Tales of the city

'I just wanted to say, none of you have any idea what you're talking about.' 'What's that, lady?' 'I couldn't help but overhear-' 'How hard did you try?' 'Don't give her a hard time. She looks like she has a story.' 'I do. It's not a story you'll like to hear, though.' 'Try us.' 'I'm just saying, you all talk like you know these big secrets about what goes on in this city, but you don't know shit. There's only one secret. Only one secret that matters, anyway.' 'Are you going to tell us what it is?' 'I am. Not because you deserve to know it, but because listening to you talk made me angry. This story is your punishment.' 'You hear that? We're going to be punished.' 'I, for one, am petrified.' 'Should we beg for mercy?' 'Ignore them, Miss. I'm very interested in whatever you have to say.' 'It was a few months ago, just before Christmas. It happened because I was the last one leaving the theater. And because I had been Antigone...' *** It was opening night. For the understudy, it was also closing night. She would still have a part in the chorus, of course. But tomorrow Evangeline would come back and claim her rightful place as the lead and the understudy would go back to being, well, an understudy. Learn the lines, watch the lead, perform your own small role, and wait, that was the game. Still, the understudy thought, at least I got one night in the spotlight. Not that they could afford decent lights. They couldn't even afford a real stage, just an empty room with a performance space marked off. The house manager had added another row of seats in an act of delusional optimism (they could barely fill the ones they had) and now the chorus couldn't move without elbowing each other. And the costumes didn't really fit and there was no money to pay any of them and the heating in the old theater did not work anymore, leaving players and audience alike shivering even with as tightly packed in as they all were... But people still showed up, and the show still went on, and even the understudy couldn't help but smile a little when she saw the Xeroxed playbills: 'Antigone,' with the director's name right under it and Evangeline's right under that and the understudy's own name (in much smaller print) toward the bottom. It was a good show, in spite of everything. A classic. The understudy was the last cast member to leave. Everyone else had gone out to celebrate, but she found she wasn't in the mood. She carefully folded and hung the bits of her costume in the single communal dressing room so that Evangeline would have nothing to complain about when she came back from whatever 'emergency' called her away on opening night. Glenda, the house manager, was waiting at the door and the understudy thought she might be annoyed at the holdup, but then the older woman smiled and whispered, 'There's a man here to see you.' As if were the most amazing thing in the world. The understudy picked up her purse and headed for the back door, but Glenda added: 'He says he's a critic.' The understudy stopped. 'He says he won't leave until he meets you. I think he really liked the show...' There was a note of pleading, and beneath that a note of insistence. The understudy wavered for a moment and then turned back toward the front. She tried not to notice Glenda's smug, pleased expression as she did. As advertised, a man was waiting in the lobby. He wore a shabby suit of indeterminate color, and a brand new fedora hat. He was not a handsome man; in fact he was profoundly ugly. But when he saw her he grinned in a way that made him look, for a second at least, tremendously appealing. He fanned himself with his playbill and pantomimed a swoon. 'Antigone,' he said, enjoying each syllable. The understudy told him her real name, but he waved it off. 'Tonight, you're Antigone. The finest Antigone I have ever seen. I first saw the play in 441, at the Dionysia in Athens, and you were a better Antigone tonight than I saw there, or anywhere since.' She gave him a non-committal look. He smiled again. 'Can I walk you out?' he said. The correct answer, the safe answer, was