“Let me know what you come up with. I’m always ready for the next challenge.”
I resume my path to the theater. I turn into the alley, and Don is walking towards me with the Pinkertons. Don smiles broadly and I seethe inside, but do my best to follow Clay’s advice. “Davis,” he calls out as if we’re pals happy to see each other. “Have you met Nicholas and Frederick Pinkerton?”
I extend a hand, keeping my anger tightly wrapped inside as I meet the two brothers. “Pleasure to meet you both.”
Frederick Pinkerton shakes my hand enthusiastically, and beams a bright smile that takes me by surprise. “I’m a huge fan of your work,” Frederick says. “I’ve seen all your shows on Broadway. South Pacific, and Anything for You, and The Saying Goes. Loved your film, too. And I also saw World Enough and Time at La Jolla. Thought it was utterly brilliant.”
I’m taken aback. I didn’t expect Pinkerton to be anything but a dick but then, that’s because he’s guilty by association with Don in my book. “Thank you very much.”
“I’ve often thought that play would make a wonderful film adaptation,” he says, glancing up pensively at the gray February sky. Then he begins reciting lines from the Andrew Marvelle poem. “Had we but world enough, and time. This coyness, Lady, were no crime. We would sit down and think which way to walk and pass our long love’s day.”
I flash back to the play. To Madeline playing the lead role. To the days and nights when those lines and many others from the play were all I lived and breathed. When I felt that way for her. Now, three years later, the lines are only lines, the memory just that. Only a memory, and it doesn’t hurt anymore.
“Helluva poem,” I say, because it’s true, and because that’s all the poem is anymore.
Frederick gives me a serious look. “You know, Mr. Milo. We should talk about you turning that into a film quite soon. Shall we set up a meeting for later this week?”
“Absolutely,” I say, and I’m honestly not sure how the morning is working itself into such a strange turn of events. I’ve gone from being blindsided, to being offered a possible next job. But the fact is, I need to think about what I want to do next. The work of a director is done once the show opens. The actors keep it going, and I move on to the next job.
Don and the Pinkertons walk away, and I head inside the theater as Patrick and Jill leave the stage. She hangs her head low, and the guilty look in her eyes makes my heart stop. But she’s desperately trying to make eye contact with me, and she’s mouthing the words I didn’t know under her breath.
Patrick calls out to me. “Milo!”
He has such a bright smile on his face that he makes it nearly impossible to dislike him. Especially when I can’t let my professional side pander to my personal one. “Hey! That was totally last minute. Agent called late last night since the Pinkertons were in town, and Don okayed it. Hope you don’t mind us using the stage for it.”
“Of course not, Patrick,” I say, in my best calm voice because the last thing I need is for Patrick to be less than happy. He’s a linchpin in this show, and if I want it to be the hit it can be, I have to make sure the leading man has no clue I’ve dreamed of all the ways I can take him out of the running with Jill. “The stage is always available for you.”
“You’re the best, man.”
Then he bounds down the hall to his dressing room, singing a cappella to a Jack Johnson tune that must be playing in his head and reminding him of beaches and sunny skies. I turn around to see Jill standing in the hallway. “I tried to call you this morning to tell you,” she says quietly so no one else can hear.
“You did?”
“Yeah. About thirty minutes ago. I got a crazy call this morning from my agent to be here so I rushed to get ready, and I called you when I was in a cab. But you didn’t pick up.”
“Must have been on the subway.”
“I would have told you. You have to know that, Davis,” she says and there’s real worry in her voice that she might have crossed some sort of line. The look in her eyes is one of genuine concern, and it erases all my irritation from before. Then it hits me, like a blow I didn’t see coming, that she can do this to me. That she has this power over me. That she alone has a direct line to my heart. Where I was jealous and angry minutes ago, now I am reduced once more to this all too familiar feeling when I’m with her.
The feeling of not wanting to be without her.
I press a hand against the wall, and curse under my breath.
“Are you okay?” She lays a hand on my arm.
No. I’m totally screwed.
“Yeah. Just need to get started. That little stunt cut into the day,” I say, pushing all my frustration onto Don, even though it’s with me. It’s with how I feel for her. I head for the stage, leaving her behind. I need to focus on getting this show ready, because that’s why I’m here. Not for any other reason.
* * *
Everyone is gone now. I’m sitting on the edge of the stage, and Jill’s walking down the aisle of the theater for one of our last private rehearsals.
“Are you still mad at me?” she asks in a small, nervous voice when she reaches me. It’s the first time we’ve been alone today. The theater is quiet and her footsteps echo.
“I was never really mad at you.”
She holds up her thumb and forefinger. “Just a tiny bit?”
I run a hand through my hair. “Just annoyed. In general,” I admit. “But I’m not anymore.” I pat the edge of the stage. “Come here.”
She hops up on the stage and sits next to me. She fidgets with the cuffs on her sweater. Rolling them up. Pushing them down. “I was worried all day.”
“You were?” There’s a part of me that’s glad she felt that way, though I know that makes me seem cruel. But it gives me a flicker of hope that maybe this isn’t a one-way street.
“I don’t want you to be mad at me and think things with Patrick…” she says, but she doesn’t finish the thought.
I want to ask if she’s still in love with him. I want to know if he’s still on her mind all the time. But I also know I can’t handle the answer if it’s yes. I can’t keep going there.
“Jill, if you have a chance to act in a film when your contract is up, and that’s what you want, you should pursue it. Even if it’s with him,” I say, focusing on the professional side of things, though it takes every ounce of my strength to get those words out without sounding like a jerk.