Chapter 40: Running On Fumes

Though the pace of stage acting was often rapid, and its days excruciatingly long—apart from when they were non-existent and she lost her mind due to boredom, just with volunteer work and the occasional television advert—Cully did not recall ever being quite so exhausted after a performance. With the dress rehearsal dragging on and the stress of the opening night...every joint and bone in her body demanded rest, like an actual weight pressed down on her chest.

The other productions she had done with Paul Pearson had never left her so drained. Not even Noises Off in London had left her nearly so achy, or so tired; many of the rehearsals for that one, though, had been an exercise in restraint for the cast members.

Off right, waiting for her entrance in a few minutes through the front door constructed in the flat from not quite the cheapest molding London had to offer, Cully still had to stifle her laughter. Somehow, the opening scene of Noises Off/Nothing On never ceased to amuse her, the bumbling Mrs. Clackett/Dotty unable to remember what to take and what to leave despite endless coaching from the director of that play within a play. Fortunately, Miranda, Pearson's third choice for the dual role, had no such troubles; in just a few days, she had entirely committed to memory what to leave or take, and which confused line to muddle through as she considered what she held.

The first scene of their second dress rehearsal was unfolding with little trouble on the relatively handsome set, many of the play's props deliberately made from less expensive materials to mimic a rickety production. The initial set itself "well" furnished in a touch wealthy, pompous Englishman style: plenty of taxidermy animals, moderately attractive paintings, a dreadfully stiff settee, and hard bottomed chairs, with a nicely painted stage flat to match. One would have thought the fictional playwright and his wife were voracious readers from the bookcases stenciled onto the sturdy background. Even the doors leading to the "study" and "outside" looked rather more real than they often did, though Cully had seen much better construction stuffs. (The back of the flat was much nicer than usual, however, prepared to be turned around to face the audience come the second act to display all the usually hidden scaffolding.)

Just off from the center of it all, a telephone receiver and newspaper lay on the side table beside the housekeeper in the play, Mrs. Clackett, who sighed. "'Soon as you take the weight off your feet,'" she said, her cockney English well-trained, but unlikely to fool a native speaker, "'down it all comes on your head.'"

Turning away from the auditorium, clutching an empty plate (Pearson had refused to budget for sardines until the final dress rehearsal, not that most of the cast minded), she tutted to herself as she walked toward the door to the study. She nearly closed it behind herself before she turned back, briskly returning to the side table. With her free hand, she touched the wooden surface, most of it hidden beneath the phone—the receiver left cast off its hook—and the newspaper, running her fingers along the paper's edge.

"'And I take the sardines,'" she muttered, her voice now almost like a woman hailing from the home counties, for Mrs. Clackett was gone for the time being. Miranda was now Dotty Otley, the actress playing the housekeeper. She began to turn, still clutching the plate close to her body, then paused again, beginning to lower it to the small table. "'No, I leave the sardines.'" She set it atop the newspaper before snatching it back half a second later as it wobbled in her grasp. "'No, I take the sardines.'"

Somewhere deep in the stalls, surely up in the nosebleed section, Lloyd—the fictional director of Nothing On, this time portrayed by a Welsh actor named Harry—sighed into his microphone. "'You leave the sardines and you put the receiver back.'"

"'Oh yes, I put the receiver back.'" Gently setting the receiver on its cradle, she turned around to return to the study...the plate still in her hand.

"'And you leave the sardines.'"

"'And I leave the sardines?'" Dotty asked, gently shaking the plate a couple of times.

"'You leave the sardines.'"

"'I put the receiver back and I leave the sardines.'"

"'Right.'"

Dotty let her hand holding the plate soon to be covered with sardines sag to her side, stepping forward to the edge of the stage. She pressed her other hand to her forehead, shielding her eyes from the stage lights as she peered into the far back of the theater. "'We've changed that, have we, love?'"

"'No—'"

"Stop stop stop, you lot!" Pearson yelled from the center of the orchestra section where he sat alone.

"Oh, for fuck's sake," Harry muttered through his microphone from the darkness of the stalls, forgetting his role as Lloyd Dallas. "Not again."

A low grunt escaped Miranda's mouth as she turned around, fanning herself with the plate. "Whatever is it now?" she asked as she gazed out again, her voice now distinctly tinged with a long suppressed Yorkshire accent.

"Could you please attempt to look confused, Miranda, not like you're confidently remembering your script?"

Dropping her head against her back and almost crushing her brown hair in its matronly bun, she said, "Yesterday, I was too confused—"

"But you're an investor in the Nothing On production, remember, you need to look like you have skin in the game, so you just can't act a total idiot—"

"Remember what they say, Miranda dear," Harry interrupted, snapping his fingers into the microphone a couple times. "'Never argue with stupid people, they will drag you down to their level and then beat you with experience.'"*

Cully pressed a hand to her mouth to hold back her laughter, half wishing she could be on stage to see Pearson's ghostly form in the audience hunting for Harry. But perhaps it was best to be hidden: she wouldn't see his hideous snarl in the glare of the stage lights anyway, only be exposed to his wrath beneath them.

"Uncalled for!"

"So is most of this horseshit," Harry added, his voice echoing around the theater, like perhaps he had adjusted his microphone. He had developed a bad relationship with Pearson from the start, like they had a poor meeting in the past, and it had only soured over the last few weeks.

"Anyone—anyone!—who will pay to see you lot in this play is coming to see what I can persuade you to do differently. Almost everyone will have seen this play before—"

"Got the book for cheap, did you?"

"I will not be talked to—"

"And got the costumes and everything else for a pence?"

Cully knew Pearson's face was bright red, his cheeks probably puffed as he scanned the back stalls for Harry; none of the crew would have brought up the house lights even if he'd demanded it. "Say that again and we'll stop every time one of you imbeciles can't remember what I've told you I want—"

"Right right," Harry said, "horseshit piled higher and deeper."

Pearson was true to his word: the rehearsal began anew, and each minute he stopped the production, inches from their faces, reminding them what he had demanded the day before instead of what he demanded two days before. Naturally, he was in need of several sticks of gum. Despite recoiling from...god only knew what scent, no one had the courage to say something, for it might only mean an even longer rehearsal tomorrow.

That miserable evening had ended past three in the morning, and Cully hadn't bothered going back to her rented room (twenty minutes on the Tube plus ten minutes of walking for a couple hours sleep, only to return by eight...after another twenty minutes on the Tube and that ten minute walk to get back to the theater). Instead, she found the most comfortable spot on the stage to sleep she could, like several other transplants to London renting the tiniest of spaces. The next morning had seen nearly the entire cast almost willing to walk from the production. In fact, a couple members of the tech crew did; however, despite the grumbling, the remainder of the crew and cast remained, eager to begin the run and add a London Paul Pearson production to their experience.

However, that marathon rehearsal was endured by the entire cast and crew, all of them worn down to their most frayed nerves together. This evening, though the entire cast was undoubtedly tired thanks to the long night before—Pearson never resisted an exhausting final dress rehearsal—Cully knew herself the worst off. More than anything, she was desperate for a shower and sleep. Whatever sleep she had managed last night was broken, and short-lived, hardly ideal for an opening night.

The chill of the night vanished once she stepped into the hot water, and she was tempted to linger beneath the jets despite her weariness. Every muscle relaxed, smarting as they did, like coiled springs releasing their last bits of tension. Her skin ran clean of the final sweat and the last bits of makeup, her hair released the product slathered on to keep it motionless, and Cully glanced down at her right arm. Just below her shoulder, below her collarbone, the small bruise had only gotten worse since she found it this morning; at first red, it now had a purplish blue tone, spreading just a little more than when she had first noticed it. Oh, Gavin.

Turning off the water, Cully reached for her towel, first running it over her hair and tousling the strands apart. At its current length, it was short enough to dry quickly with just a little attention. With that looked to, she wrapped the brown cloth around her body, stepping into the foggy bathroom, the fibers of the bathmat clinging to her wet feet. For a brief second, she felt one of her knees tremble, but it righted itself as soon as her other foot touched the fluffy beige fabric.

Out of the warm water, she shivered for a few seconds, clutching the towel closer. Funny, really, how quickly things could be altered. Forty-eight hours ago had seen her hopeful that Gavin would come to the final dress rehearsal, to see how everything they had done in the garden, at the kitchen table, at cafés, transformed on the stage. No longer words and cues printed on a page in black and white, it was now flesh and bone, alive and breathing, ready to play out if his mind could only see what it needed to conjure on its own. Now, even in these short two days, the world had immensely shifted, its very reality changed.

Or she hoped it had.

Standing before the sink, Cully wiped her hand across the mirror to smear away the condensation, running her hand over the towel curled around her body to dry it. And she wished she hadn't, for the face staring out of the mirror was pale, the blue circles beneath her eyes darker than the mark on her arm. All this for the theater? No, not the theater, but Pearson. Maybe this third production was enough for her to learn her lesson.

She splashed a couple handfuls of cold water across her face, getting the hair at the front of her face as well. Don't try waking up now, she thought, pressing a clean cloth to her face. With her face dry, she reached for her toothbrush and toothpaste, scrubbing her teeth for a minute, her eyes drifting up toward the ceiling as she did. A thin film had settled across most of her mouth, like the sheerest sandpaper, as she hadn't been able to brush her teeth the night before or had time today; she hadn't found a second to even run to the corner shop for a toothbrush, once her mind cleared early in the morning. For good measure, she went a second round.

Spitting out the last of her rinse water, Cully tossed a handful of clean water around the drain, washing the toothpaste and saliva down the sink. She allowed herself another moment to look at herself in the mirror, wondering if her face was actually a bit thinner or if her mind was toying with her. "You're just tired," she muttered, patting down her damp hair. "That's all."

Why not? The last week had been exhausting and endless, as though the premiere would never arrive, that tech would begin anew, an endless round of complaints and critiques, demands and changes: a constant nightmare, instead. And, of course, there had been her own experiences...Cully shuddered again. Drying off her limbs and torso, she turned and hung the towel on the rod, spreading it out alongside her washcloth. Donning fresh underwear followed by her pajamas—the bruise Gavin had so enthusiastically given her just hid under the sleeve of her white t-shirt—she glanced in the mirror one more time. Though the cold water on her face had helped a bit, Cully fancied she might look the same if she had not slept for three days. "All the more reason to get as much as you can tonight."

Gathering up the clothes she had worn the past two days, she flicked the light switch down just outside the door, leaving it cracked open to let the remaining moisture out. The carpet dulled her footsteps for the brief walk across the darkened hallway to her bedroom and she searched for the switch with a blind hand for a moment before she discovered it.

The twin bed that had been hers since childhood was haphazardly made, the white quilt barely tucked in around her pillow; the previous morning had been rushed in her struggle to catch a bus before eight. Her purse sat on the chair next to her bedside table, and the well worn Pygmalion was in its familiar place on top of her alarm clock, awaiting its nightly study. Beside both sat her mobile phone. (The first thing Cully did when she stepped into her room—even before peeling off her jumper ahead of her shower—was to plug her phone in to charge. Sometime during the afternoon, the battery had run out, exhausted after 36 hours.) Now, she saw a pair of unread texts awaiting her after it revived: one from a friend in London (break a leg!), the other from Gavin, marked a little less than an hour before the play had begun.

running late will be there soon

"You're always on the edge, Gavin," she whispered, tugging the quilt and sheet back, glancing at the time. Nearer midnight than eleven. "Someday, you might not keep your balance."

But that wasn't for tonight, not as her eyelids grew heavier as she began tapping her thumbs against the keypad. Neither would it be for tomorrow, or perhaps even the day after that: not until the storm engulfing her world calmed.

I noticed. thank you again.

Her hand was ready to snap the phone closed, to finally fall into some sort of dreamless, fitful sleep, when she picked it up again, adding one more sentence.

it meant a lot to see you

Who could tell the next time she would? Soon, she hoped; the run Pearson had set was only moderately ambitious compared to what she recalled from London— The phone buzzed in her hand before she could close it and push it behind her lamp for the night. Drawing the small screen closer to her face, a smile danced across her lips.

of course. it was wonderful. A few seconds passed before it vibrated again. you were wonderful

In spite of the past few days, Cully flushed slightly. i'll call you tomorrow.

His answer came back immediately: when can we talk about it. i mean not on the phone

what do you mean

last night

we did then

thats not the same

Sliding her feet under the layers of her bedding, her back pressed to the wall, Cully rolled her eyes. As always, Gavin held on to arguments already in the past. Someday, she hoped, he would finally let it all go. Rubbing her hand over that mark on her arm, she even laughed for a second; yesterday evening, it had all faded away into the night, when she had become just a woman and he had transformed into just a man, nothing more. Well, no, was that quite right? Just? It was too late to worry about it, her mind beginning to play tricks on her.

She shook her head, touching her thumb to one of the numbers on the keypad to awaken the darkened screen. if you want. i'm not free until monday.

okay ill call you. Night

but i meant what i said then

Before she had the thought to type anything more, Cully pressed her finger against the toggle button on the side, bringing the volume down to silence, then pressing it once more to turn the vibration off as well. Snapping it shut, she set it behind her lamp as she always did. Sometimes, it all felt too much.

Straightening her legs and sliding them beneath the covers for a second, she clenched her eyes. Often, Gavin looked at her and only saw her, but everything else was rarely too far from his mind. Oh, he could forget it when he wished, but it never failed to surge back eventually. Last night was the closest she had ever seen him to letting it be entirely.

She expected him to back away—try to walk away as he ever did—but Cully did not care at the moment, her fingertips desperate loosen the buttons of his shirt as she had his tie, craving the warmth of his skin under her palm as she pulled away from his kiss. "Please. It's real, Gavin—this is real...It's not pretend. It never was."

His left hand found hers, tightening around it—and she drew a sharp breath as his other drifted to her back, holding her closer. But it was only a moment before the heat of his hand was pressed against her bare skin, following her spine, tracing her hips, palming her belly, almost drifting up. "Cully," he whispered, his hand now finding the top curve of her hip, "not here."

Shivering, Cully rubbed her hands over her arms, goosebumps rising beneath her palms. Stand up, she thought, swinging her feet to the ground as the bottom hem of her loose plaid pajama pants fell back to her ankles. The sooner she turned off the overhead light and set her alarm for the next morning, the sooner she could rest, and the ache for sleep weighed heavily on her shoulders. Her back cracked slightly as she stood and she let out another yawn. After setting her alarm to on, she walked across the carpet to her closed door, flipping the switch and plunging the room into darkness broken only by the street lights drifting through the curtains at the window.

Her knee hit the mattress before she expected and she scrambled beneath the layers of sheet and quilt, wondering if tomorrow night was time to bring out another blanket or a longer-sleeved shirt. But as she drew what she had to her chin, her arms folded against her torso, all Cully wanted was sleep, a night of rest that was blank, empty, and quiet, with no thoughts to intrude.

He spun in his velvet coat, the heavier embroidered hem twirling around his torso as though he was a whirling dervish. "What the devil have I done with my notebooks?" he asked, now turning to his desk in the library, searching through the pristine piles of papers, his pens clustered together in perfect lines, sorted by color and type.

A new and sudden rage burned in Cully's chest as she stood before him, clad in her simple plaid pajamas and white shirt, both already wrinkled. Her hair was rumpled, sleep-worn already; her face was bare before him, though his own face and hair were immaculate as always. Reaching for one of the books beside her, she threw it, aiming for his face with all the strength she had, then another. "There are your notebooks!" she shouted, launching another, larger volume, searching for the strength the premiere had sapped from her. It spun in the air as it left her fingers, the pages fluttering open as it soared toward his nose. "And there. Take your books, and may you never have a day's luck with them!"

He reached out his hands to her as he shook his head, flushing a bit beneath his fair skin. "What on earth?" And now he even tried to close his arms around her—

"Gavin, no!" She shoved him away from her, no never mind how soft his hands were, how gentle his touch. "Not now—"

"What's the matter?" Gavin asked. "Come here." He wrapped his hands around both of hers, refusing to let her slip away. "Anything wrong?"

Are you really asking…? A growl threatened to rise in her throat. "Nothing wrong—with you," Cully snapped.

But...something was wrong: his hands, always warm and soft, were newly cool, and they refused to yield to her own movements. As she dropped her gaze, Cully gasped, snatching her hands out of his: they were no longer merely pale, but grey, spattered with black and white, the color spreading along his arms. "Gavin?" she asked, even as she stepped away from him. "Are you all right? Gavin? Gavin!"

"The creature IS nervous, after all," he said, like he didn't feel the chill radiating from him as it consumed his shoulders, now inching its way into his torso, the feathery tendrils destroying his flesh as they advanced.

"Gavin, what's happening? What are you talking about?" She reached for his shoulder—and he almost caught her wrist with his speckled fingers before she snatched it back. But he was moving slower, like his joints and bones were stiffening, freezing solid.

"Ah! Would you?" The words came slower than before, the grey rising past his collar and tiny wisps at last twisting around his jaw. "Claws—in, you..."—he struggled for the next word—"...cat." The creeping color touched his mouth, his lips now ashen as he rasped and took in another breath, his arm still outstretched, hand open. "How..."

If she hadn't seen his skin—his hair—even his clothes—transform to that cold grey, Cully might have thought he had only coughed, for it was the same sound, like coarse air in his throat as even his eyes were overtaken by...god, what was happening? "Gavin!" she shouted—and he remained motionless, not even his chest rising as he breathed. "Gavin!"

Nothing.

With a deep breath, Cully took a step towards him, all the while ready to jump back should he snap at her again...yet he was completely still. Shivering, she reached out, just running a finger over his cheek: perfectly smooth and polished, but so very cold, his coat and hair stuck where they had been the moment it was all done. Running her hand along his arm, she swallowed. Everything was frozen and brittle, like he had been turned to stone, to marble.

Turned into a statue. "No..." she whispered, pressing her palm to his cheek, her own skin frigid. But she couldn't let go, she couldn't leave him to this! "Gavin—"

Cully convulsed, opening her eyes as her alarm clock refused to be ignored. The early morning sun peeked through her curtains just as the street lamps had the night before, already bright and promising a clear day. She slapped the switch on her clock, turning the alarm off as she yawned, rubbing her eyes. So much for a good night's sleep, she thought, throwing her blankets aside. It might have been better not to have slept at all.

* This is at least attributed to Mark Twain, who, though very humorous, is often given credit for things he didn't say.

A/N: I'm not sure my attempt to recreate T9 texting worked perfectly, as I didn't have too much experience with it (despite my age...I did everything possible to avoid a cell phone until the last minute).