Owen Betrays My Trust on Opening Night novel · Chapter 1 of 3
Chapter 1: Opening Night
Romy steps onto the rebuilt Sterling stage on opening night; at intermission she finds her paired ring lit up on Owen's wrist in the lobby with Vane reading it over his shoulder.
The new seats are the wrong color.
I noticed it the second I walked out for the first act.
The old Sterling had burgundy velvet, worn shiny at the armrests.
The rebuilt house has gray. Two thousand gray seats, all of them full.
I said my first line and my voice came out steady.
I said the rest of them the same way.
My left sleeve is long tonight. It covers the whole arm to the wrist.
The collar comes up to my jaw.
Marigold pressed it flat with her iron an hour ago and said nothing about why.
She never does.
The curtain came down on act one and the house came up and I stood in the wings with my hands shaking.
Ninety days ago I couldn't stand on this ground.
The fire started at the back of the stage, in the fly rail, at 8:40 on a Thursday.
I was twenty-three and I was standing right there.
Owen carried me through the alley door with my arm on fire.
The stage is new now. The floor is new. The fly rail is new.
I still know exactly where it was.
"Romy."
Marigold had my water glass out and a towel over her wrist, pincushion and all.
"You have fifteen minutes. Sit down."
"I'm fine."
"You're gray. Sit down."
I sat down on the prop crate and drank the water.
She took my left wrist and turned it over and looked at the sleeve.
"You could take it off, you know. Nobody in that house paid to see a collar."
"Not tonight."
"Not tonight," she agreed, and patted my hand.
The lobby is the part of the rebuild I hate most.
They put glass along the whole street side.
You can see every person in there from the stage door hallway.
I went out at intermission because Owen said he'd come.
He said he'd be in the lobby at the half, with Birdie, in the second row.
I found him by the bar.
He had his back to me.
He was in the navy jacket, and Birdie was beside him in her raincoat, holding a ginger ale with both hands.
Hollis Vane was standing at Owen's shoulder.
Vane is fifty-eight and he wears a gray suit to a play like he's about to foreclose on it.
He's chaired the Sterling board for nineteen years.
He voted against hiring me back. He was the only no.
I was three steps away when I saw Owen's wrist.
The band was lit up.
Not the flat green it goes when he's just wearing it.
Blue. Pulsing blue, the color it turns when it's reading me.
My heart rate was on his wrist in the middle of a lobby full of people.
Vane had his head tilted down at it.
He had reading glasses pushed up on his forehead and he was looking at the band like it was a phone.
Owen's hand was curled, but he hadn't turned the band off.
He hadn't even turned his sleeve down.
"Ninety-four," Vane said. "That's the resting rate on the band. It was a hundred and forty in the second act."
"It was a hard act," Owen said.
"A hundred and forty while standing still and talking to a man on a bench."
I stopped walking.
Birdie saw me first. She waved the ginger ale and it sloshed.
"Romy!"
Owen turned.
His face did the thing it does when he knows.
Everything in it went quiet at once.
"Romy. Hey."
Vane straightened up and folded his glasses and put them in his pocket.
"Miss Tilney. Good first act."
"Mr. Vane."
"Your heart rate peaked at one forty-six in the last ten minutes." He said it the way you'd mention the weather. "That's higher than a woman at rest. That's a woman under strain."
"It's opening night."
"It's a reading, Miss Tilney. From a device you agreed to wear."
I looked at Owen.
Owen looked at me and said nothing.
That was the part that landed.
Not Vane. Owen.
"Take it off," I said.
"Romy."
"Take it off right now."
Owen put his thumb on the band and held it until the light went out.
He didn't say sorry. He didn't say anything.
Birdie looked up at him, then at me, and drank her ginger ale.
"How long has he been reading it?" I asked.
Owen's jaw moved.
"Romy, this isn't the place."
"How long."
Vane answered for him.
"Since August. He filed the disclosure on the fourteenth."
The lobby noise kept going around us. Two hundred people with wine.
The chime for the second act rang somewhere behind the bar.
"Excuse me," I said.
I walked back through the stage door hallway with my hands at my sides.
Marigold was waiting at the prop table with the towel.
I didn't sit down.
I stood there and let the second-act chime ring twice.
Then the house manager came past me with a stack of programs and I saw the top one.
Somebody had taped a printed page inside it.
A column of numbers, and a name at the top.
Mine.
I took it out of his hands.
"Where did these come from?"
He looked at the stack and then at me and went pale.
"They were in the box office this morning. Mr. Vane's office sent them down."
The second chime rang. The stage manager called places.
I folded the page and put it in my sleeve.
Then I went back out through the lobby doors because I wasn't done.
Vane was still at the bar. Owen was gone. Birdie was gone.
Vane had his glasses back on and a program open in his hand.
He was reading the page inside it.
"Miss Tilney. You're on in ninety seconds."
"Those are my medical readings."
"Those are the theater's readings. You signed the release when you took the part."
"I signed a release for the role."
"You signed a release for the role and everything that touches it." He closed the program. "Including a device that tells anyone holding the other end when you're about to come apart."
"I'm not coming apart."
"You were at a hundred and forty-six in act one." He said it loud enough for the bar. "On opening night. In front of the board."
Two men in suits turned around. One of them I knew. He sits on the board.
"Mr. Vane."
"Miss Tilney, I've run this theater for nineteen years." He folded the program and handed it to me. "A woman this unstable shouldn't be on my stage."
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