Reign (62 page)

Alan Singleton, who played Basil, entered, and his poorly concealed discomfort was all the hint the audience needed. Something else had gone wrong. Dennis Hamilton was falling apart before them.

"'Majesty,'" Singleton declaimed in a voice that shook with more than practiced emotion, "`How may I be of service?'"

Dennis looked at him slowly, knowing the move with the flower was irretrievably lost, and wondering what else was lost as well.

~ * ~

You feel me now, Dennis. You feel me coming, and growing strong, taking your strength. One final performance, Dennis. Just what I needed. Just what we both needed.

I will see you soon. Very soon. I'm practicing now. Honing my skills. Like you, I've been in retirement for far too long.

Can you imagine that I even have to audition in order to appear with you?

Even now I am in the midst of my final audition.

For your director.

~ * ~

Some of the cherub heads broke when they struck the lounge floor, but reformed immediately. Several of them landed on the sofa next to Quentin, and either flopped end over end toward him, or rolled on edge. He jumped up, looking around in panic for a way to escape, but the fat little faces came at him from every direction, and the black faun was closing in fast, less than six feet away from him now.

He cried wordlessly, turning about, looking for a breach in the nightmarish line. He could have jumped over them, but his legs were trembling so much that he knew he dared not try it, lest he trip and fall among them. Then he saw a break in the direction of the men's lounge, and in a moment he was through it, racing across the tile floor, and now he was in the small chamber, and there were two doors — the open one into the lavatory itself, which would give no means of escape, and a closed one. He grasped the knob and turned it, but it was locked. Screaming with rage and fear, he kicked it with his dancer's legs, felt the frame give, looked behind and saw the faun and the cherubs in the doorway behind him, kicked again, harder. The door flew open, and Quentin saw, several yards away down four wooden steps and a long, dirt-floored tunnel, the hanging, eviscerated corpse of Abe
Kipp
.

The sight made him stagger back, and his heel caught one of the rolling faces. He tripped, fell, felt them bumping against him, then felt the pain of the black faun's teeth as it buried them in his ankle. Screaming, he batted away the faces and crab-walked into the lavatory. He wrenched the doorstop up and tried to push the door closed against the creatures, but its pneumatics made it close slowly, and several of the things rolled through. The faun got an arm and a cloven foot into the crack, and although Quentin pressed as hard as he could, battering the door with his shoulder, the marble would not shatter. The gap grew wider, allowing more of the white faces to enter, and Quentin, as he moved further away from the door, saw to his greater horror that now the cupid mouths were opening wider than he would have thought possible, showing teeth within. The little round chins dropped, and the jaws snapped as they clattered toward him. One was larger than the others, and he knew that it must be one of the four corner winds.

Now the faun was inside, phallus rampant, teeth gnashing, scuttling toward him, its shoulders swinging with each step, and Quentin retreated further, crawled into the end booth, shot the bolt even as he realized the futility of it. He climbed onto the seat, grasped the top of the partition for balance, watched as the cherub heads, their mouths chattering like wind-up teeth, rolled under and into his booth and rattled like saucers as they toppled over and came to rest, glaring up at him with white plaster eyes. They kept rolling in, dozens of them, clattering next to each other until they overlapped, hiding the tile floor, their baby mouths with predators' teeth still working.

Then everything was quiet. Quentin hung on, balanced on the toilet, panting, bleeding from his ankle where the faun's teeth had raked him.

The faun. . .

"
Eat me!
" grated a voice next to his ear, and pain ran red through his hand. The faun had climbed up the other side of the partition and was shredding his fingers like a hulling machine strips corn.

Quentin screamed and let go. His left foot plunged down into the bowl, and his head struck the wall.

It was a great mercy that he was unconscious when he fell among the white faces.

~ * ~

"'There will be no marriage, Prime Minister. Not ever.'"

The lines were as listlessly given as those of a weary conductor calling station stops.

"'But, Majesty,'" a jittery Alan Singleton replied, "`Your responsibility — to your throne — to your people!'"

Ann Deems watched from the wings, her heart filled with fear and love, and she thought,
If only I could give him what I feel now. If only I could give him what he needs
. . .

~ * ~

The show went on. And the audience remained in their seats. Not one left for a cigarette, or a breath of fresh air, or a visit to the rest room. They sat there as repelled and fascinated as a crowd at an execution.

Dennis's singing "All My Life to Grieve" was almost drowned out by the orchestra, in spite of Dex
Colangelo's
noble efforts to pull the orchestral volume down as low as possible. The next two scenes were without the Emperor, and the other performers gave their all — some felt too much — to counterbalance Dennis's lack of fire. In the following scene where Rolf tells Inga that the Emperor is behaving like perfect royalty, there were audible if uncomfortable chuckles from the audience, appreciative not only of the absurdity of the line in context, but of Bill
Miley's
zeal in its delivery, as if saying a thing strongly enough would make it so.

Then came Scene 6, in which the plan evolves to have
Kronstein
disguise himself as Frederick to announce the marriage to Maria, which will unite
Waldmont
and
Borovnia
, and turn
Kronstein
, who has taken Maria as a mistress, into a power behind the throne. Wallace Drummond nervously chewed the scenery so thoroughly that most in the audience despaired of any return to balance for the remainder of the show.

And while Wallace Drummond was singlehandedly attempting to provide thespian pyrotechnics enough for two, Ann was in Dennis's dressing room, standing behind him, her hands on his shoulders as he looked wearily into the mirror. "You have to bring it out, Dennis. It's there — you just have to reach down deep enough."

"I'm trying," he said, his voice hollow as an empty stage where the echoes of past performances have long since died away. "I reach, but there's nothing there. I can't feel, and I can't pretend to feel — it's too late for that. It has to be real. And it won't come."

She steeled herself. The last thing she wanted to do was to humiliate him, but she had no choice. "Can you think of how you look to the audience then? Does that make you feel? Feel . . . ashamed, even. If you do, maybe that's a place to start."

"Of course I feel ashamed. But it's not enough. It's just not enough. So much of it is knowing that he's here — and not being able to
do
anything about it — not being able to confront him — that makes it worse."

"Dennis," came Curt's soft and steady voice over the squawk box, "fifteen minutes."

Dennis pressed the red button on the top to acknowledge the call. "The last scene," he said. Ann leaned down, put her cheek against his, looked at the reflection of his empty eyes. "Find it, Dennis. Make it live.

"And make him die."

~ * ~

Several minutes later, Wallace Drummond looked at his own face in the mirror, and wondered if he had gone too far in that last song. He had always prided himself on being a very natural actor, but in "Take What Is Mine," he thought he might have gone just a tad overboard. Dan Marks's eyes had widened a bit as Drummond sang the song to him, but maybe it was just something new that Dan was doing as Kruger, trying a little bit harder to make up for what was happening to Dennis.

Holy hell
, Drummond thought for the hundredth time that evening,
what was wrong with him?
Drummond had acted with stiffs before, but the caliber of Dennis's performance wouldn't have been acceptable in a bad high school production of
Bye
Bye
Birdie
. He had heard of actors getting burned out from playing a role too long, but this was more than burnout, it was mind-rot.

Drummond couldn't help feeling sorry for Dennis. He seemed like a nice enough guy, a little distracted maybe, but Drummond had noticed that a lot of people with a lot of money got distracted easily. He hoped that when he finally made it he'd have sense enough not to let the money run his life.

Okay
, he thought,
forget it. Think about the show now
.

He could hear the chorus singing, and knew that he had about five minutes before he had to go on for the final scene with Dennis. Dan, with whom he shared his dressing room, was singing his solo now, haranguing the crowd on the necessity for an imperial heir, goading them to call on the Emperor to set a wedding date. Drummond rattled through his lines and Dennis's, and thanked God that there weren't a lot of them before they got into the duel and he was slain. It would be a mercy, he thought, not to have to do any more lines with Dennis. "Kill me now, Lord," he whispered, stood up, and looked in the full-length mirror that hung on the bathroom door.

The imperial uniform hung well, and the false beard and moustache that made him resemble Dennis seemed secure and straight. Surely a mob of peasants and merchants far below would not notice the imposture, he thought, beginning to slip into character. It looked better than ever before.

Damned, he thought as Wallace Drummond, if it
didn't
look better, and he blinked his eyes in confusion. If he hadn't known it was him, he would have sworn that there was a doorway there instead of a mirror, and in it stood Dennis Hamilton in full regalia as the Emperor Frederick. There were the blue eyes, painful in their intensity, the jutting chin, the imperious stance. Drummond had resembled Dennis somewhat, but never before like this, and, curious and amazed, he stepped closer to the mirror.

The glass shattered as the Emperor's hands came through it, impossibly strong hands which grasped the front of Wallace Drummond's jacket and pulled him into the mirror. The broken shards tore through Drummond's high collar and licked his throat until the blood came.

~ * ~

(
THE EMPEROR drops the lifeless body, takes a paper towel, and daintily wipes a spot of blood from the back of his hand. Then he turns and looks at what he can see of his reflection in the broken glass
.)

(
In his own voice
) "You've returned too early, Frederick." No. Not quite it. Let me see . . . (
In Wallace Drummond's voice
) "You've returned too early, Frederick." (
He smiles in satisfaction
.) Much more like it.

(
On squawk box
) Five minutes,
Drummy
.

(
Holds the button and speaks in Drummond's voice
) Thank you, Curt. I'll be
there. (
He releases the button, then takes Wallace Drummond's saber from
the dressing table and draws it from its scabbard. He goes into the en
garde
stance, and thrusts it into what is left of the mirror. The glass breaks and
rains down on the body of Wallace Drummond, as THE EMPEROR salutes
.)

The last scene. The last time he would appear on stage.

The last chance.

Dennis Hamilton stood in the stage right wings, clutched the hilt of his saber, and waited for the music to end, for the darkness to come, that deep smothering darkness of a black stage, relieved only by the scantiest exit lights, that darkness in which the chorus would scurry off stage, Dan Marks would come past him and around onto the stage again, Wallace Drummond would ascend to the center stage balcony from which the disguised
Kronstein
would lie to the people . . .

Lie to the people.

It was, Dennis thought, all he had ever done, and now, when he wanted to show the truth, he was unable.

And he knew why. The Emperor. The Emperor was there somewhere, hiding, but able all the same to draw his strength, his emotions.

"Where are you?" he whispered into the darkness that suddenly surrounded him. "Where are you?" he said again, with as much bitterness as he could summon.

Bodies moved past him, brushed against his, and he closed his eyes, waiting for the human flood to ebb, for the lights to come up, waited for his final entrance.

Why did the Emperor not show himself? Was he scared?

Scared. That was absurd, wasn't it? Scared of Dennis? Scared of a man who could not even feel anger for having his soul stolen away?

The lights came up, the scene went on, Kruger telling
Kronstein
of his triumph with the mob. "`They're hungry for a wedding,'" Dan Marks said, "`absolutely starving for one!'"