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So he shows up after all. Maybe Braden was a bigger drama queen than Tatiana ever was. I smiled to myself and decided to make sure I said so when I saw him after the show.
And then the orchestra struck its opening chord, and The Proposition was officially on its way.
I knew the show by heart, so it was fun watching everyone come out in a predictable way. Like nobody in the theater knew the future except me. First the dancers emerged, and then Dorian came singing out onto stage. I fist-pumped in my seat as he absolutely crushed his opening verse. He was easy to overlook with Braden out there, but Dorian was extremely talented in his own right. If this show went well, he’d have a shot of auditioning for some lead roles next.
And then there was Braden. I hadn’t seen him in a week, but he looked good in wardrobe. His voice was smooth and strong as he sang his notes as the friendly neighbor next-door who would soon be wooing the lead.
He sang and moved around the stage, eventually ending up on the left wing, mirroring Dorian on the right. The backup dancers all arranged themselves in the center, in a V-formation with an opening in the middle by the curtain. They extended their arms toward where Nadia would appear, and the music rose to an especially piercing note…
And nothing happened.
One heartbeat passed. Then a second. Nadia didn’t appear on cue. The music was already ahead of where she should be singing, and she hadn’t even come out on stage yet!
Something’s wrong. My mind raced by the third heartbeat, and I was ready to toss my flowers aside and race downstairs and backstage to see where she was, because none of this mattered at all if she was hurt or in danger…
By the fourth heartbeat the curtains parted and there she was, the lead of the show.
She quickly recovered by skipping a verse of the song, quickening her pace to catch up to where she should have been on her track. It was obvious to me, but most of the audience didn’t seem to notice.
“What a beautiful day!” she sung at the top of her lungs, “A day for sunshine and dancing and play…”
Aside from being late for her cue, she was crushing it now. Striding around stage confidently and hitting all her notes like it was the last show of the season rather than the first.
The song ended, and Nadia and the others were greeted with huge applause from the audience. I stuck the flowers between my legs so I could clap as loud as anyone.
Yet I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was going terribly wrong.
56
Nadia
I finished the first song strong, expelling all the air from my lungs in the final note as the orchestra cut off sharply. The applause from the audience crashed over me, louder than anything I’d ever heard. With the spotlights on me I could only see darkness in the audience, but their sound was enough.
In other circumstances, I would have been elated. But now all I felt was fear.
My chest heaved as I caught my breath and waited for the musical cue. The orchestra was pausing for the applause to dim first, something that we didn’t practice in rehearsal, but was a welcome few seconds of break. Then they played a lighthearted melody of woodwind instruments, which was the cue for the backup dancers and Braden to leave the stage and for Dorian and I to begin our next scene.
There wasn’t much to it. I was arriving home from work so I could make dinner for my husband, who had been out all day at music auditions. Lighthearted dialogue between husband and wife that set up the premise of the show, ending with him snapping at me over an innocent question about how the auditions went, which would foreshadow their later issues.
By now, I’d practiced this scene enough times with Dorian at home to know that he could tell something was wrong with me. More than just my late arrival in the first song. But there was nothing either of us could do about it while being watched by a few thousand patrons, so we performed the scene and pretended nothing was wrong.
After that I had a solo song where Jane lamented the strain on her marriage, and how Marshall chasing his dream of becoming a country music star was adding a tremendous amount of emotional and financial stress on their life. It was an upbeat song from a character who was trying to stay positive while the cracks began to form.
And I absolutely crushed it.
When I was done, the applause crashed over me like rain washing away grime from a Manhattan street. The rush of adrenaline and joy I felt was better than any drug.
I’m doing it. It’s all paying off.
The next song was a solo from Braden, so as soon as the applause ended and the spotlight winked out I exited at center stage. Backstage, Atkins was standing with Carmina, a clipboard in his hand and nodding along as Braden spoke his lines in the next scene.
I rushed up to them. “Director. I need to talk to you…”
“Forget about it,” he said absently, eyes on the curtain. “You had a moment of stage fright, but holy shit you recovered perfectly. Nobody out there noticed, and your next song was fantastic.”
I pulled the note out of my pocket and shoved it at his chest. He accepted it, held it out, and read it silently. I read it over his shoulder:
You are an inadequate replacement for Tatiana, and if you perform in the show tonight you will suffer the same fate as she.
