Amy Cousins - When the Lights Go Down

“That isn’t happening.”

“What do you mean?” The muscles in her back locked up as she stopped herself from flinching. Nick’s face was calm. He wasn’t trying to break her heart, she was sure, just delivering what sounded like the world’s worst news.

“Heitman said to tell you it’s going to London next. They just haven’t announced it.”

Shit.

Nothing was written in stone until you had the ten-commandments tablets in your hands. She knew that. Knew better than to count on anything in the constantly shifting sands of show business. But she let herself mourn for a moment, even though she made sure to keep every sign of her crushing disappointment off her face. She’d been so ready to take this next big leap forward. To join the big leagues.

For a moment, she wondered if she should doubt Drake. Who knew if he was ruthless enough to lie to get his mother what she wanted? But, no. It would only take one phone call to Heitman, or almost anyone in the industry, to check. She was sure it was true.

Get a grip, girl. Life’s disappointing. Let’s see what we can salvage here.

She’d kept her calendar clear for the Broadway show, not pursuing other gigs that would have taken over her schedule. Unless she wanted to take a big hit, going after this play with Heitman might be her best option this late in the game.

Of course, it would have been better had she not made out with the man who was effectively one of the show’s producers, but that couldn’t be helped now. She knew he wanted her. And there was no use pretending she hadn’t just spent the previous two nights imagining him naked and in her bed. But there was no room in her business plan for romance. Or even down and dirty one-night stands. Particularly not with the money.

Shaking her head, Maxie readjusted her battle plan and rolled into her standard pitch speech. The words flowed without hesitation. It was a presentation she’d made dozens of times by now, albeit never before to a man who’d kissed her senseless at a bus stop.

She slapped her portfolio on the table the moment her dinner plate was whisked away by the busboy and showed off her stuff.

Literally.

“We have a warehouse half a mile from the office. Historically, more than half of the prop needs of any given show can be fulfilled by our stock, and that number is trending upward as our inventory expands. We’ll save you time and that means money.” Nick flipped through the pages of digital photos of precisely organized rows of bins and crates and closets. Clothes, shoes, pots, pans, bicycles, birdcages, traffic lights, trees—anything and everything that a set designer might want to see on stage. The warehouse was her baby. Her business coup. Without it, she didn’t have a business. The financial crash had hit the theater world hard. Life had been rough for years as people cut back on luxuries, which definitely included nights out on the town watching plays. But when the real estate market in Chicago tanked, she picked up an old foreclosed warehouse for a song, borrowing money from her family after presenting her business plan in a three-hour PowerPoint presentation. She’d immediately started filling it with every prop she’d collected over twelve years of backstage work. Then she’d hired her network of talent, mining her friends, classmates and savvy competitors when she could.

Nick was listening.

She could tell he’d buried his frustration as the wheels clicked in his brain and he considered her proposal.

“We’re also prepared to fully staff the crew needs of the show, at whatever level necessary. This is a plus for you in that it will save an enormous amount of time. My crews work together without missing a beat—everyone on the same page, using the same system.”

“Isn’t it more traditional for the director to assemble the crew piecemeal? Hiring the best individual for each job?”

He didn’t look up from the portfolio. He’d moved on to the copies of her projected and actual budgets for shows she’d run in the past. She hoped he’d assume that the thinness of that section had more to do with the inherent dryness of pages of numbers than the fact that she’d yet to land many big shows.

“It is. It’s also traditional to waste time creating a smoothly functioning crew out of a crowd of people who are used to a dozen different ways to call a show. I don’t waste time, and my people work together like clockwork from day one.”

Closing the cover, he drummed his fingertips on it for a moment while looking at her. She ran through her mental list of expected objections and prepared to counter them with articulate explanations.

“How many shows do you run at a time?”

A new question.

“Myself, only one. My company? Right now we’re managing Oz and a couple of small local productions.” She wanted to tell him about her vision for the future, her sandcastles in the sky, but this wasn’t high school. And she wasn’t standing in front of an open locker, hoping the cute boy across the hall would ask her to prom. She needed to impress.

One of the hottest directors in Chicago wanted her. She was disappointed about missing out on the Broadway show, but this opportunity could be nearly as big for her.

She sat calmly under Nick’s pensive gaze. There wasn’t a doubt in her mind that she knew what she was doing, and that she did it better than almost anyone. Let him stare as long as he liked. When he figured her out, if he figured her out, there was only one conclusion to reach: She’d be the one solid, knowable factor in the swirling mystery that was the world of a theater production.

He wouldn’t be able to resist her.

“You’re sure you can take on another show right now?”

She didn’t even blink.

“I was already planning to do that, plus it’ll be at least three months before we open. In ten years, Carving Bananas will be stage managing half the shows in Chicago.”

She had him. She could feel it.

Handing the portfolio back to her, he waved off the sommelier’s approach with more wine and signaled for the check. “That’s ambitious.”

“That’s a given,” she said, dropping the folio at her side. She knew the end of a meeting when she felt one. It was time to wrap it up. “We’re efficient. We’re cost effective. We minimize chaos. The more shows we run, the more obvious that will be. The only limits are on how many good people I can hire, and that pool is nowhere near tapped out yet.”

“Okay.”

He plucked the napkin out of his lap and dropped it on the tablecloth in front of him. Like clockwork, the server arrived with the check and Nick handed him a credit card. The man returned almost immediately and Nick gestured for him to wait while he signed the slip. Before she could figure out what to say next, Nick put his hands on the arms of the chair and started to slide it back.

Her butt was frozen to her seat, like she was sitting on a block of ice, the cold locking her brain into immobility. Her jaw creaked as she pushed the word out. “So, okay?”

He looked down at her. “You’ve got the job.”

“I do?”

The distinction was important.

The corner of his mouth quirked upward. “Meet with Heitman. Go over the script. If your numbers are in line, then you, your crew and your warehouse have the job.”

She stood up. Now was the time for some memorable comment to seal the deal. Some pithy remark about how he wouldn’t regret it. Maxie opened her mouth.

“I have to go to the bathroom.”

She spun on one heel and walked away, bracing herself momentarily on the arm of a passing busboy as the trembling in her knees threatened to spill her across the slick Brazilian-cherry wood floor.

The pristine surfaces of the ladies’ room at Nomi had never echoed so loudly with shouts of glee.