(“Merry Christmas, darl— Ricardo, did you even sleep?”)
On New Year’s Day, inspired by the changing year, he took a silver pin and pricked his fingertips; squeezed out bright beads and droplets that splashed the fresh-typed manuscript; chanted, “By the pricking of my thumbs, Neal Bay is overcome!”
He smeared a little blood on each page. For a while he watched it dry, then he licked his fingers clean of blood and ink.
“Excellent job, Mr. Rivera,” said Mr. Dean the next day. “Sheri turned in the final draft of her songs; I hope you two got together over the holidays? Then I guess that should do it. Listen, if you’re not too busy this trimester, why don’t you lend a hand building sets?”
Ricardo could have cackled and rubbed his hands together, but he had more control than that. He nodded and went looking for a hammer.
That afternoon he worked on the stage, doing quiet tasks with glue and thumbtacks in the dark wings while the actors looked over their new script.
Cory Fordyce said, “But I don’t remember… Morris, this isn’t our play.”
“What else would it be?” said Mr. Dean. His word outweighed that of Morris Fluornoy, the student director. “I’ll expect you to have it memorized by Friday. Don’t forget, opening night’s only two months away.”
“But this is scary,” said Lady Macbeth.
“It’s supposed to be,” said Newt, who had already complimented Ricardo on his script. “It’s Mars. Didn’t you ever see Queen of Blood?”
Ricardo resumed hammering. In his hands, the first of the Martian towers began to rise. The flunkies in set construction were used to taking orders; it was easy to shape their understanding of Martian architecture. He explained how low gravity and rarefied air required all structures to be warped until they could withstand ion storms and colloidal temperature gradients.
So, under his direction, they built something like a huge Cubist monster with a low, foam-rubber belly, giraffe-long legs, and a vast fanged mouth missing the lower jaw. They painted it red-orange, stapled a slit sheet of clear plastic between the front legs, and finally gave it wheels. Ricardo discovered a talent for painting, and covered it with writhing figures, deliberately crude glyphs of torment.
Portcullis-cum-air-lock. Hell-gate. Beast. It stood like a watchdog, always somewhere on the stage, its upper regions hidden from the audience by hanging backdrops and the proscenium arch.
Another of Ricardo’s talents also came in handy. He proved an excellent mimic, and so created a variety of unusual sound effects once he’d made friends with the sound technician. The obscure bird of night called, when it called, in a high voice familiar to Neal; and each time it called, the sandy-haired athlete grew slightly pale inside his skier’s tan. The bird’s cry, Neal once said to Cory within Ricardo’s hearing, sounded almost like a voice. He didn’t know that the words, Ricardo’s taunts, had been accelerated and run together until no sense could be made of them.
Neal became an ever more haggard Macbeth, in his plastic kilt and rakish cellophane visor. He started crossing the stage to avoid the young playwright and set-builder.
But Lady Macbeth—that is, Cory Fordyce—seemed to grow ever bolder.
Ricardo noticed her watching him as he went about his business in the shadows. One day he climbed a ladder all the way up to the catwalk, where spotlights and unused backdrops hung. He stood directly over her as she read a hologram from her husband who was fighting rebels in space. Ricardo concentrated on the top of her head, and within seconds she looked straight up at him, though he had climbed aloft in perfect silence, unobserved until now. He pretended to adjust a red gel on a spotlight while she continued her speech.
When he descended she walked proudly toward him, seeming to drink up the red light as she came, seeming to swell and tower as it filled her. Her hair caught scarlet highlights, her mouth wettened with blood, her eyes swam in red tears.
“Ricardo,” she said, “what are you up to?”
He backed away and she moved closer, forcing him into a corner.
“What are you doing to us?” she repeated.
Ricardo could summon no strength to meet the red glare in her eyes. Her intonation was that of Lady Macbeth in speeches he had written. She had such power over him. He felt his own power ebbing, leaking swiftly onto the ground, unstoppable.
She followed him along the row of ropes that dangled up into darkness.
“Don’t you run,” she said, “I want to talk to you. Sometimes you make me so mad—”
He saw a door and rushed through it, and turned with a cry as he realized his mistake. He had fled into the light cage. He turned to see her, triumphant and angry as she grabbed the wirework door and slammed it shut upon him.
The last of his strength left him. He slumped backward, catching his elbows on light levers, and so drew the theater into darkness with him as he fell.
When they found the source of trouble, they sent him out to sit in the auditorium until he felt better.
Cory came onstage. For a moment the lights were all wrong, pale white instead of red. She looked like a porcelain doll, eyes wide but blank. When she saw Ricardo, she looked over his head. Though he was the only one in the empty auditorium, she looked everywhere but at him.
“We’ll try Lady Macbeth’s song now,” said Morris.
“It’s Neal I want,” Ricardo whispered. “Stay out of my way.”
He felt murderous and guilty, but the alternative was worse. If he didn’t hate, then there would be nothing left for him at all. He did not want to be numb. If no one loved him, then he would see that they hated him; for though love was but a dream one forgot upon waking, hate worked in full daylight. Hate brought bright red visions of double lunacy, of a crimson planet spinning through a velvet-black void.
The piano played a few notes and Cory sang:
Ricardo groaned at Sheri’s song. It was so bad it might ruin the rest of the show.
Neal entered and they began a duet.
The monster of hell-gate loomed suddenly flimsy and ridiculous above the awkward singers.
Ricardo answered, “No!”
He rushed down the row of folding chairs, kicking a few out of his way. The piano stopped and the singers fell quiet. The actors and crew came out on the stage to see him.
“That stuff stinks!” he said.
“Mr. Rivera,” said Mr. Dean, aiming a quivering finger at the door, “you are out of bounds. Now leave and don’t bother returning.”
“I won’t have to come back,” he said. “I’ll hear everybody booing on opening night, even way out where I live.”
Cory’s eyes flashed red and he stayed a moment to look at her. Hate mauled his heart. He slammed his way outside to face a cloudy sky of blue with no trace of red in it.
Even then, he did not abandon the play. Whenever possible, he entered the auditorium before crew and cast arrived, and stayed hidden up in the dark catwalks until all had gone. Cory never saw him, for her eyes were always on Neal. Ricardo’s eyes, in the meantime, opened to the full scheme of performance, the total effect of actors and words, lighting and music—such as it was—working in dramatic fusion.