was outside.
It wasn't hard for Harry to pretend. Even though his mind wasn't quick, he had a vivid imagination, as his 11th grade English teacher, Miss Tyson, had put it. Too vivid. Sometimes he wished he was just dull all around so that he could stop thinking about and believing in ghosts and all. Not that he had ever seen any, but doggone it, this theatre could be plain scary, especially at night. That was another reason he didn't mind cleaning the rest rooms. There was nothing scary about rest rooms, as long as they didn't have showers. Showers were scary because of that Psycho movie he saw on TV. But just rest rooms with stalls and urinals and sinks, well, they were okay.
Harry made a last swipe with his polishing cloth, and stepped into the men's lounge, where he emptied the ash trays and cleaned the water fountain. Then he took a long drink, and sat in one of the chairs, running his hands across the smooth wood of the arms. The chair was Louie-something, Abe had told him. Harry had never known that furniture had names before he came to work in the Venetian.
The ladies' room was next, so Harry got up, went into the mezzanine lobby, and walked to the ladies' lounge. He paused at the door, knocked on the frame, and called, 'Hello?' He had done this ever since 1985, when he had interrupted a woman who was still in a stall. He went through the usual routine of listening for an answer, and, as he expected, received none. But as he listened, he heard something else.
It was music, faint but distinct. For a second he assumed that Abe had brought his radio along and was playing it on the stage, but he quickly realized that it had none of the cramped tinniness of Abe's flea market special. It sounded much fuller, as though there was a real orchestra playing on the Venetian Theatre's stage. It was somehow familiar, and Harry frowned, trying to push back the thick curtains that so often obscured his memory. He had heard that music before, he knew he had, but he just couldn't remember what it was. Maybe something from a movie he had seen.
He followed the sound across the mezzanine lobby, up the steps to the entrance to the mezzanine, where it grew louder. But as he stepped through the doors and started up the ramp, the music suddenly stopped, leaving not even an echo behind.
Harry stopped too. It was strange. Sound just didn't work like that in this theatre. It was as if not only whatever had been making the music, but also the air of the theatre itself, had been smothered under cork. He walked up to where he could see the stage.
It was empty. Abe's scrubbing had removed the blood, leaving only a spot shiny with dampness. Harry heard footsteps, and saw Abe come back onto the stage, a bunch of rags in his hand.
'Abe!' Harry called. 'Hey, Abe?'
Abe looked up, squinting until he made out Harry's form among the shadows above. 'What?'
'Were you playing your radio just now?'
'Naw. Why?'
'Thought I heard some music.'
'Not from me. You're hearin' things, Harry.' He knelt and began to sponge up the water from his mopping.
'No, I really heard it – it sounded like, like…” Frustrated by his inability to describe musical styles, he began to sing in an untrained but surprisingly pure and melodious voice a few bars of the theme he had heard. 'What the heck is that?' he asked Abe.
'Aw, you musta heard it through the water pipes from the suites upstairs – the boss must be playin' his old tunes.'
'Huh?'
'Goddam it,' Abe shouted, as if angry at holding the conversation at such long distance, 'that's from that show of his… of Hamilton's.'
'Show?' It was beginning to come back to Harry now – some king dressed up like a soldier or something.
'You know,' Abe called. 'That show of his, that, uh… The Private Empire…'
'A' Private Empire. 'A,' not 'The.' Stupid fools. The one stupid as an ox, the other stupid as a child. Which dies first?
Dennis awoke. His leg had jerked violently in some dream, although he was unable to remember what the dream had been about. A pill had finally put him to sleep, and now, his breathing still quick and shallow from the activity of the dream he could not recall, he looked at the bedside clock, which read 1:30. Dear God, he had only been sleeping for a half hour.
Careful not to awaken Robin, he slid from between the sheets, stepped into the bathroom, and closed the door before he turned on the light. The sudden flare of brightness made him squeeze his eyes shut, but not before he saw his face in the mirror.
Or was it his face? It seemed, in that split second before the light blinded him, that it was someone different, that the features he knew so well had been remolded into a cruel parody of himself. The feeling terrified him. He blinked in panic, forced open his eyes against the harsh glare, and peered into the glass.
No, it was him all right, only him, Dennis Hamilton, looking into his own eyes, seeing his own face there in the mirror. Despite his fancies, he knew he was all alone in his aching, weary soul.
He splashed his face with water and thought about Tommy Werton again. Then he turned out the light, left the bathroom, slipped on a robe, and went into the library, where he poured himself a glass of sherry and sat in a leather chair. He was still there when morning came.
Scene 5
The following Tuesday one hundred and fifty-three people attended Tommy Werton's funeral in Bridgeport, Connecticut, the majority of them from the New York theatre crowd. The fact that the drive from Manhattan was less than an hour increased the attendance, as did the fact that the funeral was held on a Tuesday afternoon. Had it been held on the day of a matinee, the crowd would have been halved.
There was no viewing, the condition of the body having proven an insurmountable obstacle to The Johnson Funeral Home's finest craftsmen. The service was held in the sanctuary of the First United Presbyterian Church. The casket was closed, and a picture of a smiling Tommy Werton sat on top of the lid. It had been taken ten years before. The gaze was directed upward and to the right, and the Tommy of the picture wore a brown suit coat and a subtly hued tie. As they filed past the casket, those guests who supposed it was a college graduation picture were correct.
Ten minutes before the service was about to begin, two men stood outside the rear of the church waiting for Dennis and Robin Hamilton. The older of the pair, Quentin Margolis, was tall and graying sedately at the temples, a human counterpart to the church itself. He wore an elegantly cut car coat and a fedora against the chill October drizzle that had caused the other man, Dexter Colangelo, to open his black Totes umbrella. Dexter, or Dex, as everyone called him who had known him for longer than two minutes, seemed as nervous as Quentin seemed calm, which seemed only fair, as the two men were the yin and yang of a large number of productions that had graced the stages of the country, including the now vanished Morosco, which had seen the revival of A Private Empire. Quentin had directed and choreographed, and Dex had been the musical director.
The original show in 1966 had been very much a product of its time in terms of production. The orchestrations had been a trendy cross between Man of La Mancha and British rock in an attempt to be all things to all people, while the choreography was rather uncharitably described by one critic as 'Hullabaloo out of Agnes de Mille,' a strange and anachronistic pedigree indeed for a Ruritanian romance. Still, the strategy had worked. That, and the tremendous presence of Dennis Hamilton as the young emperor. Not since Barbra Streisand had starred in that other less-than-perfect musical, Funny Girl, had a single personality had such a powerful effect on the box office. Still, it was not until 1981 that A Private Empire was seen as its creators, Charles Ensley and Robert Davis, had intended, due in large part to that other team, Margolis and Colangelo.
Dex had completely reorchestrated the score, restoring the style to that of the grand musicals of the fifties while retaining a contemporary sound through the careful use of synthesizers, while Quentin had completely removed the Hullabaloo origins of the original choreography, and come up with a terpsichorean style that blended nineteenth century European court dance with the acrobatic athleticism of the eighties to create something altogether new.
The music and the dancing, along with Michael Klein's epic set designs and Marvella Johnson's flamboyant
