‘Got anything nice planned this weekend? What are you up to tonight?’ I was half hoping that he might be free. With an early finish, I didn’t fancy being on my own in the flat again.
‘I’m going away.’
‘You didn’t say anything about that before.’
Vince pouted. ‘What? Now you’re like the social life police? I don’t have to tell you everything. It’s called a private life for a reason.’
I took a step back.
Vince shared anything and everything about his vibrant social life.
I put my hands up in defence, said ‘Sorry’ and got the hell out of Dodge.
Making a strategic retreat, I realised that now I was going to be late.
I skidded to a halt in the doorway to find Marcus ready and waiting, not quite drumming his fingers on his desk. There were, however, two mugs of coffee sitting there.
‘Here you go.’
I inhaled the delicious scent as he pushed one towards me.
He’d definitely earned a brownie point or two with his coffee. ‘Sorry I’m late.’
‘I expected it. I guess I should be grateful you turned up at all.’ The rueful shrug accompanying his words robbed them of any malice. A simple statement of fact which irked me even more.
‘I do have a job of my own.’
‘I know, so I’ll try and be quick today. And this will help make that job easier so that you’ll have more time. Ready for your first lesson?’
‘Not really. But in for a penny in for a pound.’
His green eyes danced with sudden amusement, transforming his face which made my body go into silly mode with my hormones hijacking any common sense and sending my pulse into overdrive. Bloody hormones. What did they know? I didn’t even like him that much.
Although I had to admit, it struck me how healthy and wholesome he looked. I might have likened him to the Prince of Darkness but he was clearly a damn sight more used to sunshine than I was. It struck me that I spent too much time with either stick thin dancers or singers with healthy diaphragms and sturdy chests and people whose working hours were principally after dark. The LMOC was my whole world and what a world it was. Most of my friends worked here. Jeanie had worked in theatre for years and had a million and one amazing stories. She’d worked with everyone who was anyone. Vince had come from provincial theatre and had less experience but had lived and breathed theatre life, so had a huge acquaintance of set designers, sound engineers and props people. My friends in the orchestra, Philippe, Guillaume, Karla and Angela had lived all over the world and came from different countries and cultures and Leonie and Sasha from the wardrobe department were slightly alternative and very bohemian. It was easy for us all to stick together because not only did we have the theatre in common, we all worked similar shift patterns.
‘Have a seat.’ He pointed to the one next to him and I realised he changed the configuration of his desk so that we could now share his monitor, with me sitting at the end of his desk. ‘You never know you might learn something.’
I sank into the chair with all the petulance of a teenager. I didn’t like the way he wrong-footed me. It made me feel out of place. This was my world. My place. I hated feeling like this. It made me act even more childishly.
‘I do know. I won’t learn anything useful because it’s not necessary.’
He leaned back and folded his arms and lifted one eyebrow in a superior fashion. I felt about five.
‘OK, how about you teach me some things?’
That sounded a bit wanky management approach to me, i.e. he was trying to butter me up. I wasn’t completely stupid.
‘Like what?’
‘How many wigs do you have in the department?’
I shrugged. ‘No idea.’
‘OK, how many in the current production of Don Giovanni?’
‘I’m impressed, you know what’s on.’ My barb struck and I saw a tiny twitch in his eye. It made me feel a bit better and then I felt ashamed that I felt like that. It was mean and uncharitable. He was new in the job. ‘There are eight main roles, the men have several wigs each, and the women have hair pieces. And some of the chorus have a wig. For this particular production, I guess we have seventeen for the principals, plus a few spares in case they get a bit untidy and we haven’t got time to redo them.’
‘What about Romeo and Juliet?’
‘You have been doing your homework. We have five for Juliet, for the principal ballerina and her understudy, thirty-five hair pieces for the corps de ballet. Wigs for the older male parts and the nurse. I think by the time we finish, we’ll have around fifty.’
‘And do you keep a record of what you’ve got? Do you keep them all? Use them again?’
‘We used to take Polaroids of everything and then file them. That was the easiest way, although a lot of the time there’ll be some one who will remember a production from way back. In that case, we’ll go and look through the old Polaroids and then look in the storeroom. Unfortunately, they don’t hold their colour too well.’
‘Polaroids?’ His face said it all. ‘You don’t have a digital camera?’
‘Oh yes,’ I said, suddenly relieved that I could reassure him on that front. ‘We used it a lot.’ Oh shit. ‘Weeelll, that was until it got full up and let’s say it doesn’t work for us.’
‘Full up?’ Marcus’s voice sounded suspiciously choked.
‘Yes, you know. It says there’s no more space.’ I lifted both shoulders. ‘When we tried to free up some space, we managed to delete everything, so we decided not to use it anymore. We have a little card index file system, where we write descriptions down.’ When we remembered, or got around to it.
Marcus closed his eyes and his lips moved. I think he said, ‘Give me strength.’ Or it might have been ‘For fuck’s sake.’
After giving his rather appropriate pound sign cufflinks a thorough visual inspection, he swallowed hard and quickly scribbled down a couple of notes.
‘And do you make all of them in house?’
‘What?’ I was still focusing on the pen and notebook, wondering what he’d written down. I couldn’t imagine it was anything very approving.
‘The wigs, do you make all of them?’
‘No, not all. It depends how many are needed. We have piece workers who will do some.’
‘So how do you work all that out? Who’s doing what? When it needs to be done by? What’s ready?’
‘It can be a bit stressful, I guess.’ Damn, I’d walked straight into that one. I was not going to elaborate and admit we’d had some major panics in the past. Because it didn’t matter. We’d always got things sorted in time.
‘Really?’ He studied me so quizzically I felt as if he could look straight through and could tell I was avoiding the complete truth.
‘Yes, OK,’ I hedged, ‘it is very stressful but it works.’
‘But it could work better. Be less stressful.’
‘What, you’re going to wave a magic wand?’
‘No but I could come up with a system to help you. A project management package.’
It sounded a bit too good to be true. ‘What’s in it for you?’
He laid down his pen and gave me a grave look. ‘It’s like trying to herd a box of angry kittens with you. Believe