Weeping Underwater Looks a Lot Like Laughter Read Free Page A

form-friendly T-shirt that claimed ELVIS GIVES . She shared a fast laugh with a few fellow actors but kept moving along, all the while rubbing her glazed eyes with the butt of her palms, appearing much more worldly-wise than her persona onstage. Whatever compliments she was offered over the next few minutes were received while she folded and stacked chairs alongside the stagehands, a few of whom shot me glances suggesting that if I enjoyed the performance enough to attempt mingling with the cast, I might at least lend a helping hand. The priest, obviously exempt from such labors, was soon pacing alongside the actress, offering her a long-winded criticism of the auditorium’s poor acoustics. She took his comments in stride, inserting a polite affirmation here and there, but hardly saying a thing. Despite having just watched her perform for two hours, I was already desperate to hear her speak again, to gather as many clues as I could about the girl behind the mask. To this end, I decided to encounter her at the chair racks near the storage room, where we’d inevitably end up stacking two chairs at once, and they’d bang together, at which point one of us would say, “Excuse me,” and the other would say, “No, really, excuse me ,” and soon we would be conversing. But after more than a dozen ill-timed trips, I lost my patience and saddled up next to the priest—interrupting prattle about his favorite playwrights—and improvised.
    “Who was your muse?” I blurted out, much louder than I intended.
    “Are you asking him or me?” she asked, glancing over to the priest, giving little hint of an initial impression beyond confusion. I was certain she didn’t realize that I was a new student, which is to say a foreigner and a person she’d never laid eyes on until that very moment. But I was getting used to this sort of treatment and proceeded more or less undeterred.
    “Muuuuse?” the priest groaned, loud enough to share his doubt with the entire cast and crew. “A muse is a Greek goddess. A muse is a myth.”
    “So if it’s not a myth, it can’t be a muse?”
    “Of course not.”
    “Did Homer have a muse when he wrote myths?”
    “What could you possibly be talking about?”
    “The theater,” I said, as though reaching a grand philosophical conclusion. “It really is a whole other world. A magical one.”
    At that, I thanked him and made a beeline for the farthest row of unfolded chairs, realizing along the way that I hadn’t given the actress even the slightest glimpse of attention beyond my initial approach. For the next fifteen minutes I folded and stacked chairs at twice the speed of the stagehands, several of whom went missing and later resurfaced reeking of menthol. Then Emily left and I realized that I was basically the only person still working and I quit. But on my way out of the building I discovered her plopped down on an old church pew next to a willowy guy with long gesticulating fingers, likely waiting for her ride. (I guessed Zach had driven home without me, an action he’d likely excuse by the fact that I’d befriended the theater crowd, which signified it was time for me to fly on my own.) By then the lobby had mostly thinned out, though there were still patches of students huddled in circles, mostly arguing over where to waste the rest of the evening. Without breaking my stride, I looped around in the direction of the actress, picking up the odd scrap of paper or pen cap, unsure if it was even me cleaning up or some obsessive new personage developed instantly for the task of industrious loitering. I continued for the trash bin just past the pew. By the lull in their conversation I sensed that one of them was nearly on his or her way. I stalled at the water fountain across from them, drinking and waiting.
    “Are you new or something?” the gesticulator asked. I took my time turning around and wiping the water from my mouth, feigning a pleasant aloofness when I finally nodded in