Bondage story - The Phantom of the Roxy - 2

Rehearsals began the next day, despite the lingering effects of jet-lag. Ira was not a great leader or an inspiring director, but the cast quickly realized that he had a vision, and was going to wheedle and pout until it was realized. Being professionals, they buckled down and got to work. The frst three days they did mostly read-throughs, sitting in a circle and exchanging lines, scripts in hand.

The cast sorted itself out into three groups, socially. Jessica gravitated naturally toward David, Sarah and Tina. The four of them were all in their early twenties, all attractive, and all from other parts of the country. The second group consisted of Jack and Dan, two older character actors from mate theater again, where sophisticated New Yorkers went to sip complimentary wine and sit through deadly dull but “important” theatrical productions like “Death of a Salesman,” “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” and “Equus.”

The particular show that Jessica had been hired for was not one of the traditional chestnuts but one of a new breed of original plays the theater had been doing lately. These were quirky but often brilliant gothic period pieces, full of wit and timeless allegorical wisdom, written by a mysterious and reclusive playwright known only as “Phinister.” At least that was what she had been told by her agent, and sure enough, the press releases would later quote him almost word for word.

* * * * * *

When Jessica arrived at the Roxy, carrying so much luggage she could barely walk from the taxi to the door, she was greeted by one Ira Shapiro, who offered smiles only in quick, nervous doses and spouted sporadic pleasantries in incomplete sentences as he helped her carry her luggage inside. He was wiry and pot-bellied, balding and bespectacled, an entirely forgettable fgure of a man whom Jessica found out the following day was the director of the play.

He led her out of the muggy heat of the sidewalk and into the cool darkness of the theater before offering his short, nervous introduction. Then he again shouldered half of her bags and escorted her through the cavernous theater, up onto the creaking wooden stage, and into the labyrinthine backstage, never slowing or checking to see if she was still behind him. A hundred twists and turns later they arrived at a set of narrow stairs that crept up the ancient brick wall to a railed catwalk some thirty feet above. They had to stop several times to rest, but they made it up the stairs. A short distance along the catwalk there was an outside door that took them out onto the pebbled roof of the building behind the Chicago who had little in common with the youngsters, but who knew each other.

The third group was made up of the fve actors and actresses who were local New Yorkers. Right from the start, they were a strange lot, aloof and uncommunicative. They talked among themselves in hushed whispers, as though they shared a great secret, and responded to the others only with grunts or single-word sentences. They seemed always on edge, and constantly peered into the shadows as though they expected to discover someone spying on them. Jessica had heard that New Yorkers tended to be aloof toward strangers, but these people seemed to be going the extra mile in the aloof department.

The stagehands seemed to share the attitude of their fellow Manhattanites, though it was harder to tell with them. They kept to themselves, and were only around when they were pointedly required to be, though it seemed as though they were always lurking in the shadows backstage.

The theater’s owner was a tall, quiet man named, of all things, Thaddeus Hodge. He had thick black hair slicked straight back, revealing deep widow’s peaks, a prominent nose and strong jaw, and intense dark eyes. He never spoke to the actors. They rarely saw him, and when they did it was always from a distance. His offce was just off the lobby, and he would occasionally be seen around the lobby and foyer, or near the back seats of the dark theater.

The rehearsals seemed to be going well, despite the odd attitudes of the local actors. Among themselves they talked like Brooklyn truck drivers, but when they ran lines with the others they could pull off creditable British accents, with strong, soaring voices.

The play itself was set in 18th century England, and seemed to revolve around a vampire. Despite the classic, “Wuthering Heights”-style gothic setting and subject matter, however, he seemed to be an unusual sort of vampire, one with a cynical sense of humor and poor social graces. Many of the scenes had him complaining about his lifestyle, dodging ex-victims, and trying to avoid awkward social situations. The dialogue was, as advertised, witty, though if it was somehow allegorical Jessica wasn’t getting it. What the overall plot was, she didn’t know or care. Her copy of the script only contained the scenes she was in, and she devoted all her time to memorizing her own lines. She played a girl the vampire had feasted upon in the past, and who was now hopelessly in love with him. It wasn’t an important part, but she was in most of the scenes.

Jessica’s encounters with the mysterious madman began on the fourth day of rehearsals. Since the frst day, she had been a little nervous about the shadows backstage, mostly because of the way the local actors behaved. There were a lot of shadows back there, shadows so dark a man could stand in one and not be seen from a few inches away. She often caught movements out of the corner of her eye, but when she looked there was usually nothing to be seen, or sometimes one of the stagehands.

But on the fourth day, as they were onstage blocking out a scene and running their lines from their assigned positions, she glanced backstage and saw a fgure silhouetted against a stray shaft of light. Unlike any of the stage- hands, he was tall, straight and wide-shouldered, and he stood stock still, facing directly toward her. She stared, forgetting her line, and when David prompted her, she glanced at him with wide, frightened eyes. When she glanced back the fgure was gone.

For the moment she convinced herself that it must have been the theater’s owner, Mr. Hodge, and went back to rehearsing, but later she began to doubt that it was him. Mr. Hodge was tall, but not as tall as the fgure she’d seen, nor as wide-shouldered. Also, she was almost certain the fgure had been wearing a wide-brimmed hat.