her chest in a dead man’s pose and looked up at the ceiling. The blankets pushed down heavy on her, cocooning her in safety.
“I wish I could let you sleep all day,” Max said.
She lifted her right arm up and beckoned him with her hand. “Come here. You deserve to have comfort.”
“That’s all right.” He shook his head. “I’m fine.”
“Ridiculous. Come keep warm under the covers. We can watch the ceiling together.”
Max was the kind of man who lifted the world on his shoulders for show, and then forgot it was there. In such desperate allegiance to clocks and schedules. He had the strength to mow down the threats, yet when he looked in the mirror, he was still the same scared little boy who first peeked out from between his mother’s legs to see the world. He didn’t move, just maintained his stance over the bed.
“Let’s just hide all day here,” she said. “Keep the covers on and the curtains drawn. And we can read dialogue. We can pick a play that we have never read together and recite it for an audience of nobody other than ourselves. Then when we exhaust that, we can solve the mystery of Marguerite Gautier.”
Max grinned and told her that he wished that they could do that (and the truth was that he really did wish that they could do that), but it seemed like years had passed since their schedules had ever allowed for that kind of recreation. “I really am sorry,” he said. “But we have the Patrons’ Brunch.”
“Patrons’ Brunch?”
“Yes, I told you. It is on your itinerary.”
“It is just the way you say it:
“Well, that is how Kinney has billed it.”
“Can we please refrain from using his antiseptic vernacular. It is not only distasteful, but it is also in contradiction to the whole notion of what we are about. We produce art to give people a vehicle by which they can view the world in new ways—not limited jingoistic phrases that one can take comfort in without thinking.”
“Sarah, I will call it whatever you prefer.”
“No. Call it what
“What if I prefer ‘Patrons’ Brunch’?”
She kicked the covers up and off, and then sat up. “You know, Molly, you are truly more effective than a two-bell alarm clock.”
“Come then,” he said.
Sarah sat on the edge of the bed. She braced her forehead in her palms. And for one brief moment, Max saw her as different from the Sarah that they had worked to preserve in reputation and memory. Almost as ordinary. Her unwashed face was stripped of makeup, other than black lines that traced her eyes. Shoulders stooped in resignation and wear. And she stared off as if there were no thoughts in her head. Then she dropped her hands to look back at him with a twinkle that was equal parts innocence, power, malice, and instability. He smiled for the Sarah that again he recognized. She dropped back onto the bed and kicked her feet up in the air. “Please tell them thank you, but I will have to decline.”
“I am afraid that that is not an option.”
She pouted out a blast of breath. “Then you can go in my place. I can sign some pictures now. You’ll bring them. And then you apologize for my current condition, of which they won’t even question because they will be certain that I must have at least one, and you can answer the questions. You have heard them all a thousand times before, and certainly you must have the quips and stories committed to memory by this point in our partnership.”
“I am flattered by your confidence, but this is not negotiable. Part of the contract. Plus we are never in a position to turn down money.”
“And then when do you expect that we can discuss the play? We are opening tomorrow, and it is still in chaos.”
“The play is not in chaos. Last night’s run-through was smooth. The set is working. The cast is comfortable. The only issue is the sudden change in your relationship to your character. Frankly, that is something for you to work out with me. Not to throw the entire company into disarray with.”
“Again, it is clear how little you know about acting.”
“But I do know about the theater.”
“And when do we meet to discuss these changes? We haven’t shared more than one or two serious sentences about it. You keep telling me we will get to it, but something else of greater importance manages to take precedence. And now it is a brunch that is sure to last half the day. Then you will have to attend to your new boyfriend Kinney, and then another silly run-through, and soon it’s dinner. And you will say that we should discuss the matter after dinner. So where does that leave us with tomorrow being opening night? What room does that leave for changes? You don’t think that I can ask the actors to rethink their entire motivations three hours before curtain. It’s ridiculous enough to bring it up to them with only one day in advance.”
“Sarah, why don’t you just play Marguerite as you have always played her—for now. We can look at revamping the production once we have some time. When we are back in Paris.”
“And act a part that I don’t feel? I might as well quit.”
“I promise we will make time today to discuss this.”
“You will put that on the itinerary?”
“Once we are back at the hotel, yes.”
“Because I cannot perform as Sarah Bernhardt reciting the lines of Dumas’s Marguerite.”
“I know.”
“I can only go on if I am Marguerite.”
She straightened herself into a firm posture. Patted her hair into place. Tugged down on her dress and then grabbed the material at the hips to center it. She arched her chin up slightly, as the photographers always tried to suggest. Shoulders rolled back. A long breath to expand the lungs. “I wish you were a playwright who could write me out of this scene,” she grumbled. Then she knocked her knuckles twice against the warm door for luck, before opening it. She stood in the doorway, a one-dimensional die-cut of radiance pasted between the deep blue sky and the haunted red train. Like a spirit revealing itself to the day.
Off to the Patrons’ Brunch.
Time to be Sarah Bernhardt.
VINCE BAKER SAT INSIDE the King George Hotel lobby, keenly aware of how different the air felt, trapped and rarefied. He had been camped for about an hour, staking out the place. He still had no real objective other than to see her. It had been twice now that he had been in her presence, and each time he had the strange feeling that the distance made him understand her a little more. Soon he was going to be forced to have to talk with her (although he worried her allure might seduce him into a dumb state, one that extended beyond the physiology of the mouth, more like a brain that temporarily lost its ability to form thoughts). He wasn’t scared of her. But he did recognize her ability to reshape charisma into control. She would probably want to speak with him once she was told that it was his name on the article that publicly flogged her. She would want to set the record straight. They all do. He still needed to figure out what he would say to her. And be able to say it.
Bernhardt pressed through the lobby doors in a dramatic fashion that was likely her calling card. All eyes instantly leaped toward her. Baker presumed this as normal. She was trailed close behind by the escort from the other night who at once appeared controlled and hurried. She looked slightly disheveled. Her hair, which both times before always seemed on the edge of kempt now sprang out as though unsuccessfully matted by tap water and a comb. Her dress appeared a bit wrinkled, as almost an elegant housedress, but certainly not what one would imagine her to be seen wearing in public. And perhaps that was the very reason that her escort guided her quickly through a small crowd that was as eager to get a glimpse of her as she was to see them. He took her right into the stairwell and effectively locked her in, before swinging open the door with the gracious hands of a politician on a whistle-stop to announce, “Thank you for coming. I am sorry to be so brief, but Madame needs her rest.” And the small crowd, an equal mix of old and young, accepted this proclamation, not for one moment questioning why the ingenue would need to rest so early in the morning.
Baker watched the group disperse and noticed a slight change in their demeanors. It was as if they walked a little taller, somehow ingesting her confidence and charisma by proxy. Maybe this is the allure of the autograph. It is more than obtaining proof or having a keepsake, and even beyond establishing connection—it is removing part of that person, a graft, and infusing it into your own system, the momentary feeling that you are one and the
