Seymour sat at a table in the basement of the shop, trying and failing to drown out the clamor of the wave of customers not far above his head. Would that old, beaten up floor even be able to withstand seemingly more customers than the shop had seen the entire year? …How long would Mr. Mushnik be pissed at him for needing to essentially quit his job, the only reason he had taken him in in the first place, in order to both get his homework and studying done and get enough sleep? Judging from the fact that he was still mad at him for forgetting to deliver a funeral arrangement to Mrs. Shiva for her… fourth? fifth? husband years ago, it was gonna be a while… maybe even stretching out into that period of time after high school that he mostly conceptualized of as a gray mist that would never actually arrive. The end of time, almost, if he even made it that far… Once again, the gray mist was punctuated by his newfound delusional fantasy of going with Audrey to college.
It was slightly less delusional now that it had been when he had first thought of it soon after she had told him she was trying to get to college; the shop was making money hand over fist now, and it wasn't completely out of the question that he could sell the idea of him going to college and getting a degree as a money making opportunity worth investing in to Mr. Mushnik. But, like Mr. Mushnik would inevitably point out if he did raise that possibility with him, he would never be smart enough for college, and he would never be enough for Audrey. She deserved a prince… or, as Tevye would say, a learned man… Seymour looked over the essay he was writing on manifest destiny, anxiously deciding after a long moment that he had caught up on his work enough in the days following his embarrassing sleep-deprived crash to finally look over the script for Fiddler on the Roof. After all, the second Tuesday rehearsal was tomorrow, and he refused to let Orin have the better insights into his character again. He had some familiarity with the story already; it had always been one of Mr. Mushnik's favorites due to its exploration of Jewish culture and the kind of stagnant uncertainty that plagued their own lives, which was why he had allowed himself to be roped into directing the spring musical this time, he had said.
Seymour started reading his copy of the script, initially distracted by the cacophony of the storefront and of his mind as well as the places where the printer had smudged the ink but quickly forgetting all of that… mostly forgetting all of that… as he was drawn into its characters and world. Motel was annoying to no end, way too similar to him in all the wrong ways but still somehow ending up with Tzeitel in place of the more accomplished man who had already had a claim to her anyway… even before Seymour had found himself between the rock and hard place of Orin's virility and money he had known that that wasn't how that worked in the real world… but Tevye… Tevye, on the other hand, was the opposite. He was so cool, with how he brought the audience into the world of the story and looked out for his daughters and fought to maintain his solid sense of place and morality in the world even as it shifted around him. Seymour wished he had a community like that, a father who wanted the best for him, a sense of place in the world to defend against challenges and use to defend himself against them rather than just getting swept up in them like he did now… the capability of being a proper provider and protector to those he cared about… Audrey… like that… …Did he want to be Tevye, or did he want Tevye to be his dad?
…Maybe not that last thing, he definitely wouldn't approve of Audrey not being Jewish… although being with her in the first place was a delusional fantasy that would never happen, and he technically wasn't Jewish either, with it passing down matrilineally and Mr. Mushnik not even really being his father in the first place. He would take being anyone besides himself, really, besides Motel… although that would be a fairly lateral move… but Tevye specifically, his confidence, his likeability, his competence, his everything was particularly enviable. Even though Seymour already knew the ending, it hit him like a truck; if not having a place in the world was this bad, he couldn't even imagine how bad it felt to lose one after having gained it. Although he would have to imagine it to get ready for possibly having to perform as him… he actually kind of wanted to now, despite his stage fright, although of course Orin's hold on him like his hold on Audrey was unjust and unyielding… Seymour hesitantly, absentmindedly started singing If I Were a Rich Man quietly to himself, trying to get a feel for how he would do his voice but mostly just copying how Chaim Topol had done it, definitely not nearly as successfully, and immediately stopped at the all to familiar sound of Mr. Mushnik warningly banging the handle of the shop's broom against the floor.