The Impaler

Chapter 29

Thursday, April 13

Cindy Smith arrived an hour before her six-thirty call to find the flowers from her mother already waiting for her in her dressing room—a dozen white roses and a note reading, “Break a leg, kiddo! Love, Mom.”

Cindy smiled. Too expensive, she shouldn’t have done that, blahdy-blahdy-blah—but oh God, how glad I am that she did!

Cindy felt on; felt ready and rested and relaxed. She had slept until noon that day and blew off her one o’clock biology class for the gym. Cindy hated biology—hated anything having to do with science and math in general—but would most likely be able to squeak out an A-minus if she buckled down for the final. Cindy hated A-minuses. She’d maintained a solid 3.8 for three years now and wasn’t quite sure how an A-minus would affect her GPA—suspected it would drop a point or two and felt a sudden wave of anxiety at seeing the 3.79 on her transcript.

You’re too much of a perfectionist, she heard her mother say in her head.

Right you are, M, Cindy replied, and arranged the flowers in the vase so she could see every one.

Cindy removed her script from her backpack and placed it directly in the center of her dressing table. Then she lined up everything parallel and at right angles around it: her makeup, her hair spray and hairbrush, her cough drops and her coffee mug. “Cluttered desk, cluttered mind,” she had heard someone say once. OCD kiss ass, she knew that two-faced slut Amy Pratt would call her behind her back. But Cindy didn’t care. After all, Amy Pratt had been called worse behind her own back.

Cindy changed into a Harriot T-shirt and sweats and turned on her iPod, scrolled to the folder titled PRESHOW, and ate her supermarket sushi in the green room. She’d splurged for opening night; felt sorry for not eating her mother’s leftover lasagna but didn’t want anything too heavy messing with her stomach.

The music pumping through her earphones was from the movie Amadeus. One of her professors had shown a clip from it in theatre history class, and for some reason Cindy had fallen in love with it. She downloaded the entire soundtrack that very afternoon and had since listened to it every day. The music grounded her—made her feel more like herself, she thought (whatever that meant)—and had even helped her nail her first big audition at Harriot. Now, Amadeus was a staple of her preshow ritual, part of a complex good luck charm, and Cindy was convinced her performance would suffer without it.

Superstitious? Beyond superstitious, Cindy thought. And although she wasn’t that hungry, she knew she’d also have to eat an orange later in the dressing room. Cindy had picked up that little habit the year before from a guest artist who swore it made him focus better onstage. Cindy wasn’t sure if the orange helped her or not, but nonetheless it had become part of her preshow ritual, too.

You down with OCD? Yeah, you know me!

Cindy finished her sushi and lay down on the green room couch. She closed her eyes and let the music enter her bloodstream as she focused on her breathing and began going over her lines. She had just finished her big scene with Macbeth, the one after he murders Duncan, when something startled her—movement, a chair scraping on the floor.

Her eyes sprang open.

It was Bradley Cox.

He sat at the green room table with his earphones plugged into his laptop—caught Cindy’s gaze just as she opened her eyes and jerked his chin to say hello.

Such a dickhead, Cindy said to herself.

She had no idea how long he’d been sitting there, but knew he’d moved his chair on purpose to get her attention and fuck with her while she was focusing. He’d loosened up over the past week; had tried making casual conversation with her during the technical rehearsals and (and Cindy could not believe this) had even tried flirting with her backstage before final dress. The bruise she’d left on his ego had finally healed, she thought. Only took two fucking semesters.

Cindy nodded her hello and closed her eyes—tried to relax into the music again but quickly became irritated with herself when she realized her costar’s presence was making her uneasy. She turned up her music, but her iPod wasn’t loud enough to drown out what she heard next.

“Hey, Amy,” Cox called. “You hear about this shit?”

“What?”

Cindy opened her eyes to see Amy Pratt entering the green room. The fiery redhead threw down her book bag and stood behind him, rubbing Cox’s shoulders as she looked at his laptop. Cindy’s stomach flipped with disgust as she thumbed her volume down to hear what they were saying.

“Says they found some guy dead in the woods,” Cox said. “North of Raleigh. Says he was stuck in the ground with a pole up his ass. Been dead for over a month. Cops think it’s a serial killer. Vlad the Impaler, they’re calling him.”

Cindy had seen the breaking news report earlier that afternoon as she was getting off the treadmill at the gym. She couldn’t hear the newscaster above all the hip-hop and the drone of the elliptical riders, and only got the gist of the story when she opened her AOL homepage on her computer back home. She glanced at the article quickly: some guy found impaled, details still sketchy, might be connected to the murder of some lawyer in Raleigh.

“Ew,” Amy Pratt said, reading. “That’s sick. People are so fucked up nowadays.”

“Maybe you should give him your number, Amy,” Cox said. “Word on the street is you like it up the ass, too.”

Amy giggled and slapped him playfully on his shoulder—but she kept massaging him and whispered something in his ear. Cox smiled, then looked over at Cindy and nodded. Cindy pretended to turn down her volume.

“You say something?” she asked.

“Just wanted to know if you were ready for tonight,” he said smugly. Cindy didn’t take the bait—knew that he and Amy had an inside joke going and wanted her to say “yes” so they could pretend she was agreeing to whatever it was that Amy had just whispered in his ear. Their version of the “Douchebag says what?” game.

Childish, asinine, easy to defuse.

“You mean am I ready for the show?” Cindy asked.

“Yes,” he said, smiling wider. “I mean for the show.”

Amy smiled wider, too—thought it brilliant, Cindy could tell, the way Bradley had salvaged their little joke by emphasizing show.

Okay, whatever, Cindy said to herself. She didn’t feel like playing, but at the same time she didn’t want to leave the green room and let Mr. and Mrs. Dipshit win.

“Just go with your heart, Bradley,” she said, deadpan. “Therein resides the only answer you’ll ever need.”

Bradley looked momentarily confused—as if he couldn’t figure out if he’d just been insulted—then sighed and rolled his eyes over to Amy.

“Guess I’m not good enough for a straight answer,” he said. Cindy could tell he was about to follow up with a snide remark, when the break she was looking for came over the intercom.

“Testing, one-two-three,” said the stage manager. “It’s ten minutes ’til our official call. Don’t forget to sign in on the callboard.”

And in a flash Cindy was off the couch. She’d signed in nearly an hour ago but couldn’t pass up the opportunity to get away. She turned up the volume on her iPod and hurried down the hall, past a group of students and straight for the electrics shop. She hoped the door was unlocked—wanted to find a quiet corner to finish going over her lines before going back to the dressing room.

I should’ve had one of the star dressing rooms upstairs, Cindy thought, while simultaneously chastising herself for being such a diva. Who cares if Mr. Dickhead and his boys have more quick changes—

The doorknob pulled away from her hand just as she reached for it—startled her and caused one of her earphones to fall out.

It was Edmund Lambert.

He stood in the electrics shop doorway looking down at her—black T-shirt, his face dusty but unfazed. He’d been checking the trap to make sure everything was running smoothly, Cindy knew. Even more OCD than I am, she thought, and felt her face go hot at the thought of liking him all the more for it. She hadn’t had much time to speak with him over the last week—they kept missing each other because he was out in the house with Jennings or under the stage in Hell—and she hoped he couldn’t see how happy she was to finally talk to him alone.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I was going to see if the door was unlocked. Needed a place that was quiet to focus before the show.”

“I can lock the doorknob, if you want,” Edmund said. Cindy was confused. “So no one will bother you. The doorknob is only locked on the outside. Jennings gave me the keys. You can leave whenever you’re finished. See?”

He locked the door and turned the inside knob; demonstrated by closing the door, then opening it from the inside.

“That’d be awesome, Edmund. Thank you.”

He smiled and let her in, unfolded a chair, and placed it in the corner behind a rack of coupling cables. He was so cool around her—but in a good way, Cindy thought; not aloof, not superior, yet not awkward or trying too hard to be smooth like Bradley Cox. Edmund Lambert was just … well … present was the only word Cindy could think of to describe him. He listened to her when she spoke; really listened for the sake of listening only. No hidden agenda. No underlying intention of wanting to bang her. He was just there, taking her in with his steel-blue eyes. And when he smiled—which she had never seen him do with any of the other girls—well, she never had to question whether or not that smile was genuine.

But what Cindy really liked about Edmund Lambert was how she felt when she smiled back.

“I’m going to watch the show tonight,” he said, “but I’m not part of the running crew. Won’t be back until photo call on Sunday unless something goes wrong with the trap. Means you’ll have to get a stage manager to let you in here from now on.”

“I should be all right tomorrow,” Cindy said. “I can find another place if it’s locked—but this is great. Just opening-night jitters, I guess.”

“You shouldn’t be nervous.” Cindy loved the way he said nuh-vuhs. “You’re doing a great job. You steal the show from Bradley Cox.”

Edmund was so matter of fact in his compliment, yet at the same time so devoid of any pettiness toward Cox, that Cindy felt herself blushing.

“Thank you,” she said. “I really appreciate it. And this, too. Letting me warm up and focus in here, I mean.”

“No problem. I’ll be back in about twenty minutes, but I won’t disturb you if you’re still here. Break a leg tonight, Cindy.”

Edmund was almost out the door when Cindy called after him: “Did you decide yet if you’re going to the cast party tomorrow night?”

“Probably not. I have a lot of work to do around the house this weekend.”

“Well, it might be fun if you made an appearance. I won’t be there long, either. Just a couple of drinks and I’ll have to stick around for Brown Bags. I know you’ve never been to a cast party here, but do you know what those are? Brown Bags, I mean?”

“Yes. I’ve heard people mention them in the scene shop. The awards the seniors make for people in the cast. Inside jokes written down on brown paper bags, right?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“I hear sometimes they can get pretty mean.”

“Yeah, they can, but it’s all in fun, I guess. You have to have a good sense of humor. I’m sure mine will be pretty brutal if Bradley has anything to say about it.”

Edmund said nothing.

“Anyway,” Cindy continued, “maybe you could come along and save me—not from my Brown Bag, I mean—but, well, I pretty much don’t like the people who are going to be there. I ’d rather talk to you than any of them, to be honest.”

“If you don’t like them, then why you going?”

His question was sincere and nonjudgmental—almost childlike in his curiosity, Cindy thought. “Because I’m weak,” she said. “Because I’ve gotten the reputation of being a snob, and I don’t want to give people the satisfaction of being able to say, ‘See? I told you she thinks her shit doesn’t stink.’” Edmund smiled vaguely and looked away from her for the first time. “I hope you don’t think less of me for admitting that to you.”

“Not at all.”

“I don’t know, maybe we could just hang out together, have a couple of drinks and just chill. Might be nice just to talk. You know, away from the theater, the show, all the stuff on our minds when we’re here.”

Edmund stood by the door, thinking. Cindy suddenly felt uncomfortable.

“If it’s too much of a big deal,” she said quickly, “like, if your girlfriend will get pissed off or something—well, I mean, I totally understand.”

“Let me see how things go tonight,” Edmund said finally. “Okay?”

“Okay.”

He smiled and was gone.

Alone in the electrics shop, Cindy suddenly became aware of her breathing and the steady thumping in her chest. Did she really just do that? Did she really just ask a man out on a date for the first time in her life?

But he didn’t say yes, said a voice in her head.

But he didn’t say no, either, replied another voice.

But he wanted to say yes, said the first voice. Couldn’t you tell?

You saw it in his eyes, too, then?

Yes, I did!

Cindy didn’t sit down in the chair Edmund had set out for her. She was too excited, felt a hundred pounds lighter, and began pacing behind the cable rack. She tried going over her lines, tried saying them out loud and imagining Edmund Lambert as Macbeth instead of douchebag Bradley Cox, but the voices in her head kept analyzing what had just passed between them, making her nervous but proud at the same time.

Edmund Lambert was going to come.

She just knew it.

Then, out of the corner of her eye, she spied his book bag on the chair by the electrics shop computer. She’d seen him with it many times and recognized the Army-issue camouflage.

She got an idea.

Cindy ran to the door and peeked out—saw a freshman, a pudgy kid who played one of Macbeth’s soldiers, heading toward the green room. Jonathan was his name—or at least, that’s what she thought his name was. She couldn’t remember; had never spoken to him before and wondered if she was confusing him with another freshman in Macbeth’s army. No time to worry; no time to feel guilty for using him.

“Jonathan?” Cindy called out impulsively. He stopped. She had gotten his name right, thank God! “Could you come here for a minute, please?”

The pudgy soldier sauntered over awkwardly, suspiciously.

“Would you mind doing me a favor?” Cindy asked.

“What kind of favor?”

“I got lucky getting in here to go over my speeches, but I need something from my dressing room. Would you mind holding the door for me while I go and get it? Otherwise it’ll shut and I’ll be locked out.”

“What, do I look like your bitch now?”

“Please, Jonathan. I don’t want to prop the door open. Someone might close it or steal the room from me. And it’d be a huge help, you have no idea, if you’re here to tell anybody who tries to do that I’ll be right back.”

“All right,” he sighed. “But make it quick. I got stuff to do, too, you know.”

Cindy thanked him and dashed down the hall.