“Kiss her now,” said Farnham.
“I can’t, Mr. Farnham.”
Mr. Farnham’s voice got tighter.
“I have been told to continue with business as usual,” he said. “It was as rough a night for me as it was for you guys, and I wish you would try to cooperate just for a second on a matter that’s absolutely vital to this production.”
“Maybe we should just skip the kiss for now and go on,” said Mrs. Warden.
“We can’t skip anything,” said Farnham. “We’re just postponing the problem if we do. Othello, if you want to do this part, you will kiss your wife right now.”
The telephone rang, and that was it. Farnham popped.
“Which one of you is doing this?” he said. He looked at each one of them in turn, and Thomas could feel his own face heating with embarrassment when Farnham’s eyes drilled him.
“This is some practical joke, isn’t it, Boatwright?” said Mr. Farnham.
“No sir.”
“Why are the phones ringing so frequently?”
“I don’t know, Mr. Farnham.”
“Who would want to disrupt our rehearsal?”
“I don’t know,” Thomas said again. “Maybe it’s Landon calling from the light booth.” All this time the telephone was still ringing. Nathan Somerville crossed to answer it.
“Landon!” Mr. Farnham shouted up to the light booth. “Is that you?”
Landon shouted no. Nathan picked up the ringing telephone. “They hung up,” he said.
“Start the scene again,” said Mr. Farnham. But then he froze and looked down at the stage as if he were trying to see through the boards. He ran upstage and out into the hallway. The door shut softly behind him.
“Where’s he going?” Thomas asked Mrs. Warden.
Mrs. Warden said she couldn’t imagine.
The telephone started to ring again but stopped abruptly. And a second later they heard a shriek from under the stage.
Thomas recognized the voice.
It was Richard.
SCENE 3
Mr. Farnham brought Richard upstairs holding him by the upper arm, like a prison guard, and roughly pushed him onto center stage. He told the rest of the group to gather around. Nathan Somerville, Greg Lipscomb, and Thomas Boatwright stood next to Mrs. Warden, who sat in a folding chair between Richard and the lip of the stage. Landon Hopkins, who was still resentful over Richard’s damage to his Shakespeare anthology, came down from the light booth and watched from the auditorium. Richard stared at the floor and waited for his cue under the glare of the stage lights.
“I don’t know why it took me so long to catch on,” said Mr. Farnham. “All of you know, I assume, that the floor of the stage is also the ceiling of the prop room? Anybody down there can hear every word spoken up here.”
Richard’s face was shiny with tear tracks, his eyes bright with anger. He wore a black tee shirt covered with brown dust, his favorite old jeans, and black Converse basketball shoes with holes in them. He breathed unsteadily, but his voice was strong when he spoke.
“I’d like to apologize to the group for disturbing your rehearsal,” he said.
“Go on,” said Mr. Farnham. He stood a little behind Richard.
“I have behaved immaturely and inexcusably,” said Richard. He would not look directly at anyone.
“That’s enough,” said Mr. Farnham.
Richard started to walk upstage toward the door at the stage wall.
“Where are you going?” said Mr. Farnham. Richard did not answer; he continued to walk.
“I asked you a question,” said Mr. Farnham.
“Let him go, Dan,” said Mrs. Warden. He ignored her.
“Blackburn, answer me.”
“I’m going back to my dorm,” said Richard as he reached the door and exited.
“Go get him, Boatwright,” said Mr. Farnham.
“Let him go, Dan,” said Mrs. Warden.
“I have some cleanup chores for that boy,” said Mr. Farnham. “Go get him, Boatwright.”
Thomas ran after Richard and caught up with him in the hallway.
“He says you have to stay,” said Thomas.
“Bull.”
“It’s a school rule,” said Thomas. “You don’t disobey a teacher.” He felt sorry for Richard and also disappointed that he would carry on such a childish vendetta. Thomas didn’t want him to get into more trouble.
Richard turned and faced him.
“He’s berserk,” said Richard. “He scared me. He pushed me up against the wall so hard I hit my head. Do you have any idea of how strong he is? He’s strong and he’s crazy.”
“You were driving him crazy with those phone calls.”
“You didn’t see him downstairs,” said Richard. “I’m telling you, the guy was berserk. He is not normal.”
But he came back to the rehearsal with Thomas, where Mr. Farnham told him to mop the stage. Then Bud Gristina showed up and apologized for napping during rehearsal time. Instead of raving, Mr. Farnham decided to start the whole scene from the beginning. They never got back to Othello’s entrance.
Greg thanked Richard afterward for allowing the kissing issue to go unresolved.
SCENE 4
It was no good. Warden tried to be rational, tried to be objective about it all, but he could not dodge the issue. The question of Daniel Farnham’s behavior was a mosquito buzzing around his head, and he knew that sooner or later it would land and bite.
He sat in his study on this Sunday afternoon ostensibly reading a letter from the editor of a magazine. He had received it yesterday. Today he distracted himself by reading it again. It was the nicest sort of rejection letter to get: a personal, detailed response to the poem and explanation of what wasn’t working in it and why. He liked this editor and respected his opinion, but Warden thought the man was wrong in this case. He would instruct his agent to keep submitting the poem in its current form.
In front of him on the desk was a pile of essays, folded longitudinally and signed with various scrawls identifying each student author. He should be writing them their own forms of personal rejection slips, comments on what was wrong with their thinking and their writing, encouragement to develop whatever might be worth salvaging in their work, harsh condemnation for anyone who continued to make the same error each
