Torn Fragility

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in.
"Having Come This Far" by Leonard Cohen



“Rose!” my blue haired actress friend Erica, tugged excitedly on my arm an envelope in her hand.

I put down the pain brush I had been holding and wiped my hands on my paint spattered denim overalls.

“Open it, open it!” she squealed and I rolled my eyes fondly at her usual impatience. She shoved the envelope into my hands and my smile flew from my face.

I tore through the pristine white paper with my finger and shakily lifted out two sheets of paper, letters neatly typed out.

“Dear, Rose Walters, we are pleased to inform you that your application to the Faculty of Fine Arts has been approved. The University is proud to have you as one of our future students and we hope that you do not…”

I stopped reading and gave a very Erica like squeal. We hugged each other and from there continued reading the letters together. The second was full of information about dates, extra courses and accommodation, etcetera.

While I phoned my parents with the good news, Erica slipped out of the studio and came back an hour later with a bottle of red wine to celebrate my achievement. In her other arm she carried a plastic bag filled with Indian takeaway from the restaurant around the corner.
We spread a sheeting, that had covered one of the props, on the sealed concrete floor and sat down to eat and drink.

Light filtered through the small window near the ceiling throwing bars of gold on our faces and shoulders. An open door led from the studio to the stage and I could just catch a glimpse of the light technicians setting up their wires. On the stage itself everything was chaos, props were scattered across, waiting to be positioned tomorrow for the dress rehearsal.
“That’s really good Rose,” Erica said through a mouthful of yellow curry rice. I followed her gaze and looked at the back drop to our right. I had just finished it before she had come in with the envelope and it only needed a few touches of black here and there.

It was a scene from The Merchant of Venice, and a gondola drifted down the busy canal while women leaned out of the rose fringed windows and waved at the performers below. I saw one of the handkerchiefs flutter and my heart stilled.

“Wow,” Erica muttered. “Sometimes it feels like your paintings are real you know?”

I gave a crooked smile and thanked her but when I looked back at the painting it was motionless only for a few ripples that still drifted from the moving gondola. But Erica had turned her focus back on her food and I wish I could do the same.

It was September and it had been nearly eight months since I had last seen any sign of magic. And it unnerved me that I should see it now, after so long. That life shouldn’t interfere with this one.

At closing time I was the last person still in the theatre except for the nearly hundred year old caretaker. Erica had called it a night and driven off shortly after we had finished the wine.

I walked onto the silent stage and looked around me, organising, sorting my thoughts. I had started working here five months ago on a temporary contract of seven months while the old stage designer was overseas on her honeymoon. My job was to design the set designs and backdrops for this theatre. It was a small theatre, cosy, with easy comfortable people to work with and I enjoyed myself here. I felt like I was part of something big and that I had a crucial role to play.

I felt at peace but at odd times Max’s haunted eyes would creep into my dreams and thoughts. I still had a fixation on him although I didn’t care to admit it. I couldn’t go out with other guys without thinking that he was more interesting, that his hands looked better than anyone else’s, that he belonged to another world none of these other guys would ever know about, that he was my fairy tale romance.

A romance I could never have.

But that was all behind me. It had been too dreamlike to base my life on. I was happy here and next year I would attend a very prestigious art University and meet many people with the same interests as me, many people who lived in their heads just like me, who dreamt up impossible things. I twirled on the spot and swept a deep bow at the invisible audience.

I heard sudden clapping and I bit back a scream before smiling. “Tom? Is that you?” The caretaker was a bit eccentric and we got along just fine.

The clapping continued and my smile became a bit tight. “Tom?” I asked one last time before rushing off stage and flicking the spot lights on.

Empty red velvet seats stared back at me, as if asking me what I was looking for. But I couldn’t find what that was. I walked backwards and straight into someone.

“Rose!” Tom said placing papery hands on my elbows. “Why’d you put the lights on? I gave me quit a fright when I came in here.”

I sighed and turned around. “Stop playing around. Weren’t you down there amongst the seats just a minute ago?”
Tom’s bushy white eyebrows shot up and his brown forehead crinkled in puzzlement. “Did you see someone down there? We can’t take any chances; better phone the security guard.”

We locked ourselves in in the studio and phoned the security guard to come take a look around. But he reported that there was no sign of any break-in and that he hadn’t seen anything on the security cameras either. Tom and I timidly crept out of hiding feeling very foolish and we rest assured by the burly guard that he would keep us safe. I wished him and Tom goodnight before going to sleep on the small springy bed the theatre installed for those working on late night projects.

It was hidden in a nook in the studio by a thin curtain and not caring how I would look in the morning I climbed into bed with my overalls on and fell asleep immediately.

And when I woke up the next morning it was to the sight of my gondola scene…but the canvas was slashed through the middle and someone had painted, in a messy scrawl with white paint, ‘Found you. Interfering like always I see.’

No one could see this; the rehearsal was this morning and no one would understand in any case. Looks like I haven’t left everything behind afterall.