Alix Ohlin - Inside

This thought ought to have softened and saddened her, but instead it made her hard. For the rest of the day, her mission was to remove all traces of the past six months. She rearranged the furniture, cleaned out the refrigerator, changed the sheets, moved the bed against the far wall, filled three enormous Hefty bags with garbage and lugged them down to the street. By then it was nine o’clock and she was so tired that she tripped on the stairs going back up to the apartment. She sat there on the dirty landing and shuddered with tears. She let herself cry to the count of ten, then stood up and went inside.

So this was how it ended, she thought. It wasn’t what she’d expected.

She could have gone up there to make sure they were all right. It wasn’t out of the realm of possibility. But she didn’t. She was sure that Halverson, notwithstanding his air of domination and control, would take good care of the baby-to-be. She pictured a nursery — Hilary’s old room? — with a crib, pastel wallpaper, teddy bears. She doubted Hilary would get in touch when the baby was born. Anne wouldn’t have, if she were Hilary.

Anne didn’t believe in fate or the universe sending you signals and signs. She believed in making your own luck. So the day after Halverson’s visit, she put on a low-cut top, had a date with a director, and left with the names of three theater companies that were about to go on the road. And systematically she made dates with men in those companies until she had an offer to travel to Scotland on a festival tour. By Friday she was packed and at the airport, proud of herself for having taken charge. Of Alan and Hilary, she would have said, had there been anyone in her life to ask, that she could barely remember their names.

It was the first time she’d ever been to Europe, and she hadn’t been on a plane in over a decade. The security arrangements astounded her; she remembered as a child breezing through airports only minutes before departure, but that was over now. On board, she sat next to a sophisticated, sarcastic actress named Elizabeth who spent the whole flight gossiping about other members of the troupe, explaining which was a sex addict, an anorexic, an adulterer. Anne found all this helpful in terms of navigating the vipers’ nest that a group of actors often amounted to, and she had no problem with the calculating, temporary alliance being offered to her. But she wasn’t interested in sharing stories of her own. So when her seatmate began to press her, at first gently, then more forcefully, for details of her life, she held back. To win her confidence Elizabeth told a long story, maybe true, maybe false, about her affair with a married man, followed by depression, alcohol abuse, heroin, rehab, and “a current infatuation with coke and my nicotine patch.” It was all designed to bring out Anne’s own confession. In this kind of conversation, you had to give up something.

“Where did you grow up?” Elizabeth persisted, digging.

“On a farm,” Anne said. “In upstate New York.”

“ You on a farm? I can’t even picture it.”

Anne nodded, gazing through the part in the curtain that showed a slice of first class. “I looked after the chickens.”

“Now I’m imagining you in pigtails, collecting eggs and putting them in a straw basket.”

“I used to gather the chickens for slaughter,” Anne said, calling up stories Hilary and Alan had told her. “I picked them up and held them in my arms to calm them down. I could feel their little hearts beating like crazy. They’d run away when they saw me coming. But I always caught them. I’d grab them by the legs and turn them upside down so the blood drained to their heads and they’d go limp. Then we killed them.”

“I could never do that,” Elizabeth said.

Anne shrugged. “You get used to it.”

Edinburgh was gray, gothic, and awash with actors. She’d had no idea of the scope of the festival, which thickened the streets with hordes of people handing out leaflets for performances and plastering posters on walls. There were Norwegian dancers, Japanese mimes, performances in churches and street corners; it was a planet of actors, and God only knew if there were enough people around to actually attend the hundreds of shows. In the evening the sound of the crowds outside filtered through the walls of their hotel, and between the noise and her excitement Anne barely slept.

In the morning they held a quick dress rehearsal in the back room of the pub where they’d be performing. Though it was August, the weather was cold and the room unheated, and she shivered throughout the warm-up. Most of the others had performed the play for a solid month in Soho and she felt she wasn’t fitting in, a discordant note in the song they’d learned to sing without her. The awkwardness made her nervous, and the nervousness made her even more awkward.

She thought she saw them raising an eyebrow at the director, and Elizabeth abandoned her when it came time for lunch, briskly walking off with the male lead, Tony. Anne went back to the hotel, where they were sharing a room, for a short, furious cry. Then she wiped her tears and worked on her lines for an hour.

Though it was only early afternoon, it already felt like evening; not having slept the night before, she could feel dryness and exhaustion creasing her face, and regretted having come. Her nerves were jangled, raw. She blamed the director for not giving her enough time and guidance, and Elizabeth, that snake, for rattling her even before the first show. She’d done them a favor by stepping in at the last minute, and in return she was getting absolutely no gratitude whatsoever.

Working up this anger comforted her and helped her concentration, but she was still upset. She needed to calm down before the performance. She walked through the crowded streets looking for a day spa or a yoga center, but couldn’t find either one and settled for her third choice, a bar. She sat down and ordered a Scotch, on the when-in-Rome principle. The bartender asked her what kind she wanted, and she shrugged helplessly. “You tell me,” she said.

He smiled and poured her a glass. She took a dark, smoky sip. At the far end of the bar, a bunch of young Americans was tossing back pints and taking no notice of her. Anne sighed and took another sip as a man slid onto the stool next to her and ordered a drink. A few more people filtered in, and when she went to the bathroom and came back, she saw a few heads turning to watch her.

“Buy you another?” the man next to her said. He was slender and dark-haired, wearing a lot of rings. His accent sounded Spanish or Portuguese.

“Okay,” she said. “Just one.”

When it came, she raised it in a gesture of thanks, and he smiled and pointed at his chest. “Sergio.”

“Millicent,” she said.

“Milly? What a sweet name.”

“Yeah, whatever,” she said, rolling her eyes. Already, she was close to having what she wanted and needed — a fleeting moment of attention, her presence in the world affirmed. She slid off the stool and stood.

Sergio touched her hand gently. “I’m sorry if I have offended you,” he said, knitting his eyebrows together charmingly. “I am a goofball at times.”

“A goofball?” It was such an unexpected word that she laughed, and he did too, showing large, white teeth. There was a mole on the side of his mouth, light brown and slightly raised, like a bread crumb stuck there.

“This is what my friends tell me, yes.”

“And where are these friends of yours? Spain?”

“I am from Lisbon originally, but right now I live in London. I work in telecommunications. I am here on business for a few days. Now you know everything about me. And you, Millicent?”

“I’m a teacher,” she said. “Taking some drama students on a field trip.”