Seven days before opening night Cole Wilder falls off a fence.
Not dramatically.
Not in the way that produces injury or consequence.
In the specific way of someone who has been sitting on a fence rail outside an animal enclosure for forty minutes talking to a contortionist who is standing on her hands on the other side of it and has leaned slightly too far in the direction of the contortionist and has discovered that fence rails have limits.
He lands on the ground.
Mira looks down at him from her inverted position.
She says: are you hurt.
He says: no.
She says: your elbow.
He says: it's fine.
She rights herself with the casual ease of someone standing up from a chair. She crouches beside him. She takes his elbow in both hands and examines it with the focused attention of someone
