Winter's Spell, page 14
“Okay,” said Chayo, nodding. “Will you tell her about the internet stalking? About how it ended your relationship with Lisa?”
“It’s way too early for that.” Tessa felt a bubble of panic rising in her chest.
“Is it? Are you sure? Cuz that sounds like something Roxy should know. Up front.”
“No, that’s all wrong,” said Tessa. “I don’t want to scare her off. Not before I know if she’s into me.”
Chayo gave Tessa a knowing smile. “Chica, given what I just saw, she’s into you. She looked like she wanted to eat you up with a spoon just now.”
Tessa laughed. “Really?”
“Really,” said Chayo.
Tessa’s heart fluttered at the word. Chayo was absolutely certain that Roxy was into her. And that closeness, that almost kiss in the wood shop. Something inside Tessa agreed, on an instinctive level.
“We’ve only been around each other for a week,” said Tessa tentatively. “Isn’t it a bit soon to start talking about the past?”
“Is it?” said Chayo again. “I dunno, Tessa. It can take a lot less than a week for some people to fall in love. What kind of Shakespeare fangirl are you anyway if you don’t know your Romeo and Juliet?” She grinned and Tessa couldn’t help laughing again.
“You know, they ended up dead,” she pointed out, the levity of the conversation making her less stressed, calmer.
“Because of secrets and bad communication,” countered Chayo, a note of seriousness entering the joke. “Look, just promise me you won’t wait until your wedding day to tell her you kind of, sort of stalked her and it ended your previous relationship.”
“OMG, now you’re talking weddings,” said Tessa with a nervous laugh. “I just can’t.”
“More to the point,” continued Chayo, undeterred, “don’t wait so long that Lisa decides to tell her instead.”
“Okay, okay,” said Tessa. “Agree to agree.”
“Don’t wait so long that I decide to tell who what?”
Tessa and Chayo looked at each other before their necks swiveled in unison to see Lisa walking into the greenroom.
Tessa felt hot all over. How much had Lisa heard? Had she been eavesdropping on their conversation?
“I was just saying that Tessa needed to talk to the theater owner about Barb’s rules before you did it yourself,” said Chayo smoothly, and Tessa breathed a sigh of relief.
“Is the water still hot?” said Lisa, indicating the kettle, and Tessa nodded. Lisa fixed herself a cup of the same green tea as Tessa and seated herself on the couch near Tessa and opposite Chayo. “Ah yes, Barb. What a pill,” she said, rather unironically, thought Tessa. The thought made Tessa smile a bit. “For once I agree with Chayo. I think you’re absolutely within your rights to talk to the owners about her Draconian rules. Honestly. No guests backstage? Or in the dressing room? No food deliveries of any kind? How am I supposed to eat? And what do I do when my real assistant finally shows up?”
“I’m sure we can put Ramón on the crew list,” said Tessa. She was pleased her voice wasn’t as shaky as just a few minutes ago. The last thing she wanted was Lisa suspecting she was still hurt by their breakup, or that she ever thought about it at all. “But yes, the food deliveries issue is a problem. I’m going to have to clarify with Barb what that means exactly. She can’t expect everyone to be working here all day without food.”
“And no scents or perfumes or even scented lotions?” continued Lisa, on cue taking out a small tube of very fancy scented hand cream from her oversized purse, then squeezing a small dollop of it on her hand and gently massaging it into her skin. She always did have very dry hands, Tessa remembered. Not like Roxy, whose hand had been warm and soft and perfectly smooth against her own.
She found herself getting warm at the thought of Roxy’s touch, and she hoped her warm feelings were not showing themselves on her face as well. The last thing she wanted was for Lisa to know about her feelings for Roxy. At least, not before she was absolutely sure that Roxy reciprocated them.
“A lot of places are going in that direction,” said Chayo in answer to Lisa’s complaint. “Allergies, chemical sensitivities…there’s a lot of folks who can’t be around scents.”
“I don’t have a problem with that, in general,” said Lisa, putting away the lotion. “But it’s the hypocrisy. That woman stank to high heaven of some old lady perfume. I could barely stand being next to her.”
Tessa couldn’t help a smile, no matter how unprofessional Lisa’s characterization was. It was true. Barb smelled awful, as if she’d bathed with an old bottle of cheap perfume.
She shrugged. “We’ll just have to make do until I can figure out a way to negotiate with her. Or like you said, Joy and I will have to set up a meeting with Barb and the theater owner to hash this all out.”
Chayo nodded. “Her list of dos and don’ts goes on for pages. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“Maybe Barb is her own kind of Leontes,” said Lisa, raising an eyebrow. It was the closest Lisa ever got to making a joke. Given that Leontes of A Winter’s Tale was a major tyrant, that suggestion wasn’t too far off.
“Sure. You could shadow Barb for a bit. You know, get Method for the part,” said Tessa.
Lisa generally was not a fan of any kind of teasing, so Tessa was relieved to see her smile at the mock suggestion, and Chayo chuckled too. It felt good to be here, all three of them, just making little theater jokes and hanging out in the greenroom with hot beverages.
The door opened, and Joy popped her head in, bright dyed-red curls and red cat’s eyeglasses frames drawing their attention immediately.
“Sorry to interrupt, gals. Phone call for Tessa in the office and,” she looked over at Lisa, “I think your new assistant is looking for you?”
All three of them got up, and Lisa groaned.
“You have a new assistant?” said Tessa, surprised. She racked her brain to think who it could be.
“Yes. Roxy’s sister or cousin or whoever? That gorgeous but utterly brainless girl who calls herself Mo,” said Lisa, rolling her eyes. “It’s going to take a lot of work to train this one. I sent her out to get us lunch just to see how she’d do. It hasn’t even been fifteen minutes, so I can’t imagine she’s brought back anything.”
“Oh! Well, think of it as a favor to me,” said Tessa, glad that she could, however indirectly, be a help to Roxy. “She sounded eager enough.”
“She’s a weird one,” said Lisa.
They parted ways in the corridor, Chayo heading back to the wood shop, Lisa going in the direction indicated by Joy, and Tessa following Joy to the office.
After a brief phone call with one of the nearby costume shops where they’d requested some costumes for the smaller parts in the play, Tessa hung up and looked through her planner to see what else was on the docket for the day. She saw the little reminder to herself to ask Joy about Madame Clerval.
“Were you able to make an appointment with that clairvoyant here in town?” asked Tessa, looking over at Joy, who was perched on the edge of her desk, her bright purple and red chunky heels swinging. Joy loved “living out loud,” as she called it, and everything about her was colorful. Tessa appreciated her energy and positive outlook.
“I did,” said Joy, sliding off the desk and riffling through the papers on her desk, then her purse, before pulling out her day planner and flipping back a few pages where she’d taken some notes. She gave Tessa a curious look, eyebrow raised. “She’s quite the character, even for someone in the trade.”
Tessa nodded. Joy was one of the only people who knew that Tessa dabbled in the magical. Nobody really needed to know she was a hedge witch. It was something she did for herself. She’d been attracted to the lifestyle precisely because it was a solitary practice: no ceremonies or rituals with others, no covens, nothing like that. But Joy’s interests in astrology, healing crystals, chakras, inner balance, and other New Age practices made her a natural confidant. Tessa appreciated having someone to confide in on this topic. Despite the stereotypes about theater people, they weren’t all accepting of such practices—Lisa least of all.
“Oh?”
Joy nodded. “That number on the store front isn’t for a cell. It’s a landline. No answering machine either. I tried calling all times of day and evening until finally last night, just on a hunch, I called late. Ten thirty.”
“And?” Tessa was dying of curiosity. What kind of business kept such strange hours?
“She answered. Very interesting voice,” said Joy, whose “voice readings” were something of a legend among her friends. She had a knack for knowing all sorts of things about a person simply based on the tone and timbre of someone’s voice, or so she claimed. Tessa had found her insights to be correct on several occasions, so she never doubted Joy.
“Oh, come on. Tell me already,” said Tessa, giving Joy a playful and rather tame shove on the arm. “Don’t leave me hanging.”
Joy relished her momentary power and cackled at Tessa’s impatience before turning somber. She gave Tessa a meaningful look. “She’s powerful, Tessa. She’s the real thing.”
“Shit.” Could this mean that Roxy was on to something?
“Oh yeah. She knew exactly who I was—even though I was calling from the office phone—she knew my name, what I was wearing, even my birthday.”
“Wow.”
Joy nodded seriously. “She told me Patty-cakes was doing well, too.” Patty-cakes, also known as Princess Pancake, was Joy’s pet cat that had passed away a few months ago.
Tessa’s jaw dropped. “What? How could she possibly know that?”
Joy shrugged. “I have no idea. But her aura was strong, even over the phone.”
“What was her aura like?”
“It was hard to read. I felt strength and power and knowledge, but I couldn’t tell if it tended positive or negative. Which makes me think negative. I mean, why would someone hide positivity from their aura?”
“Maybe to cultivate a sense of mystery? She makes a living off it after all.” Tessa wanted to keep an open mind, but it was getting harder. Madame Clerval could be incredibly dangerous if she really was as powerful as Joy was suggesting—and if she was involved somehow in the robbery at the museum, as Roxy believed.
“Anyway, I made an appointment for her first availability.” Joy paused.
“When is it?”
“In two weeks.” Joy gave her a look of consternation. “She said that was the soonest I could get in because she doesn’t have regular hours in the winter. She also said she needed to wait for Venus to ‘move into the correct quadrant’ before she could help me.” Joy paused dramatically. “And I didn’t even tell her what I needed help with.”
“Two weeks?” Roxy wasn’t going to like that. “Still. I guess it’s better than nothing. Are you sure you want to go through with this?”
Joy smiled and waved the question away. “Are you kidding? Now I have to go. I’m dying of curiosity to know what she’ll tell me.”
Tessa smiled, trying to hide her concern. “Great.”
“Is there anything you want to know about specifically? Anything I should ask?”
Obviously, she couldn’t tell Joy to ask Madame Clerval about the museum specifically, so what could Joy ask her instead?
“Let me think about it and I’ll let you know. Now that we know we have two weeks, we can really consider it.” Tessa paused. “Off the top of my head, I’d say, ask her about the play. You could say you’ve felt some evil vibrations at the theater and around Provincetown, and you’re worried about the success of the project.”
“Have you really felt some evil vibrations here?” True concern entered Joy’s voice and she studied Tessa’s face carefully.
Tessa shrugged. “Some twinges, I guess. Something feels out of balance. It could just be Lisa. Or Barb.”
“Got it.”
Tessa put a note in her planner for the date and time of Joy’s appointment, and their conversation turned to the first rehearsal that afternoon.
They heard a commotion of voices, Lisa’s loudest among them.
Tessa and Joy shared a glance before leaving the office and running down the corridor toward the greenroom.
When they arrived in the greenroom, Lisa was yelling at Mo, Mo was crying, and Roxy was attempting to calm both of them down.
A strong salty, fishy smell assaulted Tessa’s nose.
On the floor of the greenroom lay a large fish, fresh from a fisherman’s boat or market. Tessa had no clue about fish, but this one was fairly large, still completely intact.
“It was a mistake! Come on, Lisa. Give her a break,” Roxy was saying to Lisa, before putting an arm around Mo and trying to move her away from Lisa and her wrath. “Let’s go, Mo. Let’s take a breather.”
“But the fish. I must save it. It cannot stay on the floor,” Mo was saying between sobs.
“This is some ridiculous joke, isn’t it?” said Lisa. She saw Tessa had arrived and she glared at her now. “Are you in on this too? You suggest Mo be my assistant, and then give her a dead fish to bring me for lunch?”
Tessa and Joy worked like a well-oiled machine in that moment. While Joy took care of Roxy and Mo, Tessa managed to convince Lisa that it wasn’t a joke. It was some kind of misunderstanding. She pulled Lisa into the corridor and walked her down to her own dressing room. Some of the crew had arrived in the meantime, and one of them, Sam, had heard the noise and come to find her. She gave him a twenty and sent him out to get Lisa a lobster roll and a latte, before leaving to check on the greenroom scene.
While she’d been gone with Lisa, Joy had calmed down Mo and Roxy and corralled some more crew members to bring cleaning supplies to the room. The fish was now in a plastic bag and Mo’s tears had subsided.
“Is everything okay?” said Tessa to Roxy. She patted Mo on the shoulder gently. “I’m sorry Lisa yelled at you.” Tessa decided not to ask why Mo had brought a fish to the theater; it felt a little soon for that. “She’ll get over it.”
Mo looked at her with a tear-streaked face that was still impossibly beautiful, her liquid green eyes glowing with concern, before turning to look at Roxy.
“I am sorry. I let you down. I said I would act normal, but I cannot.”
“Hey, it’s okay,” said Roxy, rubbing her back a bit. “Do you want to go home? We can take the fish home, too. I’m sure you’ll appreciate it more than Lisa.”
Mo nodded, and the three of them arranged for Roxy and Mo to go home for lunch, and to remove the offending fish from the theater. Tessa thanked her lucky stars Barb wasn’t around to berate them for having a dead fish inside her hallowed theater walls.
They were about to leave when they bumped into Sam from the crew, returning with Lisa’s food and coffee.
“Hey, Sam,” said Tessa. “Wait.”
She took the food from Sam and handed it to Mo.
“Do you still want to work here as Lisa’s assistant?”
Mo nodded somewhat reluctantly.
“Then here. Take this to Lisa. Apologize,” she said gently. “Tell her you’ll be back in an hour for whatever she needs this afternoon.”
“Okay.”
Roxy and Tessa stood outside Lisa’s dressing room just far enough down the hallway that Lisa couldn’t see them, but they could still hear her and Mo’s conversation. Tessa tried not to obsess over how close they were standing to one another while eavesdropping, their hands sharing the same air space. She wanted to grab Roxy’s hand, but she resisted. Chayo was right. She needed to slow down a little and get to know Roxy better.
Lisa had calmed down a bit and the lobster roll and latte were helping patch things up between them. When Mo left the dressing room, she was smiling again.
“She said I was very pretty and very stupid,” said Mo with a grin. “So that is compliment, yes?”
Tessa and Roxy exchanged a look.
“Sure, of course,” said Roxy. “You’re definitely very pretty. And we’ll work on the other thing.” She gave Tessa a wink that sent a spark of desire shooting through her. Was there a way to take things slow—but not too slow?
She walked Roxy and Mo to the door of the theater.
“I’ll be in rehearsal all afternoon,” said Tessa as Roxy put on her coat and hat. “But maybe we could have dinner tonight? At my place? I’d love to cook for you.”
Roxy looked at Mo with concern. “Would that be okay? Will you be okay on your own tonight in the apartment?”
“Oh, of course Mo can come, too,” said Tessa with a smile, but hoping against hope that Mo would say no.
Mo looked from Roxy to Tessa and back to Roxy, a funny little smile on her lips, like she knew a secret and was bursting to share it. “Thank you very much, Tessa. But I am sure Roxy would like to eat your food without me.”
Tessa saw Roxy redden, and her heart swelled. Maybe Roxy had mentioned to Mo that she was interested in Tessa? She felt like she was getting back on the roller coaster of emotions, just as she’d calmed down and assured herself that she was ready to be responsible and get to know Roxy.
“Okay then,” said Tessa, finally breaking the awkward silence. Mo looked like the proverbial cat that ate the canary, she was so pleased. She promised to text Roxy the address and time later that afternoon, once she was sure that rehearsal would be over in a timely fashion—and since she was the director, she would see to it that it was. No burning the midnight oil tonight, not unless it was at the side of Roxy Bright.
She waved them off and was just about to pull the door closed, as it had an annoying tendency not to close all the way, letting in chilly winter air, when she felt someone on the other side pull the door open sharply.
It was Barb.
Tessa felt her heartbeat speed up.
“Oh, hello, Barb,” she managed to choke out. “Great to see you again.”
