“Definitely not.”
“Okay. What’s going on?” Lauren walked a few feet away, out of earshot of the group, sensing this might need to be a private conversation.
“I’m not coming in today. Food poisoning. Really bad.”
“Oh no. Do you need anything? What can we do?”
“I’ll be fine,” Evelyn said in a curt voice. Even sick, she apparently wasn’t the warm and friendly type. “Just can’t quite keep anything down, so I better…Oh no. I have to go.” Lauren winced as Evelyn clicked off the call out of clear necessity. She made a note to check in on her later in the day, and moved to plan B. “Evelyn’s out today. Food poisoning,” she told Ethan.
“Fan-fucking-tastic. I get Carly here on time, and Evelyn can’t make it.”
“I know,” Lauren said sympathetically. “But we have Nia ready to step in.” Nia Blankenship had been cast as the standby for both lead roles. She was a sturdy understudy, which was why The McAllister recommended her readily in the casting sessions. You could always count on Nia, and with a wild card like Carly Daniel in the mix, having a solid backup was key. No, she wasn’t the most charismatic actress, but she was serviceable.
Ethan sighed. “All right. Put her in.”
After briefing an eager Nia, rehearsal was finally off and rolling. Their agenda was a run of act 1, and with only a few hiccups, they stumbled their way to the end, blandly. Carly looked defeated by then and walked away to a quiet corner alone. Ethan appeared weary, almost as if he hadn’t slept in a week. Nia looked nervous as hell. Apparently, working with a celebrity rattled her more than Lauren would have guessed. Today was feeling like a wash.
“And that’s lunch, everyone,” Trip announced to the company. “See you back here in an hour.”
Lauren could feel the low energy in the room as the cast quietly filed out. The run-through had run flat without Evelyn, but honestly, it hadn’t been much stronger with her. The production, while still afloat, wasn’t exactly thriving, and she could feel Ethan losing his patience as the days went on. They opened in just over two weeks, and while the set, costumes, and publicity were all on track, the narrative needed a jumpstart. Even Lauren could see that much.
“Hey, guys?” Kirby said, returning to the rehearsal hall. “Nia’s in the women’s restroom in really poor shape.”
“What do you mean, poor shape?” Lauren asked.
“I think it’s her stomach.” Lauren deflated and exchanged a look with Trip. It was starting to look like they had a stomach bug on their hands, not the food poisoning Evelyn suspected. This was not good news at all.
“Aren’t you two friends?” Lauren asked Kirby, who nodded. “Would you be able to help her into an Uber? I don’t think it’s a great idea for her to be around the other actors.” The idea that she’d already been in such close proximity to Carly was a bad thing, and Lauren was now in save-the-cast mode.
“Yeah, I can do that. No problem at all.”
“If you’re late back from lunch, it’s okay. We’ll make it work,” Ethan said. Once Kirby headed out, Ethan turned to Lauren and Trip. “I’m thinking we work everything that doesn’t involve Mandy’s character, and then call it a day.”
“Can I make a suggestion?” Carly asked from across the room. She leaned against the wall with her arms crossed over her chest.
“Of course,” Ethan said.
Carly pushed off the wall and straightened. “Have Lauren fill in. We’ve run lines together, and it’s always gone smoothly.”
Lauren felt her cheeks heat. “No. I don’t think that’s a good plan. I need to be on book for lines, and—”
“I can be on book,” Trip said.
Ethan waved them off, still not over his catastrophe of a rehearsal. “If that works for Carly, I’m fine with it.” He stalked away with his hands shoved into his pockets, probably already conceding defeat.
“Is that okay?” Carly asked her quietly.
Lauren nodded. “It’s fine. Whatever you need to salvage the afternoon. We’re down two Mandys and have to get creative, right?”
Carly squeezed Lauren’s wrist and smiled at her with gratitude. That smile filled Lauren’s half empty cup to full. She was happy to help and would do her best for Carly and Ethan.
When the company returned from lunch, they moved backward to act 1 at Carly’s request. Lauren played the role just as she had in her two rehearsal sessions with Carly, only this time, instead of just the lines, she followed the set blocking. As stage manager, she was intimately familiar with Mandy’s path in the show, as it had been her job to track and record it. Rehearsing the scenes face-to-face with Carly was at first a little jarring. She found herself staring into those light blue eyes and losing herself in them as Mandy, something she’d never allowed herself, as Lauren, to do. The liberties she could take as Mandy were startling, freeing. She could reach out and touch Carly briefly, study her when she spoke, smile like Carly affected her, and even lay her head down in Carly’s lap when Mandy was called to do so. She loved every second of it so much that she lost herself in the afternoon. Before she knew it, they were done with rehearsal for the day.
She sat up from Carly’s lap, where they’d concluded, and turned to face her. “Was that okay?”
Carly chuckled. They were the only two left at rehearsal apart from Ethan and Trip. The others had been released one by one. “I’d say so. Wouldn’t you?” She stood and moved toward her belongings with a triumphant smile on her face. Lauren wasn’t sure what that meant, until she turned to Ethan, who still sat behind his director’s table, beating a pencil against the top of his lips.
She joined him and Trip at the table and opened her laptop, prepared to record Trip’s times for the day and get Ethan’s input about who to call first thing tomorrow.
“We have a problem,” Ethan said, finally turning to her.
Her heart sank. She couldn’t take any more setbacks. If one more person was struck ill by this virus, they’d be hobbling along at best. “What’s wrong?”
He pointed at the makeshift set with his pencil. “That was fucking amazing.”
Lauren blinked. “Today?”
He swiveled in his metal chair to face her. “Yes, today. The whole thing lit up like a Christmas tree. The story came alive. The relationship mattered. I know the whole fucking story word for word, and even I was rooting for them, and this was only the first portion of act one.”
Where was she supposed to go with this? On one hand, Ethan’s words were incredibly flattering. On the other, they didn’t really matter. She was the fill-in for the fill-in. “Well, maybe we can talk about why it worked so well today with Evelyn and recreate—”
“Do you really see that going well?” Ethan asked, now up and moving with purpose, except he didn’t seem to be going anywhere. Just extra energy he needed to burn off.
Lauren grimaced. “Not exactly, no. But if she’s a professional, she’ll try to take the notes.”
“I’ve given her eighteen thousand notes since we’ve started,” he said, with a hand extended outward. “She’s cold and unfeeling when playing a character who should be warm and lovable, which I’ve seen her pull off nicely in a dozen different roles. She hates Carly and it reads all over the scene like spilled blood on a white carpet.”