Sean replied with a straight face, “Oh, so that’s how I make my move.”
I smirked at him. “It’s just dinner, he said,” I quoted in a singsong voice.
Sean winced dramatically. “You got me. I have a bedpost with notches on it, and I aim to put in a few more before you and I settle down and get married.”
I stopped in my tracks just as we arrived at the condo building, doing a double-take worthy of a nineteen-thirties movie star. “Was that a proposal?”
Sean grinned at me. “The way I see it, we’re meant to be together, just not yet. Three years from now, if I’m not already married and you’re not already married, I’ll come to you and propose. What do you say? Pinky swear?”
I rolled my eyes. “You want to get engaged? Is this a ploy to keep all the girls at bay?”
“I’m serious,” he claimed, but his smile said he was more than half-joking. He raised an eyebrow, daring me.
We pinky swore. Then I told him to buzz off since he wasn’t going to be serious. He gave me a quick hug—I loved that he was so physical—and sprinted up the steps toward his condo. I stood in front of the elevator and asked myself what had just happened. Hadn’t we been talking about him playing the field? Him dating women everywhere he worked? So what turned it into him making that bizarre proposal?
To which I had agreed. I guess that meant we were engaged. Holy baloney. Sean was always one step ahead of me.
***
I was so tickled by Sean’s off-the-cuff proposal that I was a total good girl that night. I exercised, had a long soak in the bathtub with lots of fine-smelling bath salts, and ate a small and sensible dinner delivered from a local seafood restaurant. Tasty and low calorie. After dinner, I paced around my little apartment and read the score, occasionally vocalizing. Although Richard was something of a prick, he knew what he was after. His rehearsals were not confusing. I had a costume fitting early tomorrow morning, and then Herr Kaufmann would have more notes for us about Act II. The plan was to finish by Friday or Saturday.
The full dress rehearsal was scheduled for the following Monday afternoon. If all went well, we’d be ready to perform the opera on Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. A very compressed schedule, and a lot of singing all at once, but these smaller opera houses didn’t run to covers. A cover was another singer who agreed to be on call nearby, waiting to fill in. The biggest, world-class houses like the Met or the Nat had designated covers, but if they had advance notice when a headliner canceled, they’d try for luxury casting and find a big star to swap in. Smaller houses were different. They didn’t have the budget to keep top voices on standby. Singing there also didn’t present the vocal or audience challenge of Covent Garden or La Scala, let alone the Nat or the Met. They were smaller houses physically in addition to being less famous. We didn’t have to push our voices to be heard all the way to the rafters. Not that we should ever push. Pushing was a good way to ruin a voice.
Smaller houses also didn’t tend to have cliques of crazy opera fans ready to boo the singers, the sets, the costumes, the orchestra, and anything else that struck their fancy. That was good when I was trying out a new role.
For some sopranos, Tosca was a heavy challenge that exposed their shortcomings. My voice was very powerful, so I didn’t consider the singing part a risk. Power wasn’t everything, though. The tessitura of the role—the section of the scale where I had to do the most singing—was well within my area of strength. The role was challenging in other ways. I had to be both a mature woman in love and a childish girl acting in a fit of pique in Act I when I told Mario he must paint the Madonna with dark hair like mine. In Act II, I had to show some of the mettle that had allowed me to become a singing star in a tough world for a woman. All that acting had to be done in my voice as well as with my body and my facial expressions.
Why was I even doing the run at the Baltimore Civic? Why did I do Santa Fe last summer, and why was I scheduled for a concert opera performance at Wolf Trap this summer? I liked to work. I needed to work, to keep feeling good about myself, and this year especially, to keep on track losing weight. Work was a distraction from all my tangled thoughts about past relationships, past business goofs, my dislike of certain aspects of an opera career, my frustration at not being offered a wider range of roles, and more.
Like the Salzburg role. They’d been cagey with me for months. Did I have the role or didn’t I? I’d worked hard to prove I could sing anything on their schedule, but how I sang wasn’t what they cared about. Being a sexy thing was the big deal now, because most European productions were edgy. In nine out of ten, the soprano would be expected to at the very least take off all but her underwear and strut around and sing. In some, she might be allowed a body stocking, but appear nude. Even if I lost another twenty pounds by August, I wouldn’t be comfortable in just a body stocking. Losing weight made body parts sag. Not my breasts, not yet, but other areas were smaller yet not looking wonderful. I’d have to wear full-body control underwear. But I would do it for the chance to sing in Salzburg.
I kept thinking about bariatric surgery. Should I go for it? I could lose weight a lot faster if I had the surgery, but what if I couldn’t sing as well? What if I lost all the voice support my weight gave me? Other singers had to learn how to sing all over again after major dieting. Famously, Maria Callas, who went from fat and frumpy to slender and a fashion icon, was said to have lost some of the beauty of her voice, although not her superb command of the phrasing and the emotional dynamics of the roles she took on.
Weight-loss surgery was a huge risk. I hoped slow and steady dieting would allow my vocal cords, my lungs, and my supporting muscles to adjust gradually. So far, so good. No one had claimed I was singing worse today than I did a year ago. Thank goodness.
As for skin surgery merely to look good in skimpy costumes, that was even more dangerous. I’d end up with scars that ran the length of my arms and legs, not to mention my torso. Ick. I hated to even think about it. On the plus side, my skin wouldn’t flap around. On the minus side, people died having skin surgery. Was the risk worth it? I might have to take the risk in order to get roles in Europe’s most radical opera productions. But was the price of admission worth the danger? If I decided not to get any surgery, could I keep on performing in major opera venues, or would they all turn into beauty contests?
Was I doing the right thing trying to lose weight? Would even my slow, deliberate pace inevitably kill my voice? I’d lost nearly one hundred pounds. I was no longer a super hefty babe. But had I already doomed my voice to deterioration? Should I stop dieting?
Decisions, decisions. Should I have taken Sean’s invitation to dinner at face value and gone for it? Did I need to be in a screeching loud restaurant competing with a romantic rival for Sean’s attention? A younger, fresher rival, who would look at him with adoring eyes? That social situation could make me glum and hungry. I’d rather be glum and hungry in the privacy of my condo. Although I had hope that my charm might win out in the end, I felt I should at least give lip service to Sean’s spoken desire to be friends only. Although now we were officially engaged. We had pinky sworn. WTF?
For now, I intended to keep on doing what I’d been doing, letting whatever there was between Sean and me develop at its own pace. Because there was something, I was convinced of it.
Chapter 11
Thursday was work. Vocalizing, a sensible breakfast, and a healthy walk to the opera house. The costume fitting went well. Actually, better than well.
Madeline exclaimed that my hips had gotten smaller in less than two weeks. “Have you been crash dieting?” she asked.
I shook my head. “I’m into sensible living.” Although she was right to be suspicious. When I was younger and stupider and more desperate about my weight, I crash dieted with the best of them. Then I fainted during a rehearsal. That was my warning to forget being an extremist. It didn’t stop the repeated efforts to diet and the repeated rounds of bingeing, but I never fainted again.
>
As she put the measuring tape around me again, I asked, “Are my hips really smaller?”
“Yes, and your bustline, too.” She tutted a bit, pinning and muttering.
The Napoleonic era costume had a high waistline, ribbons just under the breasts. From there, the skirts fell straight almost to the floor, with one low flounce taking up the last foot of material to the hem. It was a design that flattered a skinny woman and was a trial to a woman like me with curves that were mostly bulges. My costume for Act I was the worst, consisting of a tight, high-waisted jacket over a nearly straight skirt. Audrey Hepburn had had the slender figure to appear smashing in these fashions. I looked like a puff pastry.
“Please leave me some space in case I eat a big dinner between now and opening night,” I said. Madeline harrumphed.
I bumped into Sean on the way out of the costume room. He’d tied back his dark red hair with a ribbon in an informal queue, as some men still did in Napoleonic times. “You look particularly dashing,” I said. “Are you slated to wear a powdered wig and a brocade frock coat in Act II?”
“Richard doesn’t see Scarpia as ancien regime. He’s a parvenu who never learned the finicky niceties of the upper crust. No wig, but a little powder and a nod to the old hairstyle.”
We walked to the rehearsal hall. “But he’s Baron Scarpia. In the famous Maria Callas–Tito Gobbi production, he’s in traditional eighteenth century garb, including a towering white wig.”
“I’ve seen it. The video clips are all over YouTube.” He grinned. “Richard wants me to play Scarpia as younger and nastier, a kinky sex addict who doesn’t believe in safe words.”
A young woman was walking in our direction. “Hey, Julie,” Sean called.
“Hi, Sean,” she said, on a sigh. Her eyes devoured him.
He smiled down at her in a friendly way. “Is the chorus rehearsing this morning?”
She was flustered, and very pretty and young. “No, I just…I had to come in for something.” Before Sean could ask her what it was, she rushed on, “Do you want to have lunch together?”
Must have been some date last night. I gave them both a small wave and walked on, trying not to hear what Sean said in response. He was a fast worker. But then, with an eager female, who wasn’t?
Suddenly I felt very old and cynical. I could have taken up James on his offer last week after Aida. Or Sean, on his even more confused suggestion of sharing my hotel suite. Sharing would surely have led to a serious hookup. That would have satisfied me for a while. Or I could have gone to a bar and picked up some low-life for casual sex, but I’d sworn off dangerous behavior of all kinds. Which put me squarely in the sights of the dangerous attraction Sean represented. He was entirely too nice, too charming for my peace of mind. He made me want to snatch him away from the young women he preferred to casually date and give him a sample of what he was missing by keeping me in the friendzone.
No. Stop that, Abbie. Behave. My wayward thoughts weren’t doing me any good. For the next several hours, I was Tosca, an imperious diva in love with a passionate painter. Scarpia was my enemy and I would take a knife and kill him rather than let him even touch my lips.
Too bad I kept remembering the touch of Sean’s lips on mine.
Maestro worked us over pretty good with the many transitions between the moments of anguish and elation in Act II. In that respect, Act II had as many emotional changes as Act I, only all the emotions were fearful and negative.
Franco, who liked to live up to the reputation of Italians being excitable, got into a hissy fit over how Herr Kaufmann wanted him to do his clarion, “Vittoria!” cry, the word that sealed Mario’s fate because it flipped Scarpia the bird. Even a condemned prisoner could spit in the evil police chief’s eye, and Mario did so, metaphorically, by celebrating the victory of Napoleon’s advancing army—an army that would inevitably depose the powers that supported Scarpia. Today, history gave Napoleon a mixed rating, but in 1800, when Tosca was set, he had yet to declare himself an emperor or try to annex all of Europe. People still thought of him as a liberator, a breath of fresh air, and a force for good.
Maestro didn’t think Franco sang the one word right. Franco said some hot words in his native tongue, which of course Maestro understood because he’d conducted operas all over Europe. They continued their argument in Italian.
I leaned back, resting my eyes, as they fought it out. Sean whispered in my ear. “Want to blow this joint and go make out in a prop closet?”
My eyes snapped open. He was behind me, very close. His low, enticingly male voice continued. “I saw a convenient closet just down the hall.”
“You say the sweetest things,” I said, wondering what he was up to now, but already tempted to agree to more intimacy with him. “And what is my safe word to stop the damage? Friend?”
“You wound me with your lack of trust,” he said on a sexy sigh. “I could show you a good time for a few minutes.”
I snorted. “Bozo the Clown could entertain me equally, too. Why is it that as long as I’ve been in the theater, these silly disputes keep erupting?” I nodded discreetly at the fight we both watched.
“C’mon,” Sean took my hand. “Let’s sneak out. That’ll teach them.”
Joe and the pianist saw us. I put a finger to my lips and we made ourselves scarce.
Out in the hall, we laughed like naughty school kids. Sean still had my hand. He pulled at it. “The closet is this way.”
“Oh, right. The closet. It’s probably locked.” I dragged my heels as he tugged. “You’re not serious, are you?”
Sean pulled my body close in an embrace and said, “Of course I am.” Then somehow we were in a dark closet and I couldn’t see him anymore, but I felt his lips on mine.
Time passed. The softest touches were followed by devouring pressure. Was that his hand on my breasts? Were my hands under his t-shirt, caressing his muscular flesh?
“Wait a minute,” I squeaked. I pulled my hand off his warm flesh and tried to catch his roving fingers. “Hold on.”
“I’m trying to,” he said, with a smile in his voice. His fingers tried to coax my top askew and get under the cloth.
“Personal foul.” I batted them away. “You’re out of the friendzone.” I felt for the door handle, still trying to fend off his groping. He was still playful, not serious. Even in the dark, I knew that. Which was why I turned the handle and we tumbled out of the closet.
Just my luck, super cute little Julie was in the hall, wide-eyed. So was Richard. I straightened my top. I muttered, “Dignity, always dignity.”
Sean sniggered. He sauntered out of the closet, ostentatiously tucking his t-shirt back into his jeans.
Had I tried to take his shirt off? Indeed I had. My face must have been beet red. I didn’t know where to look. Our little audience was stunned. Julie gave a great gulp and burst into tears. She turned around and fled down the corridor.
Richard said, “Wipe that smirk off your face, Grant. Scarpia has zero sense of humor.”
Chapter 12
Herr Kaufmann and Franco came out of the rehearsal room smiling, obviously buddies. Quarreling in another language must have bonded them. Franco, in his precise but slightly askew English, said, “We are to have the coffee. We shall take a break.” Joe followed them.
Richard sneered at Sean and me. “You two obviously had your break. Let’s get to work.”
Scarpia and Tosca had plenty to say to each other in Act II. It was basically one long negotiation. Stating the problem, announcing the terms, arguing the terms, agreeing on the deal, and then Tosca carrying out a slightly different agenda.
We’d worked hard enough on my initial hauteur, but Richard made me do it again. That was fair, considering how long it had taken me to get it. Then we moved on to me cynically offering Scarpia a bribe, and him evilly refusing it and stating his much nastier terms. The pianist keyed the musical phrases, and we sang each line and discussed them. I had my score out and followed along, trying not
to look at Sean. Unlike some musical greats like Luciano Pavarotti, I could read music. My years at an actual music school ensured that. Sean could, too, but he merely consulted his score. Every time I peeked at him, he was staring at me intensely. I did not want to imagine what Richard made of it, but he wasn’t pleased.
Richard said, “Drop to your knees here.”
We were at the point where Mario was taken back to be tortured again. Many opera productions today featured the heroines dropping to the floor or ground repeatedly. To name one instance, it was all over a recent Il Trovatore at the Met. Maybe Richard wanted to be fashionable.
“I do that later in the scene,” I said.
“You should do it here, too.”
“But it won’t have the impact it does later on.”
“It’s dramatic. Standing around arguing with Scarpia isn’t.”
I fought not to give in. I didn’t want aching knees. Anyway, the drama in opera was mostly carried in the music, not in the physical action. “I can’t do it multiple times. My knees, remember? I want to save it for when it is absolutely necessary.”
Richard got a sour look on his face. Did he have amnesia from yesterday? What part of me being dangerously too heavy to casually drop to the floor over and over did not get across to him?
We fought our way to where I legitimately should get on my knees and beg. And then on to my big number. We fought our way through every line of “Vissi d’arte.” That was not unusual. Every director had some idea of how each word ought to be sung. So did every soprano. Although I preferred to keep the peace with directors, I had my limits.
Richard wanted me to look at Scarpia as I sang it, but I refused.
“I respect what you’re saying,” I said, “But I don’t agree that Tosca is showboating in this aria. She’s talking to herself and to God, not to Scarpia. She says she has given her life to art and to good works. She asks why God has repaid her with this terrible dilemma. She’s not asking Scarpia anything at all. Meanwhile, he’s happy to let her twist in the wind, to let her suffer. He likes that.”
Friendzoned Soprano Page 9
