Die to Live

It’s disorientation sickness—throbbing head, ringing ears. Nausea forces my mouth open—I vomit then I spit out the bile.

I stand up and take in the massive arena with a Shakespeare in the pit. He is a fairly good replica—same receding hairline, same facial hair.

He scans my collar.

“Is the disorientation gone?” he asks.

I nod.

“I recruited you from level 15,” he says.

“I was Lady Macbeth in the Scottish play,” I say. “Sorry,” I say nodding to the vomit.

“Never mind. Stage Manager will get it.”

“Listen, I haven’t had a hit in twenty cycles. My collar is not even a fingers width anymore. We’ve been warned—another low rated performance—”

“How long until Curtain?”

“Five days,” Shakespeare says.

He hands me a script for Much Ado About Nothing with Beatrice’s lines highlighted.

“The last Beatrice we had—was struck,” he says.

Comedy—the Audience loved Comedies. There were rumors that if you reach the top, you got out. 

I think about Macbeth and Banquo on level 15. I never even got to say goodbye.

That’s show business.

I go backstage. In the breakroom, discolored ceiling tiles surround yellow-tinted flickering fluorescents above a coffee machine that whines with age.

“I’m Beatrice,” I say. Only the older man—Leonato—looks before returning to his script.

Hero—well cast for the beauty of the play—introduces herself and the other mains:

Don Pedro—his bulk tests the seams of his shirt—

Claudio—a younger man with a jovial countenance—

Don John—a weasel of a man—

Antonio—a man of nearly fifty—he has honest-to-God wrinkles around his eyes.

Hero pulls me aside and takes me to my dressing room.

“Are they always this—somber?” I ask.

“Beatrice—it’s still fresh,” she says.

“They did it onstage. Leonato caught the head. It took hours to clean up the blood.”

“Good God,” I say.

She shrugs— “That’s Comedy.”

In my dressing room, the bed has an actual mattress—laid out fully, my feet don’t hang off of the end.

She closes the door then and says, “I think one of the mains is sabotaging the play.”

I sit up.

“Why? A bad performance tightens everyone’s collar.”

“I don’t know,” she says sitting beside me.

“Last performance someone tampered with Beatrice’s sound equipment. Before that there was a strange issue with the makeup—everyone broke out in hives. It has been something every performance.”

“How do you know it is one of the mains?”

“The sound equipment is locked up in the control booth. The mains are the only ones who ever have access to the room.”

“What about Stage Manager—”

“No—” she said. “You’ll understand when you meet her.”

“So that leaves—”

“Don Pedro—” I say ticking them off on my fingers.

“Claudio—”

“Don John—”

“Antonio—”

“—I don’t think it is him. He’s so kind,” she says.

“Leonato—”

“—He looked so pale after—”

“And Benedick.”

“It wasn’t him. He and Beatrice were—close.”

“I need you to keep your eyes open and let me know if you notice anything strange.”

I nod.

In the morning, I burn through the pages of the script learning my lines.

Comedy—Joy then angst then a happy ending. If only real life was like that—tied up at the end with a nice little bow—

On my way to the stage, I meet Benedick—a man of thirty with a look that turns haunted when I introduce myself as Beatrice.

At rehearsal, the acting is excellent, and the casting is ideal—especially Don John. He makes the perfect villain. It helps that he is just as slimy offstage.

At lunch I eat with Hero and watch the five remaining suspects: Don Pedro, Antonio, Claudio, Don John, and Leonato.

Claudio catches me looking and winks. He comes over and bends down to whisper—

“If you ever want to run lines, I know Benedick’s too. You never know what might go wrong—”

“‘If it had been painful, I would not have come,’” I say.

“‘You take pleasure then in the message?’” He says.

“‘Yea, just so much as you may take upon a knife’s point…’” I say turning back to Hero.

Claudio nods, smirks, and walks away.

“What about Don John?” I say.

“Perhaps? But what motive could he have?” Hero says.

“Maybe hoping for a demotion to Tragedy? He would make a perfect Iago,” I say as he twirls his mustache around one long finger.

After rehearsal, I see Shakespeare and Stage Manager together offstage. He touches her belly reverently—

I take her off the list of suspects.

In between searching for the saboteur, and rehearsals, I work my lines. I try campy, silly, flirtatious, then I settle on serious, and a bit aloof to allow the words to speak for themselves.

I mark Leonato off of my list of suspects when I find him weeping in a storage area.

“Sorry,” I say turning to leave.

“She didn’t want me,” he says as snot runs down his face, “but I loved her—and they killed her,” he snarls. He is gripping his collar so hard he chokes.

Antonio walks past me then and takes Leonato in his arms.

Antonio pulls me aside after the last rehearsal on day two.

“You are looking for Beatrice’s killer,” he says.

I don’t respond.

“I must be a suspect, then,” he says nodding.

“I saw Don John milling around the control booth that day,” he says.

“You didn’t know her. Beatrice was the best of us. I want her killer to pay.”

I sneak into Don John’s dressing room and search his desk but come up empty. When I search his bed, I find a black pair of panties beneath his pillow.

“She always rejected me,” he says closing the door behind him.

I drop the panties back on his pillow.

“So, you killed her?” I say.

He laughs.

“Killed Beatrice?”

He laughs again with real mirth.

“You know nothing of villainy, Beatrice. Ask yourself why I would risk my own neck for something so petty as rejection,” he said.

“No, you are looking for something far more sinister—someone who doesn’t see himself as the villain—somebody who in his heart of hearts, believes he is right.”

On the third day, Claudio pulls me aside. “You are looking for the source of the issues we’ve been having?”

“I can vouch for Don Pedro. He is a good man. He has been acting strange lately though—but I’m sure it is nothing.”

On the fourth day, I sneak into Don Pedro’s dressing room, and I find a note in his desk. It contains a plea— “keep the secret.”

On the morning of the fifth day, I confront Don Pedro.

His face pales when I show him the note.

“This has nothing to do with what happened to Beatrice,” he said his head in his hands.

“Then what is it about?”

“I wouldn’t kill Beatrice. You have to believe me.”

“Then tell me what it’s about.”

“The baby—Stage Manager’s baby is mine. That’s it. I swear on the Bard of Avon himself.”

“If it wasn’t you—"

I think back to Don John’s words—the true villain is the one who believes that the harm he does is right, the one who would burn down the world, himself included.

I confront Claudio before we take the stage.

“Don’t you see this is the only way to change things? Beatrice was a mistake—she was supposed to die with the rest of us. But what do you think happens when the Audience sees an entire Comedy troupe—?” he swipes his thumb across his throat. “A blood bath—Chaos.”

“The best thing about all of this is either the show goes on or it doesn’t—I win either way.”

He’s right. We have no understudies, and the show must go on. We head on stage to perform. There is no way of knowing what Claudio has tampered with.

Everything goes smoothly until Act 4 Scene 1—the public denouncement scene.

When Leonato laments, “Hath no man’s dagger here a point for me?” Claudio leaps forward and stabs him in the stomach. He backs away and raises his arms with the dagger in his hand as if waiting for the sweet release of death—but nothing happens. There is a breath of silence.

Then the theatre lights go up and applause shatters the silence. The Audience stamps their approval with their feet.

As Leonato stumbles, crying for Beatrice, they clap him to his death.

Claudio looks around and drops the dagger.

“Bravo!” they cheer at the gore on stage.

Our troupe is awarded the highest Audience rating.

And I can feel the collar on my neck loosen ever so slightly.