“Stellar! Your dream job. Oh no!”
“I should’ve told you. It just felt wrong to complain, when you would’ve given your left tit for that promotion.”
I know the pain of not telling the person you want to pour your heart out to. “You can tell me anything. No matter what.”
“I will. But Lyle’s gonna combust if you don’t get backstage.”
“Wait. You call McHugeLyle?” I thought the only person who did that was… I stomp that thought.
“Long story.Go.”
In the Friday No-Names’ dressing room, everyone’s in various stages of breakdown. David pretends to be chill while checking his phone every twenty seconds. Jason hops, head down, eyes closed, humming; Béa watches him, fascinated. I’m toxically overdosing on every known stress hormone, second-guessing this decision every minute and a half.
Surprisingly, Sharon is worst off. She ducks out of sight of David and Jason, pulling a tailored black T-shirt from her Birkin bag before peeling off the one she’s wearing and dropping it on the floor with a sodden thump.
“Hot flash,” she mutters, wriggling into the new shirt. “Ah, who am I kidding. I considered crashing my car on the way here to have a reason not to show up. My husband and teenager are in the audience. Somebody sedate me.”
McHuge knocks a cheery rhythm. “Good news, citizens of improv—the Fridays are up first!”
Sharon puts her head between her knees. Jason’s humming turns to moaning. I’m floating in another galaxy as we troop toward the stage like we’re going to our execution.
McHuge stops us in the wings. “You’re all picking up nervous vibes right now. I’ve been where you are. I’ve felt what you’re feeling.”
“You havenot,” Sharon retorts.
“I have emotions, Sharon. I’m not a machine,” McHuge says, straight-faced. We burst into fear-tinged giggles.
“It won’t be as bad as you think. Remember, the past is ego. The future is pride. Stay humble; stay in the present.”
McHuge is managing the audience for us tonight, since none of us have ever seen it done. He’s as easy onstage as he is in class. Although maybe this is hard work, and he’s skilled at making it look like nothing. The same way Tobin—no.
“The game is freeze tag. We need audience suggestions for a relationship between two people,” he calls, eyes roving across the many empty seats.
A competition breaks out among the audience members as to who can be the most silent. McHuge told us they’d be shy—it’s their first improv show, too.
“Friends,” calls a woman’s voice. Stellar, waving from front-row center.
“Friends,” McHuge repeats, a funny catch in his voice.
“Enemies,” comes a shout from the back.
“One-night stand!” Stellar retorts. McHuge’s mouth goes weird.
“Couple getting divorced!” yells the heckler in the back. The word leaves a deep, ugly ache under my breastbone.
“Divorce it is,” McHuge says.
The Fridays shuffle our feet, uncertain. Conflict makes bad improv. Why would McHuge pick such a loaded topic?
McHuge launches the scene as a man waiting for his turn in divorce court. The past starts yelling in my left ear, the future in my right.
Breathe in. Breathe out. Stay in the present.
David pushes off the wall first, joining the scene as McHuge’s lawyer, contradicting McHuge’s every bid. The cringe factor is off the charts.
The rest of us hug the wall. Make love to the wall. We live here now. We won’t leave to join a sagging, flailing scene like this one. Even McHuge looks panicky, his gaze returning again and again to the front row.
“Freeze!” Béa steps forward, tagging David out of the scene to recruit McHuge into a slapstick search for her pet boa constrictor, who escaped into the ducts during a supervised transfer of custody. She gets the first laugh of the night when she hangs off a chair and pretends to fall headfirst into a vent, legs thrashing.
