When it does, it’s a far away video of a stage. Sawyer’s set looks magnificent. A few weeks ago, her and Sawyer had sat up on Natasha’s laptop and searched for pictures of Edinburgh and the way the set looms gloomily over the stage, grey polystyrene painted to look like wet brick, is perfect. Off camera, someone shouts “Let there be light!”
A series of little lights flicker at the top of the set like stars.
“Great,” comes Sawyer’s voice from the side of the room, “Now try the neon,”
The stage explodes in light and color, and Sawyer screams. She runs on the stage and checks a few things. Her face is dusty but not as bad as the night she called Natasha. She punches the air and tap dances her way across the stage. Natasha laughs in the street, stifling it with her scarf. On the screen, Sawyer jumps off the stage and runs towards the camera, winking down the lens before the screen goes blank and then loops back to the start.
That evening, Natasha's phone rings while she's lying around sketching.
“Hi gorgeous,” Natasha doesn’t expect to hear Sawyer’s voice, and she immediately starts pacing around her room. The good thing about talking to Sawyer on the phone is that she still doesn’t let Natasha get a word in. “The show goes up tomorrow. Once Irma is happy with it, I only need to come in for show call! So I’ll be free most days again.”
Natasha tries to dampen down the excitement she feels at this.
“Do you want to come and see it? I can put your name down for any night you want.”
Natasha plucks a day out of the air.
“Awesome,” Sawyer says, “I’ll get you an aisle seat so you can get out for a break if it’s too much.”
“Sawyer. I’m anxious, not poor. I’ve been to a theatre before.”
Sawyer snorts down the phone. She doesn’t seem to be in the mood to bite, she just talks at Natasha about Boston’s poor pizza compared to the pizza in Chicago.
Natasha finds herself looping around the same conversation with Sawyer, but she doesn’t seem willing to hang up. Natasha gets into bed, turns out the light and closes her eyes to imagine Sawyer there.
“I wish I was there,” Sawyer whispers into the phone.
“You’re just across the city, I’ll see you soon.”
“But I want to be with you,” Sawyer sounds petulant. “I even miss how messy you are.”
They’re back at the beginning of the loop, but Natasha can’t bring herself to stop it. Sawyer makes the decision for them both, the pauses between her sentences get longer and her breathing gets deeper until Natasha feels safe to hang up.
The next day, Natasha piles on a messy selection of her luckiest jewelry. The little charms jingling against each other annoy her in yoga, but when she’s at home she finds flicking the tiny plastic Virgin Mary round and round her wrist quite comforting. It feels like hours after the show must have ended before she hears from Sawyer. She’s waiting for a takeout pizza and running her mouth. She’s got a few notes from Irma but she’s hyper, excited.
On the day that Natasha has tickets for Sawyer’s show, she has three classes back to back. She is tempted to mention her evening plans to her students, but decides to keep it to herself. She showers off the day’s sweat, wraps strands of her hair around her fingers so they kink up as they dry. She pulls out a black and purple floral dress, then pauses as she undoes the buttons. She might surprise Sawyer a bit tonight. She throws the dress on the back of a chair already groaning under the weight of Natasha’s laundry, and pulls out the suit she wore to her cousin’s wedding.
The pants are bottle green with tapered legs and pink flowers embroidered all over it. The suit jacket precisely matches. There’s a couple of pulls on it, but it still looks slick. The pockets are lined with black silk and she likes the way she looks when she stands with her hands in them, hip cocked. Underneath, she wears a black silky bodysuit with piping around the cups.
She pulls her hair up in a loose bun, teasing out a few strands. She suddenly looks her age, and she’s giving herself full Lindsay Peterson realness, and she loves it. Natasha tugs out an old bronze clutch and gets ready to leave.
The foyer of the theatre is busy. It has a capacity of just over 1000 and Sawyer has warned her that it's likely to be almost full.
“I’m here to pick up a ticket for Miss Natasha Kuznetsov,”
The woman behind the desk roots through a box of index cards for long enough that Natasha starts to wonder if she’s got the wrong place, or the wrong day, or she’s asking for the wrong thing.
“It might be under Sawyer Martinez?”
Natasha reckons that that’s the sort of possessiveness that Sawyer would go in for; she’d love Natasha wandering around the building with Sawyer’s name on her. The woman frowns, continues rummaging until her colleague leans over and says, “Comp tickets are in this one,” and hands her another box of index cards. The woman flicks right to the back, passes Natasha a
