Page 101 of Everything's Coming Up Rosie

I go back to the first scene I blocked, walking it one more time to get it in my head, and when I’m almost finished, I hear the stage door open. I freeze and wait, unsure who else would be here on a Sunday, but when I see Arthur, I can’t help but smile.

He doesn’t smile back.

“What are you doing here?” he barks.

“I’m the director, buddy,” I crack.

He grumbles something that I can’t hear. Despite all my best efforts, he is a nut I haven’t been able to crack. Not that I’m giving up.

“I came to get some work done,” I tell him. “The set looks amazing.”

He barely looks at me as he walks across the stage to the fly lines. “Electric coming in!” I can tell he says this because he was trained to say it when bringing in one of the lines, and not out of courtesy to me. Still, I respond with, “Thank you,” to acknowledge that I heard him, and step out of the way.

Once the row of lights is lowered, Arthur stops the rope, clamps the brake, and steps out from the wings. He’s holding a gel and a few tools, and as he gets to work replacing the old gel, I stand there wondering if I should leave.

I don’t leave, choosing instead to make things awkward.

“So you and Bertie seem to have hit it off.”

It takes 0.3 seconds for me to realize this was the wrong thing to say.

Arthur stops moving and glares at me. “That”—he points his crescent wrench at me—“Is none of your business.”

My instinct is to apologize and run away, but I’ve noticed that Booker was right when he told me to dish it right back. Arthur doesn’t respond well to the people he intimidates.

He does, however, respond well to Bertie.

And she doesn’t take his crap.

“It is, sort of,” I say. “I mean, I was there when you two met.”

If he’s surprised by my response, he doesn’t let on. “That doesn’t make it your business.”

I watch as he goes back to fiddling with the lights. “I think I know why my song made you emotional.”

“Your song was mediocre at best,” he says.

“It wasn’t, but okay.”

Even though he doesn’t respond, his puckered face communicates plenty.

“You think you can make it better?” I pause. “Professor?”

He stops moving, but only for a moment.

“I googled you,” I say, as if that simple sentence was enough to fully encompass the amount of research I’d done on Arthur. Once I finally got back to my search, I couldn’t stop—what I found was fascinating.

“Turns out, you were kind of a big deal once upon a time,” I say.

“And look at me now!” The words drip with sarcasm, and I go still.

“You taught acting and directing at NYU,” I say, because it was one of the first things I’d discovered.

He rolls his eyes. “Are you just going to stand there and tell me things I already know?” He holds out a wrench. When I don’t move, he says, “Hold this.”

I take the wrench and press a bit further.

“I think the song reminded you of that life,” I say. “Of the way it felt to train up the next generation of actors and directors.” Another pause. “I also know you directedFunny Girl.” That one took a bit more digging to uncover.

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