by Megan Chance
But Johnny saw them. Of course he did; he noticed everything. When I turned to him I saw how he watched me, the puzzlement that was in his expression, and I tried to smile and said, “It was very moving, wasn’t it?”
I waited for him to comment on my tears, to say something like Charlotte would have said, to disarm me with his notice, but he only said, “I’m waiting for Valentin to die. One of the most well-deserved deaths I know.”
“Well deserved? But he was only defending his sister’s honor.”
“Well deserved for damning her to hell. She was stupid, but stupid ain’t a crime. Not yet, anyway. A bit over the top, old Valentin.”
“I didn’t realize you had such a soft heart,” I said.
Johnny gave me a wry smile. “Don’t fool yourself. Why don’t we get some lemonade, or whatever the hell else they’re serving in the salon? I don’t suppose I can count on whiskey.”
He rose, holding out his hand, helping me to my feet.
The crowd was hard to get through, and the talk was loud, and I could see little beyond Johnny’s broad back. When he stopped short just within the salon, I almost plowed into him.
He was shaking some man’s hand, a man I didn’t recognize, who was about Johnny’s age, but dark haired, and wearing the impeccably cut flash of the nouveau riche. On his one side stood a young man who was nearly a copy and obviously his son, and on the other another man with a broad expanse of shining forehead and dark hair curling over his large ears. Johnny turned, pulling me up beside him to introduce me to Mr. Bartholomew Perkins and his son, Theodore.
“Charmed, Miss Olson,” Mr. Perkins, senior, said, bowing perfunctorily over my proffered hand. I felt like an imposter, such a shabby copy of my old self that I was embarrassed.
“And this is Thomas Prosch,” Johnny said. “You’ve heard of him, no doubt. Owner and editor of the Intelligencer.“
“Co-owner,” Prosch corrected.
I had to resist the urge to turn and run. A newspaperman. It was all I could do to smile, to say how pleased I was to meet him. I pulled nervously at the veil, wishing it were longer, thicker, hoping it blurred my features enough.
“Well, what do you think of it?” Perkins asked.
“A sight above what I expected for these parts,” Johnny said.
“I’m afraid I’m not much of a connoisseur,” Prosch confessed—and I was relieved.
Perkins said, “The orchestra is not the best, of course, and the tenor playing Valentin is only adequate, still … the Siebel is delightful, don’t you think? One doesn’t expect to find a mezzo of that quality in a troupe like this.”
Johnny looked bored. “She’s a bit throaty for my taste.”
“I was just telling Father that it does one good to hear something better than fiddle playing in this place at last,” said the son earnestly.
“Seattle ain’t about to get the best companies. But the fact that they’re here at all is something.”
“A man of your experience ought to know,” Perkins said. He turned to Prosch. “Will there be a piece about it in tomorrow’s paper?”
Prosch tapped the pocket of his suitcoat. “That’s why I’ve brought my notebook. You can all rest assured I shall use your comments quite unashamedly.”
They laughed. I managed a close enough approximation; at least I hoped no one noticed how strained it was.
“Well, it doesn’t compare to the best,” Perkins said with a sigh. “I once saw the most sublime production of Faust. It’s been several years ago now, of course. In Philadelphia. The girl who played Marguerite was quite the most stunning soprano I’d ever heard. At the time I thought her better than Adelina Patti, though she was still so young. Just a child.”
My fingers tightened on Johnny’s arm. When he glanced at me, I forced my hold to loosen.
“Of course, she grew up to be the renowned Sabine Conrad, so it turned out I was quite right.”
Johnny said, “Quite a talent. I saw her once in San Francisco. So many damned people there I couldn’t get close enough to look at her, but I’ll never forget that voice.”
I was stunned. Johnny had heard Sabine Conrad.
Prosch said, “Can you imagine if she ever turned up again?”
Johnny snorted. “Just let it be on my doorstep. Hell, the tickets I’d be able to sell … It’d turn the Palace legitimate overnight.”
“Why is that?” the young Perkins asked.
Prosch said, “The whole city would pay to see her, no matter where she sang. No one knows what happened to her. She disappeared after the scandal.”
“Scandal?”
I squeezed Johnny’s arm again, feeling faint. “The heat is really too much—”
Prosch went on. “A terrible thing. It’s been … what? Three years? Four? And, you know, people still talk about her. I know someone who hired a man just to look for her. And a reporter friend of mine in San Francisco has dedicated his career to finding her again.”
This time, I tugged hard and insistently on Johnny’s arm, and when he looked at me with a frown, I managed, “My head … Forgive me, but—”
“Pardon me, gentlemen,” Johnny said politely. “But the lady requires some lemonade.”
“Of course, of course, we hardly meant to keep you,” Perkins said. “Enjoy the rest of the performance.”
Johnny pushed through the crowd, and I was relieved when we left Perkins and his son behind. But before we could get to the lemonade, the ushers were calling people back to their seats.
“They’re starting again,” I said, turning back, pulling Johnny with me.
“You don’t want the lemonade?”
“I’m feeling much better already.”
“You sure about that, honey? You looked ready to swoon.”
“I was overcome for a moment. I’m all right now.”
He nodded, and though I don’t think he completely believed me, he led me back to our seats. I was grateful when the lights faded and the music started up again. But Mr. Prosch’s words stayed with me through the rest of the opera, and I never again regained my sense of wonder as it went on. The music seemed full of false notes, banal and sentimental suddenly, and the tenor truly was unbearable, the soprano playing Marguerite seemed too brightly innocent and sweet—there was no nuance to her at all, and her embellishments during the Jewel Song were too ornate and rather silly, her despair as she lingered in prison, condemned for killing her child after Faust deserted her, almost hysterical. Only Mephistopheles felt real to me. His fiendish bass lingered in my ears when all else fell away, and when Marguerite sang her song of redemption to the angels, and they carried her to heaven as Mephistopheles and Faust cowered before them, I realized the ending for what it was: a fantasy of the basest kind. I knew already: angels did not redeem women like Marguerite.
CHAPTER 9
Johnny reached into his pocket for a cigar and a match, which he struck against the rough outside wall of a barbershop. He paused to light his cigar, and I waited as he puffed it to life, wrinkling my nose at the smoke that clouded before my face. The night was full of the sound of carriage wheels thudding over the streets, distant whoops and hollers, a dogfight.
When he began to walk again, I fell into step beside him. Johnny said, “You always surprise me, honey.”
“Really? I would have said I was anything but surprising.”
He inhaled and let the smoke out in a cloud. “Take the opera, for example. You know Faust like someone who’s seen it more than once.”
“No, I—”
“You were keeping time.”
“I was what?”
“Keeping time. You know that music inside and out, Margie. Don’t lie to me about that, at least. I don’t doubt my own eyes.”
“I … have a good ear. That’s all.”
“I don’t dispute that.” He flicked off the ash from his cigar. “So how’d you develop this ‘ear’?”
“I don’t know. I’ve always had it.”
“That’s
how you know Verdi.”
“Yes.”
He was quiet. His footsteps—and mine—seemed too loud on the boardwalk, thudding and echoing in a night already heavy with sound.
“It occurs to me that we don’t know each other very well,” he said finally.
“Does it matter?”
He went on as if I hadn’t spoken. “Now, there’re some things…. I know you like it a little rough, and hell, I ain’t averse to a little pain myself if it makes the pleasure better. But there ain’t much that you let yourself enjoy, honey. I always figured you were punishing yourself for something. Am I right?”
I was startled into silence.
“Suppose you tell me what that is.”
Still I was mute; I had no idea what to say.
“Does it have something to do with him?”
“With who?” I whispered.
“Whoever it is you got in your head. The one I can’t dislodge.”
“Oh, Johnny …”
He held up his hand to quiet me. “You enjoyed tonight. At least at the start. That’s what surprised me. I don’t think I’ve ever seen that in you. Hell, you looked like you were staring into heaven, and I found myself thinking: now, if she looked at me like that when I was fucking her, I would give her anything she wanted.” He laughed ruefully. “I suppose we all got our vanities, don’t we?”
I could not answer him. I should never have let him take me to the opera. I should never have gone. I’d known I was taking a risk, and now the two things I’d been most afraid of had happened: my longing for the music was so strong I didn’t know how I would live without it again, and Johnny’s curiosity about me had sharpened. I should have listened to my instincts; I should have denied myself the pleasure.
Johnny said, “Three years we been together, Margie, and I know hardly more about you than I did at the start. I thought I stopped wondering about you a long time ago, but tonight’s been … a revelation.”
“The past is the past,” I said softly. “I never ask you about yours.”
“Because you don’t care—that’s the difference. What you want from me ain’t what I want from you.”
I looked away. How stupid I’d been.
Johnny laughed shortly. “You see? You don’t even ask: ‘What is it you want from me, Johnny?’”
“I know what you want.”
“Do you?” He stopped walking for a moment to look at me. The cigar lit his eyes weirdly; I found myself taking a step back. “Were you like the Marguerite in Faust? Is that why you took her name?”
“It is my name,” I said, but my voice quavered, and I knew he heard it.
“Where’d the scar come from? Did he give it to you?”
“That’s none of your business.” I walked on. In two steps, he was beside me, his hand on my arm, gentle enough that I could have kept going, but I stopped.
“Did you never think to move on, honey?” His voice was unbearably tender. “You say the past is the past, but I don’t think you left it behind. How long you planning to wait before you start living again?”
His comment pricked. I found myself saying meanly, “Why don’t you admit what it is that bothers you, Johnny? I don’t love you—that’s what this is about. That isn’t going to change; we both know it. What’s so wrong with the way things are now?”
“Because I’m your partner, and you’re keeping secrets.”
“You have your own secrets.”
He went quiet, and I was grateful until he said, “Tonight got me thinking. Maybe it’s time to do what I intended in the first place and make the Palace a real theater.”
“Just because an opera company managed to fill Squire’s one night doesn’t mean Seattle’s ready for anything else.”
“Hmmm. Maybe. Or maybe it is. Maybe we should take a trip down to San Francisco, see if we can’t convince a couple troupes to make the trip north.”
“It would be a waste of time. Who would come here?”
He tapped off a growing ash. “You know, I’m starting to think you don’t want me to make the Palace legitimate. Why is that?”
“I’m only being cautious. We have a good thing now—”
“It could be better.”
“Are you so certain? It couldn’t hurt to wait a little longer—”
“We were the first boxhouse in Seattle. We’re the most successful because we took a risk. Who’s to say this wouldn’t pay off the same way?”
“It’s too soon. We can’t afford it. What about our regular customers?”
“What about them?”
“We’d lose them.”
He shook his head thoughtfully. “I don’t think we would. Not all of them anyway, and we’d have a whole new crowd to take their place. It’d take—what?—a few months, maybe, until the profits came up again. We could survive it. I’m ready to do this, Margie.”
“Johnny—”
“We could add footlights to the stage, get rid of the chaises in the boxes. Turn the bar into a salon. There’d be no more whores, no more temper tantrums over yellow fucking dresses.” His voice had gone low and vibrant; he gestured with his cigar, the lit end glowing brightly in the darkness. “We’d run a melodrama or two, maybe even an opera of our own. Can’t you see it, Margie? You and me, proprietors of the best damn theater in the city.”
His words were seductive. I could not help picturing it. A theater the equal of Squire’s or better. Singers who could sing. Musicians who could play. The ambitions that I’d forced dormant shivered and stretched. In my ears rang Faust, tempting, cajoling….
But then I remembered what Prosch had said about people who still searched for Sabine Conrad, reporters who meant to find her, and I knew I could not keep hidden here, not if the Palace were a theater. There were so many people I’d left behind, players, singers, managers. Sooner or later, someone who’d known me well enough to recognize me would arrive. And then what? How could I escape myself then? How could I keep myself safe from everything I was?
I swallowed hard and shook my head. “I don’t think it’s a good idea.”
He gave me a sidelong glance. “You afraid?”
“Of course I’m afraid. Of losing money.”
“You sure it ain’t more than that?”
“What else could it be?”
“I don’t know.” He made a little laugh. “I wish to hell I did.”
He threw his cigar into the middle of the street and took my arm, pulling me close, putting his hand to my chin so I could not look away. “I want to do this, Margie, and I want you to help me. I could go ahead without you, but I’m likely to make a mess of it. I need you beside me. I don’t know why, but you understand this business like no one I’ve ever seen.”
Everything felt dangerous, unbalanced. I did not want to think about this. I wanted things to remain as they were. And so I did what I had always done. I curled my arms around his neck, and when he stiffened a little, I rose on my toes and kissed him. He didn’t respond at first, but I did not relent; I knew what he liked, and soon his mouth moved on mine; his hands crept to the small of my back and then lower. I drew back, teasing, pressing my lips against his throat, above the unfamiliar high collar, the smooth cold silk of his necktie. I unknotted it, looking about for a place, a corner, a shadowed alley. I slid my hand down his chest and pressed my hips to his. “Over there,” I murmured. “No one would see—”
Johnny curled his fingers tight about mine, stopping me. “No, Margie.”
I let my other hand fall to his trousers. “Come on, Johnny. Let me thank you for taking me to the opera.”
He smiled. “Oh, you can thank me all right, but it don’t distract me, honey, if that’s what you mean to do. I’ll fuck you if you want, but when we’re done, we’re coming right back around to this. It’s time for you and me to move into something new. You know it as well as I do. It’s time to turn the Palace.”
I jerked away, surprised and angry.
He raised a brow. “Oh, don’t tell me
you changed your mind. What a pity. And here you got me all excited.”
“Go on home to Sally, then,” I snapped.
“I think I just might do that,” he said. “But you and me, we ain’t finished with the rest of it.” He took my arm; when I tried to pull away, he tsked at me. There was a smile in his voice when he said, “You put me in mind of a little girl who didn’t get a treat. Come on now, let’s go home. We’ll talk about this tomorrow. Just now you got ‘til McGraw’s to change your mind about taking me to bed.”
THE CANDLE WAS lit, and I watched its shadow against the walls while in the next room, Tessa and her partner’s rhythmic gruntings kept time to the duet between Faust and Marguerite that repeated itself unendingly in my head. How many times I’d sung that duet. How often in these last years I’d tried to forget it, to forget everything. I’d closed my heart to it, and I had not realized until tonight how much that had cost me, not until Johnny had uttered his proposition. Faust had raised my hunger again, and now I heard Mephistopheles’s terrible, derisive laugh, calling me a fool, calling me worse than that.
I was relieved when Charlotte came home—anything that robbed me of my thoughts was something to be grateful for. She came inside and sent a frown in the direction of Tessa’s room before she looked at me in surprise. “I thought you’d be asleep.”
“I couldn’t sleep.”
Charlotte sat on the edge of the bed and bent to unfasten her boots. “Was the opera good?”
“As I expected.”
She slipped off one boot and then the other and rose, going to the basin. On the other side of the wall, Tessa screamed out and went still. In the silence after was the smooth gurgling splash of water as Charlotte poured it. “Thank God that’s over. You’d think she got enough of it at the Bijou.”
“You never wish to bring someone back with you?” I asked.
