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Braden got a faraway look in his eye.
Ryan leaned over and shoved him playfully. “Snap out of it, bro. Act like you’ve been interviewed before.”
“I haven’t been interviewed before.”
“Hence why I said act like it.” Ryan looked around. “Can you believe this guy? One interview and he turns into the cowardly lion.”
“You’ll do fine,” I said, patting Braden’s arm. “Just click your heels together if you get scared and you’ll magically return to Kansas.”
“A good pair of magic slippers would take you away from Kansas,” Ryan joked. “I want the magic slippers that transport me to Lily’s Diner, on 58th.”
“Why there?” Andy asked.
“Because I like their omelettes.”
“Magic slippers that can take you anywhere, and you choose a place that’s five minutes away by train?”
“Fuck you—they’re my magic slippers,” Ryan said.
Dorian came jogging down the stairs. His hair was down, and flowed behind him like a curtain. “What’s all the commotion?”
“A writer from the Times is going to be at rehearsal tonight,” Andy explained while stirring his coffee.
Dorian pulled his hair up into a bun. “Ahh, wonderful. I was just thinking to myself in the shower that we didn’t have enough pressure on our shoulders already.”
“Right?” I said.
He shared a smile with me. We hadn’t talked since yesterday, but the smile was a good sign. Maybe it wasn’t uncomfortable between us.
“There’s more we have not told you,” Andy said quietly.
Ryan began to ask what, then rolled his head across his shoulders. “Oh, right. Director Atkins doesn’t want to tell Tatiana about the sandbag trap or the note.”
“Seriously?” I asked.
“The cast, too,” Andy added. “He wants a tight lid on the information. He threatened to fire any of us if we spilled the beans.”
I sipped on my coffee. It had gone cold by now. I wasn’t sure how to feel about this. Tatiana had a right to know about the trap, and especially about the note since it was addressed to her specifically. It wasn’t fair to keep it from her. Or the rest of the cast, since the saboteur was endangering everyone.
But I also couldn’t blame Atkins for wanting it kept a secret. Like Braden and I had joked about, Tatiana would probably faint when she read the note or learned about the sandbag trap. It would do more harm than good, especially with the writer coming to rehearsal tonight.
“How does everyone feel about that?” I asked.
There was a chorus of shrugs and mumbled whatevers. “The less Tatiana knows, the better,” Dorian said definitively.
“You don’t think it’s manipulative to keep the information from her?” I asked. “If it were me, I would want to know.”
“You’re not Tatiana,” Braden pointed out.
“Atkins has taken steps to address the issue,” Andy said carefully. “Not only with cameras. He went around town buying extra locks for the exterior doors, including to the roof door the saboteur was trying to enter. He paid out of pocket for it.”
“Yeah, alright,” I admitted. I rose from the couch. “I guess it’s time I got off the couch and started my day too.”
I put my mug in the sink and went upstairs. Dorian caught up to me on the top floor.
“Hey, we doing temp work today?” he asked.
“I was planning on it, but now that I know there’s a journalist coming to rehearsal I think I’d better spend the day practicing. Hope that’s alright.”
