Reign (59 page)

Dennis had taken a turn for the brilliant, and while it had initially delighted Curt, it now disquieted him. It had been too instantaneous, too abrupt, like a switch in Dennis's brain had been turned on. And Curt knew all too well from working with electrics that what could be turned on could also be turned off. He could handle nearly anything technical that happened on or off the stage, but he couldn't do a thing about the vagaries of the actors' performances except spoon-feed lines, and lower the curtain if things got too bad.

He still didn't really know why Dennis wanted to reprise the role of the Emperor one final time, but he suspected that it had something to do with what everyone discreetly referred to as "the tragedies." Whether or not it symbolized (along with his infatuation with Ann Deems) a return to happier times for Dennis, a time before the accidents and suicides and murders, Curt didn't know. There seemed to be more to it than that. There was an intensity in Dennis that Curt had not seen for a long time, almost a need to prove something to himself.

But what? That he could still act? He had finally proven that in the past week of rehearsals, though it had been touch and go until the outburst at Quentin. Curt had been startled by it and amazed at the results of it. Yet, even with the remarkable change in Dennis's acting, Curt felt as though there was still something missing, and he didn't know why, or what, beyond the feeling that it still seemed like artifice, no matter how precisely presented, like a photo-realistic painting masquerading as a photograph, or a brilliantly conceived and built robot aping real life.

Whatever it was, it felt fragile, like a house of cards about to tumble. Curt hoped it wouldn't take the rest of the theatre along with it.

He walked to the call board to make certain that everyone in the company had checked in. They had. Everyone was there.

Everyone.

~ * ~

The air of backstage was filled with vocalizations, notes both high and low. They came from every dressing room, from Dennis's, closest to the stage, all the way up to those of the chorus members unlucky enough to have to tread the wooden steps to the fifth floor. The intercoms, or "squawk boxes," in each dressing room were checked to make sure that the company would be able to receive their calls several minutes before they were due on stage for their various scenes. Hair was put into place and sprayed heavily. Faces were twisted and distorted to ease the application of makeup. These things accomplished, costumes were donned, muscles stretched, hands shaken, prayers said, dozens of simple and arcane ceremonies observed. Those who were ready queued up to read the telegrams and mailgrams that strewed the bulletin board, hiding the call sheets and the boilerplate Equity notices no one had read in the first place. They remarked over names, laughed over witty messages, had cups of coffee, waited.

~ * ~

Evan Hamilton imagined that he smelled the audience shortly before he heard it, long before he saw it. Even over the heavily cosmetic scent of foundation makeup, the biting sting of spirit gum, and the
vomitous
reek of liquid latex, he could sense the eternal smell of the theatre. It was the scent of many people gathered under one roof, a clean scent of freshly washed and perfumed bodies, the smell of people ready for pleasure.

But there was something else, a headier aroma, a ripeness of anticipation. It must have been such an odor, Evan fancied, that hung about the perfumed citizens of Rome as they waited for the circus to begin, for blood to flow.

Now he heard it through the thickness of the curtain, heard the sound of the audience, the low, dull buzzing of the faceless mass, like a hive of threatening bees. This sound, which he had heard and which had frightened him when he was a child, was like no other, and affected him like no other, and he closed his eyes as he felt the channels through which blessed air came in and out of his body begin to constrict, and he whispered a curse in his head, and felt like dying, and someone took his hand.

He opened his eyes and saw that Terri had come out of Kelly Sears's dressing room and was with him again. "Are you all right?" she asked.

He nodded, took a deep breath. "The crowd. I was remembering."

"Don't," she said. "Forget it. It can't hurt you. Everyone's here. How could anyone hurt you?" She smiled and gave him a kiss. "Let's see if Dennis is all right."

They walked across to stage right, down the short flight of stairs to Dennis's door, behind which they heard him singing his first song, "The Awful Thing About a King." They listened for a moment. His voice sounded full and strong, and even in the warm-up, the mocking humor of the lyrics shone through. When he finished the first chorus, Terri knocked, and Ann opened the door.

"Hi, mother. Is everything all right? Dennis's costume all set?"

"It's wonderful, Terri," Dennis said, getting up from his chair in front of the mirror. "Frankly, I'm glad the original one got lost. This costume feels fresh and new and ready." He laughed and put an arm around Ann. "Just like me. Reborn. You've really done a wonderful job. And of course," he added slyly, "the fact that I had the best dresser in the business helped . . ."

He stepped aside, and behind him Terri and Evan saw
Marvella
Johnson standing in the corner. She smiled at Terri dryly. "You did okay, girl," she said in her low, rumbling voice.

"
Marvella
!" Terri pushed past an amused Dennis and ran to her mentor, who held out her arms for an embrace. "You came!"

"How could I miss your professional debut?"
Marvella
said, nearly crushing the girl with a bear hug. "And how could I miss the boss's last star turn?" She held Terri at arm's length, and her smile faded, her mouth straightening into sadness. "But I'll just stay down here. I won't go upstairs at all. I'll just stay in the audience and watch. I've been backstage too many years."

"All right,
Marvella
," Dennis said. "For tonight anyway. But as for the future, I still want you to be part of it."

"We'll see, Dennis," she said, and Evan thought his father would have his work cut out for him if he wanted
Marvella
to resume her old position.

"Half hour, Dennis," came Curt's voice over the squawk box.

Dennis pushed a button. "Thanks, Curt."

"Well," said
Marvella
, "I'm gonna head out front. See who I can meet."

Dennis kissed her cheek. "I'm glad you came. Thank you."

"I'm glad too, Dennis. Love you, as always." She gave Evan a peck on her way out, and he felt a tremendous wave of love and sympathy for this woman who had always treated him so kindly, starting when he was a lonely little boy roaming his father's theatre, for back then every theatre Dennis Hamilton played was his theatre.

He turned and looked at his father, and it seemed that time had turned backward. Dennis looked tall and strong, young and handsome. The last time he looked like that, Evan had felt only a little love, and a great deal of fear. Now those emotions were reversed, for while he loved the man, he felt a bit of fear as well. Though he knew that it had not been his father who had actually threatened him with death, it had been his near double, and the two were hard to separate in his mind. Still, they
were
separate, and he took his father by the hand.

"Break a leg, Dad. I know you'll do great."

Dennis's features quivered with emotion, and he drew Evan to him so that the boy could no longer see the man's face. "Do you know," Dennis whispered, "how proud I am of you?"

He pushed Evan back then, and blinked tears away. "What's this? Can't have my makeup ruined, can I?" He laughed. "Save my emotions for the stage, yes?"

Evan smiled and nodded. "Yeah, sure. You go get 'em, huh?"

"I'll do my best."

He looked at Ann. "You staying backstage?" She nodded. "Well, take care of my old man."

"I will." She smiled so serenely, seemed so calm and confident, that Evan thought her own acting ability might outstrip his father's.

"Come on," Terri said to Evan. "I'll walk you out to the lobby."

"I'll go out with you," Ann said, "and see how John's bearing up. Oh, here's your ticket, Evan." She handed it to him. "You're sitting with
Cissy
Morrison."

"Oh no," Evan said, partly dismayed and partly delighted. "That woman treats me like I was her dear little nephew."

"Her date for the evening got stuck in L.A. editing his new film," Ann said. "We thought you'd be a perfect replacement."

"Only don't sit too close," Terri warned him. "That woman's not much on youth, but she's got
money
."

They all laughed, Terri took Evan's arm, and they and Ann left the dressing room, moving past the guards at the stage door, outside, around the front of the building, and into the lobby, where Ann bade them goodbye and searched for Steinberg.

"You'll be okay?" Terri asked Evan.

"I'll be fine." He heard the sound of the audience inside the auditorium, but it was all right. He was one of them now, and he would be with a friend. He would not be up there on the stage again. It was his father's turn tonight, and he prayed that Dennis would get through it, that the killer who had haunted the theatre would stay far away. "But, Terri," he said, "keep an eye out for Dad, will you?"

~ * ~

Can you feel me?

~ * ~

It is
, Dennis Hamilton thought, sitting alone in his dressing room,
the loneliest and most frightening thing in the world.

When I'm on that stage, in front of the audience, there is no turning back. No one can help me if my strength begins to fail, if I forget my lines. Jam, while surrounded by people, completely alone. Only I can do what has to be done. Only I
.

A writer can get up from his typewriter, walk around the room, come back, begin again, and no one ever knows how many pauses, how many thousands of disparate thoughts separate the words and chapters. A film actor can call for a break while he puts his thoughts back together, draws up the emotions from wherever he will, and then begin again, and have his errors, those tentative and failed attempts, eradicated in the editing rooms. An artist paints out his weaknesses, a sculptor destroys his with a swing of his mallet.

But I am naked and alone, and what I create is seen as I create it, and as the world sees my triumphs, it can just as easily witness my failures
.

Dennis bit back the fear, looked in the mirror, and saw only himself, Dennis Hamilton, in the guise of the Emperor Frederick. And that, damn it, was who the audience was going to see tonight. Dennis Hamilton as the Emperor, no one else, and they would see him more clearly than he had ever been seen before.

And what of that impostor, that bastard who had stolen away the Emperor for a time? Dennis hoped that he was gone. He wanted to believe it with all his heart. But as long as his fear was there, as long as the thoughts of the mere possibility of failure existed, he could not help but feel that the creature was still alive, no matter how fragile and transitory that life might be. The only thing that would kill it, that would end its feeble existence once and for all, was for Dennis to play his role on his stage tonight as he had never played it before. Then and only then would he be truly restored to his throne.

He looked into the mirror again, almost in fear. But still he saw only his own face.

~ * ~

Can you feel me, Dennis? Can you hear me coming? My footsteps are light, but soon they will shake your world.

~ * ~

By eight-fifteen over two-thirds of the theatre's seats were filled. Most of the musicians were in the pit, having come up from the stairway beneath the stage, and were adding to the din. The brass players warmed up their horns and lips with triple tonguing exercises; the strings limbered their bowing arms, or attacked the many
pizzicato
passages in the score; the woodwinds wet their precisely shaven reeds, fit them into ligatures, played scales and arpeggios so rapidly the individual notes became part of a savage blaze of
woodgrained
sound; and the percussionists tuned tympani, examined their drums, and set in place blocks, gongs, temple bells, and triangles, all of which were used in Dex
Colangelo's
rich and varied orchestrations. To those used to such sounds before a musical performance, it sounded perfectly normal.

But to Abe
Kipp
, sitting below the stage in one of the little havens he had long ago made for himself, it sounded like all the demons of hell were
bebopping
over his head.

While the acoustics of the Venetian Theatre were nearly perfect for the audience, they were notoriously quirky in the rest of the house. An entire orchestra playing at top volume could not be heard in the second floor dressing rooms, but individual instruments could be picked out from the dressing rooms on the floor above. And where Abe
Kipp
sat seemed to be the locus of sound from the orchestra pit.

Abe was on call that evening in case of emergency cleanups, and John Steinberg had actually given him a beeper for the occasion. "You can watch the show if you like, Abe," Steinberg had said, "or just hole up somewhere. If we need you, I'll give you a beep and you can come to the lobby."