Prima Donna

by Megan Chance

  “And not since? But there’s no need to be afraid. You won’t be alone. There are ten others in the choir. We rehearse on Sunday, after we sing at the morning service.”

  “You see? That won’t get in the way,” Charlotte said.

  Mr. Anderson peered at me with his watery eyes. “Do you read music, Miss Olson?”

  Charlotte spoke before I could. “Yes. She chooses the music for the girls at the Palace.”

  “The Palace,” he said slowly, and I thought I was saved.

  “The boxhouse,” I said in relief. “I’m Johnny Langford’s partner. So you see, Mr. Anderson, I am sorry to waste your time—”

  “That ain’t a problem, is it, Mr. Anderson?” Charlotte asked quickly. “She ain’t a whore.”

  “We are all lambs of God, Miss Rainey,” he said. He looked at me. “As are you and Mr. Langford, Miss Olson. Your … position … holds no impediment to the choir.”

  “Oh, but—”

  “Miss Rainey led me to believe you wanted to join,” he said. “Please don’t let any nervousness you might have keep you from trying. The choir here at Trinity is well regarded in the city. I flatter myself that I have some skill in bringing voices together to form a pleasing whole. We’ve recently purchased a pipe organ—we’ll be lengthening the church to make room for it later this year. So, you see, I have high ambitions for the choir.”

  “A pipe organ,” I said, startled by the announcement, by what it meant: Seattle had a church large enough to buy a pipe organ, large enough to support one. “Have you someone to play it?”

  “Yes indeed. My wife, whom you saw this morning, has the talent.” Mr. Anderson folded his hands. “Might I have the honor of hearing you sing, Miss Olson?”

  I met Charlotte’s gaze; she was staring at me with anticipation and pleasure.

  She said quietly, “What makes you happier than singing?”

  It was tempting, although it shouldn’t have been. Mr. Anderson reminded me of my old master, Herr Wirt, at the Lutheran Church in Kleindeutschland, and my memories of standing on those warped wooden risers as he directed me, and taking lessons with him after, his exactitude, his surety, filled me with warmth and pleasure. I’d been fourteen when I started with the Lutheran choir, and after only a few months I was singing solos in the old church, the robes hanging, too large, over my hands, my voice rising to fill the nave, strong and sure and sweet, until it seemed almost to color the stained-glass windows, while my parents watched from the pews and my brother stood singing only one away and Gideon three down.

  “Will you sing, Miss Olson?” Mr. Anderson asked.

  Caught by the rosiness of the memory, I found myself saying yes, and he smiled and escorted us back into the nave where the piano was. He sat on the bench and pulled it close and opened the lid over the keys and then looked at me expectantly. “Shall we start with ‘Rock of Ages’? I assume you know it.”

  I nodded. Charlotte settled herself in the pew, and I stood by the piano and waited for him to start. Though I knew a moment of fear when I thought he might recognize my voice, I told myself I could sing the song simply and cleanly, the way I would have sung it if I were truly Marguerite Olson, if the only training I’d had was that of a talented child. When he played, I let my voice loose, singing the song easily and well and without even one-tenth of my strength to do so. This was no aria; this had no notes I must reach inside myself to meet. This was pure pleasure, and I sang it that way.

  Mr. Anderson’s wife—the neat little woman in brown—appeared from a door to stand and listen. She clasped her hands together before her in a rapt expression of gratification, and when I was finished, she applauded. Charlotte joined in with her, and I felt myself flush; I could not help my smile.

  “You’re very kind,” I said.

  “And you will be a very welcome addition to Trinity Choir,” Mr. Anderson said. He rose from the bench, coming to me, taking my hand between his, clasping it hard. “You will sing, won’t you, Miss Olson? I cannot tell you what a disappointment it would be to lose you now that I’ve heard your voice.”

  Some things had not changed after all. My own vanity had not. It stretched and preened like a pampered cat beneath his words and Mrs. Anderson’s expression. And the delight I’d taken in singing made it hard to resist.

  “I will,” I said.

  “Delightful,” he told me. “Then we shall see you this Sunday, the twelfth.”

  “This Sunday is the seventeenth,” his wife put in gently, and Mr. Anderson started and said, “Good heavens, is it? Ah yes, today is already the fifteenth, isn’t it?”

  The fifteenth. Of July.

  Mr. Anderson smiled and went on. “Well, Miss Olson, I look forward to introducing you to the rest of our choir. Come to the service if you like. Practice begins just after.”

  “Thank you,” I said. “I will.”

  We took our leave, and when Charlotte and I were on the steps outside, she said, “Is something wrong? You looked sick of a sudden.”

  “Nothing,” I said. “It’s just … today is my birthday.”

  “Your birthday?” She laughed. “Well, happy birthday. How old are you?”

  “Twenty-seven.” Old. I was old. Too old for the ingenues I’d loved. Only Donna Annas and Queens of the Night for me now. The thought was so absurd I laughed. As if it mattered at all, as if I would ever take to the stage again.

  Charlotte laughed with me. “Well, there you go. And look at that, I got you a present without even knowing. I hope you like it.”

  I smiled at her. “I do like it. I like it very much.”

  And then I remembered Johnny.

  CHAPTER 13

  Dear God, what was I thinking?” I said to Charlotte as we made our way back home. “I can’t do this.”

  “Why not?”

  It was not just Johnny, it was the people who came to that church, who sang in that choir. People I’d spent three years avoiding, for good reason. This was beyond foolish, and I knew it. But I couldn’t say that to Charlotte, so I said the most obvious, the thing she would understand.

  “What if Johnny finds out?”

  “How would he find out? He don’t go to church.”

  “Others do.”

  “Who would know him? Who would tell him?”

  “Anyone,” I said helplessly. “Do you think it’s only miners and lumbermen who come to the Palace? Johnny knows everyone.”

  “So he finds out. What will he think, except that you’ve turned to God?” Charlotte clasped her hands and looked woefully up at the sky. “‘I repent of my terrible ways, oh Lord, and must do penance by singing in Trinity’s choir.’”

  “You’ve chosen a wrong profession. You should have been an actress.”

  “You should’ve seen your face. The music is what makes you happy. Anyone can tell that.”

  I could not deny that I had loved it. Those few moments, singing to the piano that Mr. Anderson played, regardless that it was a simple song, was singing to music, and now that I’d tasted it again, I didn’t really want to give it up, despite the risk. And here was Charlotte, making it so easy to tell myself it was all right to do something that made me happy when I had not been for so very long. To take my life back again … I could not take it back, not really, not completely, and in fact, there were parts of it I didn’t want back. But I could do this. I could sing in this way. Hidden. Among others.

  “I’m a fool,” I told her.

  “And an old one too,” she teased.

  I laughed with her, but I could not forget the danger so easily. My apprehension stayed with me as I readied for the dinner with our potential investor. The choir was just one more thing to add to the lies I was already telling Johnny—perhaps the most dangerous one of all. The fact that I was singing in the church when I had not even told him I could sing well enough for the Palace’s stage would raise questions—and he would want the answers. Now that I was well away from the church and those few moments of pure happiness, I knew singin
g there could only hurt me. How long, truly, could I keep Johnny from discovering it?

  I tried not to think of it when I met him at the Palace that evening. When he came down from his room, dressed again in the suit and vest with the silk tie, I was transported to the night we’d gone to Faust. The arias slammed back into my head, impossible to dislodge until he came to me and took my arm and said, “You in a good mood, honey?”

  “I won’t be Medusa tonight,” I said rather tartly.

  “I’m counting on it,” he said.

  It was not a great distance to the Occidental Hotel from the Palace. The hotel was one of the best in the city, a long, storied building with a peaked roof sited in the midst of the triangle created by the butting up of Commercial to Front Street. From its second-story balcony, the hotel had the best view in town of the many accidents that occurred at “the throat,” as it was called—wagon overturnings and careening carriages certain they could make the treacherous corner without incident were legion.

  The setting sun had blazed through the westward-facing windows earlier in the evening, and the restaurant was hot. The tables were full, mostly men, undoubtedly travelers and businessmen, and I felt their stares as Johnny led me inside and spoke briefly to the waiter, who led us to a table in the corner by the window, where sat a man I’d never seen before.

  He was long-limbed and elegant, with red hair and a full set of whiskers, though he was quite young—I would have guessed younger than me. He wore a deep blue coat, and his necktie was a large swath of bronze silk about his throat, his watch chain large and looped and ostentatious. In New York he would have been the grossest kind of parvenu. I was intimidated at first—it took me a moment to remember that he was nothing new; ambitious men like this had been second nature to me once.

  He rose when we came to the table and Johnny introduced him as Blakely Davis. I offered my hand, and he bowed deeply over it, and smiled when I said how pleased I was to meet him.

  “The honor is mine, Miss Olson,” he said. His gaze flickered over my scar; he was too polite to stare, but I knew he noted it by the way he glanced quickly at Johnny—undoubtedly making the connection Johnny had wanted him to make.

  I took the chair between them, easing it closer to Mr. Davis, giving him my best smile, gratified when he seemed a bit taken aback by it. “Have you been in Seattle long, Mr. Davis?”

  “A few months only,” he said. “But I’ve found it quite to my liking. I mean to stay.”

  “Davis acquired an interest in a mining concern,” Johnny said.

  “From my father,” Davis acknowledged. “I came out here to oversee it.”

  “You have a generous father,” I said.

  “Oh, not so much as one would imagine.”

  The waiter hovered. Johnny ordered wine and whiskey.

  “It’s not every son who gets a mining company handed to him.”

  “Not a company, I’m afraid. Merely shares. But I daresay they’ve turned out better than anyone expected.”

  “And as a result, Mr. Davis is looking for investments,” Johnny said.

  “Mr. Langford tells me you may be interested in our enterprise,” I said.

  Davis looked thoughtful. “Perhaps.”

  “Do you enjoy entertainment, sir?”

  The wine came, and the whiskey. Johnny poured for each of us, handing me the wine, though I would have preferred the other. Still, I understood; whiskey was not a woman’s drink.

  “I like to be entertained as much as any man,” Davis said.

  I laughed and took a sip of the wine. “Ah, but all men are different, Mr. Davis. Have you a preference for minstrel shows or farce? Or perhaps you’ve a melodramatic turn of mind?”

  “What I have, Miss Olson, is a money-making turn of mind,” he said. “And I must admit I’m intrigued by the proposal Mr. Langford has set forth. But you understand, I must be careful with what investments I make. I’m not so wealthy that I can afford to lose money.”

  “We don’t intend to lose money,” Johnny said firmly, curling his fingers around his drink. “Were you at Squire’s for the opera a few months ago?”

  “I regret I was out of town.”

  “Full houses every night. I tell you, Seattle’s overdue for good entertainment. How many temperance lectures or juggling dogs can one man see? What I want, Davis—what we want—is to provide entertainment that’s … entertaining.”

  “You see, that’s what has me concerned, Langford. The Palace is not exactly known for its quality entertainment now. Why should I believe you can provide anything different?”

  “Because I say we can,” Johnny said bluntly. “And I do what I say I’ll do.”

  “No doubt you mean to, but—”

  “You accusing me of lying, Davis?” Johnny’s voice had gone silky.

  “Of course not. But I—”

  “What Mr. Langford means is that we understand your concerns,” I said, glaring at Johnny and putting my hand on Mr. Davis’s arm. “Frankly, there’s no one who wouldn’t have them. But you must understand, Mr. Langford and I are ready to change with the times—as we have always done. After all, when we started the Palace, this town was nothing but lumbermen and miners. The boxhouse was considered farsighted then. Seattle wasn’t ready for a real theater. It is now.”

  Johnny eased back in his seat. Mr. Davis glanced down at my hand on his arm. I did not move it. Instead, I pressed a little more warmly until I felt him relax, and said, “We do have some experience in this kind of thing. Before he came up here, Johnny helped run a theater in San Francisco.”

  “What about you, Miss Olson? You said ‘we.’ You’ve had experience with theaters?”

  I felt Johnny’s glance, though I avoided it. Instead, I met Mr. Davis’s gaze and held it. I smiled and began a quiet, back-and-forth motion with my finger over his suited arm. “I once kept company with a traveling musician, sir. I have quite … intimate … knowledge of such matters.”

  He swallowed.

  “I think we would make good partners, Mr. Davis. You seem an intelligent man.”

  “I would hope so.”

  “And I can see in your face a certain sensibility. Have you ever been read by a phrenologist?”

  “Once. Yes, once. Some time ago.”

  I leaned forward. “I’m certain he must have found the finer natures most pronounced. I believe I can see them myself. You have a refined countenance, sir.”

  He looked down modestly. “I believe he did say I was very developed in sublimity.”

  “And spirituality too, I’m certain.”

  “Why, yes. How perceptive you are, Miss Olson.”

  “It hardly needs perception, Mr. Davis. Your physical attributes are obvious for anyone to see.” I pressed closer until I could feel the warmth of his trousered leg against my skirts. He did not move away. “I do not think we could ask for a finer partner. I think I should always be assured of your honesty. How peerless you would be in advising us!”

  “I would hope always to be of service,” he said, very modestly, though he was turning pink. Perhaps it was the heat, though when his gaze came to mine, I saw desire there, and I smiled demurely and dropped my eyes and didn’t stop my caress on his arm.

  “I’m most certain you would be,” I murmured.

  Davis glanced across the table to Johnny. “However did you find such a charming creature, Langford?”

  “She wandered into my place one day like a lost dog,” Johnny said wryly, and when I looked at him, his expression was glittering—a little dangerous, a little amused. “But she’s proved herself useful enough. Ain’t no one better when it comes to smoothing things over.”

  Davis turned to me. He was pink as a lobster, clashing terribly with his beard. “I imagine so. You have a very invigorating presence, Miss Olson.”

  I let my eyes sparkle. “Why, Mr. Davis, how kind you are to say it.”

  Johnny said, “As you can see, Davis, Miss Olson’s talents are something to behold. I expect h
er to be quite useful in procuring the right acts for the Palace. Have you any doubt she could win over the most reluctant manager?”

  Mr. Davis shook his head vigorously. “None at all.”

  “Then will you invest in us?”

  I glared at him again before turning back to Mr. Davis. “Mr. Langford is impatient, but I should so hate to rush you into such an important decision, Mr. Davis. Especially on an empty stomach.”

  “Then let’s order dinner,” Johnny said.

  “We’ll have strawberries after,” I said, smiling. “Have you ever had strawberries and champagne, Mr. Davis? Why, I shall feed you one from my own hand. A more delicious combination would be difficult to find.”

  “Fed from such a lovely hand as yours, how could it be otherwise?” he said.

  THE DUST FROM passing carriages lingered in the air, hazing the glow of the streetlamps; if there were stars in the sky, they were impossible to see through its fog. Dinner—and the wine served with it—rested comfortably in my stomach. I felt soft and languid. Though Blakely Davis had not yet said he would invest, I was certain he would.

  “Strawberries and champagne,” Johnny mused. “Where the hell did you come up with that?”

  I shrugged. “It worked, didn’t it?”

  “Honey, I’m surprised he didn’t fuck you there on the table. Or that you didn’t let him.”

  “He’s of no interest to me other than as an investor.”

  He shook his head. “That ain’t what he thinks, I promise you.”

  “Do you think he’ll invest?”

  Johnny chuckled. “At the very least.”

  “You wanted me to be charming.”

  “Well, you were that.”

  “I thought you’d almost ruined everything. I had to do something to fix it.”

  “Damn, I swear to God I never saw anything like what you did to that man.”

  “Don’t be absurd. It’s what I do every day at the Palace.”

  “Not like that.”

  I took a deep breath. “Just like that.”

  He was quiet. We walked in companionable silence for a while, our boot steps echoing on the hard street, raising little clouds of dust. As we got deeper into the Lava Beds, the noise from the night increased, the now familiar sounds of shouting and shooting and laughter.