Page 82 of Potion Sickness

“No incidents yet,” she reports, when I stop at the table.

“The night is young.”

“I know,” Emma says. She takes two dollars from a man buying a brownie slice and carefully counts his change.

Rupert Buchanan is just inside the doors, holding a program.

“You drove eight hours?” I say.

“Seven and a half,” he says. “And of course I did. Bert practically insisted on buying me a ticket.”

“Lucky,” I say. “I hear they’re a hot commodity.”

Backstage, Dana is running the deck. “Goblets are set. Cody, cue sheet. Ms. Pelham, that’s not your entrance, come away from the curtain.”

At the props table, Lily is on standby. She’s been given an official title — Blood Assistant — and it has gone directly to her head. Dana allowed her to practice at the last dress rehearsal, where she stood at Hannah’s elbow with a paintbrush and a cup of corn syrup blood and applied gore to Jackie’s hairline with intense precision. Hannah had told her to ration more carefully. Lily’s rebuttal was that, quote, “he got stabbed a lot.”

“Remember, Lily. Don’t touch anything until it’s time,” Dana says, passing behind us without stopping.

“Blood Assistant is a supervised position,” Hannah says. “Heavily supervised.”

Tiffany is in the stage-left wing, in her full Third Witch costume. She’s turning the cape’s clasp over and over in her hands. Tonight, she once again has two jobs, and once again, the audience will only know about the smaller one.

Englebert crosses the wing to her.

“Mrs. Reagan,” he says.

“Maestro.”

“I have no notes for you. Your role tonight has no rehearsal process, no understudy, and will receive no applause.” He sits and looks up at her. “Every production rests on people the house never sees. Tonight I have the privilege of being carried by one of them. Whatever happens on that stage, the finest performance in this building will be yours.”

“Stop,” Tiffany says. “You’re going to make me cry off my witch eyeliner.”

“That would be unprofessional.”

“Then quit talking and get in the cape.”

* * *

I find Pru in the storage-room-turned-dressing-room with her script open on her knees, in full costume, reading the sleepwalking scene one last time.

“You know it,” I say.

“I know I know it.” She doesn’t look up.

The crown sits on the costume trunk beside her on its stand, the band catching the light off the makeup mirror. Pru has done her own eyes tonight, dark and severe, and between the green gown and the pinned hair she looks like a medieval portrait.

“I have a message to deliver,” I say. “Two, actually. First one’s from Vivian. Ten minutes to places.”

“And the second?”

“The second is from your mother, technically.” I sit down. “Don’t worry about the play.’”

There’s a knock, and Emma’s head comes around the curtain.

“Pre-show report,” she says. “No incidents. Nobody’s said the name. I checked the decaf personally.” She produces from behind her clipboard a piece of paper folded into careful quarters. “Also Lily made you something and she said I had to deliver it before you got famous.”

Pru unfolds it. It’s a drawing in marker of a tall figure in a green triangle of a dress, yellow circle on her head, standing on a brown rectangle of a stage. Around the stage there are dozens of small pink blobs, which I take to be the audience. Every blob has its arms up. Lily has labeled it in enormous, tilting letters: ‘GOOD JOB, QUEEN.’