Spencer may have pretended all month long that all was well and maintained a never-wavering “I don’t want to know” stance on the whole thing…but he had surely noticed Scarlett’s nervous, careful behavior and inability to speak around Eric. Or Eric’s excessively polite, excruciating efforts to make sure it was perfectly clear that nothing was happening. Scarlett had seen the other cast members jump in to fill the holes in the conversation when she and Eric were cornered together. The Eric situation was a lot of work for everyone. Never mentioned, but always there, always generating a crackle of unpredictable energy.

“It’s nothing,” she said.

“Yeah,” he mumbled, rubbing his face tiredly. “I hope so. Come on. Since you’re up, I need your help.”

Just because she was awake at this hour didn’t necessarily mean that Scarlett actually wanted to do anything, but she followed him along to the kitchen anyway. She sat on one of their large wooden prep tables while he set up the coffee station. That was his early morning task, and it only took a few minutes. He pulled a few script pages out of his back pocket and handed them to her.

“This,” he said, “is killing me. The audition is at one. I have no idea what I’m doing. Help me think of something. Read the highlighted part.”

“‘Man holds two ends of seat belt in his hands,’” Scarlett read, as Spencer filled an industrial-size coffee urn with water. “‘He is unable to figure out how they click together. He tries several times. He puts up his hand for help from the flight attendant.’ Seems pretty easy.”

“Seems easy. Is impossible.”

He turned off the water and hauled the heavy urn up by its side handles, taking it out of the kitchen. He returned a moment later and sat on the counter. He unbuckled his belt, slipped it from around his waist, and held it up for examination.

“This is a seat belt,” he said, “and I am the guy who can’t figure this out. What is my problem? Look.” He looped the belt around himself and jabbed the end at the buckle. “Seat belts are just insert and click. That’s it. How do you play someone who can’t figure that out? Why do they even do safety videos on planes?”

“If I flew,” Scarlett said, “maybe I could tell you. What is this for, anyway? Air Stupid?”

“I know. This is my problem. I don’t know how to play someone who doesn’t know how to fasten a seat belt without acting like an idiot. But the airline won’t want the person in the video to seem stupid, because I’m supposed to be playing their typical customer. So I have to be stupid without looking stupid. I can do looking stupid. Looking stupid is easy. But this is harder than Shakespeare. People get Oscars for playing the kind of guy who can’t fasten the seat belt. It’s a well-known fact.”

“Do they give Oscars to people in airline safety videos?”