Many took the old theater to be something of a relic. It made a dark presence in the line of newer buildings on that block, like an old crone draped in shawls who never spoke to anyone. It was a on a back street that years ago smelt of intrigue, when that part of town was known for the unexpected and rarely seen, when there was street theater with mimes and comedians or when a bold clown might walk the square at noon. There were wide open bars in those days, where you would enter with an eager smile and wonder who you’d leave with. In later years the excitement had moved elsewhere, taken other forms and bypassed those who remembered the old place. The building was from the previous century and even had a peaked roof that spoke of indwelling secrets, where pigeons and starlings took cover and ice in winter made a draping sheet. Near the top were feathery tufts of leaves and long plastic fingers worn by the wind.
Real estate all around had surpassed the old theater. Its value lay in what could be built on that land once it was gone. All talk of which only amused Alice.
“They only think of money,” she said, marveling at the unique thought. “Imagination itself, why, what else is theater? Ought to enlighten them, ought to give them a little pause, yes, you’d think. It all gets taken over by a swarm of dollar signs. I wonder that they can get through the night, thinking like that.”
She puttered with her German porcelain and old spoons. She laughed and in the evening she left that and returned to her knitting. Alice was over ninety and never left the house. Sandrine shopped for her, did a lot of the cooking and cleaning up, although Alice was still quite independent.
“If I walked out,” she said if anyone asked, “Titus would change the locks.” Which was a joke. Titus was devoted to her and grateful she let him run the place and put up his own shows whenever he liked. He checked on her every day and they would sometimes spend an hour in her kitchen talking over recent shows and ones he hoped to line up. He always sought her advice: Was it too much tech? Would it get an audience? How should he price the tickets? He had lists and notes on his cell and people to get back to. Alice’ opinion was always welcome, always sought for. And that was the easier because she never said no. The most indulgent vanity project, people who could get no one to come but their friends, she would go for and wish Titus well. She would often have suggestions that would jazz it up. Old friends who had conjured up a makeshift sheaf of scenes with pointless monologues, those she would let in for hardly anything if they couldn’t pay. Just the quaintness of the antique theater, with its wooden rafters, hidden stairways and hewn bolsters attracted film projects that would do a shoot on a weekend and strike the next day. That paid well. And the theater needed activity. There were too many dark nights.
In fact down its upper corridors there was a mystique about darkness. Other people than Alice lived there, old retirees in single rooms they guarded like mountain haunts. In fact it was never clear to Titus himself how many such people there were. They were solitary men somehow ensconced there who had grown to be as much a part of the place as the walls and old beams. They had become the walls and old beams. As far as Titus knew they had no history, no beginning, they related to no one, had no connections and no wish to travel even to another block. For him it was a shadowy collection of spectral old men thrown up on that shore out of chance and penury, people who at night wandered from floor to floor when they felt bored or would sneak outside for an idle smoke. Alice collected the rent. Envelops they shoved under her door each month like a votive offering to warn away nasty letters from attorneys and bureaucratic trolls who envied their deep walled solitude. And some, Titus thought, hardly paid at all. Sandrine, who did props and lights for many of the shows, said these figures, no saying who, at night invaded the theater itself when no one was around. In the morning she would find props mysteriously moved, costumes left off the hanger or put where they didn’t belong.
“It’s as if they owned the place,” she said. “I mean by some secret agreement. That’s how they act. Like it’s their place too.”
Although he had managed the theater for five years, Titus knew only one or two of these people by name. Around the question of moving props he suspected one of them, Kiefer more than others, for the man was arrogant in his nightshirt, pacing without sound, choosing times when no one watched. But if discovered, then he would retreat like a wraith chased from disowned ground. If Titus appeared on the upper floors sometimes a shadow in a night shirt would slip by in resentful silence, looking at no one. Now and then when Titus mounted a half-lit stairway the faint streak of an arm and a worn coat would pass above before either could make a greeting, civil or not. Sandrine said some of these men had been old colleagues of Alice’s: marginal actors, unpublished playwrights, theater people of some errant kind, and that Alice gave them free or low rent out of gratitude or reminiscence from many years before. That would have been tracing back to when Alice herself was on stage and managed productions in and out of town.
“Well, if they’re old friends,” Titus mused, “makes sense.” He held no resentment, comfortable in his office. And Sandrine knew no more. She would have liked if Alice talked about it, but the past held little interest for the old woman.
For years builders and agents had approached Alice urging her to sell and now, but for a few sporadic callers, they had apparently given up. Her heirs who lived in Africa would have to settle such things. Only her death would bring a change, a fact, she noted with some humor, must be in the foreground of the thinking of anyone who visited or knew.
“Why, I am a regent, Sandrine. Did you know that? It’s true. I have them all guessing.”
It seemed Alice was the only one who felt no emotion about it. She had a steady unfocused gaze that sometimes led her to stare intently at some plant or picture on the wall and forget about everything else. After a time of steady silence she would turn away, some definite notion of things having formed in her inner crucible, so solid now it need only be visited when the mood appeared. She dressed carefully, watched in her mirror with no desire to impress anyone but only to be honest in her own manner. Her dress and all the odd objects around her were meant to complete herself.
She had a large chart of the stars she would spread out on the table while she did her knitting. At odd moments she would stop and stare at some spot on the black speckled sheet. Then after a while she would nod and turn away.
“Astrologers are such narrow people,” she once told Sandrine. She paused with a serious turn of her head and spoke directly. “They don’t know half what they say. And you see this here has nothing to do with astrology. These, these here, well, these are the real stars.”
Not all realtors had heard of Alice’ indifference. One in particular, Colby, was of a different sort. He was persistent. He would not listen to Titus’ warning. He wanted an interview since Alice would not talk on the phone. He offered to come by that afternoon even though Titus explained that Alice might not be available.
“Why not?” Colby asked as if it were a logical impossibility. “She’s always there. I know the story. I’m caught up on this lady.”
“Well, if you are…,” Titus began, but Colby would not let him finish. The man used words like sparklers and confetti to form a cloud obscuring what they pretended to make clear. He made no mention of the place as a plum if he could bring off the sale. That was for other realtors to pitch. Everyone knew that all the buildings on the block, and for blocks around, were decades younger than the theater. Without saying so, the pressure of a deal could be felt from Colby’s buttoned-down muscularity. He knew there were big bucks waiting and professional prestige if he could make a contract fly, whatever sort of postponement clause. By his tone, Titus picked up, well, others had tried–but those many, they just weren’t Colby.
Titus thought Alice would refuse but he asked anyway.
“I’ve seen them all,” Alice said. “Who?”
“He’s pretty insistent. Has a curious way of trying to make money where no one else expects it. Seems a little weird.”
Titus put Colby off that day but promised another. He picked a time when he knew Sandrine would be there. Alice agreed it would be all right. Might be more amusing than television, which she hated.
News of Colby’s appointment apparently filtered like smoke up through the rooms and landings above Titus’ office, after all the while he had presumed no one would care.
“Of course they know,” Alice said. “They know. They’ve known all along.”
“Um,… how do you mean?” Titus looked around at her and waited while the old woman massaged her swollen knuckles but would not go on. Sandrine brought her tea and looked around at Titus with a luscious smile at an implied joke.
“Well, I didn’t tell them.”
When the agent arrived, he was nothing like Titus expected. Colby had a teddy bear quality about him, his neck swelled from his collar. His long arms seemed liquid and loosely attached, especially designed, tailored in fact, to drape over things, armchairs, doorknobs and people. They might, with enough welcoming and presumptuous gentleness, draw people to him. Titus felt impressed with the man. Harm, in any form of blows or insults, seemed an alien notion that had not occurred to him. Titus estimated that the man possessed a peculiar advantage versus many people: he presumed the world had never hated him, did not hate him now and meant him no ill will whatever in the future. He had the odd trait of seeming to be glad right there where he was; at least that was his appearance when he arrived. He dressed well, with a red tie that had the flourish of an afterthought.
Colby wanted a look at the place and was quickly satisfied. He poked in corners and around curtains but asked hardly anything. They engaged in pleasantries in Titus’ office, but Titus had no small talk. He wanted to get the matter over with as quickly as he could. They went out to the landing before the stair. A door above slammed. Titus looked up and there was the block-like form of Kiefer standing legs apart.
“He doesn’t belong here,” Kiefer announced.
“What?”
“He doesn’t any right to be here.”
“Whatta you know?”
Titus walked up, planning to ignore the man.
“He has no business here at all. What does he think he is? We have peaceful lives.”
This was as close as Titus had ever come to Kiefer, the odd lodger. He could see how the man had been handsome once, with robust features that were outlined everywhere with creases and puffs of now unneeded flesh. His eyes were intense but would quickly look away and then back again in the manner of forgetting where he was. His voice was large but was strained now with the resentful bite of insistence that Colby should quickly leave.
“Out of the way, Kiefer.”
Titus stopped in front of the man and peered into his face.
“You don’t even know this guy. He just walked in. What’s he to you? He doesn’t want to talk to you.”
Kiefer stood his ground.
“No? Well, he should. He should want to talk to everybody.”
The dialogue went on all the more insensibly for being in the crowded passageway. Titus tried to pacify Kiefer and Kiefer always came back claiming “That guy should go somewhere else.” Colby said nothing as if he were quietly living in another dimension outside the shade where domestic differences got air. He stood back and beamed a smile whenever anyone looked to see.
“I’m sure she’ll welcome us,” he put in after Kiefer’s attacks only repeated.
“Yeah, we got an appointment,” Titus let on.
Kiefer kicked the floorboard.
“She won’t. She can’t. You’re not welcome in this establishment. This is not public property. No. It’s not….”
Titus decided the only way to resolve anything was to keep moving. As he walked ahead the others had to follow. Like a crowd that had an agreed purpose, the three men arrived at Alice’ door.
Inside, Alice sat by her table and regarded each of them in turn. Colby, from being one silent smile, came on like a kid let into a toy store. Once he got started, would not stop talking. He told her the place was fabulous, had such a rich aura, not least because she was sitting on a gold mine, as if that had never been said before. He went on about prices and deals on nearby properties and how he had contacts other realtors only wished for. How his research, his friendships, had more depth. With more force than he looked like he possessed, he strode around and acquired the center of the room.
“I can offer you right now,” he pronounced, “because I tell it to you frankly. You know what? The sum, I tell you, of a million dollars up front. Just to sign. And more later of course. Of course. Because we don’t have to find the buyers. That’s how we work. The buyers come to us. We’re that well known. We can work out the details. Among any of them. Just to agree. Because, I can be quite frank with you, my associates think highly of you. Very highly. They’ve heard of you. They know. Why, you were in the theater for years.” He named two shows Alice had been in decades before. How did he find that out? Alice enjoyed a teary smile.
Titus only stared. As Colby went on non-stop, Titus had one spark of an idea: this guy should be on stage. Colby went on talking and Alice, her knitting discharged in her lap, listened and regained her detachment. Colby had to take a breath. Stepping from behind where she had waited by the wall, Sandrine took the open space, pirouetted on the floor so her dress flung out and held up her arm.
“We should do a jig for that. A million dollars. Wow.”
She cocked her wrist in his direction with a dancer’s flutter of her fingers.
“This’ all bullshit,” Kiefer said. He thrust his awkward form in front of Colby. “Big money. It’s all talk. You want that? You want talk?”
Sandrine fluttered more, assessing the strange animal in their midst.
“I would prefer,” Colby said, “if we could speak in private.”
It was way too late for that. He had allowed himself to form a nexus that could not move. He downstaged Sandrine who stepped off to balletic twirls she held before the window. Colby was back to his pitch, in places giving it a different tone. And the more Kiefer objected, the more imperturbably Colby went on. At each pause he was off again, not just about money, but about insurance, annuities, how the place could be improved, given stature again as in the old days, be a presence on her street like nothing else. It could be revived.
“This theater, I know it’s your love. Has to be. I know that and I see it. And I see why. Oh. One has to be impressed. But think what would happen with better lighting, new seating, new décor all around.”
How this would work if the place were sold was vague and never addressed. Titus began to suspect the man had some mad plan of his own that his strange intrusion had not revealed. But then the whole encounter, scrambled as it was, drew to an end quite unexpectedly. From an embroidered sack hung on her chair, Alice produced a twenty dollar bill and put it in Kiefer’s hand. The man stopped in mid-sentence. Suddenly fallen speechless, he blinked and stared and put it away in the manner of a bird stealing seed. The distant and silent insistence in the old woman made everyone pause. Kiefer leaned to one side apparently stunned at what she had done and what he had accepted. It could have been her small gentle smile, or the strange gift, or the simple act now of Sandrine who, sensing the right moment, swung open the door for them to leave. She prettily angled her waist by the knob. The adversaries filed out but Colby anyway could still be heard down the stairs going on with his pitch as if he still had a hearing.
Titus stayed to ask if Alice needed anything and to intimate how he had tried hard to avoid the visit altogether. Alice needed nothing and just wanted to rest. Titus waited till he heard nothing from below and then descended alone. But two steps out in the corridor, he stopped short at the shadow to one side. Colby was gone. Along in the hallway Kiefer was slumped in a corner of the wall.
“You don’t go back to your room? It’s no big deal, man. She’s not gonna sell. You’re totally safe.”
Kiefer could not reply. Titus could have avoided him but came close enough to see the man’s carboned cheek was wet with tears. He would not return Titus’ look. He shrunk back. The twenty dollar bill was crunched in his fist. Kiefer was poor but could that mean so much? To cry over? Then throw it back. Kiefer’s face descended to his chest. He was starting to sob. Titus did not want to see more or ask why. He went around and down the stairs to his office.
That evening Titus got tired of his spreadsheet and his ragged list of people to call. He wanted only to retreat, turn off his cell and go his own way when a sound came on the stair above. There was a clatter of feet and a confidential voice that spoke beneath the noise:
“Let’s go talk to him.”
Otis moved aside the door left ajar. He was a lanky man, shorter than Kiefer who was right behind him. He moved with frail grace smoothed now with drink and asked unnecessarily if they might come in. Titus thought such a visit so odd that he welcomed them. Kiefer placed a nearly full bottle of whiskey on the desk and produced three plastic cups. There was an embarrassed silence.
“Well, tell him.”
“I suppose,…” Kiefer began, but he could not finish. Otis poured into each of the cups till Titus stopped him with his own.
“I have to apologize,” Kiefer said, “for my… behavior this… this afternoon. I hope…. I hope you accept my apology. I got excited. I overreacted. I hope you accept… my apology.”
“Of course.”
“I was not myself. That isn’t me. And your friend the real estate magnate….”
“He’s not my friend.”
“Well, if he were…. if he was a friend, then I would apologize to him. To him as well.”
“Of course.”
With this the old actor lapsed beside the bottle and caressed it. He took serious notice of the label with some attention to its usual self-praise. His large hand moved over it as it might be sculpted in marble and this abrupt visit a ceremony he performed alone or with his friend Otis. Now Titus was allowed to watch and was even included. Kiefer was nothing like what Titus had seen that afternoon. There were no tears. He even seemed softened and relieved of pain. The man’s glance had a sanguine intimacy that had nothing to do with drink.
As Otis inquired of shows about the theater, Titus introjected how things were fine with the slight blemish that now and then with the current show props were mysteriously moved in the night. What of that? Otis looked around with a shrug. Kiefer patted the bottle as it might be a puppy needing warmth and consolation. Still his eye lingered there and he nudged it toward Titus in a fraternal way.
“Eh, it’s all good,” Otis said with a slur. “What twenty dollars’ll getcha. So, Titus. Tell us. How did the confab go? She gonna sell the place?”
“No.”
“Your friend didn’t stick around?”
“He’s not my friend.”
“Well, anyway.”
“No. It was a non-event. I don’t know what’s in that man’s head. It isn’t brains.”
Otis went into a reverie about his own experience in real estate from years before, how it takes so much drive and you meet such strange people. A lot of it’s a waste of time. And you have to walk your feet off. Kiefer lapsed back not listening. Titus rose, poured the remainder of his drink back in the bottle and let them know that he had plans. That was as much as he had seen of these men in the last five years.
A few days later Titus got a call.
“Compson is very upset,” Sandrine said. “Props are missing. Things moved around.”
That was the current show.
“What’s missing?”
“A golden ash tray. And a veil. It’s only used in one scene but they need it.”
“Well, the ash tray isn’t real gold, is it?”
That show had the next two weekends and now was only Tuesday.
“No. They can replace that.”
“And the other?”
“That’s harder. You don’t understand. I don’t like it, Titus. I don’t like any of this. Stealing. Moving things. That’s not what it’s about. I’m not happy.”
Sandrine could be very insistent, like now. Whenever she was involved in a show a kind of cast came over her and she became especially meticulous, even touchy. Titus didn’t want a discussion. He wanted peace.
“All right. I’ll look.”
“We’ve already looked. They’ve looked. It isn’t there.”
“I’ll look,” he said with enough force so she stopped. He took a softer tone and suggested he had an idea for a solution. He didn’t want to explain more but he assured her. After some more back and forth Sandrine thanked him. That was enough.
Tuesday night nothing would be happening. Titus resolved to wait in the lighting booth and see if there was a visitor. He would just surprise the person, one of the solitary loners no doubt, and ask about the props. He suspected it would be Kiefer but maybe not. Anyway, a little surprise, an embarrassed confession, and that would solve the problem before going home. There was even a makeshift couch up there in the lighting booth where he had slept more than once.
Titus was up in the booth before the house had settled down. Compson and none of the people for her show were there. He waited in the dark while growls and wood squeaks came from the other floors and trailed up the stairs to work like shadows feeling upward before they wore themselves out. There were no voices, only vague shifts and clicks like carefully latched doors. Even at that distance he could feel Alice asleep and all in her apartment growing still. For all the others, they would be still too, each in his own private solitude, his own smell and crumpled sheets. No one would come tonight. Titus had the vast space filled with absences, all to himself. He actually did fall asleep.
He awakened so suddenly he was afraid he had made a disturbing sound. It must have been hours. He waited in the dark. The floor creaked in the aisle below and some shadow, darker in the dark, moved there with only the rustle of fabric above soft steps. By now Titus’ vision had adjusted and the faint night lights were enough to see that the person below indeed was Kiefer. His resolute step proceeded down the aisle and with it the white veil, which Titus had never seen, was held aloft and streaming from his uplifted arm like a flighty ghost. The form attained the stage. Titus watched as the man’s shape turned and wafted the veil in circles around the stage. He stopped and stood erect. He was more agile than Titus would have said. Stock still, he held the veil upward on extended arm, letting it drape down to the floor.
“You.”
Long pause. Throat sounds.
“You. Do you…. you….?”
He repeated the words, some of them very clear, others only mumbles. His voice gradually became a kind of verbal hum so that he could speak each word and elide it to the next without a break. His tone, soft at first, rose slowly to an incantation with gentle hypnotic power that gradually grew to fill the dark open space.
“Do you,… do you… yes, I do…. Do…,” he kept repeating, and the repetitions became singing to himself. He went down from the stage into the center aisle and stood stock still. Then after a moment he retraced his steps back up. This time when he got on the stage he moved for a while aimlessly and Titus could see how in that aimlessness, odd objects left for the set, would be picked up, felt or examined, and then put back wherever they fell like some discarded thought. The man was steady now. There was furniture to the sides but the center was bare. Kiefer stood facing out and held the veil up as before. Its faint whiteness shown in the dark streaming to his feet.
“Do you Alice, take this….man… this… ”
His voice choked and he had to repeat. Titus could not interrupt; he was held stark still. Kiefer had trouble getting out most of the words and so in places there were only odd syllables and phrases. Then the repetitions came again. Again he walked down the aisle and after a pause walked back again, stood in the same place and repeated it, this time in a clearer more resonant voice.
“Do you Alice… take…. this man….”
Then, as a part of the ritual, he draped the long veil over himself. He stood still. He turned in different directions then turned back to face front. He bowed. Then he wrapped his arms around the veil and bent over nearly to the floor in a kind of thin embrace. Then he stood erect again, breathing heavily. After a moment he went down the aisle again, paused and walked back again. He did the whole thing over, this time circling more in the open space. Again the stuttered oath. Again the changing of the veil. Again the soft embrace.
After he watched for a while Titus thought that now would be the right time to suddenly switch on the lights, create an awful fright. The enshrouded ghost would shrink back aghast and race out in haunted shame. That would be the recompense. That would straighten out the props. But Titus would not. He waited in stillness hoping the ritual, even as it repeated, would end itself somehow, but around again Kiefer went, weaving sometimes, often holding himself in a stalwart pose, always draping the veil aloft or holding it to his face. For long moments he was simply still and silent. Titus kicked a lightbulb. That was enough. The spell not quite broken, was broken off. Mercifully, the man dropped the veil as he ran out down the aisle and was gone. A door creaked and slammed. Then another.
Titus waited till the building with its secret halls and faint steps became fainter still. Then he retrieved the veil and made his way home. Up the street between the trees he made out the first gray threads of dawn.
It was days before Titus brought the matter up. The veil problem was solved. He didn’t want anyone hating Kiefer and for all he knew, Kiefer might still not be the only one who prowled around the theater at night. Or moved things. He could be just one among others who saw his chance. So Titus waited till Compson’s show closed and picked a time when Sandrine would be there. Then he told the story to them both.
Alice gave barely a little smile. She moved her hand over the paper chart of stars. Neither woman spoke.
“I guess he’s crazy,” Titus concluded. “Or crazy…. for you.”
“Oh, well,” said Sandrine. She leaned her torso far over, poised her fingers on the table, balanced with practiced grace. “Don’t you? Don’t you see? Why this, this…. Oh, I can just see it, it’s so marvelous. It’s theater of another kind.”
“Oh, yeah. Well, the man lives in fantasy.”
“Of course you’d say so,” said Sandrine, “but some part of it is real. There. There you have it. If he was crying as you said. There’s something real in it, I mean if he even does it at all. I think it’s so fascinating. It’s so sweet. Imagine. A wedding! Wow! A wedding in the dark. Just to think of it.”
She hummed to herself and twirled around so her skirt flared out.
Alice was turned away, gazing at nothing. Her bony fingers went back and forth over the chart of stars. After a moment they returned to the threads of her knitting.
“Real….,” she said, “… real…” She softly repeated the word till she saw they were looking at her.
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