Wondrous Strange

“And, while I obviously appreciate all the effort you’ve put into making yourself sparkly…” Kelley shot a glance at Bob, who’d found something particularly fascinating to look at under one of his fingernails. Probably a sparkle. “What kind of crap-arse UN-DER-STUDY doesn’t know the bloody LINES?”

“But I do know them!” she protested. “I mean, I did. A second ago. Backstage…”

The Mighty Q’s sneer grew. “Well, that’s marvelous. Perhaps we’ll just invite the audience into your dressing room in twos and threes, and you can deliver your performance from there.”

“I…” Oh, God, Kelley thought, it’s just like theater school all over again. The blood roared in her ears, and she thought for a moment that she was going to faint. Or maybe barf. Right there in front of the whole cast. Her cheeks burned with embarrassment.

“Assuming your delightful predecessor doesn’t miraculously heal, then you have less than two weeks to learn the part. Less than two weeks. This production opens on the first of November come hell or high water. At this point, I’m betting on both.” He turned sharply on his heel and waved one hand in dismissal. “Right. We’re broken for lunch, minions. I can’t see the point of belaboring this any further. Be back here at two for ensemble work. You”-he aimed a pointed glare at Kelley-“look at your damned script.”

The theater cleared out quickly. No one seemed to want to hang around much after that, and certainly not around her. Kelley stumbled blindly to the courtyard and collapsed onto the steps.

“Kelley?”

She turned at the sound of her name, spoken by Gentleman Jack Savage, the actor playing the fairy king, Oberon, in the show. He was a veteran of the boards-in his early fifties, with a solid presence and a voice that could melt ice or peel paint, depending on how he chose to employ it.

“Hi, Jack,” she said, wiping her eyes in embarrassment.

“Gadzooks, my dear,” he chided her gently. “I know the Mighty Q howls like a banshee, but really, you mustn’t let the old fart get to you.” He sat down beside her on the steps and unscrewed the top of his battered old thermos, pouring himself a cup of coffee. The scent of dark-roast Colombian was comforting.

Kelley gave him a watery smile. “Jack…you know that people-most people-don’t actually use the word gadzooks in everyday conversation anymore, right?”

“I’m on a one-man crusade to bring it back into fashion. Along with odds my bodkins, ’sblood, and, let us not forget, yoicks.” He took a sip of his coffee and patted her knee with fatherly affection. “Everyone has to have a purpose in life, my dear. That is mine- quixotic as it may be.”

“What if I don’t?” Kelley stared fiercely at her sneakers, willing away the prick of tears from behind her eyes. She felt-she knew-she’d just blown her big chance. “Have a purpose, I mean? A destiny.”

“Impossible.”

“Why do you say that?” She looked up at him, desperate for his honest opinion.

Jack raised an elegant gray eyebrow. “I’m the king of Fairyland, my dear,” he said, and winked at her. “All of that pixie dust has given me extremely potent powers of observation.”

“Jack, I’m not kidding.”

“Neither am I.” Jack held her gaze, his face serious. “Kelley…you are seventeen. You are on your own in New York City. And you are chasing a dream that most reasonable people consider either unattainable or a damned-fool waste of time. Believe me, I know. All of which tells me that you are either fearless or just a little bit foolish. I suspect both. I also suspect that you are one of those precious few with enough natural talent to make a go of it.”

Kelley scoffed in disbelief. “You saw what I just did in there, right?”

“And heard, yes.” Jack chuckled. “You mangled just over fifty percent of your lines. I don’t care what Quentin says, for a first timer that’s not half bad. Well-it was half bad. But that’s the point. It was also half good.”

“You…really think so?” Kelley asked, trying to gauge whether Jack was being sincere.

“I really do.” Jack shrugged and drained his coffee. “You’ve got a voice. You’ve got a presence. More importantly, you have the heart and the passion and the sheer mule-headed stubbornness that could very well take you to places most of us scarcely dare to imagine.” He screwed the cup-lid back onto his thermos. “Now, call that destiny, call it purpose-whatever ‘it’ is, my dear girl, you have it in good supply.”

Kelley was not entirely convinced, but she smiled, grateful for the kindness. “Has anyone ever told you that you’ve got a silver tongue, Jack?”

“Many times. Unfortunately, never the reviewers.”

“Thank you.”

“No need for that, my dear.” Standing, Jack tipped an imaginary hat to her as he went back inside the theater.

The second half of rehearsal also ended early, but this time it wasn’t Kelley’s fault-it would have been hard to screw up her lines when she’d been ordered to rehearse script in hand. Although it was humiliating for Kelley to still be “on book” so close to opening, the company whipped through the large ensemble scenes at a pace and with a level of competency that even Quentin could only manage a few halfhearted mutters over.

After a couple of hours he released most of the cast, holding back the two girls playing Hermia and Helena so he could work on their monologues-because, he remarked pointedly and well within Kelley’s earshot, “they already know their lines.”

Lucky them, Kelley thought, as she changed back into her street clothes. She gathered up her stuff and hotfooted it out of there before the Mighty Q could change his mind.

Outside the day was glorious, the October sky deep blue and the air mild. The sun was shining brightly, and it reminded Kelley of fall days at home in the Catskills. She felt a wave of sudden homesickness.

Why am I doing this? she wondered.

In her six months in New York, Kelley had never once questioned her life choices: graduating high school early, dropping out of theater training to move to the city-leaving behind what few friends she’d had, not to mention her aunt, who’d raised her single-handedly since her parents’ death twelve years earlier. Kelley was all Emma had and they adored each other but, instead of continuing on with her studies at a nearby state university, visiting Emma on weekends, here she was. Living in the toughest city in America, chasing a selfish dream that-Let’s face it, she told herself morosely-apparently, she really wasn’t any good at. No matter what Jack said.

She scuffed her feet as she wandered up Eighth Avenue, reluctant to make her way uptown to the fourth-floor walk-up that she now called home. Except that home was something else. It was sky and grass and the trees of the woods outside her old window, and peace.

Kelley came to a stop at the corner of Fifty-fifth Street. Central Park was only a few blocks away. There would be trees and grass, and benches where she could sit quietly, looking over her lines away from the city crowds. Turning right to veer east, she broke into a jog.

II

Sonny Flannery opened the French doors and stepped out onto the stone terrace of his penthouse apartment. With cat-footed lightness, he leaped up to perch on the smooth, wide granite of the railing. Heedless of the nineteen-story drop to the pavement far below, he crouched there like a gargoyle, elbows resting on knees and his long, slender hands hanging in front of him, watching as the afternoon shadows of New York’s countless high-rises began to grow long over Central Park.