Character Flaws

Chapter 10

Chapter 10

The next afternoon, I followed Thor through the streets in my new persona as he explained what I would be doing for the remainder of the search for the killer. Thor’s sister, the very sister with whom I was forbidden to flirt, under any circumstances that could possibly arise, was in a retelling of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. It took place in modern-day New York, as opposed to Illyria, and so some of the roles had been switched around. Thor’s sister, I was told to call her Kate, was cast as Daisy Orsino, who was madly in love with Lance Oliver. I was appalled when Thor first told me they had gender-swapped Shakespeare, but decided to build a bridge. My name was now Mary, Red’s oh-so-clever idea, and I would be playing Chester, who becomes a cross dresser named Viola to get a job working for Daisy/Kate who apparently only hires women. Maria became Mario, Malvolio became Maggie, Sebastian became Sally, Sir Toby became Tammy, Aguecheek became Agnes, and Antonio became Antoinette. Only Feste remained the same. I would attend play rehearsal whenever they had it, which was astonishingly frequent, and participate in every show I was asked to participate in. As far as anyone knew, I was a real drag queen. Thor had arranged for me to live in an ultra-classy loft, at least in my opinion, and was rapidly becoming worse than any girlfriend I’d ever had. When I wasn’t with him he was calling me, when he wasn’t calling me he was texting me. I was losing my mind and it hadn’t even been a full twelve hours. We were on our way to the theatre, where I would be spending a majority of my time for the foreseeable future. Thor was going to introduce me to his sister, who hopefully wouldn’t recognize me otherwise my cover would be blown and I would be bludgeoned to death by an angry brother. We reached the stage and entered the dark area reserved for the audience through a heavy wooden door. At the other end of the building sat the stage, brightly illuminated and bustling with activity. Thor strode confidently toward the people while I remained a few steps behind, slightly uncomfortable in my new clothes. Thor’s sister came bounding out of nowhere and threw herself at her brother. He spun her around twice before putting her down. It was a very enthusiastic greeting, especially when I had it on good authority they had seen each other two days ago. I came up behind the pair and waited for their sibling moment to be over. Thor finally turned to me. 

“Katie, this is who I was telling you about. Mary, meet Kate, Kate meet Mary.” He said, gesturing between the two of us. “Mary would like to play Chester.” 

“Well,” Kate mused, “No one else has actually auditioned for that role so you’ll definitely get it, but you have to talk to our director anyway. I’ll get him if you want.” I nodded in response and she left, walking fluidly back to the stage where she stooped to speak in the ear of a short man with thinning hair. He nodded when she finished and made a few sweeping arm gestures to the actors on stage before following Kate back to us. As they got closer, I could sense Thor attempting to suppress a laugh. I glanced at him out of the corner of my eye to see him biting his knuckles with the effort. I resisted the urge to roll my eyes, and instead observed the absurd man approaching me. From a distance he looked normal enough, but the closer he got the stranger he appeared. His skin was like tanned leather, rough and wrinkled, with a wide-set mouth settled in the middle of his face below an equally wide, smushed-looking nose. His eyes were small and far apart, doing little to interrupt the broad expanse of forehead between his nearly non-existent eyebrows and his wispy brownish-grey hair, that was perched exclusively on the crown of is head in lynx-like tufts. I was vaguely disappointed in Thor. I thought he was more mature than laughing at some poor unfortunate old guy’s physical appearance. But then again, maybe I overestimated the Aussie’s maturity. I was in drag after all, and it was all his fault. 

“Hello.” The ape-like director greeted us gruffly, thrusting out a hand to shake in an almost robotic gesture. I reciprocated, trying to keep my movements as smooth as possible, how I imagined a drag queen would behave. “I’m Walter Cross. You want to play Chester?” I smiled and nodded.