Page 4 of Potion Sickness

“Let’s stay calm,” I say. “It’s twelve hundred words for a regional glossy that mostly runs foliage maps.”

“It’s a byline,” Pru says. “You’ve been feral about not having one for months. Take the byline.”

Unfortunately, she’s right. It’s been months since the Tribune shut down my desk, and the freelance market for a political investigative reporter in a town of eleven hundred people is exactly what you’d think. I’ve been pitching anything I can, anywhere I can. This one I pitched half as a joke: former soap actor comes home to an audience of folding chairs, small town builds itself a theater from scratch, first show ever. The editor wrote back in six hours.

She wants the curse in it. Of course she wants the curse in it.

“It means I’ll be at rehearsals this week,” I say. “Tonight, probably. Interviewing people.”

“You’re coming tonight?” Englebert’s head comes up off his paws. “Tonight is the first run-through, Marigold. Full company, full sequence, no stopping. It is the crucible in which we learn what we have made.”

“I’ll sit in the back.”

“You will sit in the back and you will observe professional discipline, which I say for your protection, because Vivian has become extremely sensitive about interruptions since the incident with the fog machine.”

“Which incident with the fog machine?” Pru says. “There have been several.”

“Don’t worry,” I say. “I won’t intrude.”

“You’ll quote me, though, won’t you?”

“I’m not quoting a cat in a regional magazine.”

“You’ll attribute it to ‘a source close to the production.’”

“Every source in that building is close to the production. It’s forty people in a gym.”

“Then it will be very difficult to identify me,” he says, “and that is what makes it elegant.”

Gabe has his hand over his mouth, trying to stifle a laugh. Pru flips through her script, landing on the sleepwalking scene.

“One more time,” she says. “Before tonight. If anyone laughs, I’m quitting and Vivian can put the crown on Moonbeam.”

“Moonbeam auditioned,” Hannah says. “It didn’t go well.”

“Then you all know the stakes.”

Pru stands up. She’s in her work clothes, blazer and all, holding a script with her own handwriting crowded into the margins. She plants herself at the end of the table.

“Out–” she says, and stops. “Damned spot. Out, I say.”

Pru would hate that I’m saying this, but: Englebert is right. She gets four lines in, maybe five, and it’s hard to look away.

Englebert hops down from the director’s chair. “Marvelous,” he says. “Simply marvelous.”

Maude, who hasn’t moved from his position under the sill, is now sitting in a full square of morning sun. He begins to purr.

Hannah starts gathering plates. “Run-through’s at seven. Be there at six-thirty, if you want to catch people before Vivian starts her speech. She always gives a speech.”

“I’ll be there at six-thirty.”

Pru picks her keys off the table. “Mari?”

“Yes?”

“When you meet Damien,” she says. “Don’t tell him where I live.”

“This is Duskboro. He already knows where you live.”