Echo After Echo

  Contents

  Act 1

  i

  ii

  iii

  iv

  v

  vi

  vii

  viii

  ix

  x

  xi

  xii

  xiii

  xiv

  xv

  xvi

  xvii

  xviii

  xix

  xx

  xxi

  xxii

  xxiii

  xxiv

  xxv

  xxvi

  xxvii

  xxviii

  Act II

  i

  ii

  iii

  iv

  v

  vi

  vii

  viii

  ix

  x

  xi

  xii

  xiii

  xiv

  xv

  xvi

  xvii

  xviii

  xix

  xx

  xxi

  xxii

  xxiii

  xxiv

  xxv

  xxvi

  xxvii

  xxviii

  xxix

  xxx

  xxxi

  xxxii

  xxxiii

  Act III

  i

  ii

  iii

  iv

  v

  vi

  vii

  viii

  ix

  x

  xi

  xii

  xiii

  xiv

  xv

  xvi

  This is the Aurelia Theater.

  Zara’s body curls around the open stage door. Her feet are a rushed whisper. She would die before she would disturb the auditions that are, according to a sign, already IN PROGRESS.

  Backstage is black and empty. Not so much a world as the darkness before the world begins. Ten stories of fly space yawn above Zara’s head, ready to swallow scenery — a tangle of woods, the twisted spine of a mountain range.

  The greenroom throws light through an open door. Zara stops outside. Breathes. There’s always a moment like this, a quiet one before the nervous, giddy plunge into auditions. Zara wants to make these seconds last — forever, if possible. She has no interest in going back to her assigned life. The one where she is a senior in high school, pulls decent grades, does a scattering of school plays, has a string of minor crushes.

  This is already better. This is already more.

  She stands in the theater’s dark body and pictures its face, pale marble with a gilded blush. Any actress with half a dream to her name knows the Aurelia Theater. Still, it doesn’t seem possible that Zara is actually here. The casting notice she found in Backstage must have been a mistake.

  Open call.

  For Echo and Ariston.

  They wanted a video audition, so she signed up for an hour of studio time at the arts annex where she takes acting workshop. She could have made the video at home, just cleared her throat and dived into Echo’s lines headfirst. But Zara needed to feel like more than a teenage girl pretending in her bedroom, and that meant a real rehearsal space. She set up her phone on a borrowed tripod and turned strips of recessed lights on and off until she found the magical combination that gave her face a slight glow. She still felt a jab of nerves as she hit RECORD. She sounded ridiculous, saying her name and age for the phone’s little black eye. She had to restart her monologue twenty times before she had a decent version to send. By the time she was done, Zara felt sure she would never hear back.

  She auditioned on something stronger than a whim — but what’s the name for that? Zara tests words to find one that fits. It’s a game she plays, inspecting and weighing things in her mind, seeking matches. Being an actor is all about finding keys from the real world that open imaginary locks.

  What’s stronger than a whim, but with the same push to it, like a knuckle of wind?

  Urge? Desire?

  No. Too many bad novels have coated those words, turned them slick.

  Inclination?

  Weak.

  Impulse.

  Yes. Something gentle and sure clicks inside her.

  Yesterday, Zara got the call from the casting director. Today, she skipped school for the first time in recorded history.

  A woman in the obligatory black of a crew member comes out of the wings and catches Zara standing in the doorway. “Auditions?” she asks.

  Zara nods, her neck still tight from the train ride.

  The woman leads Zara into the greenroom. The space is choked with girls. And every single one wants the same role as Zara, which is a problem, because now that she is here, she can’t imagine leaving.

  This is the Aurelia Theater. It feels like coming home.

  The greenroom is delightfully shabby. Ancient couches have been pushed aside to make room for the actresses. A cornered snack machine hums resentfully. No one’s buying. These girls, in their stylish dresses, with their stylish bodies, do not look like they have ever snacked.

  Zara makes the error of comparing herself to them. She is soft, a collection of circles. She wears a skirt that is too old and a sweater she used to think was perfect but now feels unforgivably tight. A forgotten gland at the back of her knees comes to life, pushing sweat down her legs.

  The assistant stage manager takes one girl and then another, leading them away like this is some dark fairy tale. The rest of the girls do what actors do when they’re penned in a small space, waiting: they warm up. Some sing scales. Others stretch themselves into improbable shapes. Most show off their knowledge of the famous Greek tragedy.

  The room bears only a slight resemblance to other auditions Zara has attended, where people find their friends or make new ones as quickly as possible. Where everyone talks in warm, brash voices, wishing one another broken legs as they run their monologues and grab their sides.

  These girls are focused on themselves. On their work.

  On the need to win over Leopold Henneman.

  Just thinking about the famous director makes Zara’s nerves double over. She grabs for her purse and the aggressively loved copy of Echo and Ariston she found at a library book sale when she was twelve. The year that she got her first kiss. She walked around for months afterward feeling blank, and then she found this tiny book with the flaking cover. By the time she had finished the first page, she was different.

  She was in love.

  The darkly printed words and the wide margins in Zara’s script calm her. She knows the play by heart — three different translations. Looking at it right now isn’t strictly necessary. But it keeps her safe from the greenroom’s whirlpool of pride and politics and low-carb tendencies.

  The assistant stage manager is a black fly, hovering.

  “Evelina Robbins,” she calls.

  A girl tilts her chin and marches a few steps toward the door. Then she seems to remember her purse. It’s especially large and bulky, and with no other visible options, she leaves it in the care of the nearest girl, who perches on the arm of a couch drinking from an unmarked white cup.

  As soon as Evelina is out of sight, the other girl peels the lid off her latte and pours steaming milk into the purse.

  Everyone goes back to her own business.

  Eli has no business sitting at the table between the mezzanine and the wide fan of the orchestra seats. This table is meant for designers, like Roscoe.

  Most of all: it’s meant for the director.

  Leopold insisted they fling the auditions wide open, so the Aurelia is overrun with what feels like every actress in New York who either is a teenager or thinks she might be able to pass for one. Eli
knows that this is only a tiny fraction of the girls who sent in video auditions. She can’t imagine what it was like to weed through those, to tell so many girls that their talent and their prettiness and their dreams weren’t enough. Which is why she’s the light-board op, not the casting director.

  The current redhead wraps up her monologue. There’s a lull between girls, which gives Eli a minute to dig out the food she brought from home. Eli keeps one Tupperware for herself and hands the other to her boss. Roscoe takes it with a wide-lipped smile. He gets so busy thinking about the lights that he forgets to eat. Almost forgets to breathe. That’s why Eli is here today: to help Roscoe. To take care of him, a little. He is lighting god and first-grader and nothing in between.

  Leopold Henneman rattles out of his seat. He paces down the aisle and then right back. He hunches over the table with a pen, working his way through a pile of headshots. He draws a slow, deliberate X over each girl’s face.

  His assistant, Meg, gathers the papers quietly and walks them over to the trash. As usual, she’s brisk and blond and mostly silent, and does whatever needs to be done.

  Leopold uses two fingers to wave the casting director to his side. “I was under the impression you knew what I wanted for Echo,” he says in a low voice. “Was I unclear in some way?”

  Eli tenses every muscle. In her family, if someone has a feeling, they all hear about it. None of this pinched whispering. Theater people are usually loud, which is part of why Eli loves them.

  The assistant stage manager leads another actress out from the wings. There is a snicker of paper as her résumé is passed. Eli doesn’t even look down. She’s painfully aware of how skimpy her own résumé looks. Eliza Vasquez, nineteen years old, with a string of off-off-off-Broadway hits under her belt. Follow-spot operator. Light-board operator. Lighting designer, but only once. At some point Leopold is going to decide she’s not good enough to be here.

  And then what?

  Eli can’t let herself think about that. Thank God, or whoever is up there in the flies, the girl onstage is a very good distraction. Eli has watched every one of these actors and thought about how to clothe them in light and shadow.

  This new actress Eli has to adjust to. She is already better. She is already more.

  It’s about how she inspects the curtains. She sticks to them, lingering in their heavy shade, running a finger over their infinite redness. It pushes the Aurelia’s beauty to the front of Eli’s brain.

  The girl’s smile is crooked in the best ways. Her hair hangs to her waist, a warm shake of cinnamon, eyebrows a few shades darker. About thirty white girls in a row have read for Echo: it’s not exactly Hamilton up there. But this actress becomes the first one in hours that Eli can see, instead of skimming over with tired eyes. And the way she looks at those curtains — Eli thinks, for a second, she might climb them.

  Eli steals a glance at Leopold, to see if he notices the difference. He’s still pouring quiet words into the casting director’s ear. Eli can’t help thinking about Hamlet — wasn’t somebody poisoned through the ear? Not a good way to go.

  Leopold puts a hand on the casting director’s shoulder. She nods and sinks back into her seat. Eli gets the feeling that she won’t be doing much casting today.

  The girl onstage leaves the curtains behind, squares her feet, and says her name.

  Zara Evans.

  Then she launches into the act 1, scene 2 speech. The one that Echo spits at her parents before leaving the kingdom.

  Echo and Ariston.

  God, Eli hates this play.

  Or maybe she just spent too much time with it, the way she did with Hannah.

  They met during Eli’s first show in the city, and Hannah pulled Eli in with all that eyeliner and lava-soft kissing. She was the one who convinced Eli to move to the city and chase a full-time career as a lighting designer. Being with Hannah was being on the verge of every good thing. And then one morning over diner pancakes, it was done, before Eli even had time to pour the syrup.

  Zara Evans is halfway through the monologue, and Eli should be falling asleep, but she’s not. Actor voices are usually sanded, smooth, powerful. Zara’s is garden-variety sweet. A little on the breathy side. Sometimes she takes a step forward, then back, a spiky dance that no partner would be able to follow. What she lacks in perfection she makes up for in honesty.

  “I would live in this home and then the home of a man

  Of your choosing. This Ariston. Your Ariston.

  I would touch without feeling,

  Kiss without taste.”

  The girl is digging these words up, dredged in fear, glowing with possibility. It makes Eli want that feeling back, the one she had with Hannah. But now she’s older. Wiser. She knows what’s waiting on the other side of that feeling. She’s permanently, painfully aware of how it ended with Hannah. Not in death, like it did for Echo.

  But it still wasn’t pretty.

  She looks down the table and finds the whole crew staring. Even Roscoe is staring. Are they having the same sort of flashbacks? Eli can’t imagine Roscoe in love. She can barely imagine him tying his shoes.

  Zara Evans ends on a trembling note.

  No one claps.

  Eli knows the monologue was good, but she also knows how little that matters when it comes to casting. Who’s beautiful? Who’s connected? Who does the public want to see smeared across the Arts section for months? There are parts of this that aren’t magic at all, cruel parts that balance out

  the pretty.

  Eli takes out her Leatherman, not because she needs a multipurpose tool, but because she’s developed a habit of flipping the knife blades when she’s nervous. Let this girl stay, she thinks. A callback, at least. Because Eli has fallen a tiny bit in love. Not the whole feeling: she’s not a lunatic. But the first piece is there, a sliver of brightness that makes the rest of the moon inevitable.

  Zara’s audition piece ends, and she’s still onstage. All she can see is the bright, cutting circle of the spotlight. Zara doesn’t want to leave, but the longer she stands here and hopes, the worse it will be when Leopold Henneman sends her back to Pennsylvania.

  And then —

  A voice in the dark.

  “Indulge me,” it says.

  Zara knew the director must be out there, watching her, but it’s one thing to imagine it and another thing to have evidence. Leopold Henneman is talking to her — that has to be a good sign, right? His voice is low but not smooth. It crackles and curls. When it says Indulge me, everything in Zara’s body leaps to say Of course.

  “Miss Evans? Are you still with us?” he asks.

  Leopold Henneman is the world’s most-famous living theater director, a fact that Zara finds as distracting as an itch between her shoulder blades. There’s also the matter of the visions. When most directors use that word, they mean some vague and dreamy idea of what a play should be.

  Leopold Henneman claims to have actual visions.

  Zara has to focus, to fight her way back into the story. Echo and Ariston. Love and death.

  “What would you like me to do?” Zara asks. “The casting director said to bring one monologue —”

  “I would prefer something else,” the director says. “A game.” His voice has grown hard, the tight bounce of a rubber ball. She wonders how many of the other girls have been invited to play.

  “Who do you love most?” Leopold Henneman asks.

  Zara has no idea what he wants her to say. The question takes on a new life inside her head. It seeks out memories, possible answers. The words ring and rattle. She can’t stop hearing them.

  Who do you love most?

  Her boyfriend? He has soft brown eyes and soft brown freckles. They spent most of the summer at the movies, sharing oversalted popcorn. They kissed in the sun at the lake, wrapped in towels, beaded with water. Zara likes him. But the distance between like and love suddenly seems like the distance between Earth and the sun.

  Who do you love most?

&nbs
p; The first person she kissed? That was a girl from summer stage. She was playing Wendy in Peter Pan, and Zara was one of the Lost Boys. It happened at one of those theater parties where everyone kisses everyone. The kiss itself was nice. But then the blankness set in. Besides, that couldn’t have been love because they’ve barely talked since.

  Who do you love most?

  Her parents? She loves them, of course. But it’s the of course that rules them out.

  Who do you love most?

  The Ariston to her Echo. How can she describe a person she’s never met? Her thoughts grow frantic and fast and hot to the touch. “I . . . I guess . . .”

  “Don’t guess,” Leopold says. The weight of his voice tells Zara that she’s running out of time. “Show me.”

  She stares out into the blank brightness of the theater. The director’s words thrash around inside her. Who do you love most? It’s a trick question. There’s no love wide enough to measure against Echo and Ariston. They’re legendary — Romeo and Juliet, but better. Less hormonal, more epic and defiant. Zara craves that kind of love, but she hasn’t found it. The closest she’s ever gotten is standing onstage.

  Then — Zara looks down. She’s standing on a skin of black paint, a thousand layers of story beneath her.

  “Who do I love most right now?” Zara asks.

  Leopold Henneman’s voice takes on a hard crust of boredom. “Are you so fickle that the answer will change by tomorrow?”

  Zara shakes her head, trying to chase off embarrassment and get back to a clearheaded feeling. Neutral, her drama teacher calls it. But that word always sounded too calm to Zara. She feels it like the moment on a diving board, right before jumping. She lines up her toes. Takes a deep breath.

  And then she starts to change.

  It happens to her body first — shoulders pinning back, chin exploring a higher tilt. Her palms float upward. Before she opens her mouth, she imagines what her voice should be: plush as a red velvet chair, tall and reaching as the fly space above. “You should know that I’m very pale,” Zara says. “Pale, and dressed in gold.”

  There is no answer from the audience. But Leopold Henneman hasn’t told her to leave. Not yet.

  It’s a stay of execution.

  Zara twirls her fingers with a stolen grace. “I’ve given people so many reasons to love me. Death of a Salesman. The Misanthrope. Mourning Becomes Electra.” Zara is listing the plays that have been performed on this stage. She feels the need to touch every bit of the theater like it belongs to her — no, like it’s part of her. She rushes from the thick pelt of the curtains to the lip of the stage, where it tumbles into the orchestra pit. She stretches her arms up, toward the streaming lights. “Twelfth Night. The Trojan Women.” She works backward in time, excavating story after story.