the center, and I hate the way the Chicago Theatre just peters out with that milky blue. Such a waste of good space.”
“Mmm,” Chip said noncommittally toward the sky. “It would be nice to have a center that really pops.”
“Exactly. Pops. That’s what I envision here. That’s what I want.”
Chip stood next to Mr. Richardson, craning his neck backward, wordlessly staring at the ceiling until his neck started to ache.
“You know,” Mr. Richardson said, hushed and with a touch of giddiness, “I’ve had dreams where I’d walk into the Barter, like it was any old day, and look up to see it had become”—he lowered his voice even further as his eyes darted toward Chip’s—“the Fox Theatre.”
He lowered his neck at last and Chip followed suit. Mr. Richardson’s eyes were watery, either from emotion or because all the fluid from his neck up had been stuck for the past five minutes with nowhere to go. Regardless, they held a childlike shine, as though he had just told Chip his most sacred secret. “Wouldn’t that be something?”
Chip resisted rubbing his neck. The Fox Theatre. It wasn’t even worth trying to scroll through his mental cavities. But now, at least, he had a name. And something to spin. Chip summed up his most enthusiastic yet professional voice. “It certainly would. And I want to dig into that thought deeper. But if you could just excuse me a moment, I need to find the gentlemen’s room.”
He waited for a reply, but Mr. Richardson only looked back up to the ceiling, lost in his own boyhood dreams. “The Fox Theatre,” Mr. Richardson murmured. “Wouldn’t that be marvelous?”
Chip opened the lobby doors and turned down the hall. As he walked, he pulled out his phone and started typing Fox Theatre ceiling.
Chip pushed open the door to the men’s room as the website began to load.
He stopped inside the doors.
“Well, well, if it isn’t our favorite guy in town.”
A steady stream of Google images flooded his phone, but Chip’s eyes flickered upward.
At the sink stood Dan, Bree’s stepfather, washing his hands beneath a steady flow of water.
“Mr. Leake,” Chip said, lowering his phone. “What a pleasant surprise.”
“Likewise,” he said, turning the faucet knob and reaching for a paper towel. He ripped one off with a glimmer in his eye. “So you’re here to see Bree’s finale. That’s awfully neighborly of you. What would that make this? Two performances in the past four weeks?”
“Oh. Um. Yes. Yes, it is.”
Had Bree told them he’d been to her show?
Why would she do that?
What else had she said about him? And perhaps most importantly, why on earth did that give him the urge to smile? What sort of bizarre, sadistic man was he? The woman ruined your view, man. Don’t feel pleased that she’s talking about you to her parents.
His eyes fell back to his phone and pictures of a theatre with an impressively realistic-looking blue sky for a ceiling. The text fell down the page titled, “The Landmark Fox Theatre: An Adventure in Lights.”
In truth, Chip had planned to slip out after the meeting with Mr. Richardson. He might get to his folks’ in time for the dessert his mother made for family supper. It was cheesecake week. He never missed cheesecake week.
Regardless, he had no intention of experiencing A Midsummer Night's Dream a second time.
“I actually plan to—” But then Chip stopped. He looked up to Dan. Grinned. “You know what? I was just about to buy a last-minute ticket. You wouldn’t mind if I snag a seat by you, would you?”
“By us?” Dan’s eyes lit up. “Oh, of course. That’d be great.”
Two minutes later Chip hummed to himself as he moved back down the hall, skimming the Fox Theatre article along the way:
The historic 4,768-seat theatre of Atlanta, Georgia, has thrilled thousands of entertainment-goers since its erection in the 1920s. Since taking on the whimsical task of creating a skyline effect in 1929, with its sky-blue interior paint and ninety-six 11-watt incandescent bulbs . . .
When he swung open the door to Gilliam Stage, he found Mr. Richardson in the exact position he was in before, staring up at the ceiling as though it truly was a night sky.
Chip slipped beside him, hands clasped behind his back, resuming his position as he looked up. “Now, just thinking here, if you were to go with a trompe l’oeil ceiling simulating that starry midnight sky, I think you would want something special to set you apart from the rest