The Rehearsal by Eleanor Catton Page A

flat to apply the liner, but when she released the skin to blink and appraise herself the
     line had puckered, giving her a blurred, slightly clownish look that made Stanley think of an old and kindly whore. As she
     smiled he saw that her incisor was rimmed with the gunmetal gray of an ancient filling. The skin on the back of her hands
     was loose enough to frame the tendons and the veins, and her knuckles were pouchy whorls of white. A manufactured tan on her
     collarbone and on the V-shaped glimpse between her breasts gave the skin a fibrous look: the wrinkle-weave traveled both horizontally
     and vertically so the skin was soft and infinitely lined, like worn suede.
    For the first time in his life Stanley saw that a woman was not simply a failed and hopelessly outmoded girl. She was a different
     creature entirely from the glossed and honeyed girls in the audition room: those girls, Stanley thought, could never play
     this woman until the day they became her, and from that day onward they could never play a girl.
    “You’re right about the hip flask,” he said. “I reckon I’ll walk out of here and straight into the pub.”
    “Have one for me,” the woman said. “And good luck. If luck counts for anything.”
    Stanley passed through the double doors and out into the drowsy warmth of the late afternoon. As he turned the corner and
     left the gabled heights of the Institute behind, he thought to himself that he was probably the twentieth student that day
     to have exited the audition room, passed through the foyer, walked by the administration desk and exchanged words with the
     secretary before leaving the building. He wondered what she had said to the others, and how she had said it, and what they
     had thought when they looked her in the eye.
October
    “Let’s see some chemistry,” the Head of Acting said, and nodded for them both to begin.
    “I met him last week on the damp satin dance floor at the inter-school ball,” she said. The words tumbled out of her too quick,
     too early, before she had swallowed her nervousness and found her rhythm. “Everyone was balled up in a tight knot near the
     stage, forming a human noose around the girl and the boy in the middle. It’s so the teachers can’t see in. From the outside
     it looks horrible, all tight and pushing and pushing, like they’re trying to watch a cock fight or a captured bear. They all
     take turns in the noose. I was down the other end, just watching,and he walked up to me and asked me very quietly if I wanted
     a drink.”
    She was sitting on the edge of the podium, her ankles hooked over each other, kicking out her legs in an idle, gentle way
     so her heels bounced and bounced. Stanley was standing a little way off with his hands in his pockets, watching her calmly.
    “Soon I will walk you home in the bluish dark and ask if your hands are cold just for a reason to touch you,” Stanley said.
    “He asked me if I wanted a drink,” the girl said again. She wasn’t looking at him. She had found her rhythm now, and her eyes
     were flashing. “I thought that meant he had some alcohol so I said, Yes. We’re breath-tested now, at the door before we walk
     in, we have to say our name and our address, and always there’s that little spasm of fear that you feel, coming out of nowhere,
     in case it comes up positive. Some of the boys take cameras in, just so they can fill empty film canisters with rum and drink
     it once they’re inside. Or they strap hip flasks to the inside of their legs. Most of them just bring pills. I thought he
     meant he had some alcohol so I said, Yes. He disappeared.”
    “Even as I saw you I was disappointed,” Stanley said. “Can anything come of such an ordinary beginning? I asked myself. I
     looked at you and I thought of all the things you aren’t. Even before I spoke to you I was angry at you for not being more
     than you are.”
    “He came back,” the girl said, “and I almost laughed. He had gone and bought