12. Rehearsing for Hal

The migraine circled Marina, made her vision blurry and her step unsteady. She gripped the banister and climbed up the Centro Libre stairs to the second floor art room she borrowed for rehearsals. How long did she have before the migraine became full blown? The sunlight streaming through the tall windows at the top of the hall stairs hurt her eyes. Jimmy stopped her by the art room door. He pointed to a group of little boys. “I’ve been sent to the playground before the rain. From the look of it Miss Keiser or the weatherman is wrong again.” Marina smiled. Jimmy brought his face close to hers and peered at her eyes. “You’ve got a thunder storm headache.” Tears flooded her eyes. “And you’re period’s gonna be here tomorrow.” He grinned and squeezed her hand. She kept crying. “When are you gonna cast me in that play?” Jimmy could always make her laugh. If he didn’t drink beer to oblivion every night might they have stayed together?
Just those few tears relieved the pressure in her eyeballs. She was again convinced her migraines were a dysfunction of her tears. Carmela was early as always, by the window, running some lines and mimicking putting on makeup and eyeliner with one hand while holding an imaginary compact in the other.
“Hey. I had a few thoughts about the scene where Iris decides to go to the bar by herself.”
The nerve along the inside of Marina's right eye, close to the tear duct, sent a shooting pain. Not enough tears. Or maybe the migraines were terror fighting its way out of her organs and her cells. Just thinking that Carmela had ideas she felt a terrible pull to curl up in a ball, close her eyes, and go unconscious. Carmela’s ideas meant Marina had to decide. She didn’t know what the fuck she was doing. Carmela was all confidence and bravado. She’d been in a hundred plays.
Elsie erupted into the room and Marina ran away from Carmela to hug Elsie. “Buenas tardes.” Elsie made a point of talking Spanish whenever she could. Carmela almost invisibly rolled her eyes. By greeting them in Spanish Elsie was saying I’m more Latina than Carmela. Ned strode in next, threw down his backpack and kissed all the women.
Marina looked at her watch. “We’ll get started and assume that Vicky is late as usual.” When she didn't pay actors a penny, could she fire them?
Ned walked over to the table by the window, covered with scraps of fabric and paper for collages, that they used as the bar. He leaned his elbows onto the table and faced out. Elsie danced alone by the stack of file cabinets that stood for her jukebox. She was more voluptuous than Marina had envisioned. And it was true that she’d pretty much lied in the audition, representing herself as Latina when she’d just been a tourist in the Island a few times. Still when she started moving she was pretty fascinating to watch. Ned eyed her. Carmela stood frozen at the low children’s art table that passed for the tiny bar table that Ned’s cousin Sybil, who was doing the set, promised she would find. Carmela was fiddling with her imaginary lipstick. He turned back to an imaginary tv screen, and screamed “Gol” then turned back to Elsie. All this looked like it worked. But what did she know? Her method was to stumble into things, the chimp typing Shakespeare.
Marina looked at her watch. When would Hal show up? For the first time it came to her that maybe he wouldn’t. Why did she persist in imagining he was reliable when half the time he stood her up? As she watched the actors it came to her that maybe she should bring the women from her class into the play. She wondered if that choral thing they did for Amanuel could work here in this play. Could it show the ways Carmela stood for every woman? That was the kind of question she wished she could ask Hal.
“Let’s do some improvising to get some density into the bar scene. This is one of those science fiction bars with lots of strange aliens, a place where the attraction is that differences converge…”
She watched them play. Carmela and Elsie pretended to hang out together, but it was easy to believe they were from different planets rather than the close friends they had to be for Mating in the 80s, a play where Carmela’s character got gang raped in a bar.
A wave of nausea. The migraine would soon be full blown and she’d have to figure out how to make it home, but for now she had to keep going. She wanted to look like she was working whenever Hal showed up. Was he paying her for sex with this production? She was never sure what it was he wanted with her. This seemed to keep her wanting him. Was she still trying to best Mami, show her what it took to be the woman who could make Papi come home?
“Let’s take a break.” She walked to the black rotary phone at the teacher station by the door, got the operator, and asked for an outside line. She dialed her number and her code. She was afraid she’d have a message from Hal saying he wasn’t coming. There was a message from Ori saying something had come up, could she take Machi tonight. And there was a message from Vicky. “You won’t believe this but I got cast in a telenovela. I’m going to have to drop out.”
Carmela was tugging at her arm. “I’ve got to talk to you.” She pulled her outside. “I don’t know how to tell you this but we’re having a problem.” Marina wanted to scream, ‘You think you’ve got a problem? Half her mind was on the migraine and most of the other half was on what to do with Vicky’s part. She couldn’t go back to auditioning. She was scanning in her mind some of the other women she’d already looked at when she began to hear what Carmela was saying. “Elsie’s stealing my business. I come up with something in rehearsal and next time she’s doing the same thing. Didn’t you see her at the bar? Putting on lipstick and eyeliner. That’s mine.”
Marina felt like an idiot. Were these the kinds of things a director was supposed to do? Notice who was the innovator in an improv and then protect the actors from theft of craft? “I’ve got a lot on my mind right now Carmela. I just heard from Vicky that she’s dropping out. She says she got a part in a telenovela.” Carmela almost winced. “How’d she get that?” This was worse competition than what she got from Elsie. Just then Hal showed up, walking fast into Marina’s space, almost colliding with her. He stood close to her and gave her one of his standing hugs where his penis was always involved. Did he hug all women like this? She welcomed the distraction. She blurted out to Carmela, “I’ll have a word with Elsie.” She called out the window to Ned and Elsie who were smoking on the Settlement steps.
For Hal they ran the first bar room scene with Carmela and Elsie at the table. It was true that Elsie was putting on imaginary lipstick. They also did the second scene where Carmela showed up alone and danced by the juke box. They did the rape scene where Ned pushed Carmela onto the art table that stood for the pool table, mounted her with her hands pinned back while she said, “This has never happened.”
Marina wondered how it would work to have her women repeat, “This has never happened?”
She thanked the actors and sent them on break and she sat with Hal on the steps outside the art room. He leafed through his tiny notebook and cleared his throat. “I know exactly what you’re trying to do.” Her first thought was, “He’s lying. He says this to all the girls.” He cleared his throat again. She could smell cigarette smoke, a whiff of patchouli, and Hal’s acrid sweat, usually covered up. She ignored that smell’s information. It stood for everything about Hal she refused to know. “If you have them move around more in the space maybe it would be less embarrassing.”
That was the last word she took in, the last she remembered. She wrote down his other notes and could barely make out her handwriting later. At that moment her migraine went full blown. She almost remembered him rising and pecking her on the lips and bounding down the stairs, already late for the next thing. She gave the actors Hal’s direction, not knowing what she was looking for as they moved. She omitted the word embarrassing, and watched them a while through blurry eyes before she called it a day. “This weekend we’ll be rehearsing in the space. Ned, are you sure Sybil is going to be there? We’re going to have the video woman. She'll be blocking her shots for the live video part of the play, and the set needs to be close to ready.”
Ned nodded. Elsie was standing close to him and they walked together toward the door. Marina was getting the picture, they were becoming a couple. At first Ned had nosed around her, asking her, “Are you with anyone?” She’d tried to make light of it..”Too many anyones.” Carmela blocked the door with her hands at her waist. “Aren’t you going to tell them about Vicky.”
She’d actually forgotten. The solution came to her as she spoke. “Yes. Vicky’s gotten a big break, a part in a telenovela and she said to say goodbye to all of you and tell you she’s sorry she’s leaving the play.” She could see Carmela was about to ask. And she raised her hand. “This is what we’re going to do. Conflate Elsie’s and Vicky’s parts. From now on, Carmela’s got one best friend.