RESEARCH ( barry berkman.. ) ✔

o7. rage room..

Sally Reed paced back and forth in the small, narrow confinement of the backstage. After one bigger audience show, the Cousineau's theater was suffocating in tininess. The guilt she felt for having lied in front of the masses has been pampered and showered in absolute bliss of fame from those who have attended the event for her, however, an open wound remained and that Barry was avoiding her purposefully these days.

Her two paged script from the Great Gatsby matched the stiffness and elegance of the remarkable role she was about to put on stage with a different partner than the one she got used to. Casting calls have left her with little time to practice, but even in the feverish center of this, surrounded by equally nervous colleagues from the class, she gravitated around Barry, seated in his chair, with the cowboy hat, the little thread tie pinned to his shirt, buttoned to the very top. 

He was also reading his script, but she stopped beside him and decided to start the conversation she itched to have for days. She placed her hand on the little table before him and leaned lower, diminishing her voice too, "I didn't have the time to send you the edited script, Barry. You're acting really childish for not understanding that I couldn't just tell the truth all of a sudden in front of so many people."

"Block," Gene called Barry's name flatly and he took this chance to get up without answering Sally. He needed to stay concentrated on not giving Gene a reason to burst the shell of their quarrel because of a poor performance. The show they put was little, both in span and audience, but either way an important distraction from tensions. Barry was supposed to open the show either way, since the cowboy era was the furthest they went in time with speeches.

He just fixed his cowboy hat with both hands when he felt Sally clinging to his right arm and pulling him to a stop. "Barry, don't ignore me-"

"I really have to be on stage right now," Barry flattened his tone in a fugitive glance down at the blonde who has stolen his heart a good few times. Falling out of that love has been hard, but the distance between them rifted as a difference as soon as Barry saw not all people were as selfish as those few he had made the mistake to trust. "And there's nothing more for us to talk about anyway. You did what was best for you, Sally."

"Block!" Gene insisted, irritated one more time. Barry plucked Sally's hand off of him and made a little excited sprint to the stage. His heart was beating fast, the rush of cutting someone off, someone he used to consider the sun to his life, was an empty feeling at first, until he realized the shadow he's been put through.

"What is that supposed to mean?" Sally mumbled to herself.

Natalie was the shy voice of reason nearby who may as well have dropped in on all they talked in that small space they shared. "It means that low thing you pulled made you lose him."

"For the better," Sasha shrugged from the corner where she helped Germaine with their matching costumes accessories. "He always seemed a bit sad around you..."

"Shut up," Sally snapped back and moved her pace to a different corner.

On stage, Barry's palpitations have rapidly removed the unexpected thrills of breakup, with consequences and such, replacing everything with the empty stomach of an actor entering the character they prepared to display. Indeed, the room was little and the lights on him made it hard to distinguish faces, even amongst the few. However, performing right was a must he fell in line for, in a satisfactory charm so common to western cowboy movies he tried to depict with only one single scene. 

With a perfect opening, the Cousineau's show through big periods depicted in cinematography and acting went smoothly and finished in satisfactory applause after each act, morphed into the other. Chronologically speaking, Sally Reed was only one performance after Barry's and as soon as she was off the worry of messing up a speech she in fact played without flaw, she searched for him backstage.