Divine Sarah

of the detail. “Do tell all,” she said. “And make it saucier than a dime-store novel. Perhaps a church can wage war on our heroine, with everybody in the village knowing about it except for her. Imagine the dramatic irony. The tension, and the pity.” Then she laughed. Purely for herself. “But how would it end?”

Max jumped back in alarm. He grabbed Sarah by the arm and quickly whisked her out the door. “Let’s continue this in just a moment,” he muttered to Kinney. “We’ll meet you in your office.” He slammed the exit door shut. Max noticed Kinney taking notes with his eyes, scribbling every last detail to memory.

Max held on to her arm and pulled her to an inlet on the pier between the building entrances. They stepped over a strip of sunlight into the shadows. A wave broke beneath their feet, echoing far below the weathered slats. There was a rancid smell, like something had curled up and died in the corner. It was an overwhelmingly bitter and foul pungency that slowly turned sweet as fresh fruit. Max hardly noticed. He was still gripping Sarah’s arm. To a passerby it might have looked like a quarrel, or even a shakedown.

Sarah shook her arm free. “But I wanted to hear what he had to say.”

Max clenched his fists, and then unclenched them. Eventually he settled on shoving his agitated hands into his pockets. He bit down on his lip, and looked her in the eye. Then looked away as quickly to the thin view of ocean beneath his feet.

“Are you ready to work out the final scene with me? That room cannot handle it.”

He didn’t respond.

“Right now it is almost as though Marguerite is responsible for the disease. As if the tuberculosis is the knife guided by her own hand. As though she has brought on the disease only to create this tragedy of love.”

Max chewed on his lip while grinding his toe between a space in the slats.

“Max, you are not listening. You are upset about something. Why is my Molly upset?”

“You think this all just comes so easily, don’t you?” His voice was trembling. “Just wave a magic wand and poof.”

“Are we bringing you into it now?” She smiled. Her eyes crinkled at the corners, without tears. “Do they still say poof? Or is queer the in slang?”

“Sarah, you are supposed to be preparing for the show. Not off in your dreamland.”

She leaned forward and threw her arms around him, leaning her full weight against his chest. She touched her lips to his ear. “I love my Max so much. How he looks out for me. And sometimes I wish I could have all of my Max. But then, I suppose, I probably wouldn’t love you anymore.”

He felt the dryness of her breath tumbling down his neck. He didn’t push her away. Instead he hugged her and held tight, listening to the breaking waves and the distant carnival sounds. The boa tickled. He massaged his knuckle beneath her shoulder blade, a sharp hand-sculpted fin. “Sarah, the hop will destroy your career,” he whispered. “And you.”

“The hop. Listen to you. Hop. You become so pedestrian when you come to America. Say its right name, Max. For me.”

“If saying opium will make you stop, then there I’ve said it. Please.” He rubbed her shoulder a little harder.

“Your touch is always perfect. That’s why I love my Molly. He always cares for me.”

“We won’t have to worry about the Catholics if the newspapers get hold of this. You’ll be run out of America in a matter of minutes. And I’ll remind you that you cannot afford that in the least.”

“It’s not illegal.”

“In fact it is here. Very illegal. Laws have changed.”

“Then just tell them I have a cough. Or that I’m teething.” She laughed. “Tell anybody who wonders that I’ve just had a nip of Godfrey’s Cordial. Or Coke-Cola.”

“You can’t let Kinney suspect. He’s the type who will look for any advantage to grab control of this situation…Good god, we need to air you out. That smoke smell can last for hours. I wish you had never married Jacques Damala.”

“It was only for a year, my sweet.”

“A year that introduced you to a culture of drugs.”

“Do you remember New York, Max?”

He heard footsteps milling down the pier behind them. A woman’s deep voice moaning and talking. Max held Sarah tighter to shelter her from view until they passed.

“Don’t tell me you don’t remember New York? And that was long before the Greek Damala.”

“There have been many New York trips,” he answered dismissively, hoping not to engage her. “Abbot Kinney can’t even suspect, Sarah. He’ll turn us into one of his junk heap circus rides. It will make a mockery of your career.”

“You are my protector, Max.”

“This is serious.”

“Booth’s Theater. Does that ring a bell?”

“Sarah. Not now.”

“New York. Booth’s Theater. What was that, about ’eighty? Down in the Tenderloin.”

“Not long enough ago,” Max sneered.

“Oh please, Molly. We took that ship over that bounced up and down the entire way. We couldn’t walk straight. That was the ship that Lincoln’s widow was on board. She looked tragically horrible. Gray skin. Her eyes sunken and pale. Almost a vagabond. She would have died if I hadn’t grabbed her arm. The stairs were that steep. She knew it. She said it would have been a blessing to die. I still feel the buzz that went through me while holding her hand. Life and death all around her at the hands of actors. I didn’t tell her my name. I couldn’t even look her in the eye. We didn’t see her the rest of the trip, did we?”

Max laughed. “Not for trying, Sarah. You spent the rest of the days trying to point her out to me until we landed at New York Harbor with all those WELCOME THE BERNHARDT signs.”

“That promoter Jarrett was such an embarrassment to me. An ass.”

“But he paid us well for that, Sarah. And ensured that you were the toast of the town.”

She brushed him off with a wave of her hand. “The reporters all wanted to know what religion I was. Here I thought that they would be asking questions about Dumas writing L’Etrangere especially for me. About bringing the French craft to the United States. Or if I’d be starting off the tour with Phedre or Hernani. No, puritan America just wanted to make sure I had some religion. I should have just copped to something. Then maybe I wouldn’t have seemed so immoral to them.”

“Things haven’t changed much.”

“But Booth’s Theater. Do you remember?”

“All the customs men waiting at the theater hoping to levy a tax on the stage production.” Of course he remembered. It had been his first trip to America. Every moment had seemed important. “They looked at the dresses. Each and every one. Admiring the beads and jewels.”

“And you were such a frightened Molly. Just like you are now. Afraid that they would find my little canister of opium. Almost one hundred dollars’ worth on that trip. You were ghostly in the corner. Couldn’t even enjoy the sight of all these burly government men holding dresses up to their barrel chests.”

“A different kind of fear.”

“And you told me to get rid of it. As soon as they left, you said we had to get rid of it.”

He grinned. She had successfully, as always, brought him into her world. Pretty soon Max was likely to completely forget the volatility of the current situation and participate in its explosion, until somebody (undoubtedly him) inevitably cleaned it up on hands and knees in the final hour. “That was a different time, Sarah. The world was a different place then.”

“It was you who said that we had to smoke it. You didn’t suggest throwing it over the Brooklyn Bridge or dropping it into the toilet. You said we should smoke it. And you were the one who figured out how to get us into Chinatown.”

“Something like that. But Sarah let’s not lose track of where we are now.”

“Whatever we do, you said, don’t waste it.”

It was true. Max had ordered that directive. He got directions from one of the stagehands, who asked him why they would want to go down there, and Max had said it was for the food. The stagehand said he would go with