Hart & Boot & Other Stories Read online

  After she ran up the escalator, she found the platform wholly deserted. She said, “Fuck,” because there should be some people waiting, even on a Thursday night, unless she’d just missed the train. Which meant she’d have to sprint for the theater to make rehearsal on time. She hated making people wait on her, because she knew what it was like, sitting around waiting for the lead actress, thinking what a bitch prima donna she was—Zara didn’t want to be seen that way, not even by the cast of a little experimental theater that could only seat about fifty people, tops. She crossed her arms and looked out at the darkened overpass and the Oakland hills beyond the platform. Odd—there should have been lights from the houses on the ridges, but the hills were just dark shapes in the moonlight. Were they doing rolling blackouts again? And why was there no traffic on the overpass? Was it closed for repairs, too?

  Then a train pulled in, surprising her—there had been no announcement of an oncoming train on the PA system. Still, it was headed in the right direction, so when the doors slid open she got on.

  There was only one other passenger, sitting in one of the sideways-facing seats with a newspaper held open in front of her face. Zara dropped down into the seat opposite, glancing at the woman’s newspaper. It was written in Greek, which she couldn’t read, and Zara shifted her gaze to the blackness beyond the windows as the train slid away from the station.

  The woman across from her tossed her newspaper onto the carpeted floor. “Nothing but bad news,” she said in a smoky, throaty voice, smiling. The woman was in her forties, probably, dressed in a tailored black business suit, her hair blonde and stylishly short.

  “Oh,” Zara said, not really in the mood for conversation.

  “I’m Nikki,” the woman said.

  Because it was going to be a long ride under the bay and into the city, she said, “I’m Zara.”

  “Good to meet you.” Nikki crossed her legs. “I’m a talent scout.”

  “Oh?” Zara said, feeling a stir of interest. “Like for a record company?” She had lots of friends in bands, some of whom would happily sell out in a heartbeat.

  “For an agency, actually. We represent musicians, dancers... actors. We’re always on the lookout for new clients.”

  Zara didn’t say anything. She was ambivalent about the very concept of agents. She was more interested in the art than the marketing, which perhaps meant she needed an agent; on the other hand, perhaps it meant she didn’t need one at all. Agents might want her to do things like audition for commercials. They might want her to get a tan.

  “Are you a performer?” Nikki asked.

  “Sometimes,” Zara said.

  “Actress?”

  Zara nodded. Nikki looked at her expectantly. “I’m playing the lead in Medea,” Zara said. “It’s a contemporary version, set in the suburbs, very minimalist, but with some almost Grand Guignol touches at the climax.”

  “It sounds fascinating,” Nikki said, and she sounded like she meant it. Zara wondered that Nikki could sound sincere no matter what she actually felt—maybe from one moment to the next she didn’t even know what she was feeling. That had to be part of her profession, right? Sociopathology as an occupational hazard. Except for a talent scout-slash-agent, it wouldn’t be a hazard, but an advantage. As her friend Dave the unemployed programmer liked to say, “It’s not a bug, it’s a feature.”

  “It’s a good role,” Zara said.

  “I’ll come see it,” Nikki said decisively. “Has it opened yet?”

  “Opens tomorrow.”

  “Where?”

  Zara told her the address.

  “I’ll be there,” she said.

  “Okay,” Zara said, shrugging.

  Nikki frowned, as if she’d expected something more—most young, hungry actors probably dropped to kiss her boots at the merest whiff of interest, Zara supposed.

  “Medea,” Nikki said. “That’s the one about the woman who murders her children, right?”

  “That’s the one,” Zara said.

  “I wouldn’t miss it for anything,” Nikki said, more decisively. The train stopped, and the doors hissed open. Zara didn’t recognize the platform—it was underground, with marble walls, Doric columns, and stone benches. She didn’t see a sign anywhere—was it the 12th Street station? If so, it had been extensively remodeled. It seems like she would’ve noticed that on another one of her trips. “See you,” Nikki said, and left the train. The doors closed behind her, and the train pulled away into a dark tunnel.

  Zara leaned her head back against the window, and closed her eyes. It took twenty minutes or so to get from Oakland to the Mission, and she’d left home in such a hurry that she hadn’t brought anything with her to read except her script, which she had down cold at this point, and didn’t want to look at anymore. She’d always been good at remembering lines. When she was really into a role, speaking her lines didn’t even feel like recitation—it just felt like talking, saying what came naturally. That was her favorite feeling.

  Someone coughed, and Zara opened her eyes and lifted her head. “Holy shit,” she said.

  The Greek Chorus was back—when had they gotten on the train? They must have come from another car, creeping quietly, sliding open the adjoining doors without a squeak. Or, more likely, Zara had fallen asleep, and just hadn’t noticed them. They stood in the middle of the aisle, holding onto the grabrail above their heads, though there were any number of empty seats. They all stared at her, silently, swaying a little with the movement of the train.

  Zara thought about getting up and going to another car, but what if they followed her? “This had better be a coincidence,” she said. “We just happen to be going in the same direction, right? You aren’t following me, are you?”

  The Chorus did not answer, just looked at her. “So, what are you, mimes? You were plenty talkative before. Or are you just frat boys?”

  Still no response.

  Zara snapped open her purse (black vinyl, decorated with little silvery skulls) and rummaged until she found a mostly used-up tube of lip balm. She held it between her thumb and forefinger, took aim, and threw it at one of the Chorus member’s faces.

  The tube bounced off his nose, and he squawked like a bird and flinched away.

  “Just fuck off,” Zara said.

  “We’ve heard things,” the Chorus said, hesitantly, half of them mumbling, none of them quite in synch. “But only from strangers. Those who carry messages have no power.”

  “So you’ve got a message for me, then?” Zara said. “What is this, guerilla marketing? Viral advertising? How much do you get paid?”

  “Torrents of blood will fall from the sky. Justice brings new pain; on a fresh whetstone, Fate sharpens her sword. Each charge is countered by another, and who can fairly judge between them? Yet whoever acts must be punished. Such is the law.”

  “The only law you should be concerned with is the one against pissing me off,” Zara said. “If you don’t get away from me, I’m going to kick your asses, concurrently or sequentially, whichever you prefer.”

  The Chorus member in front, the one she’d hit with her lip balm, said, “Go on. My heart trembles with fear.”

  “Is that supposed to be sarcasm?” she asked.

  The Chorus leader bowed his head. “We are old. You are young. You must teach us.”

  Before Zara could reply—or throw something else—the train slowed down. Glancing out the window, Zara saw the familiar brightly tiled walls of the 16th Street Mission station, with people—normal people—milling around. “You assholes should be put to sleep,” Zara said, and when the doors opened, she got off the train.

  The Chorus didn’t follow, but as she walked away, they called, “So you fall, abandoned, searching your heart for joy, but finding nothing—sucked dry, gnawed by monsters, a shell, a shadow, a—” Then the doors slid closed, and cut off their voices.

  ***

  Halfway through the second act, Zara saw Doug poke his head through the door at the back of the t
heater, his expression unreadable at this distance. He came in and sat down in the back row as if he had every right in the world to be here, at a closed final dress rehearsal. So much for her hope that he hadn’t penetrated the inner mysteries of her life—if he knew she was here, he knew as much about her as there was to know. She went on performing her scene with the actor playing Jason, deeply into the role of her suburbanite version of Medea. “Her” kids—actually the director’s, a boy and a girl, seven and nine years old, remarkably well-behaved, practically raised in the theater—sat on the floor, the boy playing with dolls, the girl with a dump truck. The gender-stereotype-reversal was just one of the writer/director’s countless tiny little flourishes.

  She imagined, briefly, that Jason was Doug, and her bitter lines took on a new level of heat, but she forced herself to dismiss the comparison. Why give Doug so much power? He was just a client with an overactive fantasy life, who somehow failed to comprehend that “Mistress Zara” was nothing but invention. When the curtain came down on Act II, she’d tell one of the stage hands to get rid of him, and he’d be hustled away. Maybe she should think about calling the cops, or at least getting a restraining order.

  But Zara didn’t have the chance to do any of those things, because in the middle of a crucial monologue—the moment when Medea decides that the only solution to her problems is to murder and murder again—Doug rose from his place in the back row and came walking down the aisle. He was clearly fresh from work, dressed in a white shirt, dark tie, and slacks, his face handsome but a little doughy, poised somewhere between the end of baby-fat and the onset of middle-aged thickening—just another thirty-something member of the Gray Horde with a wider-than-average streak of kink. Zara didn’t let her lines falter, even as Doug continued to approach the stage, even as the director stood up and said, “Hey, you can’t be here,” even as the children broke character completely and said, “Who’s that guy?”

  She continued her monologue as Doug climbed up on stage. He came up over the edge of the proscenium, just downstage of where she stood. His movements were clumsy and awkward, like a chubby kid hauling himself out of a swimming pool. “Mistress,” he said, getting to his feet.

  “How weak my heart must be,” she said, still in character, “to be swayed by such pitiful pleas.”

  Doug frowned, then took out his wallet. He flipped it open, took out a sheaf of bills—fifties, mostly, it looked like—and threw them at Zara’s feet. “There,” he said. “Prepaid through the end of the month. Now get out of that stupid dress and put on something good. I had a hard day, and I need you to make my night even harder.”

  Zara stared down at the money on the floor of the stage, her lines forgotten. The rest of the theater was silent, even the children. “You motherfucker,” Zara said, looking up at him. “You think I’m a whore?”

  Doug grinned. “I guess so. I guess you’ll have to punish me for that.”

  Zara rushed at him, put both her hands on his chest, and shoved him. He shouted, arms pinwheeling, and almost fell off the stage. He landed on his ass at the edge of the apron. “Get out of here,” Zara said, through clenched teeth. “Never come near me again, you sick freak.”

  “I’m the sick freak?” Doug said, rising, wincing as he rubbed his ass. “At least I finish what I start.” He nodded toward the stage floor. “You keep the money. I’ll see you.” Limping a little, he went down the steps and out of the theater.

  There was silence for a moment after the door closed behind him. “Well,” the director said finally. “Shall we take it up from the end of act two? Unless Zara has any other visitors...?”

  The other actors laughed, a little tensely, and Zara squeezed her hands into fists. The story of this would spread all over—theater people loved to gossip. By next week everyone would think she was a prostitute, when the truth was she’d never even touched any of her clients, not skin on skin, let alone had sex with them. She’d just wielded the whip, or the crop, and prodded with latex-gloved hands, and talked the talk. It was just acting, but it would get all twisted around into something else in the stories. Now when the other actors looked at her, they wouldn’t see Medea, they would see Zara, with the crazy john/boyfriend/whatever, with a wad of crumpled money at her feet. Doug had ruined the role for her, tainted the experience.

  Well, fuck that. He was going to pay.

  “Are you ready, Zara?” the director said.

  “Yeah,” she said. She kicked the money offstage. Let someone else have it.

  ***

  Late that night, after the director wished them luck and Zara showered off the fake blood, she went in search of her revenge. Rodney, the doorman at Damien’s Basement, refused at first, but Zara wouldn’t let it go. “I know you gave that son of a bitch my phone number,” she said. “So you can damn well give me his last name.”

  “He paid me,” Rodney said sullenly.

  “Yeah? I’ll pay you by not telling Damien and getting your ass fired,” she said.

  “Shit,” he said, but told her what she wanted to know.

  Doug had mentioned the name of his company once or twice, in the awkward social moments before their sessions, and the same memory that made it so easy for Zara to retain her lines helped her remember where he worked. From that, it was short work on the internet to find an online directory for his company, complete with extension numbers for various employees. Humming a little—the thrill of vengeance, which probably wasn’t much like what Medea felt, but it still made her feel connected to the character—Zara dialed the number for the company’s vice-president. It was after midnight, so all she got was voicemail, but that’s what she wanted.

  After the recorded greeting, and the beep, Zara said, “Doug Mitchell calling,” and pressed the “Play” button on her digital answering machine. Doug’s voice came on, rambling about the indignities he craved—cock-shaped gags, butt plugs, floggings. He never mentioned her name, only said, “you”: “I need you to,” “I want you to,” “You have to.” Zara let the recording play for several minutes, over several messages. Then she paused the playback, hung up, and dialed another number at Doug’s company, this time the head of Human Relations, and repeated the process, introducing Doug and then letting his recording ramble. Then a woman’s voice emerged from the answering machine, and Zara tried to stop the playback before the HR director’s voicemail could record it. She accidentally hit the “Delete” button, erasing the woman’s message. The voice had sounded vaguely familiar, but Zara couldn’t place it, and she hadn’t heard more than the first few words. Ah, well. If it was important, she would call back. Zara hung up on that voicemail, and called another extension. Now her machine held nothing but Doug’s messages, and she poured his litany into dozens of voicemail boxes at his company, eventually dialing extensions at random, until she was too exhausted to keep going.

  Doug was going to have an interesting day at work tomorrow. Zara had worked as a temp often enough to know how the Gray Horde operated. They would play the messages for one another, put Doug’s voice on speakerphone, argue over whether or not it was really him, and eventually decide it was, of course, it was. She’d been careful not to leave a message in Doug’s own voicemail box. She wondered how long it would take him to figure out why everyone was laughing at him. This wouldn’t exactly balance things between her and Doug, but maybe it would give him the idea that she wasn’t someone to be fucked with, and that she could hurt him in ways that had nothing to do with catering to his masochistic side.

  Zara stripped and crawled into bed near dawn, happy and content, suffused with schadenfreude, definitely ready to play Medea the next night.

  She dreamed of women with brass wings; of singing stones; of bloody tears; of scorpions the size of lobsters, arrayed on serving platters; of old women, weeping inconsolably over child-sized coffins.

  ***

  Zara made it into the city that night without incident, encountering no grease-painted strangers, no weird detours in the BART station, no socio
pathic talent scouts. No Doug. He hadn’t called, either, but maybe he was just afraid to leave more incriminating evidence on her answering machine. She went backstage and got help with her make-up, hair, and costume. She was keenly attuned to any differences in the way her fellow actors treated her since last night, but for the most part, they concentrated on their own preparations. She supposed they were whispering about her in corners, wondering how much she charged, but that might have been simple paranoia. She closed her eyes and took deep breaths, inhaling the faintly sweet, powdery scent of her own stage make-up. Paranoia was fine. Paranoia could be used in portraying Medea.

  Before curtain, the director came to give them a little pep talk. “You know what they say,” he said, not even glancing at Zara. “A terrible dress rehearsal means a fabulous opening night. If that’s true, we’ve got nothing to worry about now.” Everyone laughed, and a little piece of Zara turned to cinders and ash inside. Getting her revenge on Doug hadn’t solved everything— it didn’t change what he’d done to her. But revenge had enabled her to sleep well last night, so there was something to be said for it.

  “There’s a full house out there,” the director said. “Even people standing in the back. Some of them aren’t even my relatives! So let’s go, folks. Break a few legs.”

  The play began, and Zara waited in the wings for her cue. The actress playing her nanny talked to the children on stage, saying, “Go to your rooms, little ones. Your mother’s had a terrible time lately, and it’s best you stay out of her way. I can see everything welling up behind her eyes—every injustice, every sorrow—and I’m afraid of what she might do when it becomes too much for her.”