The musicians start to play. I take my place at the side of stage.
“Light cue one, go,” Linus says.
The lights go up. The audience hushes.
Linus: “Orlando, go!”
I hesitate a moment. Breathe, I hear Kate say. I take a breath.
My heart hammers in my head. Thud, thud, thud. I close my eyes and can hear the ticking of Lulu’s watch; it’s as if I’m still wearing it. I stop and listen to them both before I walk onto the stage.
And then time just stops. It is a year and a day. One hour and twenty-four. It is time, happening, all at once.
The last three years solidify into this one moment, into me, into Orlando. This bereft young man, missing a father, without a family, without a home. This Orlando, who happens upon this Rosalind. And even though these two have known each other only moments, they recognize something in each other.
“The little strength that I have, I would it were with you,” Rosalind says, cracking it all wide open.
Who takes care of you? Lulu asked, cracking me wide open.
“Wear this for me,” Marina says as Rosalind, handing me the prop chain from around her neck.
I’ll be your mountain girl and take care of you, Lulu said, moments before I took the watch from her wrist.
Time is passing. I know it must be. I enter the stage, I exit the stage. I make my cues, hit my marks. The sun dips across the sky and then dances toward the horizon and the stars come out, the floodlights go on, the crickets sing. I sense it happening as I drift above it somehow. I am only here, now. This moment. On this stage. I am Orlando, giving myself to Rosalind. And I am Willem, too, giving myself to Lulu, in a way that I should’ve done a year ago, but couldn’t.
“You should ask me what time o’ day: there’s no clock in the forest,” I say to my Rosalind.
You forget, time doesn’t exist anymore. You gave it to me, I said to my Lulu.
I feel the watch on my wrist that day in Paris; I hear it ticking in my head now. I can’t tell them apart, last year, this year. They are one and the same. Then is now. Now is then.
“I would not be cured, youth,” my Orlando tells Marina’s Rosalind.
“I would cure you, if you would but call me Rosalind,” Marina replies.
I’ll take care of you, Lulu promised.
“By my troth, and in good earnest, and so God mend me, and by all pretty oaths that are not dangerous,” Marina’s Rosalind says.
I escaped danger, Lulu said.
We both did. Something happened that day. It’s still happening. It’s happening up here on this stage. It was just one day and it’s been just one year. But maybe one day is enough. Maybe one hour is enough. Maybe time has nothing at all to do with it.
“Fair youth, I would I could make thee believe I love,” my Orlando tells Rosalind.
Define love, Lulu had demanded. What would “being stained” look like?
Like this, Lulu.
It would look like this.
And then it’s over. Like a great wave crashing onto a shore, the applause erupts and I’m here, on this stage, surrounded by the shocked and delighted smiles of my castmates. We are grasping hands and bowing and Marina is pulling me out front for our curtain call and then stepping to the side and gesturing for me to walk ahead and I do and the applause grows even louder.
Backstage, it is madness. Max is screaming. And Marina is crying and Linus is smiling, although his eyes keep darting to the side entrance that Petra left from hours ago. People are surrounding me, patting me on the back, offering congratulations and kisses and I’m here but I’m not—I’m still in some strange limbo where the boundaries of time and place and person don’t exist where I can be here and in Paris, where it can be now and then, where I’m me and also Orlando.
I try to stay in this place as I change out of my clothes, scrub the makeup off my face. I look at myself in the mirror and try to digest what I just did. It feels completely unreal, and like the truest thing I have ever done. The truth and its opposite. Up on stage, playing a role, revealing myself.
People gather round me. There is talk, of parties, celebration, a cast party tonight, even though the show doesn’t wrap for two more weeks and to celebrate now is technically bad luck. But it seems like everyone has given up on luck tonight. We make our own.
Petra comes backstage, stone-faced and not saying a word. She walks right past me. Goes straight to Linus.
I leave the backstage and go out the gate that serves as a stage door. Max is at my side, jumping up and down like an exuberant puppy. “So was Marina a decent kisser?” she asks me.
“I’m sure she was glad not to be kissing Jeroen,” Vincent says, and I laugh.
Outside, I scan the area for my friends. I’m not quite sure who will be here. And then I hear her call my name.
“Willem!” she says again.
It’s Kate, charging toward me, a blur of gold and red. My heart seems to expand as she leaps into my arms and we spin around.
“You did it. You did it. You did it!” she murmurs in my ear.
“I did it. I did it. I did it.” I repeat, laughing with joy and relief and awe at the direction this day has taken.
Someone taps me on the shoulder. “You dropped something.”
“Oh, right. Your flowers,” Kate says, leaning over to pick up a bouquet of sunflowers. “For your stunning debut.”
I take the flowers.
“How do you feel?” she asks.
I have no answer, no words. I just feel full. I try to explain it but then Kate interrupts: “Like you just had the best sex in the world?” And I laugh. Yeah, something like that. I take her hand and kiss it. She twines an arm around my waist.
“Ready to meet your adoring public?” she asks.
I’m not. Right now, I just want to savor this. With the person who helped make it happen. Leading her by the hand, I take us over to a quiet bench under a nearby gazebo and attempt in some way to articulate what just happened.
“How did that happen?” is all I can think to ask.
She holds my hands in hers. “Do you really need to ask that?”