Station Eleven

Station Eleven Page 9

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THERE WERE FEW PEOPLE LEFT at the Elgin Theatre now. A woman washing costumes in Wardrobe, a man ironing other costumes nearby. An actress—the one who’d played Cordelia—drinking tequila backstage with the assistant stage manager. A young stagehand, mopping the stage and nodding his head in time to the music on his iPod. In a dressing room, the woman whose job it was to watch the child actresses was trying to console the sobbing little girl who’d been onstage when Arthur died.

Six stragglers had drifted to the bar in the lobby, where a bartender mercifully remained. The stage manager was there, also Edgar and Gloucester, a makeup artist, Goneril, and an executive producer who’d been in the audience. At the moment when Jeevan was wading into the snowdrifts in Allan Gardens, the bartender was pouring a whisky for Goneril. The conversation had turned to informing Arthur’s next of kin.

“But who was his family?” Goneril was perched on a barstool. Her eyes were red. Without makeup she had a face like marble, the palest and most flawless skin the bartender had ever seen. She seemed much smaller offstage, also much less evil. “Who did he have?”

“He had one son,” the makeup artist said. “Tyler.”

“How old?”

“Seven or eight?” The makeup artist knew exactly how old Arthur’s son was, but didn’t want to let on that he read gossip magazines. “I think he maybe lives with his mother in Israel, maybe Jerusalem or Tel Aviv.” He knew it was Jerusalem.

“Oh, right, that blond actress,” Edgar said. “Elizabeth, wasn’t it? Eliza? Something like that.”

“Ex-wife number three?” The producer.

“I think the kid’s mother was ex-wife number two.”

“Poor kid,” the producer said. “Did Arthur have anyone he was close with?”

This provoked an uncomfortable silence. Arthur had been carrying on an affair with the woman who looked after the child actresses. Everyone present knew about it, except the producer, but none of them knew if the others knew. Gloucester was the one who said the woman’s name.

“Where’s Tanya?”

“Who’s Tanya?” the producer asked.

“One of the kids hasn’t been picked up yet. I think Tanya’s in the kids’ dressing room.” The stage manager had never seen anyone die before. He wanted a cigarette.

“Well,” Goneril said, “who else is there? Tanya, the little boy, all those ex-wives, anyone else? Siblings, parents?”

“Who’s Tanya?” the producer asked again.

“How many ex-wives are we talking about here?” The bartender was polishing a glass.

“He has a brother,” the makeup artist said, “but I can’t remember his name. I just remember him saying he had a younger brother.”

“I think there were maybe three or four,” Goneril said, talking about the ex-wives. “Three?”

“Three.” The makeup artist was blinking away tears. “But I don’t know if the latest divorce has been finalized.”

“So Arthur wasn’t married to anyone at the time of … he wasn’t married to anyone tonight?” The producer knew this sounded foolish but he didn’t know how else to phrase it. Arthur Leander had walked into the theater just a few hours ago, and it was inconceivable that he wouldn’t walk in again tomorrow.

“Three divorces,” Gloucester said. “Can you imagine?” He was recently divorced himself. He was trying to think of the last thing Arthur had said to him. Something about blocking in the second act? He wished he could remember. “Has anyone been informed? Who do we call?”

“I should call his lawyer,” the producer said.

This solution was inarguable, but so depressing that the group drank for several minutes in silence before anyone could bring themselves to speak.

“His lawyer,” the bartender said finally. “Christ, what a thing. You die, and they call your lawyer.”

“Who else is there?” Goneril asked. “His agent? The seven-year-old? The ex-wives? Tanya?”

“I know, I know,” the bartender said. “It’s just a hell of a thing.” They were silent again. Someone made a comment about the snow coming down hard, and it was, they could see it through the glass doors at the far end of the lobby. From the bar the snow was almost abstract, a film about bad weather on a deserted street.

“Well, here’s to Arthur,” the bartender said.

In the children’s dressing room, Tanya was giving Kirsten a paperweight. “Here,” she said, as she placed it into Kirsten’s hands, “I’m going to keep trying to reach your parents, and you just try to stop crying and look at this pretty thing …,” and Kirsten, teary-eyed and breathless, a few days shy of her eighth birthday, gazed at the object and thought it was the most beautiful, the most wonderful, the strangest thing anyone had ever given her. It was a lump of glass with a storm cloud trapped inside.