Chapter 14
The next evening Mark and I walk into the auditorium at six-thirty to find almost everyone already there. We make no pretense of hiding the fact that we are together, and it must be quite obvious to most people that we have been together all last night. I see Bill give me a mean look and I know that he at least knows, and his paranoia certainly blossoms forth quickly. He stares hatred at me for several minutes before turning completely away. I know he thinks I'm in competition with him for the star position in the play, but I couldn't really care less at this point. I have Lilly under control and I really don't want to compete with anyone; what Mark thinks after seeing the performance is his own business.
Mark goes up to the front and stands up on the stage to give us a last-minute talk.
"You've all worked hard and I think you're all ready. Just play it like last night, like another rehearsal, and it'll go fine."
He continues and with that very special ability he has to relax and instill confidence in people he soon has everyone feeling much more certain that all will go well. I can almost feel everyone let their tension out and ease back into their chairs, and I remember last night and how at ease I felt in his arms. I stare lovingly at him and feel his energy flowing my way as he keeps looking at me as he talks. I look over at Bill and see that, despite his paranoia, he too seems to respond to Mark, although I can tell he is still furious and distrustful of me.
"Well," he says to end the talk, "I'm going to walk outside for a quick drink and come back and go to the theater just like anyone else. I trust I'll see a good show. Bon voyage et bon chance."
We quickly set into motion and for the next hour the place is like a beehive with everyone in frantic haste to get ready. Costumes and makeup are donned, lights are tested, sound systems are checked, scripts undergo a last-minute study, and almost unbelievably the curtain rises at precisely eight-fifteen just like it is scheduled. All that hour during which we are bustling about we keep getting reports from the ushers as to how many people have turned up in the audience, and the last report is a full house which sends us all into a weird kind of mental excitement, almost a controlled hysteria. The Theatre Workshop, which is the name of the playhouse connected with the school, has a high reputation around New York for good avant garde and original productions, much of it based upon and due to Mark Langstrom's own reputation; it consistently draws good crowds of a knowledgeable and intelligent variety and its plays almost always get thoroughly reviewed.
When the curtain rises and I take my first look out at the audience it seems that everyone in New York must have somehow crowded into the auditorium.
The pace of the play picks up quickly until we are going noticeably faster than during last night's dress rehearsal. I seem to barely finish a delivery when the next lines are hurled back at me and I hear myself responding. There is a palpable tension in the air on stage and I can feel the audience being swept along. The crowd out there has become one unit and that unit has become incorporated into the play as certainly as if it were a part written into the script. After about seven minutes the action swings away from me for a moment and I get a chance to catch my wits and have a quick look at the whole thing objectively. Bill is carrying the action now, standing at front stage center and I can feel the audience with him. I've never seen him so lost from himself; I have a difficult time remembering that he really is Bill. Then the action shifts back to me and all objectivity is lost as I become Lilly.
By the middle of the play a firm pace has been established and a rhythm set up among all of us on stage that carries us from line to line effortlessly as though we are floating through the performance under the direction of a conductor. I can feel the audience zero in on my breasts and hips as I flaunt them, and my voice acquires a rasp that I didn't think I was capable of producing. I am supposed to be getting drunk as the play progresses and more and more I recognize Lupe in my movements. Bill is pressing me hard now and he's in such fine form that I suddenly realize he's been purposely holding back at rehearsals and not showing me how deeply he really has gotten into his character. He comes up with new movements and expressions at every turn and I have to let myself go as I never have before to stay with him. It's a cruel trick to have played on me and I know I'll hate him for it after the play when I have a second free to hate, but now all I can do is watch and try to guess what he's going to do next. He's playing for keeps and he's good at it.
By the time the sex scene comes I'm exhausted yet I still have super nervous energy. My muscles quiver and my voice is grating with emotion. My legs feel weak as I crawl onto the bed and I can sense the power and viciousness of Bill so close to me. Stripping is like peeling my skin off. I feel the lights burning into my flesh and feel the thousand eyes of the audience penetrating into my crotch, yet I stand up under it all and hardly cringe as I feel Bill's hand suddenly push from behind me into my naked crotch. This is the moment I've been preparing myself for for the past weeks, the moment that will tell whether I've grown as a person or not. All my fear of sex has been culminated in this one scene and Bill is going to try to make it hard for me somehow. I tense at his touch, waiting for a sign as to what he's going to do, knowing that I have to make myself vulnerable to him and not show my fear. I wish I had really crammed a tampon up my cunt like I thought of doing, but it seemed silly to me and I didn't do it. Bill is working my crotch over good now and I can feel that he has an erection already. The moment when I have to make myself vulnerable is coming and I tense as his fingers slip into my cunt. I want to lurch away, to scream at him to get his filthy fingers out of my pussy, but I can't. Then the moment comes. I bend forward and lift my crotch to him and I feel his fingers tighten in my cunt. Then with a brutal jab I feel his cock jab up into my asshole and I scream a real scream of agony as the pain jolts through my body. Tears fill my eyes and I swear to myself amid my trembling panic. Bill has really done what he was supposed to simulate. He has entered my ass and is pounding away under the eyes of hundreds of people who think it's all an act. The pain is almost unbearable and I feel my eyes close and my teeth grit and my legs weaken. The filthy bastard! The filthy fucking bastard!
On he pounds until I feel him come and loosen his cock from my burning hole, all in a matter of a few seconds which seem like an eternity to me. I have to stand then, wobbling, infuriated, and I do stand and wobble only it isn't an act for me—it's real and ugly and I hate him like I've never hated anyone before. How I manage to end the play I don't know. I use Lilly's words and actions but it's my own personal emotions that go into the rest of the play, and when it's over and amid a thunder of applause I have to go through two long curtain calls, I don't know whether I'll make it without fainting. Then it's over and the curtain drops for the last time and I push my way through the chaotic joy of the people backstage and out the wing and into the deserted hall of the school. I'm crying now and my legs are shaking as I run to the women's room at the far end and slam the door shut.
Inside it is dark and quiet. I feel for a toilet and sit down heavily on it and let myself sob with anger and pain. My asshole feels like it has been ripped open with a razor. Carefully I reach back and feel the liquid dripping out, not knowing if it's blood or sperm or both and not being able to see in the dark. After a while I stop crying and go to a sink where I wet a wad of toilet paper with warm water and swab at my rectum while tears still run down my face.
I have no idea how long I've been in the bathroom when I finally walk out into the hall and make my way down the silent corridor. As I approach the stage door I hear the noise like a waterfall of voices and I know that the party has begun.
I slip through the door and find myself in the midst of that special kind of insanity that can only be found at cast parties after an opening performance. Everyone is crowded onto the stage and the set is serving admirably as a real bar, only a bar with the weirdest lighting imaginable as someone has turned on several rows of colored stage lights and blues, reds, greens, purples, and yellows are streaming down on everyone like a burst rainbow. Bottles of wine and champagne are everywhere and people are tottering around already drunk. The tension of the performance was too great to contain for long, and now it is all being released in an orgy of liquor and whatever else may happen. I look instinctively for Mark but trying to find anyone in particular amidst that chaos is like trying to find the proverbial needle in the haystack. I slip around the edges trying to remain as inconspicuous as possible, but I only get a few feet before I'm grabbed and spun around to face Sandra and Tony.
"Jenny, you were great, fantastic! I've been looking all over for you to tell you!"
"Magnificent!" Tony chimes in, echoing Sandra's sentiments. "When you screamed I thought I was going to scream with you. And that last scene was just too realistic."
Both of them are half-crocked on champagne and they keep their tight grasp on me. I try slipping away from them but they won't let go. Then others come up and soon I'm surrounded by drunken admirers, all with wonderful things to say and all pushing me to my limits. I feel suffocated, trapped. I push and shove at them and finally break loose and move quickly away hearing them asking each other, "What's wrong with her, anyway?" I'm careful to avoid people now, staying close to the curtain, fading in and out of the folds. I want to find Mark and get him to take me away from here, get me out of this unreal world full of phony actors, insensitive and even sadistic. "Just too realistic." Tony's words flash over and over in my mind and I want to tell them just how realistic that scene really was and watch their faces drop, all of them. And I'd like to see them all staring at Bill and trying to figure out an appropriate reaction, a right reaction. I'd bet most of the mindless idiots would look at Mark Langstrom for direction, for some cue as to how to react. "Magnificent, just too realistic!" they would probably say.
As I slip along the curtain I see two figures standing in front of me on the edge of the crazy party and I instantly recognize the one facing me as Mark. His lithe body and chiseled face are unmistakable even in this weird lighting. I let a small cry escape from my lips as I leap toward him. He turns just as I reach him and before he can do anything or say anything I bury myself against him, pushing my head into his chest. I feel his arms circle me and pull me into him and despite all my efforts not to I burst into fresh tears and lean tight against him sobbing. He holds me and comforts me until I regain my composure. Then I look up into his face and all I can think is it's over, finally over.
His eyes are a mixture of concern and perplexity.
"You were great," he says softly, looking me in the eyes, and he looks so deep that I'm afraid he'll see what's hiding there. And I don't want him to see what really happened on that stage.
I push back slightly and wipe my eyes, hiding from his gaze until I can push back all the ugliness. Then I turn around and stare right into the eyes of Bill! It was Bill Mark had been talking with when I ran up. I stare at him and feel myself tremble all over again. If I didn't have Mark to hold onto I don't know what I might do. I cling with all my strength to his arms. All I can see in Bill's eyes is a carefully masked conspiratorial look, furtive, secretive, impossible to pin down yet there just the same, and my hatred for him seethes. I let him see it with all the masked contempt I can muster. I think of screaming the truth out right there, of throwing a fit of disgust and hatred for all to see, yet as soon as I think it I know I won't do it, just like I didn't cram a tampon up my cunt, though even that wouldn't have helped.
Finally I see Bill begin to squirm under my stare; perhaps he senses what possibilities are going through my mind and is afraid I might just be crazy enough to explode with the truth. He fumbles for a cigarette and lights it clumsily then looks at me nervously. I clamp my hand on Mark and watch him.
"You won, Jenny, with the last scene," he says, and he looks suddenly defeated, like a small boy who's lost something dear to him.
"You gave me the last scene," I say with an ice in my voice that I couldn't have mustered even for Lilly. "Thanks for nothing!"
Then I turn abruptly to Mark and whisper up into his ear, and he nods his head and without a word leads me out of there, out of the building into the dark streets of Manhattan, and I feel the soft night air clear my mind and I walk very close to Mark down the sidewalk suddenly knowing that I did win, somehow, without even competing, far more than Bill will ever know.