After they were hired—because of course they were hired, how else was this going to go?—periodically throughout the summer I would pop in to say hi to Ros, and I would just check to see if that terrarium was still there. Ros taught me the name of the plants that grew within, like the nerve plant that grew amid the moss, its green leaves latticed with tiny white traceries. I greeted each new leaf with excitement—a tiny new bud would send me over the moon. It wasn’t just that I thought of it as mine, so much as it was mine. It was so deeply for me that it seemed impossible that it could be anyone else’s, until the day that it was gone.

Footnote

5 They won.

TAKING MEASUREMENTS,
or the Tale of Oliver Teller’s Sprained Wrist

On Monday, the costume shop started taking measurements.

It was a necessary evil of costuming, but it was still sort of horrible, to see bodies reduced to a series of numbers. There was a lot of anxiety on the actors’ parts, and on our parts, too—it was an act of intimacy to get that close to someone, to wrap a measuring tape around their hips and write the number down. Benna divided us all into pairs and told us her three rules for the actors and us: You weren’t allowed to say anything negative about yourself; you weren’t allowed to talk about things you should do, e.g., I should eat less chocolate cake; and both you and the costumer had to thank every part of your body that was measured.

“Thank you, elbow.”

“Thank you, thigh.”

“Thank you, inseam. That’s the ball game. Thanks for coming!”

I was partnered with Phoebe, who worked quickly and efficiently. She made people trust her. She made me trust her. She wielded the tape and announced the numbers, and I wrote them down on the charts we were given. Monday and Tuesday passed by in a blur of numbers and brief introductions to actors—I met the actor playing Jack from Into the Woods, who complimented me on my railroad-stripe overalls, as well as a handful of the Trojan women, all of them shockingly beautiful, each in their own way.

On Wednesday, the measurements nearly all taken except for a few stragglers, Phoebe and I walked over to Café Trapdoor and treated ourselves to a late lunch. With Into the Woods opening in a week, the pulse of the campus seemed to be quickening. All around us came the staticky crinkle of people talking on their walkie-talkies, including the director of Abominable, who could be observed in the far corner of the café talking heatedly on her walkie—whether to her assistant director or her divorce lawyer was anyone’s guess.