird in you, Jill.”
“But,” I say, stammering. This is so unlike me. I know the music. I know the song. I have never been afraid of performing. Acting has been the thing I love most. But something’s different now. “It comes in the middle of the show. It’s not even her first song.”
My protests fall on deaf ears. He says nothing.
“Can’t we start with something else? I haven’t even practiced it before. ”
There’s a glint of a smile on his lips. “That’s why I’m rehearsing you,” he says, and his voice is like whiskey and honey. Rough and smooth at the same time. “So you can practice. I want you to be able to blow the audience away. I want them to melt for you. I want them to fall for you. You can start by trying to make me feel that way.”
I feel wobbly, and I don’t know if it’s because I’m rehearsing with an award-winning director in my first Broadway show, or if it’s because his words are all laced with subtext and innuendo. You can start by trying to make me feel that way. But as off-kilter as I feel right now, I have to use this emotion. Because Ava feels the same way when she begins this song. She doesn’t know what to make of Paolo, and I don’t know what to make of Davis.
I pick a point on the opposite wall, a random little nick in the plaster, and I sing to it. I serenade the nick on the wall with a flat, empty-sounding melody. I make my way through the first six lines of the song when he stops his accompaniment.
I turn to him, waiting.
“Is there a reason why you’re staring at a spot on the wall?”
“Um…”
“Is there?” he asks again.
I shake my head.
“Do you sing the song to a spot on the wall?”
“No.” My face flames red.
“Do you sing it to the audience?”
“No.”
“Do you sing it to the floor?”
“No.”
“Do you sing it to a random, distant point in the balcony?”
“No,” I say through gritted teeth, and now I want to smack him for the way he’s making me feel stupid.
“Are you mad at me, now?” He asks, but his tone never wavers. He’s like a law professor quizzing a student, dressing her down. He doesn’t anger, he doesn’t rage. He simply peppers her with questions ‘til she’s unnerved. Screw being turned on. Now I’m pissed off.
“No,” I lie, looking down.
He rises from the piano, stalks over to me, and stands mere inches in front of me. He doesn’t touch me. He doesn’t lift my chin with his hand, or grip my shoulders. He doesn’t have to make contact for me to respond, to raise my face, to meet his eyes. I do it anyway, looking up, meeting him because I can’t not. His midnight blue eyes give away nothing right now except power, confidence, and absolute f**king control. Maybe it’s the ions, maybe it’s electricity. Or maybe there is just a current between us, and it’s one that he alone controls. I bite my lip briefly, and he breathes out, hard. He makes an almost imperceptible sound that borders on a growl, then speaks. “Are you mad at me?”
He doesn’t use my name this time. Nor does he use Ava’s. I need to know who he’s talking to. “Are you asking me or are you asking Ava?”
I’m greeted by the tiniest grin of satisfaction. He nods approvingly, as if he likes the question.
“Jill,” he says slowly, my name taking its time on his tongue, crossing his lips, turning into sound in the charged air between us. “I’m asking you as Jill.”
“I’m saying no, as Jill.”
He shakes his head, narrows his eyes, seeing right through me. “Don’t lie to me. About anything. There is no right or wrong answer. There is only the truth, and I want yours right now. Tell me your truth. Are you mad at me?”
I breathe out hard. Then I admit it. “Yes.”
“Good.”
“Why is that good?”
“Use it. Use it for the song. Ava is headstrong. Ava is passionate. Paolo makes her crazy. He manipulates her. Or so she thinks.” He raises his hand, balls his fingers into a fist, and gestures as if he’s grabbing something. “But he does it to reach down deep inside her. To help her find her true self, her true art, her true creativity. Everything he does, he does because he believes in her.”
“But why? Why does he believe in her?”
“Because he knows. He knows in his heart—” he taps his chest “—in his head—” now his forehead “—and his gut.” He hits his fist against his flat stomach. “He knows. Start from the beginning. And take your anger and use it. But don’t sing it to the wall, or the lights, or the chairs. Sing it to Paolo. Look in his eyes. Let your anger carry the song. Let your frustration take you through. Then let go of it, and let it fade away.”
I nod. I don’t think I can speak. I can only feel. The anger at Davis for dressing me down. The frustration at myself for not getting the character right. Then what Ava feels—the spark of hope, the possibility of becoming the person, the artist, the woman that he believes she can be. I take a deep, quiet breath, imagining all those feelings living inside of me, so I can become her.
He returns to the bench and resumes the music, the notes pouring forth, falling on me like rain. Then I’m Ava and I turn and meet my director’s gaze. Only he’s not Davis anymore. He’s Paolo. He’s the man I’m mad at, and mad with, and most of all, mad about. He’s the one I’m singing to. Not the wall, not the floor, not the audience. But him. Just him. The man who drives me crazy with his perfectionism, with his sometimes inscrutable side. But I need him, I need him not only to succeed as a painter, but to break free of all the loneliness I’ve felt my whole life as Ava. And I sing every word, every line, every note to him.