Page 9 of The Claiming of the Shrew
In fact Halstadt seemed to be one of the only men in the group. Among the other people Fawkes was introduced to, the only other men were a boyfriend of one of the actresses, and a slouching stagehand whose name was Ralph. Fawkes receiveda flurry of names, parts in the play, and relationships, and eventually stopped trying to retain it all. He accepted a cup of hot cider, and found that he was having fun.
“So what are you up here for?” Halstadt asked.
“Work,” Fawkes said. Well, it was true.
They didn’t ask for details, and the conversation wandered on. As the actors and stagehands started heading off to bed, Fawkes made his goodbyes, and he and Leah walked off into the night.
“You’ll be there on opening night, right?” Gloria called after him.
“Oh, for sure!” Fawkes called back, although he had no idea whether or not that was true.
“They like you,” Leah said as the bonfire disappeared behind the trees.
“Was that what that was? Getting a group read on my winning personality?”
“No, I just forgot everyone was still up, that’s all.” But she said it a little too quickly.
They reached the edge of the campground, near the parking area. The lodge was visible across the lawn and the nearly full parking lot, the lobby lights and a few lit-up windows gleaming through the dark. It really was a beautiful place, and Fawkes regretted that he had to be here on business he couldn’t tell anyone about. Especially with such lovely company in the dark.
Abruptly he realized that the lovely company had been left a few steps behind, and turned back to find out what had distracted her. Leah had stopped beside a campsite containing what appeared to be a large dark lump with one end sticking up in the air. It looked like nothing so much as a gargantuan dead bat the size of a dining room table.
“What’s this?”
“My camp,” Leah said with a sigh. For the first time, he thought he saw her bravado deflate somewhat. “I was going to finish setting up my tent later. It’s a little more complicated than I thought it would be.”
The dead bat’s true nature became clear: a partially erected tent. It was the old type with about a million metal rods that were supposed to fit into each other. Fawkes remembered struggling with a similar one on camping trips as a kid. It had been an absolute nightmare to put together.
“Want some help? I’ve done a little camping in my time, and these are usually easier with two people.”
Setting up a tent together was not exactly going down in history as the most romantic sort-of-first-date activity (not that he had any idea if she considered this a first date). But they struggled with fitting the metal rods into place, got some pinched fingers, and ended up laughing a lot. By the time they had her tent put up and staked into place, Fawkes felt a shared sense of camaraderie that warmed him to his core.
“Oh, that’s nice,” Leah said, admiring the result of the past twenty minutes’ struggle. “It’s bigger than I thought it would be. Do you want to, um, stay a bit? Not in the tent!” she said hastily. “I mean, we could make cocoa or something.”
“I wish I could,” Fawkes said. And he did. But the clock was running on the night. “It’s getting late, though. I ought to be going.”
“Oh,” she said, twisting her hand in her crutch. “Well, I’ll ... see you around, right? Maybe in the morning?”
“There’s one restaurant in a twenty mile radius, so I think probably we will,” he said, grinning.
Leah did a cute little crutch-assisted hop. “Okay! Good night.”
“Good night,” Fawkes said.
It was only as he walked away that he started kicking himself. He could have sat around drinking cocoa with Leah. Maybe gotten her to invite him into her tent, even.
He indulged in a wistful sigh.
And then he firmly put Leah out of his mind, or at least tried to.Nowhe could get down to the night’s work. Though knowing Leah was watching, he would definitely need to stay on his toes.
LEAH
“Late night?”Joy asked, buttering her toast.
“Hnngghhh,” was Leah’s response. She took a long drink of coffee.
She was in the lodge’s restaurant with her sister. Around them, a number of the cast and crew of the play were exploring the lodge’s breakfast buffet or wandering around yawning and carrying coffee cups. Gloria, Halstadt, Maggie, and some of the other actors were at a table in the corner. They had waved Leah over, but she had already accepted a summons from Joy.
She had stayed up half the night watching Fawkes’s window from her tent and wondering when the man slept. His light stayed on, and occasionally a shadow came into view and vanished. At one point the window had been opened, and then it stayed open for a while, and she thought (but wasn’t sure) that she had seen something dark ooze over the windowsill and slither down the wall.
