one

Geoffrey chooses the first soliloquy as his audition piece. Oh, that this too, too solid flesh would melt, he whispers, holding his hands in front of him. He imagines his skin sagging away from his bones and running like candlewax from the heat of a flame. Shame fills him, as hot as tears, and he knows that he will cry and his voice will crack, just so, when he says, But break my heart; for I must hold my tongue.

Out of the corner of his mind, the tiny part of himself that knows he is in the shabby casting office and not in Denmark at all, Geoffrey notices when Oliver leans forward on the old sagging couch and rests his chin on his joined hands. Oliver has been watching him for years, but it's different now. It matters in a way that Geoffrey's certain he could never explain, except that this is his part, and it will be his play. He'll make it more than Oliver ever expected, and all he needs is for Oliver to see how he will bring the words alive.

Ellen will play Ophelia. Geoffrey runs lines with her every evening to prepare for Oliver. He kneels at her feet and watches the vivid joy on her face, the way she lets her eyes drift shut and she smiles, her mouth half-open. Later, he tries to decide if it's in any way the same as how she looks in the middle of her third orgasm, when he is already spent and he uses his fingers so he can watch the way she moves and looks as she climbs and crests. He loves her. Last season he was Romeo to her Juliet and it felt every night like destiny had picked them out for a moment of perfection. He feeds on her energy and pours it back into her. He loves her.

Love is something he can show to Oliver. Love is the only way he can truly become Hamlet, this confused, tormented man, who adores both sides of every decision with a wild passion. Geoffrey can appreciate that, more every moment than he'd care to admit outside the theatre. He loves. And he hates.

When he rehearses with Ellen, Geoffrey hears his voice defiling her and he can't pull back. He reaches for every way in which he can despise her, and it fills his throat until it spills out into these words he always thought were beautiful. The brightness of her eyes changes, and her face turns unfocused, afraid, confused. Geoffrey drives her mad, drives her to her death. He wonders if somehow he'll end up driving her away.

"Wonderful, wonderful," Oliver says when he finishes. Geoffrey comes back to himself slowly, and doesn't say anything at all.

"You know that I was considering Henry Breedlove for the part," Oliver says.

Geoffrey tenses and twitches a hand like a dog shaking off water. "Oliver, you know that my notices were better than his--"

"He's very good, Geoffrey," Oliver says. His interruptions are always so smooth, so calculated. "But he's not you."

Geoffrey makes himself stand still. Inside, he's vibrating with rage and nervous energy, but he won't let it show. He wants this part. No, that it's a lie; he desires it, with a bright and furious intensity. Want is a barren, meaningless word, compared to this. He will be good, and Oliver knows it.

"So, Geoffrey." Oliver leans back, lacing his fingers together, and smiles at him. "All that remains is for you to convince me that you deserve this part."

Geoffrey takes a step forward and drops to his knees. This is not a negotiation. Oliver has watched him and he has watched Oliver: his pride, his petulance, his cautious brilliance. Everything is for the glory of Oliver. That's the price. Oliver lays a hand on his shoulder when Geoffrey leans over him. Geoffrey shudders and wonders if his flesh will melt away under the touch. "All right," he says, and moves his hands to Oliver's thighs, his mouth to his cock.

Geoffrey's good at this. Oliver won't be the first one to tell him so. Shame runs through him, hot and cold and arousing. He imagines telling Ellen about this, about laughing it off. She will ask him, "What does this mean?" and he will say, "Nothing," and the only reason he can never tell her is because that would be a lie.

"Oh, dear boy," Oliver says, afterwards, when he's arranging his fly. "I never doubted you."

Geoffrey lets out a husk of a laugh. He breathes in, long and slow, before tilting his head back to look Oliver in the eyes. "Thank you," he says, without irony.

Oliver cups his cheek. Geoffrey hesitates on the knife-edge of choice: to lean into the touch, or not. He freezes, struck still by the madness of indecision. Ellen and Oliver. Ellen or Oliver. He feels a strange disconnect, like the silence that breathes in his ears after he hooks a payphone receiver into its cradle.

Geoffrey doesn't understand what it means. He doesn't need to. He will be Hamlet, and he will be brilliant.

two

"This is the schedule for the upcoming season," Richard says.

Geoffrey gapes at the list, which consists of dreck, more dreck, and a heaping pile of musicals.

"That's...not a problem, is it?" Richard asks, folding his arms and leaning back on his desk.

"Problem?" Geoffrey asks, high and hysterical. "Problem? Do you mean the part where you're scraping the bottom of the barrel for original works or the part where we'll be losing our Canadian content grant within a week?" He crumples the list. "Or the part where Two Gentlemen Of Verona is anchoring our Shakespeare run?"

"Because if it's a problem, Darren Nichols has already said that he's willing to step in as artistic director. Apparently, Belgium didn't work out for him."

"Darren Nichols is a hack," Geoffrey says, flinging his arms out and accidentally--sort of--throwing Richard's list right back into his smug weaselly face.

Richard catches it and says mildly, "I find him avant-garde and innovative."

Geoffrey lunges forward. Richard yelps and stumbles away, and Geoffrey snatches up the copy of Basil's latest notices that he was sitting on. "Oh! Avant-garde and innovative, excellent quotes," he says. "Hmm, you've missed 'limp' and 'deadly dull' and 'perhaps the most somnolent Tempest I have ever seen'."

"The committee likes innovative," Richard says. "Anyway, your contract is up."

Geoffrey freezes. "You wouldn't."

Richard pouts. "You create a disruptive work environment," he says. "I've noticed it, and, and so has the staff and the crew--the actors are all convinced you're schizophrenic."

"I can be far more disruptive than you have ever known." Geoffrey draws himself up to his full height. "I can--"

"Be replaced," Richard says. "By Darren Nichols."

Geoffrey deflates immediately. "You wouldn't," he says again, but apparently Richard has grown his day's worth of spine, and he just smiles.

"Fine," Geoffrey says. "Fine, goddamnit." He leans in, close enough that Richard swallows nervously and tenses up. "You're right, of course," he whispers. "We all know it, but we're actors, so we just can't admit it."

He leaves the room before he can hit upon a really spectacular rationale for murder.

"Well, thank you, Geoffrey," Richard calls after him. "I've always thought that, myself."

Geoffrey spends the next six hours washing the taste of his words out of his mouth with Glenlivet. A day and a bottle of aspirin later, he's already plotting to sneak King Henry IV into the season.

three

"Maria!" Geoffrey shouts, stalking across the stage, his coat billowing behind him. Today's their first day on the main stage and he's going to wring every ounce of brilliance out of this play or die trying. "Lights!"

Maria's standing in the aisle looking distinctly pissed off. That's no different from usual, but there is far less eye-rolling and exasperated sighing, and far more foot-tapping and murderous glaring. "I'm not working today," she says. "None of the crew are."

Geoffrey stops dead for one wide-eyed moment, and then leaps off the stage to confront this agent of destruction of everything he's working for. "Are you fucking kidding me?" he asks, shoving as much disbelief into his voice as he can manage. "It certainly seems to me like we have a rehearsal scheduled. Would you care to elaborate on that?"

"We didn't get paid," Maria says. "We're not working."

"And you're--quite certain you couldn't have brought this up, oh, I don't know, yesterday?" Geoffrey asks, very pleasantly for a man whose dream is currently being pissed on by the gods.

"Yesterday I didn't know that all my cheques were going to bounce today," Maria says. "Yesterday I expected to have money deposited into my account."

"Maria." Geoffrey holds his hands out, pleading. His fingers are trembling and clenched into claws, his tendons sticking out and his knuckles turning white. It's a good thing he's in control, so that they can discuss this rationally. "We have three weeks until the dress. We have no set. We have--" Here he waves at his collection of bumblers whom he must turn into actors and after he pulls off that miracle, God help him. "We need to rehearse. So I want you to--" He makes little flicking gestures with his fingertips. "Go back to your, your--"

"Booth?" Maria says drily.

"Yes! --Yes," Geoffrey says. Calmly. "And then you will say, Act I, Scene i, and we. Will. Begin."

"We're not working until we get paid," Maria says, and Geoffrey watches an unnerving murmur of mutiny travel through the assembled stagehands.

He grinds his teeth together and nods. "So that's the way it's going to be, is it?" he asks in his most dangerous I went crazy once and I'm not afraid to do it again voice. "Right! Tell everyone to take ten, Maria."

Maria turns around and walks out of the theatre.

Geoffrey keeps it together for five seconds, and then he bellows, "Richard!"

"It's a payroll issue, Geoffrey," Richard tells him when Geoffrey slams into his office seething with righteous indignation and more than a little hysteria at the twenty minutes of rehearsal time that has already been wasted on this soul-destroying nuisance. "You'd have to talk to the HR office."

Geoffrey goes to his happy place, where he can strangle Richard without end or consequence. It makes him smile. His smile makes Richard smile in return, a sickly little twist of his lips. "You," Geoffrey says, slowly and deliberately, "are the theatre manager. You," he continues even more deliberately, "are supposed to manage the fucking payroll."

By the end of this very moving bit of dialogue, Geoffrey is leaning across Richard's desk and holding him half-upright by the lapels. Geoffrey gives him a little shake, just to help his thought process along.

"I'll, ah, I'll just--" Richard makes a feeble grabbing motion towards the phone. Geoffrey turns to look at this marvelous communication device that can be used to contact moronic HR people to inform them of their gross error in trying to oppress the Arts.

"Yes," he says. "Do that."

He stalks around the office muttering vulgar suggestions to the motivational posters. Richard talks into the phone but his eyes never leave Geoffrey. That's as it should be. He's an actor. He has presence.

"Well, ah--" Richard says when he hangs up. "Well, they--it's a computer issue. They're--a tech is looking into it--" He stammers to a halt halfway through his explanation and tries to crawl backwards out of his chair as Geoffrey advances. "Geoffrey--don't--Geoffrey, it's no use shaking me! There's nothing I can do!"

The squealing sound he makes is very satisfying, but it will not bring Maria back. Geoffrey narrows his eyes. He may have to stoop very low, but if he wants to present the true Lear, then he will do what he must. "Exeunt!" he shouts, and sweeps out of Richard's office waving a triumphant finger. He nearly plows Anna down as he goes. "The show must go on!" he calls back to her in lieu of apology.

He finds Maria in the lounge backstage, smoking and fermenting dissent among the ranks. "Coffee," he says.

"Coffee," Maria deadpans. Geoffrey spins around to the rest of the crew, his eyes going from one to the next. They apparently don't appreciate what sort of mad genius came up with this devilishly clever solution.

"I," Geoffrey says, splaying his fingers across his chest, "will bring you coffee." He feels like Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, and any other imaginary do-gooder, all rolled into one. "Exactly the way you like it," he adds, since his brilliance is still going unrecognized.

Maria raises an eyebrow. "Exactly the way we like it?" she asks.

This is clearly a trap. Geoffrey's stomach sinks. Something has gone wrong somewhere. He searches for any sign of Oliver hanging from the rafters or peeking out from behind the water cooler and laughing at him, but Oliver has apparently decided to leave this in his hands. Somehow, that doesn't make Geoffrey feel better. "Yes?" he says, hissing the word out quickly before he loses their attention completely. "Yes."

"All right," Maria says. Very slowly. Very threateningly. Geoffrey straightens up under the weight of her appraising stare. "Starbucks," she says.

"Starbucks?" Geoffrey wants shout incredulously. But he holds himself back. For the play's sake. He's pretty sure the twitch gives him away, because Maria is smiling.

"Vente cappuccino latte half-caf with no foam," she says.

Geoffrey feels a tic coming on. "Yes," he grits out.

"You might want to write this down," Maria says.

Geoffrey takes out a notepad and prepares. "I am in Hell," he tells the ceiling.

Maria smiles at him--and how has he never noticed before how bloodthirsty this evil, evil woman's smile can be? It must be that her usual expression of a constipated lemon hides it--and says, "Geoffrey?"

"What?"

"If it's cold, you're going back."

Geoffrey grins fiercely at her and resolves to tell Ellen the moratorium on having Maria pick up her drycleaning is officially over.

four

Geoffrey's schedule, carefully prepared and annotated by Anna each Friday, and discarded as useless by most of the cast by midnight Saturday, says that he is leading a seminar on "The Business Ethics Of The Merchant Of Venice". There is no time listed on his schedule for lurking in the lobby, waiting for the coast to clear. Geoffrey eyes the potted ficus he's hiding behind, searching it for listening devices and tiny cameras. He scans the approaches using the conveniently mirrored doors leading to the street. The theatre is like a tomb. The clatter of high school matinee audiences has faded and the actors haven't started showing up for their evening calls yet.

In short, the place is deserted. It won't stay that way, and Oliver might pop in at any moment. The time has come. Geoffrey sidles across the atrium to the door of the gift shop. He flips the sign from "open" to "back in 5!" and ducks in.

He whirls into action the moment he's inside, grabbing t-shirts and mugs and a hideous foam bust of Shakespeare. With a flourish, he dumps it in front of the sleepy-looking clerk.

"How much?" he demands.

"Um," the clerk says.

Geoffrey takes a second to marvel at the idiocy of the general population and of people who work retail in particular, and then opens his wallet and flings cash in the clerk's general direction. "Take it!" he says. He clutches his spoils to his chest and flees.

"For my seminar," he mutters to himself, to ward off questions from anybody who might jump out of the woodwork and catch him with an armful of cheap cotton with "Shakespeare Is My Homeboy!" blazoned across the front. "For my seminar."

No one catches him and Geoffrey sneaks into his office. He freezes when Anna taps hesitantly on the locked door and ventures, "Geoffrey? Your seminar started half an hour ago?"

"Not here!" Geoffrey yells, and, "All part of my lesson plan!"

He cackles as he stuffs all the merchandise into a giant green garbage bag. He scrawls "BIOHAZARD--DESTROY." on the side with a permanent marker. Standing back to admire his handiwork, he's finally able to breathe easily.

He's New Burbage's greatest supporter, but he'd rather be run over by a pig truck than let anyone know.

five

Geoffrey plies Ellen with wine and compliments well into early morning the night before the technical rehearsal for Cleopatra. He matches her nightcap for nightcap and falls into bed with her, leading her on with laughter and the kind of lecherous promises he couldn't keep even when he was twenty. It's five in the morning before she falls asleep; he knows, because he stumbles around her house fucking with every clock she owns until they're all flashing 12:00. He crawls under the covers beside her and is too exhausted to even bother feeling guilty when she curls up next to him.

The next morning--or afternoon, or whatever time it's turned into (it's a time when the sun is entirely too bright, anyway)--Geoffrey bites back a groan when he moves his head. Method acting is a bitch. He drags one eye open to check his watch and, despite the whole cunning plan, feels a stab of panic at seeing the time. He tosses the watch on the floor and knocks the phone off the hook for good measure, and goes back to sleep.

Ellen shakes him far too soon after that. "Geoffrey! Geoffrey, we overslept! The fucking power went out."

"Tis the nightingale, and not the lark," he mumbles into the cold spot of drool on the sheets under his cheek.

Ellen whacks him with a pillow. "It's not funny!"

Geoffrey rolls on to his back and smiles at her. She looks terrible, washed-out and red-eyed. He'd better make a reservation for a hotel somewhere for the next little while if he wants to avoid being murdered later today. "You're still drunk," he says.

"Not with this headache. Where's the phone?" She starts shoving the bedcovers around, looking underneath the mattress. "I'll miss my call. Geoffrey--"

"It's the tech," he mutters, working his fingers under her nightgown and moving upwards. "Just the tech."

"There's no such thing as 'just the tech'." The game's nearly up, then, but Geoffrey finds Ellen's breast the next second, and she hums something halfway between "fuck" and "fuck yes," and Geoffrey smiles kisses into the soft skin of her throat. "Geoffrey," she says, dangerously. "You're planning something."

"Planning to seduce you," he says, burying his face in the softness of her stomach and reaching up to push the spaghetti straps off her shoulders.

"After last night?" Ellen sounds mildly indulgent but mostly annoyed. "You can't."

Geoffrey gives her a wounded look. "Is that a challenge, madam?"

"No." She smacks his hands away. "What are you doing? You're the director, you never miss a tech. Most of the time I have to drag you away from your stupid maquettes."

"Can't I take a day off now and then?" Geoffrey asks, trying for playful.

It doesn't work. Ellen rolls off the bed and stares down at him. "You meant to do this," she says. Her voice is hard and hurt, both at once. Geoffrey closes his eyes and nods.

"You bastard! You fucker!" There's more, but she's in the bathroom flinging clothes around, and most of it is muffled. "You wanted me to be late!"

Geoffrey shrugs. Claire hasn't been within a hundred feet of the stage since he chose her as Ellen's understudy. She's been suffering under the brunt of Ellen's passive-aggressive bullshit and finely honed sarcasm. This is the only way Geoffrey could give her a chance.

Ellen slams out of the room and pounds downstairs. "I'm sorry," he calls after her. He's pretty sure she hears, because she screeches, "Fucker!" and the slam of the front door is loud enough to rival a minor earthquake.

Geoffrey leans over the side of the bed and picks up his watch. There's no way Ellen will make it to the theatre on time for the beginning of the performance. Claire will have to go on. He feels exhausted. He thinks about calling in sick, but he needs be there to see Claire onstage. He needs to know if this was worth it. If she's as good as he believes, then he's going to have to convince himself that it was.

Possibly, Ellen will forgive him sometime in the next century. First, though, she'll want to know why.

Claire will be good. And Ellen will be masterful, with all her anger and jealousy driving her. So the only answer Geoffrey has for "why?" is the one he clings to on the days when he's trying to convince himself he's sane.

It's what's best for the theatre, so it had to be done.

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October 27, 2006