Take a Lemon

The next morning, I got to the Organic Chemistry lecture a bit early, and did not see Geoff in the row ahead of me. A minute or so later, however, he sat down next to me.

“Good morning, Marsha!” he said.

“Oh, hi… Geoff,” I responded, being sure to hesitate over his name.

“You remembered my name! That’s always a good sign, right?”

“Of what?”

“It means that we’re going to be good friends, right?”

“Oh… OK” Well, I’d chosen to room with him, so being good friends should be possible, as long as he avoided making a pass at me. And given his clear interest in Lee Ann, that seemed likely.

“So… do you think you could give me Lee Ann’s phone number?”

I managed to keep from laughing. Geoff was anything but subtle. “I’m not sure she would appreciate me doing that, Geoff. But if you want, I can give her yours.” Or he could try to ‘friend’ her on Facebook, I thought, but she hadn’t accepted my request when I was Marshall, so it probably wouldn’t help.

He was almost comically eager to give me his number, which I prepared to write in the back of my Orgo notebook – but the number itself wasn’t the same one that I remembered. It was the first thing I had noticed that was different in this timeline than the original one that wasn’t obviously the result of my own transformation, and I must have reacted visibly, because he noticed.

“You’re surprised by my phone number?”

“Oh… no… I just…”

“You seem to get surprised a lot, don’t you Marsha?” he laughed. “I’ll bet it keeps life from becoming boring.”

Well, ‘boring’ is certainly not the word I would have chosen for my life these days, that’s for sure.

“I’m just…” I started, not really knowing how I was going to explain my reaction; fortunately Professor Jones started his lecture then, so I didn’t have to. Instead the two of us took notes on the Grignard reaction, our four-color pens clicking adding to the percussion chorus typical to this class. By the time the lecture was over, Geoff had either forgotten my reaction or didn’t think it worth bringing up, and I was able to get away.

When I gave Lee Ann his number at lunch, she thanked me and punched it in to her phone to save. I really wanted to ask her what she was planning on doing, but couldn’t think of a way to go about it that wouldn’t sound totally out of character. Too late, I thought of possibly ‘forgetting’ to give it to her, or trying to talk Geoff out of trying to make anything of a relationship with her.

But the Lee Ann and Geoff thing was just a distraction. My primary focus for the day was preparing for our first “character” rehearsal that evening. I wasn’t too worried about the straight characterization; that was something that I would develop over time. The physical contact parts would have to wait until I had really found the character. What worried me, though, was making a fool of myself in the hysterical bits. I wouldn’t have minded so much if I knew the cast as well as Marsha did, but while I was coming to like them, they were still relatively strangers to me.

I had to get comfortable with those parts, then, on my own first. Mr. Condrin had told us that many actors are afraid of overacting, and consequently tend to underact. But it’s much easier for a director to tone down overacting than to bring up underacting, so he had wanted us to err on the side of “too much” rather than “not enough.” What I needed to do now was to read the problem sections as over-the-top as I could – and that was going to mean a lot of very loud screaming.

Obviously, I didn’t want to do that in my room; it would no doubt bother not only my roommates, but also the girls in the adjacent rooms. Sometimes when I was practicing scenes last year, I used to go behind the engineering buildings – most engineering students pretty much kept to themselves, and I figured that they would ignore somebody walking around talking to himself. That probably wasn’t going to work for me now; a girl screaming would have attracted a lot of attention, even from engineers.

What I really needed was access to one of the music department’s rehearsal rooms. As Marshall, I had been able to make a case for using one for my guitar playing. Marsha didn’t play an instrument, so it might be harder. I’d have to see if I could talk the powers-that-be into permitting it for my acting. Possibly Alvin could help me? I’d have to ask him tonight.

In the meantime, I had plenty of studying to do, as well as some thinking about conversations with Marsha’s roommates. I’d said that I wanted to portray her properly; according to Tina, that meant a lot more talking about things that had never occurred to me to talk about. I decided that I would try to just sit with them more when they were together in our living room; maybe I’d get a better idea of what to talk about that way.

At that evening’s rehearsal, we started by running the first scene a couple of times. Jared pantomimed the kiss, moving his head towards me and stopping about an inch away, lips pulled back, and made a kissing sound. I sort of bobbed my head with my lips closed in response. At least it didn’t draw a comment. Then we did the same thing for the second scene, which ends with that memorable climax. Jo said her final line, “Why did you turn out the light?” Then Alvin announced that the radio was now at full volume, and I came on from stage right to turn the light back on and turn off the radio, only to discover “Mrs. Boyle” lying there, dead. I screamed in panic as well as I could, but it sounded really weak to me. Alvin didn’t say anything about it, though; apparently, the main focus was fairly general character work, combined with making sure we knew our blocking.

But Jo agreed with me. As I helped her up, she commented, “I think you need some help on that; I have an idea on how to improve your screaming, if you don’t mind.”

“Not at all,” I told her. “I’m open to suggestions.”

We ran the scene again. Jo had told me before rehearsal that she didn’t mind dying so early and missing the second act, she just hated that she didn’t get to do a dramatic death scene. So she did one on our second walk-through. I had come in at the end of the act once again to “discover the body” and scream in fright; I tried to put some panic in my voice, but it didn’t sound to me any better than the first time. But when Jo suddenly sat up and grabbed my ankle, my scream was pretty convincing – at least before I collapsed in laughter.

I was certainly not the only one who laughed. Alvin waited until we had all settled down and then simply announced, “Good work, all. On Wednesday, we’re going to work a bit more on characters. I expect everyone to be off-book on act one by Sunday.”

Jared gasped, “Sunday? Isn’t that a bit quick?”

Jack laughed, “Welcome to an Alvin Tomlinson show. He always has us off-book really fast.”

“We don’t have that long a rehearsal schedule, Jared,” Alvin pointed out. “And you can’t really get into the role if you’re holding a script. “

“Yeah, but I’ve got like ninety-five lines in this act!”

“You counted your lines, Jared?” laughed the guy who was playing Major Metcalf.

Jared looked a bit embarrassed. “I just like to know how much work I have to do.”

“Marsh has more than that,” Jack pointed out, “and she’s not complaining.”

Of course, I wasn’t complaining because I knew that I wasn’t supposed to be surprised by this – Alvin was the only one who knew that I was new to working with him. But inwardly, I was panicking. Jack had ninety-five lines in the first act? And I had more? How in the world was I going to have them all memorized by Sunday?

“Don’t worry too much, Jared,” Alvin said. “Do your best; Nikki will be playing prompter. I don’t expect everyone to be perfect. I just want you to know most of the lines without reading them, so that you’re not tied to the book. And we’ll be doing some acting games to help you.” Then he turned to the rest of us. “Any other comments or concerns? No? OK, take care all and I’ll see you on Wednesday.”

And that explained why Alvin hadn’t said anything yet – it wasn’t time for us to get energetic in our roles, apparently. That was a relief, even if the whole “off-book by Sunday” thing was a bit intimidating. But I did want to ask Alvin something, so I waited until most of the cast had filed out.

“Oh, Marsh!” he greeted me, before I could say anything. “How are things going for you with… the whole… disorientation thing?”

“Oh, Nikki’s been a godsend,” I told him. “Thank you so much for telling her. I can’t say enough about what she’s done for me. And thank you also for working things out for me with Naomi and Jack.”

“My pleasure,” he smiled back at me.

“I wonder if I could prevail upon you for one more thing,” I asked. “I’d like to be able to practice the screaming parts someplace where I don’t have to worry about being overheard. I thought maybe one of the music department rehearsal rooms. Do you know how I could get permission to use them?”

“Even easier,” he responded. “The theater is mostly empty during the day except when there are classes. You could come in here and be as loud as you like. I’ll send you a schedule so that you’ll know when it’s free.”

“That would be fantastic!”

“Great, then. Oh, and one other thing, Marsh.”

“Yes?”

“Are you having some issues with Jared?”

Issues? I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised that he’d noticed, given his reputation. But this wasn’t just a question of issues for me. For all I’d focused on the acting challenges, playing a woman in love with – and physically affectionate with – a man was in a whole other category. I wasn’t really ready for it, and I guess that had come out too obviously. But as candid as I had been with Alvin, there were some things I just couldn’t tell him. I didn’t want him thinking of me as a guy. And I certainly didn’t want Jared to think of me that way, either.

“I’m just a bit nervous, I guess,” I told him.

“That’s very understandable. Some girls kiss guys all the time and think nothing of it. I don’t think that’s you.”

“No, I…”

“So I have an idea on how to make this easier for you. I’ll talk to you and Jared after Wednesday’s rehearsal, OK?”

What could I say? “OK,” I answered, trying to sound a lot more confident than I felt. I mean… what exactly could he have in mind?