I slipped through a curtain into a room that had been painted entirely black. Walls, ceiling, floor, stage, all the same flat black. A square the size of a small bedroom had been taped off on the stage. The tape glowed lightly as if radioactive.
About twenty people were watching a young man who was sitting at a desk, reading a thick blue book, pencilling notes in its margins. A pretty blonde with dishevelled hair stood behind a line of tape and knocked on an invisible door, stamping her foot twice to provide the sound. The man looked up from his book, his face darkening, as though he'd been expecting-dreading-this visitor. He closed the book and walked to where the woman stood. He mimed opening the door and stepped aside as the woman entered. Before either of them could say anything, an older man sitting in the front row called, "Stop."
He was in his forties, muscular, bald with a wispy hairline of implants combed back from his crown. Theo Harris, who had been Maya Cantor's drama teacher.
The actor looked at him with a petulant frown. "Why'd you stop us so soon? I didn't think we got far enough to screw up."
"Don't jump to conclusions, James," Harris said. "I just want to try something here."
He climbed up onto the stage and took the actress aside. He whispered briefly in her ear, then went into the darkened wings and returned with something held behind his back. He slipped the object into the pocket of her coat and then climbed down and took his seat. "Once more, please."
James sat down at the desk and resumed reading. I moved quietly to the back row of chairs and eased into one.
The actress stamped her foot again. James closed the book as he had before and went to the door with the same dark look on his face. He opened the invisible door but before he could look away, the actress pulled a small black revolver from her pocket and jammed it against his chest.
James jumped back with a startled look. "What are you doing? That's not in the scene."
Harris stood again. "You weren't in the scene, James. You knew before the knock who was going to be there and why she was there. Didn't you?"
James stared sullenly at the black floor.
"Joe Clay doesn't know who's there, does he?" Harris asked.
"No."
"If he did, would he open the door? Think of what Kirsten represents to him now. To you. You've finally achieved sobriety. You're finally on the road back to your self. And she is dangerous to you, isn't she?"
James's jaw was set so tightly, the word "Yes" barely escaped.
"I pulled that little stunt with Alicia because I wanted to see surprise on your face. I wanted to see the look of a man who can lose everything he has in a split second if he isn't careful. That's where Joe is right now, isn't he? That's where you are if you are Joe."
"I guess."
"Don't guess, James. Know. Know that you are on a tight-rope with no net. All you have is the little bit of strength you've discovered since you started going to AA. So if it takes a gun to find it in yourself, next time she knocks on the door I want you to see that gun whether it's in her hand or not." "We were devastated when we heard about Maya. Devastated. This sort of thing happens so often with actors-they're hardly the most stable beings on the planet-but Maya Cantor? No one saw it coming."
We were sitting in Theo Harris's office one flight up from the theatre, drinking coffee. He was also wolfing down an egg salad sandwich, for which he apologized. "If I don't eat before my next class, I'll be tripping from hypoglycemia."
"What sort of student was she?" I asked.
He mulled it over for a moment before answering. "Capable, I would say. She certainly had talent. I wouldn't say she was gifted, not in the sense that Alicia Hastings is. If you'd seen more of Alicia's work in that scene today, you'd know what I mean. I never should have paired her up with James. He is so mannered, so constipated emotionally. She blows him away without even speaking."
"And Maya?"
"An attractive girl. An attractive person. Open to her emotions and her instrument. Some students come by it naturally and others have to work at it. Maya was more in the second category and she did work at it-more last year than this, I have to say."
"Why do you think that was?"
"My impression? Something else had captured her imagination. Maybe a boy. Maybe another career idea. A lot of kids come in here thinking they're going to be the next Seth Rogen, the next Ellen Page, but they realize pretty quickly how tough it is out there. Competition for parts in our productions is fierce and to be honest, the U of T program isn't considered among the elite. The really talented kids go to New York or to Yale or skip school entirely and get right to work."
"You think Maya had come to that realization?"
"It's possible. She auditioned well enough and acquitted herself honourably in the parts she did get, but like I said, that hardly paves the way for a career in the theatre."
"Did she ever seem depressed to you? Despondent about her prospects?"
"Let me tell you something, Mr. Geller. I have seen some pretty high-maintenance people in my time. Not just as a teacher, but as a director, which I was for many years in the outside world." He pointed at the wall behind him, where posters of his professional productions of The Threepenny Opera, Twelfth Night, Fifth of July and others had been framed. "I've seen actors threaten to kill themselves when they weren't cast at Stratford or the Shaw Festival. I've had students who've dropped out-not just out of school but their very lives-when they didn't get parts they wanted. I've had the drunken midnight phone calls, the sob sessions right in this office, even threats… all the histrionics they couldn't deliver in their work. But Maya Cantor conducted herself quite professionally in everything she did. Last year, she directed Trojan Women, and she handled the cast beautifully, which was no easy task. She had a boatload of drama queens in that one and never lost her cool."
"What about the last month or two?"
"She wasn't as focused on her work. A few weeks before she died, we held auditions for a production of Women in Transit and she didn't sign up."
"Was that unusual?"
"Let me put it this way: Very few plays have as many good female roles. Every actress in the program auditioned for it."
"Did she say why she didn't audition?"
"No. Not to me, anyway. I heard she was involved in an outside project-a guerrilla theatre sort of thing where actors confront politicians or business types about one issue or another-but that shouldn't have prevented her from trying for a part."
"You weren't concerned?"
"Not really. In retrospect, maybe I should have been. But she didn't seem down at all. Quite energized in fact. It's just that her energy was being applied elsewhere."
"Was she seeing anyone that you know of? Anyone from her class?"
He thought about it, then shook his head. "A lot of mingling goes on in a theatre program. People work intensely together. They fall desperately in and out of love. They're trying on new personalities, in a way. Behaving outrageously, passionately, even foolishly, as if it's expected of them as artists. Again, Maya didn't seem to go for that. She knew who she was." Harris looked down at the papers piled on his desk, snippets of drama written over the centuries, words to be spoken by students vying for their moment in the spotlight.
"At least I thought she did."