"It's quiet now
And what it brings
Is everything
Comes calling back
A brilliant night
I'm still awake"

The night seemed surely too long. Okay, it wasn't longer than others and nothing ever lasted forever. This much Leo knew for certain, but he couldn't sleep at all. He walked around in his three-room apartment, puzzling and thinking throughout the darkness. One look at the watch; 4 am. Luckily it was the weekend he had taken off weeks before. He surely wouldn't have any motivation to go to work today. And then, this thing with Rosie. She would come over today, which was a problem to him indeed. How on earth should he explain to her what had happened? Why must he even refresh this old topic? Didn't he swear never to think about this again? What now?

Leo lay in his bed, still awake, and starred at the ceiling. He had been abandoning these thoughts long ago. The moment he stepped out of New York to be correct.

"I didn't come too far" he thought, but still his past never caught up with him. Until that night, three or four days ago, when suddenly they would broadcast all kind of interviews and excerpts from this new musical on TV. He suddenly remembered everything, though he longed to forget it so badly.

Images flashed before his eyes, as if they were really there and he just couldn't help it. A broken window; how the sunset reflected in the shattered pieces on the ground; the skyline of Manhattan from outside the city; himself standing outside in the rain, feeling terribly guilty and his first night in this flat, tossing in bed, tortured by nightmares.

Leo closed his eyes tightly. He put his hand on his face and tried to forget.

"This never happened" he kept telling himself.

All because of this damn new play which would open soon. "Think Twice" it was called. Leo didn't even know what it was about and also he didn't care. All he knew was, it caused all this.

"Maybe it wasn't too wise not to move a little further away" he thought.

"Kiss today goodbye,
The sweetness and the sorrow.
Wish me luck, the same to you.
But I can't regret
What I did for love, what I did for love.
Look my eyes are dry.
The gift was ours to borrow.
It's as if we always knew,
And I won't forget what I did for love,
What I did for love."

A knock on the door. Leo woke up all of a sudden and couldn't remember why anyone would knock in the middle of the night…especially not on his door. He turned his head and looked at the time.

12:35 pm.

Heaven's! Did he sleep that long? Usually, he would wake at eight or nine in the morning. But this was unusual. He couldn't even remember falling asleep the last night.

The bell rang.

He jumped out of the bed, took his dressing gown and moved to the door. A look through the spy cleared everything: Rosie!

"Of course, she wanted to come here today" Leo bit his lips. How could he forget this?

He opened the door just to find a disconcerted Rosie staring at him.

"What did happen to you? You look awful" she said with her usual smile on her face. "Didn't you sleep the night?"

Leo shook his head. "Very little."

He made a little movement with his hand, leading her inside and she entered the flat smiling. After Rosie had settled down in the living room, Leo went to the kitchen.

"Coffee?" she heard him from out of there.

"Yes, thank you."

Rosie looked around. The living room wasn't as big as she had imagined. Only a couch, a small brown wooden table with some newspapers on it and a rather small window, giving a look on yet another house with a little glance on a dirty backyard.

She took one of the newspapers. Nothing. She'd hoped to see some hint on Leo's story; a little article or some memories he kept there, just to prove his story was true, but this were just papers of the last month.

"I brought you an article, you might find interesting" she yelled over to Leo.

He appeared in the door of the living-room, carrying two cups. After putting them on the table, he sat down next to Rosie.

"An article?" he asked quietly. He looked horrible indeed. Pale and unshaven and tired. Rosie could feel his tiredness somehow.

"Yeah, here" she handed him the magazine. Leo took it with one hand and just stared at the cover for a second, but putting it on the table as soon as he'd read the first lines.

"I don't wanna read this" he said.

'Max Bialystock speaks about his new musical'

"You should" Rosie said, but there was no way. Leo simply shook his head and took a little swallow of coffee.

"Erm..." she didn't really know how to begin this. "You said you know this guy?"

"Knew" Leo answered dryly. "I worked for him, as I told you yesterday."

Rosie waited some time before asking more. She thought that maybe Leo would start again, but there was no way he answered anything, except she'd asked him. What did he want to hide so badly?

"Worked? As what?"

"His accountant" Leo said.

"Accountant?"

"Yeah, I was an accountant" Now he smiled slightly, as if he'd remembered some better times.

"How did that made you work for this man?" She asked again.

"I did his books once and then…" Leo stopped, putting his hand on his head as if he had a headache and wanted it to stop.

"What then?" Rosie just didn't give up. She stared at him with all the attention she could offer. Leo turned his face in her direction and watched her for a moment from under his hand. Then he smiled again.

"You really wanna know this, don't you?"

Rosie nodded. She was eager to find out about Leo's past and his weird behavior, every time this Max Bialystock came to speech. And she knew she was close. He'd never let her come this far and she certainly wouldn't give up now.

Leo sighed and stroked through his brown hair. Then he grabbed his coffee and took another swallow.

"He begged me to help him with a ridiculous plan he once had and so I did" he answered. "And with that he became famous and I was sort of his partner from this moment on."

Rosie still gave a puzzled look. "Wait a minute" she said after a short while. "Wait. Wait. You mean…'Bialystock and Bloom'…that was you?"

Leo nodded. The girl next to him started to move on the couch. He could feel her excitement, even though he wasn't looking at her.

"Why on earth did you give that up?" she finally asked. "I mean, you must've had everything. And you gave that up, money, women, and a life to…to live here?" She pointed at the room.

Sure, this apartment was small and not really the kind of place someone wanted to stay above any other places, but Leo was glad he had a little world to himself now; especially after his memories came haunting him day after day for a while now.

"There's more in life than just being famous and having enough money to buy whatever you wish for."

"But if you can have anything…I…I simply can't imagine there is something you could've missed" Rosie replied.

"Believe me, there is" Leo said, suddenly turning his head towards her and looking straight into her eyes.

This sudden movement caused a slightly surprised jump from Rosie. She didn't dare to say anything for a couple of minutes and the silence that occurred was scary, nigh embarrassing.

"I looked ahead

I'm sure I saw you there

You don't need me to tell you now

That nothing can compare"

"Well" she said with a coarse voice after what seemed to be hours. "What exactly did you miss?"

Leo sighed again and stood up. He moved slowly toward the small window in the room. Staring into space, he answered softly: "To make you understand this, I'm afraid I'll have to tell you the whole story from the beginning."

Rosie nodded and even though Leo had his back turned on her, he knew she wanted to hear exactly that.

He took a deep breath and sat down again.

"Well, where to begin?" he muttered. Then he leaned back in a more relaxed position and started.

It was over three years ago. I worked with Max several years now and we were successful. Very successful. No show we laid our hands on, didn't turn out to be a hit. At that time, I personally thought it couldn't get any better. I remember we had this new thing planned. Something about a musical comedy version about some guy Max worked for years ago. I can't remember his name though, but it was interesting. Somehow new and a different direction than those we usually took. Not a satire or something like that, no it was a mixture between a drama and a comedy. We hadn't done anything like this before and so tried this. It was interesting.

To be more precise, we started rehearsals that day and everything went well. Max sat in the theatre, watching all this. With his hands on the table and a cup of black coffee in front of him, he lazily watched the first usually pathetic attempts to play single scenes of the show without looking at the script every two minutes. He'd always found this funny in some odd way. He couldn't even say why; I guess it was a little spark of Schadenfreude that lived inside of him. He would hold back in most situations for it kind of was inappropriate for a Producer to laugh about mistakes his actors did on stage, but I've heard him laughing about it more than once. Often, we would stand outside during the breaks and his eyes were filled with tears due to him laughing that much.

That morning wasn't different though. Roger DeBris, our director stood next to the actors on stage, shouting all kind of thing to them. He did his swishy hand movements all the time and acted like it was one day before Opening-night. But he always got hysterical and nervous when rehearsals started. Headaches and bad mood was the daily schedule back then.

I stood in a corner a little behind Max. I had walked around the whole morning to get some lists checked and the last contracts signed and slipped into the theatre quietly when I had finished. No one noticed me and those moments were precious. Never could I be more able to watch all of my team-mates in their reaction this privately. It amused me every time anew.

"Hey" I said and sat down next to Max. "How's it going?"

"Not too good, to be honest" he answered. He bend over to me and whispered: "Roger's in a very strange mood today, so don't say anything. He thinks the actors are more qualified to clean pig-pens than acting in a 'first class musical', as he puts it." The smile on his face couldn't be more precise.

"He's overacting again?"

"Of course" he giggled. "Did you expect anything else?"

"No, not really" I had to laugh too. We turned our heads to the stage again and continued watching all this. Roger screamed several times at someone or impended to leave this whole show, if they weren't going to give all this a little more effort; but no one actually listened to that any more, for he did this all the time.

Finally, he proclaimed a break, which was about time, since the actors lost interest and effort to do anything, being screamed at the whole time.

Roger and his assistant Carmen came to our table as soon as the last actor vanished outside.

"Unbelievable" he still was talking to Carmen, then turning to us. "Did you believe this? How on earth am I going to direct this to something proper, when you give me those amateurs to work with?"

Max folded some papers and put them away, not looking at Roger.

"Those are the best working on Broadway these days" he simply said.

Roger took a deep breath. "You must be kidding. I cannot…how would Mr Bloom here say it?...'function under these conditions. And I seriously..:"

"Hey" I interrupted him. "No need to impersonate me. By the way, I also think they're doing just fine. After all it's the first day, Roger."

"I…"he didn't seem to know what to say. To put it in one word he was disgusted. Sure thing, he would have gone on like this forever, if Carmen didn't step in now.

"Okay, Rog. I think you've made your opinion quite clear" he said in his casual tone, patted him on the shoulders and smiled as though Roger was in the best mood of all times.

"Alright, Darling. Maybe I'm just a little stressed lately" Roger answered, putting his hand on Carmen's. It was amazing. Only Carmen could do something like that. Even when Roger was too angry or totally depressed somehow, this younger man always found a way to make him smile again. I can't explain what he did, but it was wicked to watch this every time.

Max shook his head in disbelief and cast me a look that said 'How the hell did he do that?' and I simply shrugged.

"Why do you shrug?" Carmen asked. It was then I noticed he was watching me.

"Oh, I-I don't know exactly" I said, trying to change the topic. "I guess I kinda stretched my shoulders tonight and was trying to fix this."

What a lie. He'd never believe this.

"You should try Aerobics, it helps" Carmen answered with his normal smile on his face again.

He did buy it…unbelievable.

"Erm, yeah. Sure will" I answered. I could feel Max nearly exploding in laughter next to me, but he didn't dare to laugh aloud.

"Leo, what do you say we go outside for a moment? All this bad air in here causes headaches" he said, packing his stuff and hurrying to the door.

"Er" I was a little taken aback. "Okay."

I stood up and followed him.

"Sorry, guys. See ya then" I yelled to Carmen and Roger who waved their arms and grinned.

When I opened the stage-door I could feel the cold autumn air breezing in my face.

"It's getting cold" I said, closing the door. Max stood, lend on a wall and grinned. I joined him there.
"What is it?" I asked. He usually didn't grin without saying anything.

"Explain this to me" he started.

"Explain what?"

"What Carmen did with him. I mean we can talk to him as quietly as possible to calm him down, it doesn't work. And he simply puts his God-damn hand on his shoulder and everything's just fine. I don't get it" he laughed.

"I don't know, either" I smiled. "It must be a thing between them, but who can say?"

"A thing between them?" Max giggled even more. "Weird thought considering you talk about a gay couple."

"Why? They're not different than you and me" he said.

Max looked at me a bit awkward.

"Well, okay. Maybe a little" I grinned. "After all… Those crazy movements, the speech and all... Okay, maybe a little much."

"I wouldn't even go so far as to compare us with a couple like that" he said. I must've looked a bit odd, since he changed that sentence immediately. "I mean, first of all we're not a couple."

I nodded. "Then, we're not gay." I laughed again, but somehow he didn't.

"Yeah" he said. "You know, we should go inside again. Roger will get depressions when not everyone's on stage in time."

Then, he vanished through the door again, which fell close a moment later. I stood there for a moment.

'What was that?' I thought a little confused.

~To be continued~