I flashed Sean a look. His expression was “Who, me?” I’d tried to ignore him as much as possible ever since the closet. If I thought about the closet, I’d fall apart. What on earth possessed him to do it? Did he think about me during these sessions the way I compulsively thought about him? Or was he just bored and wanting a diversion? I’d thought I knew what kind of person Sean Grant was, but now I wasn’t so sure.
Richard at least was keeping his mind on the work. He had me go over the last line of “Vissi” about twelve times, each time with my posture a little different. Finally, he was satisfied and turned to Sean to micromanage his section of the scene.
With the heat off me temporarily, I could drift a little. Those kisses. Sean was a great kisser, and I should know. I’d kissed a lot of men, sometimes in my line of work, but more often in my lifetime effort to find a man who loved me. Finding a man who loved me was not an easy task to accomplish. Boys and young men didn’t want to go steady or be pinned down to a faithful, monogamous relationship. They also didn’t want to be seen dating a fat girl. It didn’t add to their coolness quotient. But they still wanted the sex, any way they could get it.
I had been the exact opposite of wise with a lot of boys and men, ready to commit wholeheartedly if they would only declare they loved me. Far too ready to get physical in the hope the relationship would be emotionally good. Based on my reaction to Sean’s teasing game-playing, I was still a fool for men. Why did he kiss me? I didn’t imagine the closet. Why did I kiss him back? Duh. Because he was delicious.
Sean fiddled with the papers on Scarpia’s desk, that important symbol of his power.
“Make sure you sign with a flourish,” Richard said. “Scarpia is very proud of his ability to read and write. He views it as an aristocratic accomplishment.”
“Which is ridiculous, because aristos often could barely read and write,” Sean said.
“They had the opportunity to learn. Scarpia may be a Baron, but he grew up poor. It’s all over the libretto that he aspires to a higher social level.”
Sean said, “I can’t push that much. Scarpia has to be proud and in control. He has to be the boss, even though he’s aware of higher ups who view him as scum.”
“As does Tosca,” Richard said, “which makes him burn for her all the more.”
Sean turned to me. “Do you like that I burn for you, Tosca?”
Talk about double entendres. “Considering that I view you as scum,” I nodded at Richard, “not so much.” I softened it with a smile so he knew I was kidding. He already knew from how I responded to his kisses that I liked how he burned for me. Did he truly burn for me, or was he joking?
The scene rehearsal continued. I respected Richard’s attention to detail, but it did get wearing. Also, we kept waiting for Herr Kaufmann to return and go over some of his finer points on the act. I didn’t have much business with Franco or Joe in Act II. It was mostly Tosca versus Scarpia.
Richard had me move around and mark, say my lines without singing full out, so he could work on Sean’s lines and his placement.
Finally, we arrived at the last part, when Tosca had given in and agreed to have sex with Scarpia as the price of saving Mario’s life. Scarpia moved to embrace me. In my moment of submission, he sang, “Tosca! Finalmente mia!” At that moment, I stabbed him to death. Richard thoughtfully provided a narrow LED flashlight for me to use as my pretend murder weapon.
I’d sung parts of the music quite a few times, but as concert pieces, never the full opera. I’d seen many versions of Tosca. Usually, when Scarpia moved to embrace Tosca, she immediately knifed him with the steak knife she’d surreptitiously picked up from his dinner table. He never got his arms fully around her.
Richard decided this time it should be different. “Scarpia, I want you to embrace Tosca. Tosca, I want you to hesitate while in his arms. I want it to look as if, at the last moment, she almost decides to go through with the deal as stated.”
Both of us were surprised. I objected without hesitation. “But she’s got the knife in her hand. She’s already decided to kill him.”
“Maybe not.” Richard walked a little closer. “In most productions, Scarpia is played as an unattractive, middle-aged man. Like Tito Gobi with Maria Callas in the famous television presentation. Usually, Scarpia is paunchy, too, and wears a wig style no one likes. Right?”
I nodded. “Except when Sherrill Milnes played him in that movie version. He was hot. And Ruggero Raimondi, later on.”
“Exactly. Look at Sean,” Richard said, going over to Sean. “Which Scarpia is he? Tito Gobi or Sherrill Milnes?”
I smiled full out at Sean, who winked at me. “Do I have to state the obvious?”
Richard triumphantly said, “Which is why you hesitate. You know how it goes. Tosca is thinking, ‘Well, he’s actually pretty hot, and I’ve slept with plenty of men who weren’t,’ and so on. She’s talking herself out of it. Then she stiffens and goes back to her plan. Try it.”
I ignored Richard’s implication that he knew I’d kissed a lot of frogs in my day. I’d never done it for casting couch reasons. I was always looking for love. So was Tosca.
Sean moved to embrace me, saying his line. I shivered in his arms. Catching us coming out of the closet had alerted Richard to the chemistry between us. Now he wanted to use it to make me a Tosca with another layer of emotional complication. No problem with portraying that, since I was as conflicted as any woman in any time period. But I didn’t believe it was right for the story.
Sean was not helping me fight it off, either. Each time he sang his line and put his arms on me, he somehow caressed me. Richard scolded him for treating me like a delicate piece of china, so we did it again, which gave Sean the opportunity to embrace me from the top, as it were. Each time, he found a new spot on my body to touch. There was a lot of me, so that part was easy. Sean made it look completely natural and incidental.
He also allowed his hand to stay on my arm between each attempt. I was in tizzy. A pleasant one physically, but I didn’t agree with the interpretation. I finally said, “I don’t think she has any attraction to Scarpia. We’ve just spent over an hour building up how much she detests him.” I glanced at Sean. “Sorry.”
“You think you know the character better than anyone, is that it?” Richard asked. Clearly he did not like me disagreeing with his clever new concept.
Fighting words. In the past, I would have bit back the argument that rose to my lips. Not this time. “The opera presents her as a woman in love. It doesn’t refer to what might have been her sordid past. Suggesting that she for even one instant mentally shrugs and goes along with the ‘if rape is inevitable’ routine devalues her. It makes her a whore.”
“Scarpia is a sadist,” Sean said. “He prefers to conquer Tosca, not have her voluntary compliance. He wants a fight so he can overmaster her.”
We argued and continued to argue. I found it easier as I kept at it. Eventually, Richard moved on. Had I won the point? He might return to pressing it tomorrow. For now, it was finally my moment to murder Scarpia.
“Sing it from the moment when he says “Finalmente!” Richard said, for at least the fifth time. “Now knife him!”
I dug the flashlight into Sean’s solar plexus, and he started to carry on that I was murdering him, but Richard stopped us.
“Not forceful enough, Tosca. If, as you claim, you hate this man and find him totally repulsive, when he swoops in to start raping you, hit him with everything you’ve got.”
I had a little trouble being forceful enough. None of us liked my second try. Sean helped by working harder to appear menacing during the next.
“Better,” Richard said. “Now do it again, but this time, twist the knife. You hate him, and you want him to die. Remember to pause after your first two ‘Mori! Mori!’ Before the third ‘Mori,’ Sean, you call out for help, but make your voice weak after the first cry.”
It was a repulsive dramatic arc. She was sticking the pig. He was a human be
ing and she was trying to kill him. It wasn’t neat or pretty. He didn’t die easily or instantly, so she cried “Die! Die!” after she stabbed him, and then “Die!” again.
Sean was a good actor. Doing the standard version of the scene, he stuck to Scarpia’s traditional, “Now I’ve got you in my clutches” menace. I was fighting for my virtue and for my lover’s life, so I knifed him and kept stabbing him until he fell silent and breathed his last.
I had a brief moment of victory, of looking with shock at the corpse of the man who had made all Rome tremble in fear. It was immediately followed by saying I forgave him now that he was finally dead. I put candles and a cross at his head. Then I had my freak-out, a silent moment, with the music continuing behind me, of realizing I had done it. He was dead and I could escape. I frantically searched on the desk for what I believed was my lover’s safe conduct away from the city. Then I realized that I had to touch the repugnant dead thing, rifle his pockets, to find the paper. I made myself do it, all the time portraying a kind of fear that the dead thing would rise up and stop me. But he was dead, truly dead. Once I found the paper, I wrapped myself in my cloak and rushed out to freedom.
The pianist played the music as I acted out the dumb show. It was one of the most horrifying and personal moments of the opera, the moment a delicate flirt, a silly, jealous woman, shed blood to save her virtue and her sanity from being destroyed by an evil vulture of a man.
The act ended somberly. There was no joy in her triumph over Scarpia, and since the audience already knew that Scarpia had played a fatal trick on her, it was just as well. For her to be happy would have been even more pitiful. She acted out of desperation, not to triumph over him. She had to remain a heroine, not become a murderer in her own mind. She was deeply shaken by what she did.
I was wrung out. Richard had been talking to me the whole time, telling me what to do, how to move, how to look at Scarpia. Now he said, “Do it again.”
Could I? I glanced at Sean. He winked at me. I said, “Give me a minute.”
We did it again, so many times I lost count.
“You’re a trouper,” Sean said to me after we finally finished the Act II rehearsal. Richard had left quickly, as had the pianist. Joe and Franco had never come back, nor had Herr Kaufmann. Maybe they’d found another room. Or maybe we’d get the missed time with Herr Kaufmann tomorrow.
Sean and I had the rehearsal room to ourselves. I gathered my things as quickly as I could, aware that there was a very tempting, soft couch in the corner we could occupy together. If our time in the closet hadn’t been only about him being bored with the rehearsal.
He’d caressed me plenty as Scarpia, too. Much more than necessary, and I didn’t think it was because he was a natural lech who took advantage. Word on that would have come down to me a long time ago. Claudio would have warned me. Someone else would have tattled. There weren’t many secrets in the small, tight world of opera.
“Thanks.” I made some inane comment about getting to Act III tomorrow. Of course we would, since we’d finished Act II. “Tonight is late night at the Walters Art Museum. I plan to grab a quick dinner and head over there. Get some culture that doesn’t involve murder.”
“Want company?”
I gave him a quizzical look. “Don’t you have some explaining to do with Julie?”
His expression showed surprise. “Explain about what? I barely know her.”
Was he being deliberately dense? Was discouraging her the reason for the closet? No, he couldn’t have known she’d be in the corridor at the exact moment we tumbled out. He couldn’t have known I would decide to fight him off. Why had I, anyway?
Bottom line, I didn’t understand what Sean wanted with me. A goofball playmate? Some singers were big pranksters, and Sean might be that type. Then why the kissing and the touching? I was convinced it was personal, not the encroachment of the careless player who fondled all women.
Or was I fooling myself? Was he the lightweight kind who talked women into letting him use them? Julie and then me. Or rather, me, then Julie, then me.
We were walking down the long hall past the lockers. Now I stopped and faced him. “Sean. Be straight with me. What do you want from me?”
Chapter 13
My daring stunned me. Sean looked shocked, too.
I almost took it back. Had I ever asked a man I was involved with what he wanted? Even once? Mostly I had begged them to stay with me, to love me. Of course I always chose men who wouldn’t stay and couldn’t love.
Before he could say anything, I rushed on. “You said you wanted a friend. So what was that…interlude in the closet about? And the cab last week? Why are we pinky sworn engaged to be married in three years? What do you think we have?”
I wanted to ask more questions, but I made myself stop. I made myself wait for an answer.
Sean tightened his lips. I didn’t fill in the conversational gap. I waited him out.
Finally, he pulled at the string that held his hair back in a queue, and released it, an obvious nervous gesture. “I thought a friend was all I wanted. I wanted to get off the merry-go-round of Julies.” He shrugged. “You know, sweet kids who take everything too seriously, and who won’t go the distance in our world.”
“So you engineered a scene that would hurt and humiliate her—or at the very least make her think any romantic hopes she had about you are impossible?” I stared at him, perplexed. “Had you asked her to come down that hall at that exact minute? Did you use me to get rid of her? Why don’t I believe you?”
He opened his mouth to say something, then shut it.
That meant trouble. My courage deserted me. I held up my hand. “Don’t search for a plausible answer to placate me. Let’s just forget it. We’ll chalk it up to boredom with the rehearsal. See you tomorrow.”
Pointedly, I turned away from him and opened the door to my dressing room. He stood there for a while, I could tell. Then he walked away.
I held in my desire to cry until I was in a cab going to the Walters. By then, I didn’t even want to cry. I was angry. Sean had told me our relationship was to be friends only, and then he’d thoughtlessly crossed the line, over and over again. It was all a game to him. Or he was too immature to acknowledge the import of his actions. Either way, I refused to be his patsy in future. We didn’t have to rehearse together tomorrow. After all, I’d killed him today.
***
I didn’t feel much better after a solitary, sensible meal at a café near the Walters. The museum was okay, but I wasn’t in the mood. Still, I made myself walk through the entire place despite my glum feelings. Perhaps the world-class artwork would soothe my troubled spirit on some unconscious level.
After I’d seen it all, I took another cab back to my condo and changed into exercise garb. The gym upstairs was clearing out when I arrived. Singers didn’t have to commute at the crack of dawn like the rest of the world, so I could use the late evening hours in the gym in privacy. I ran on the treadmill and used the stair climber and the rowing machine. I began to feel better. Then I treated myself to a sauna, and finally to a long, hot shower. After that, back in my condo, I indulged in soothing girlie ritual self-care, including changing my fingernail polish and doing my toenails to match. As a final touch, I slathered on a cucumber cosmetic mask and then did fifty crunches. After all that, I took another shower and dressed in an extravagant pair of superhero pajamas. Down-to-earth diva, that was me.
Did all of my activity keep me from thinking about Sean Grant? No. My thoughts about him went around and around. For hours, I dissected the meaning of every word, every raised eyebrow, every arm casually flung around my shoulders, and every kiss. My conclusion: Sean didn’t know what he wanted out of women, but he liked them and he wanted me sexually. Was I willing to accept that we might only be a hookup for a night or two? That he would move on when our short run on this opera was over? He was a masterly kisser. We both were free. Why not?
No. Been there, done that. Never again.
***
I laid out the Tarot on the breakfast bar. I probably did the reading all wrong, because every card that came up seemed to be a romance or love card. The Lovers. Two of Cups. Ace of Cups. When I hit the Knight of Cups, I stopped trying. I stared at the Knight in Shining Armor coming courting. Then I swept all the cards into a stack and put them back in their velvet bag.
It was midnight when Sean rang my doorbell. I opened the door and stared at him. He was hot-eyed. His tense stance conveyed his roiling emotion.
“I don’t know why I’m here,” he said.
“I do.” I ushered him in and shut the door. He stood in the small foyer, obviously unsure of what to do next. I reached for his belt buckle.
I pulled him to the suite’s living area, and sat him on the couch. Then I dropped to the floor and got between his knees. When he started to say something, I hushed him. “Don’t speak. And don’t even think about touching me.”
I tore him apart. I used my tongue and my teeth, my lips, my breath control, everything that I had studied and learned for twenty years since I’d lost my virginity in the basement of a friend’s house in front of a Nintendo. I drove Sean to the edge of insanity. Although there was no music playing, I made him sing.
It went on for a long time. I had a lot of stamina. I tested the edge of his, gulping in his sighs and his groans, eating up his shudders and shivers. I pushed him past the silly little boy-girl games he’d been playing to a new plateau of sensation. I broke him open and deflowered him. I took him. And all the time, I was on my knees, not allowing him to touch me. Finally, I took pity on both of us. Sex this good had to end sometime. Every performance ended and the curtain had to come down. I took him to the apex of sensual experience, and then I blasted him into the stratosphere.
Friendzoned Soprano Page 10
