Chet Williamson - Reign

Couldn't they write to each other, he asked, write and maybe he could come up to see her at her college on Mondays, when the theatres were dark, and the show wouldn't run forever, after all, it might even be a flop, so did it make sense to call an end to everything now?

She had to, she told him. She could not imagine being away from him, but it was her parents, and she could not disobey them.

Then you don't love me, he said.

But I do, she answered.

They were still young, barely past adolescence. They were in love with each other, but with their own lives as well, he with the theatre, she with her school, her friends there, and bound by her ties to her mother and father. They were confused, they were angry, they were hopeless and doomed to estrangement. After that night, they did not see each other again for twenty-five years.

And twenty-five years later, their children sat facing each other across that same table in that same inn. An onlooker who knew both their parents would have noted the resemblance. The boy's features were strong and clear, his red hair the shade of his father's before gray had touched it. Though her hair was cut short, and was similar in color to the boy's hair rather than her mother's, the girl bore Ann Deems's delicacy of features, the small mouth, the pert nose, the small but intense green eyes under gracefully arching brows. The hands of the two did not touch, though. Not yet.

"You expecting somebody?" Evan asked. "You keep looking around."

Terri smiled as though it hurt her. "No, not really."

They had finished their entr e e, and were waiting for dessert. Up to that point, the conversation had been neither sparkling nor provocative, so Evan was surprised when Terri asked him if he was a virgin.

He gave a little laugh. "Why?"

"Curious."

"The same reason you keep looking around?" She didn't answer. "No, I'm not. Is it your business?"

"It might be. A person can't be too careful these days."

"About what?"

"About their sexual partners."

He looked at her for a long time before he spoke. "What?" He knew it was a dumb thing to say even as he said it. He had heard her clearly, and realized the implication, but he was too distrustful of fate to think that it should drop something this desirable in his lap.

"Look," she said, and now her smile was not as pinched as before. "I know you find me attractive, and I think you're kind of a hunk in a strange way.”

“Thanks. I guess."

"And we're both unattached, so why shouldn't we?" She cocked her head at him. "Unless I've been reading you wrong."

"No, no, I think you're quite a… a hunkess yourself, you're right.”

“Hunkess? I didn't know there was a feminine form for that."

"So what are you asking?" he said, getting back to the subject that now hung over the table like a fleshy chandelier. "If I'm safe?"

"Basically. Oh, I mean, we'll practice safe sex anyway, but if you know that you're carrying something unpleasant, I'm sure you'd be gentleman enough to tell me.”

He had never, he thought, met a girl like this before. Not even in Honduras with the corps. "I'm not," he said. "I mean, I don't have anything."

"Good," she said, giving him a look that produced in him an instant erection. "I'm very glad to hear that."

"You, uh… you still want dessert?"

She smiled and shrugged. "We already ordered it, didn't we?"

Dennis pulled the Porsche into the small underground garage of the Kirkland Community Building shortly after ten o'clock. When he opened the door for Ann to get out of the car, she stepped directly into his arms and they kissed again, this time with more passion than before. "You don't think this will spoil it," Dennis said with a half-smile.

She shook her head. "I only wish it had been earlier. We've had to wait so long.”

“No longer," Dennis said, and kissed her again, lightly.

They walked, their arms about each other, to the elevator that would take them to the suites above. "Wait," Dennis said, as Ann was about to push the button. "Let's walk up. Through the theatre. I want to… to talk for a moment."

She didn't know what he intended, but followed him without protest through the shadowy corridors, up the winding stairs, and into the inner lobby of the theatre, then up the marble staircase that led to the balcony, across the mezzanine lobby, and finally up the ramp that led to the balcony. He took her hand and led her down to the first row of the loge, where they sat together, looking out over the dimly lit auditorium.

"I used to come and sit here," Dennis said. "Just sit here and look down at that stage and think about what's been on it, and what's going to be on it. Sit here and dream my dreams." He took her hand in his. "This project's so damned important to me. My whole career has been for me, but this is finally a way I can do something for somebody else, pay back the theatre for everything it's given me… all the good things, I should say.

"I've come up here several times since… Robin died. But I haven't thought about the dreams, about the things that'll come. I've just been remembering. Remembering that day. And I can't, Ann. I've got to stop. Go on. But I can't, unless I…"

He paused, and Ann felt that there was more he wanted to say, something he wanted very much to tell her, beyond dreams, beyond love. "What is it, Dennis? You brought me here for a reason. What is it?"

He turned and looked at her as frankly as he ever had before. "Robin wanted to kill you," he said. "She planned to push you off the catwalk, planned for you to go through the ceiling."

Her stomach twisted, and she wondered if she looked as pale as she suddenly felt. "She told me…” she said, remembering, “… she told me the ceiling was solid, that if I fell off the catwalk I wouldn't go through." Her hand tightened on Dennis's. "Why?" she asked in a pinched voice. "Why would she want to do something like that?"

"She thought we were having an affair."

"Dennis…”

"She knew about us – years ago. I knew she was jealous, but I had no idea how much."

"Did she… tell you? That she wanted to kill me?"

His pause made Ann uncomfortable. "No. No."

"How did you know?"

"I… I knew. But not until afterwards. I… put it all together. It was the only thing that made sense."

"But how did you -"

"I knew." He leaped to his feet, stood for a moment looking at the stage, then turned to face her, his hips against the low railing. For a moment she was frightened of the intensity in his look, but when he spoke again, his voice was softer. "She never told me, but I knew. I'm sorry. I just couldn't keep it a secret from you. You had to know."

She was about to speak when a movement from above caught her eye. It was up where the ceiling had been recently plastered over, up at that pale spot where Robin had fallen through, where she…

… fell through again.

As though in some dream without sound, Ann saw the ceiling break away, saw Robin drop through, hang for a moment, then fall as if in slow motion, saw her eyes, full of unmistakable hatred, turn full upon Ann's, boring into her with a malignancy she had never before known, then vanish in the middle of the air.

"Ann?" It was Dennis's voice, but it sounded as though it were under water. "Ann, are you all right?"

His face, as full of concern as Robin's had been full of fury, came between her and the theatre, blotting out the broken ceiling, the ghostly track in the air that marked the path of Robin's descent. Still, his sudden movement startled her anew, and she gasped.

"What is it?" he asked, grasping her shoulders.

Slowly she craned her head past him, saw nothing but the theatre in semi-darkness, the ceiling, patched but whole.

"Did you see something?" he asked, turning to look down at the stage.