Reign (61 page)

"Yes, but you
recovered
," Quentin said. "The quintet . . . the quintet was good."

"It wasn't
good
,
Quent
. It was passable. Which was more than I can say for my scene with Kelly." Dennis shook his head and drank half a glass of water. "It was like I was
sleepwalking
through it."

"But you recovered," Quentin said again. "You got through it, you got your head together, and you got back into the role. Jesus, Dennis, up till then it was
brilliant
, you know it was, wasn't it, Ann?"

Ann nodded. "Yes. It was perfect."

"Now you just stay here and you rest. You've got twenty minutes. Rest for as long as you need — we can hold the curtain a little longer — and use the rest of the time to work yourself back into that role. Come on, Dennis, be the Emperor again."

Dennis smiled. Ann thought it looked forced. "I will," he said. "I will,
Quent
. Leave me alone with Ann for a minute, will you?"

"Of course." He gave Dennis a gentle embrace, as though he were afraid he might hurt him. "Do it, my friend. You go out there and
do
it."

When they were alone, Ann looked into Dennis's eyes and saw the tenor there. "He's back," Dennis said, his voice shaking.

"I know."

"I felt him. I felt him draw strength from me like he was ripping out pieces of my flesh." Dennis's lips drew back, his teeth clenched, and he began to shudder as tears came to his eyes. "I thought he was gone. I really did. I thought and I prayed so hard that he was gone."

"But he's not," Ann said firmly, refusing to break down as well. She wanted to.

She wanted to run sobbing out the stage door and get into a car and just keep driving into the night until she was as far away from the Venetian Theatre as she could possibly be.

But that meant that she would have to flee Dennis Hamilton too, and she would not, could not do that.

"He's still here, Dennis. And you came back thinking that he would still be here. If he was, if you had known it right away, you would have stayed just the same. You would have stayed and fought him." She put a hand on his arm to give him strength. "That's why we came back — to fight him. He let us think he was already beat, and we let down our guard. We wanted to believe he was dead — or dying. And he wanted us to believe it too. We played right into his hands. That was our mistake.

"But he's not infallible, Dennis. As powerful as he is, he's got a plan of some kind. And if he's got a plan, we can ruin it. We just have to figure out how."

Dennis peered into the mirror, as if trying to find the secret in the lineaments of his own, and the Emperor's, face. "I have to be strong." he said slowly. "Even when he tries to draw strength from me, I have to . . . to
feel
so much that it doesn't diminish me. I have to be stronger than he is. That's the only way I'll be rid of him. The only way to get back what I need . . . is to
take
it back." He looked away from his face now, and into hers. "And I will. I will, Ann."

She put her arms around his neck and drew him to her. "I know you will, Dennis. I believe you." She held him for a time, then drew back and looked at him. His expression was firm, the tears were gone. "Forget the audience," she told him. "Forget everything else but you and him. And me," she added. "Remember how much I love you. I'll be here, backstage, whenever you need me."

~ * ~

And backstage the word was passed from mouth to mouth —"Dennis is slipping. Be ready to carry him." The performers consulted their scripts as they drank their intermission coffee or smoked their cigarettes, going over their lines with the Emperor, trying to figure out ways to save the scene, steer the dialogue to the required end, should Dennis forget or "go up" on his lines to them.

Wallace Drummond felt most affected of all. His final scene, the climactic duel with the Emperor, was the final scene of the show, and Drummond, shaken from the feeble caliber of the work Dennis had evinced in the first act finale quintet with him, pored over his lines, trying to prepare himself for any eventuality. His usual levity was nowhere in evidence as he discarded his set of sides and buried his head in a full script, trying to memorize those few of Dennis's lines that did not cue his own. When the five minute bell rang, he jumped, then relaxed. His first scene was with
Lise
and Kruger, so at least that would go well. And there were six long scenes before he and Dennis appeared on stage together. Six scenes were surely enough for Dennis to reclaim his lost character, he thought, and did a few minutes of deep breathing exercises to relax him. Only this time, they did not work.

Out in the lobby, the air was filled with the kind of chatter that goes on, not at theatrical intermissions, but in air terminals after plane crashes. Talk was subdued but animated, and there were lines of reporters seven deep for the two phone booths situated on the stairway to the lower lobby. Several television personalities had gone outside to join their remote crews and report on the first act. A bespectacled blonde with a talk show out of L.A. made a particularly pithy comment — "The last scene has been like watching a beautiful train derail."

Cissy
Morrison had clutched Evan's hand tightly when Dennis had gone up on his line, and they had come into the lobby with a pall hanging over them. Evan felt more sympathy for his father than he ever had before. The look of sudden terror on the man's face convinced Evan that his father was finally feeling what Evan had felt, seeing what he had seen — the true face of the audience, that snarling mob with one pair of hungry eyes, yearning to see failure in whatever form it might present itself. He prayed his father could survive the knowledge of twenty-five years of self-delusion revealed in one night.

After Quentin left Dennis backstage, John Steinberg cornered him in the lobby. "Can he finish?" he asked, his face pale.

"He can finish."

"Should I go back? Talk to him?"

"No. He just needs to be left alone right now. To get into character."

Steinberg patted his brow with an immaculately pressed and pristinely white handkerchief. "He never had to get into character before, Quentin."

"Well, he does tonight. He's got to work it out."

"Let's hope he does so in ten minutes or less. I hate giving refunds on five thousand dollar tickets."

Quentin looked around the crowded lobby and thought that he had never seen such a lively crowd. "I think they're getting their money's worth," he said bitterly. "The only thing better would be if we sacrificed a few Christians." Then he pressed a smile from his tight lips. "But don't worry, John. Dennis will be all right."

High up in the production booth, Curtis Wynn had little time to worry. He was too busy preparing for the second act. Still, he could not escape the memory of that terrible moment when Dennis had not only gone up, but totally stepped out of character and pretty much stayed there until the curtain. No one could blame Curt, of course, but he wanted, as always, a show that was
perfect
, nothing less, and he had been getting it right up to the point that Dennis had floated away into Cloud-
Cuckooland
. What the hell had happened? Had he seen something? Maybe this purported stalker flitting around in the wings like some
latterday
Phantom of the Opera?

He tried to shake away the thoughts and doubts, warned the crew to prepare for the early cues of Act II, Scene 1, gave the cue for the two minute bell to signal the dawdlers to return to their seats, and looked down at the huge red curtain that covered the stage, at the orchestra members all sitting in the pit, ready to begin the entr'acte, which would start in exactly 120 seconds. Despite everything, the show would go on.

~ * ~

Quentin Margolis stood at the back of the rear orchestra section and watched the first scene with tension in his stomach. He thought it would go well, and it did. Kelly Sears as
Lise
, Dan Marks as Kruger, and Wallace Drummond as
Kronstein
all played the scene to near perfection. Quentin detected slight nervousness on Drummond's part, though nothing that was noticeable by the audience.

The scene between Dennis and Steven Peters as the peasant spy followed. It was weak, if not pitiful, and Quentin ached inside for Dennis. He had no doubt his friend would get through the rest of the performance, but he would be ending his acting career on the lowest note possible.

He could watch no more. He turned and quietly walked through the inner foyer, thinking that he might sit in the lobby. But through the curtained glass he saw the dim, hulking shapes of security guards there, and went down the curving staircase instead to the lower lounge. The large room, filled with easy chairs and couches less opulent and far more comfortable than those of the lobby or the mezzanine lobby, was unoccupied, and Quentin eased himself onto a couch, put his head back, and closed his eyes to try and quell the headache that had begun to throb at his temples. After a moment, he opened his eyes and looked around the room.

A door across the room and to his right went to the ladies' lounge and rest rooms, that on his left to the men's. Directly ahead of him was a closed cloakroom, and to the left a false fireplace with a black marble
fireback
and mantel. The mantel was beautifully carved with entwining vines and the figure of a faun in the center, its curled beard roiling downward into its triangular torso, which became lost in the vines at its navel. Looking at the erotic figure, Quentin wished he could get his own waist that slim.

When he put his head back again and looked up he saw the bas-reliefs on the ceiling. Though they, like the furniture, were not as grand as those of the more open areas off the main lobby, they were nicely rendered — white, cherubic faces ringing the baroque molding, with larger heads puffing plaster clouds at each of the room's four corners.
The four winds
, Quentin thought, and he smiled.
Blow me out of here
.

He closed his eyes again and entered a state of semi-consciousness that was not quite sleep, for he remained aware of where he was and what was happening on the stage. From far away he heard the Prime Minister Basil's solo, "Only for the Crown," in which Basil regrets the machinations he is forced to use to bring about the betrothal of Frederick and Maria, and knew that Scene 4, in which Frederick learns of
Lise's
death, would follow.

Quentin did not want to see it. He kept his eyes closed, remaining in his self-induced trance, until he heard a sound he did not recognize. It was a grinding noise, as if stone teeth were gnashing. At first he thought it was part of his dream, which he would be glad to leave anyway, for he was remembering the faces that had come after him in that other dream, those AIDS-inspired faces, the white, hideous faces of the virus that had no other wish than to . . .

"Eat me." He jerked his head forward, opened his eyes, and saw that the marble carving of the face of the faun was moving.

It grinned.

"Eat me," it said again, and began to pull itself from the marble vines that imprisoned it. Its arms came out first, and it reached up, grasped the edge of the mantel, and, like an athlete chinning himself, dragged the lower part of its body from the marble foliage, revealing its erect phallus, small in reality but obscenely large in proportion to the carving's body.

The faun hung now, a black and shining figure nearly two feet tall, from the mantel. Then it dropped to the floor with a clatter of marble hooves, grinned its grin that showed teeth like little black razor blades, and walked with sharp clicks toward Quentin.

And then the faces of the cherubs and the winds began to move, and fell from the ceiling like ripe, white fruits.

~ * ~

"'She is . . .
dead
?'" Dennis asked Linda Bartholomew as
Gretl
,
Lise's
friend. He had been gradually feeling his strength and the strength of his performance return. He had been weak at the beginning of Scene 2, but had improved by the end, and now felt as if he had captured the character once again. When he heard that
Lise
has been murdered, he felt the Emperor's grief, felt it as deeply as he had when he stood over Robin's body.

He stood for a long moment, letting the emotion wash over him even as he was aware of the sympathetic response of the audience. He could feel them feeling his own emotion, and knew that if it would continue, he would triumph.

"'I thank you,'" he said, "'for bringing me word.'" He slowly raised his hand and gently gestured her out, then turned to Bill
Miley
as Rolf. "'Tell Basil I wish him to come to me immediately.’”
 
Rolf bowed and exited, and Dennis walked slowly to the throne and sat down.

At this point he was to reach into his uniform tunic and take from it a pressed flower that
Lise
had given to him at their first meeting. He started the move, but as he slid his hand into the tunic, something shook his soul with the power of a stroke. He gasped for air once, twice, three times, and his hand fell to his side on the throne.

He sat there like a machine that had stopped, and the audience stirred. Was this part of the show, an unexpected emotional response to show how much
Lise's
death had devastated Frederick? Or were they witnessing the further collapse of Dennis Hamilton, the actor?