“Sure, yes, of course,” Landon said. “I will. I’m halfway out the door.”
The woman looked up at him from under thick, dark lashes. “And I get off at five. If that’s information that’s helpful to you at all.”
Landon tried not to laugh, wondering exactly what he’d done to invite the comment. “Got the wife and kids to think about.” He wiggled his wedding ring in front of his face—a ring he would slip into his pocket the minute this exchange was done. “Like I said. Moving them here from the States.”
Cat shrugged. “Well, if you change your mind, you know where to find me.”
He called his thanks behind him as he skittered out.
Landon had been there since one thirty, clutching his new sketchbook like a lucky charm, certain that at any moment Rose would walk through the door and take a seat next to him. At ten minutes to two, the seat to his right filled with a young man who couldn’t have been older than twenty-four, with a handlebar mustache and jeans so ripped Landon didn’t understand how they still hung on his slight frame. Two minutes later, the seat to his left filled with an older woman in purple overalls, her gray hair pulled back into pigtails and her face set in an expression of such calm contentment that Landon couldn’t help but wonder what kind of life she’d led—or erased—to earn it. He tapped his foot nervously. The seats kept filling. Old people, young people, men, women, the room was an eclectic mix. Nobody exchanged pleasantries or chatted, just prepared their sketchbooks and sharpened pencils. Landon’s breath was so loud that he thought seriously about trying not to breathe until the professor arrived.
“Let’s get started on time this afternoon, shall we?” A short man wearing the largest glasses Landon had ever seen fiddled with the curtains until blackout blinds finally unfurled. He followed along orange extension cord to an outlet, then turned on a bright spotlight against a white curtain. The room felt instantly charged, the chipped paint and worn chairs taking on new life in both the darkness and the light. “Gesture drawings to warm up,” he said, confirming Landon’s suspicion that he was indeed the professor. “For the sake of ourprospective student”—he said the phrase like an epithet—“forgive me while I explain again the exercise you’ve all been doing since September. Gesture drawings are your opportunity to sharpen the connection between your eye and your hand. You’re momentarily free from anatomy and pushed into essence: How is she moving, what emotions does her action evoke, how do you capture rhythm and movement? As the poses get shorter, your drawings should become more fluid. Try to divorce yourself from your analytical brain and let the theater of it all flood the senses.”
A woman in a white robe entered, dark hair rolling down her back in waves. “We’ll do six poses to start. Two minutes, one minute, thirty seconds,” the professor said. The room hummed with the opening of sketchpads and the squeaky streak of charcoal on paper as the woman dropped her robe to the floor and stepped into the light.
Landon’s sketchpad slipped out of his hands and dropped to the floor.
“Something the matter?” The professor eyed him pointedly, clearly seconds away from telling Landon to prospect elsewhere.
“No,” Landon managed to say. “Nothing.”
He couldn’t think. He couldn’t breathe. The years had altered her form slightly, her hips wider and breasts heavier than they’d been the day she’d peeled off her clothes at the pond and asked him to jump. But she was singular, unmistakable, and still the most beautiful woman he’d ever laid eyes on.
Chapter Eight
Rose weighed every possible pro and con and decided that, despite the heavy credit load, she would double major in English and theater. Unfortunately, by then, course registration had closed, and the student productions that offered course credit had been cast. True to her word, Poppy had secured the role of Hero inMuch Ado About Nothing. It wasn’t Beatrice, but it was enough to spark envy among most of the seniors—all except for Wanda, the fiery upperclassman who’d landed the lead. From her newly claimed seat in campus theater society, Poppy had encouraged Rose to get involved in the club-run production. “What are they going to do, turn you away?” she’d said. “It’sdevisedtheater. They candevisea part for you.”
While Rose would find that was not exactly how it worked, she was lucky she’d made a good first impression at initiation because it was Wanda who helmed the club and set the rules. “I remember you,” Wanda said with her whole chest. “You and the towering tree jumped into the pond naked.”
“Landon,” Rose said, though she was fairly sure Wanda didn’t care about the name of the tree. “We tried to keep moving, but it’s tough to run while putting clothes back on.”
“I liked that.” She’d winked so beautifully Rose’s breath caught. “Can you sing?”
“A little.”
“Dance?”
“Not really.”
“And you’re sure this is what you want?” Wanda’s bright eyes bored into her. “Devised theater is an act of collective creation. There is no script, and there are no rules. It will be exhilarating and it will be terrifying and it will not be easy.”
“I’m not here to do things that are easy.” While Rose had never been one to look for shortcuts or even take them when they were right under her nose, she was beginning to understand in her cells that you only became by doing, that the actions you take are who you are.
“Well then,” Wanda said, reaching forward and twirling a lock of Rose’s hair between her fingers, “I’ll see you in the basement of the Annex. Tonight, nine p.m. Don’t be late.”
Rehearsals hardened Rose’s decision into an all-powerful knowing. Deep underground, in a room with no doors or windows, under a ceiling that leaked brown fluid and inside walls that bore remnants of an ill-fated attempt at wallpapering, seven scrappy freshmen and one enigmatic senior devised. It felt ridiculous at first, the idea that seven people could come to consensus on anything. In those early days Rose longed, more than anything, for a script.
“Your favorite books, TV shows, crime podcasts, porn—all of it is inspiration.” Wanda pushed them to stretch and expand; to say yes, yes, yes to anything and everything. No idea was too wonky, too sad, too outrageous. They sat on the floor and laughed as hard as they could until every single one of them was crying. They hurled noises and phrases at each other until they were bluein the face. They used their arms, legs, hands, and torsos to try to explain abstract concepts like belonging, compassion, and understanding, moving in ways Rose hadn’t previously thought her body capable of.
By eleven each night, she was physically drained and emotionally spent. And by eleven-oh-five each night, she’d ascended the basement stairs, placed her hand in Landon’s, and somehow, miraculously, felt clear-eyed and wide awake. It had started innocently enough. Landon had a paper due by midnight the night of her first rehearsal, and the library was right next door to the Annex. He would wrap things up a respectable hour early, he’d said, and take the long, winding walk back to the dorms with her. After their electric kiss on the dance floor and subsequent sham marriage, Rose didn’t think excuses were necessary anymore to be near one another, but she humored him. All things considered, she secretly found it sweet, if a little old-fashioned.
Rose could think of a hundred different ways to describe their chemistry, and neithersweetnorold-fashionedwere among them. “Your place or mine” was their constant refrain as they negotiated whose roommate would be most sound asleep, or at a party, or pulling an all-nighter. On the nights when they were alone, they used every item in the room with abandon—Rose pushing Landon up against the closet doors, Landon teasing her bottom lip from his perch above her while one hand kept her firmly in the wooden desk chair, the two of them grinding up against each other on the bed until one or the other was breathing too hard to continue. The nights they were not alone were arguably more electric, as they slipped under thin duvets and tried their best not to wake sleeping roommates. On those nights, her face pressed up against his, his hand drawing lazy circles on her back, Rose knewthat even though they’d been dancing around the idea of going all the way, she had well outpaced anything she had ever felt for the high school football player, the spark that could have grown into love with careful tending and time. She and Landon were on fire.
It wasn’t just the surreptitious make-out sessions that made Rose feel that way. She’d had chemistry with a few someones before, and she was sure she would again. But what she’d never experienced was what it felt like to be with a person she wanted to doeverythingwith. Rose wanted to kiss Landon almost as much as she wanted to throw laundry into the aging machines together, or read textbooks next to each other in bed, or eat stale popcorn and watch a movie on her cracked laptop. She wanted him to touch her everywhere, but she also wanted to hear more about his relationship with his dad, and meet his hallmates-turned-friends who sounded dorky and sweet like he was, and hike a Vermont peak with him before the weather turned. When she was too tired to move after a particularly athletic rehearsal where—at Wanda’s suggestion—she did handstands until her back gave out to try to capture the futility of ascending as a woman in modern America, Landon rubbed her back and made her instant noodles. When he tried water polo for the first time and strained his groin, Rose turned a Nalgene into a hot pack and agreed to at least start his favorite movie,Legends of the Fall. Every night, when Landon left, the bed felt progressively emptier.
When the show was finally as devised as it ever would be, Rose was not surprised that Landon was first in line for a ticket. She’d explicitly asked him not to sit in the front row and was amused to see his long torso blocking at least three people’s views in the second when she came onstage. The amusement gave way to adrenaline, roaring through her body.
An audience.Rose had thought the process of creating something from nothing was the reward, but it did not hold a candle to performing. The presence of an audience transformed the dank basement into a sacred space, and turned Rose and company into collaborators in a way they’d never quite tapped into on their own. The group of them had thought they’d devised a serious meditation on feminism, shepherded by Wanda’s directorial pushes. By the end of rehearsals, they had a loose series of sketches on a theme, all held together visually by interludes of frenetic movement set to music intended to make the audience plug their ears. Rose had thought it was all heady stuff, but they’d clearly gotten it only half right. Lines she’d once found serious landed laughs, and lines she’d thought hilarious met with stark silence. The audience told her what the play was about while she tried her hardest to tell them. It was the purest form of connection, Rose thought, this relationship. And it was the fastest addiction she’d ever developed.