They call her Dana (50 page)

"It wouldn't surprise me at all, love," she told him.

The man in the loud checked suit made a disgrunded noise, let the purple drape fall back in place and came over to greet me. He had a battered, belligerent face that reminded me of a bulldog's. His small black eyes were full of perpetual suspicion. He smelled of cigar smoke and cheap hair oil. He sized me up, scowled and then took my hand, pumping it vigorously but with a noticeable lack of enthusiasm.

"I'm Jackson," he growled. "Advance man, assistant manager, you name it, I get it done. Jason was right. You are gorgeous, too bloody gorgeous for an ingenue. Carmelita's not going to like it a bit. You're gonna make her look like hash. Jason says you were appearing at the Court Theater in New Orleans. I thought I knew all the theaters in the city. Never heard of the Court."

"It's new," I replied.

"You're gorgeous, I grant that, but can you act?"

"I've never had any complaints," I said truthfully.

"We'll see," he told me.

Jackson didn't intimidate me at all. I saw through him immediately. Besieged by problems, burdened by tremendous responsibilities, and no doubt constantly put upon by the demanding, temperamental members of the troupe, he had, I suspected, assumed the gruff, disgrunded manner as protective armor. I had the curious feeling that we were going to be friends, and I smiled at him. He scowled, thrust his hands into his pockets and stalked back over to the window to glare out at the rain. I'm going to win you over, Mr. Jackson, I vowed. Just you wait and see.

"And we mustn't forget Theodore," Bartholomew Hendrics said. "Say hello to Miss O'Malley, Theodore."

Theodore wagged his tail, gave two barks, one high, one low—it really did sound like a canine hello, I thought—then leaped from the sofa, squatted in front of me and raised one neatly clipped brown paw. I shook it solemnly. Bartholomew looked enchanted. Theodore looked expectant. Bartholomew told me he expected a cookie. I said I'd try to have one for him next time. Jackson snorted. Laura casually asked where the new leading man was.

"He hasn't come down yet," Bartholomew said. "He's a frightfully intelligent chap. We were discussing Macbeth earlier on. He knows the play backwards and forward. Seems he read a lot of Shakespeare when he was out there on the plains."

"I'm surprised he knows how to read," Laura said acidly.

"He's quite good, Laura. I saw him when he was with Brad-shaw's company. They were doing She Stoops to Conquer, and he was playing Marlow. He has tremendous stage presence and a remarkably effective technique. I was delighted when Jason said he was going to become part of our little troupe. We're lucky to have him."

"I'm starving," Laura said. "Let's adjourn to the dining room."

I followed her into the foyer, Bartholomew and Jackson and Theodore close behind. Jason Donovan had just come downstairs. He had brushed his hair and changed into gray breeches and frock coat and a black silk waistcoat and would have looked

almost respectable had it not been for his dark red neckcloth. He was with a short, enormously fat woman with sharp brown eyes and yellow curls, her girth covered by a long, tentlike garment of lime-green linen. Seeing me with Laura, she gave an exclamation of delight.

"Exquisite!" she cried. "Absolutely exquisite! That glorious coloring! That divine body! It's going to be sheer enchantment dressing her. You realize, Jason, that none of Maisie's costumes will even begin to fit her, and the colors would be wrong anyway. We'll have to start from scratch, new patterns, new materials—and only three weeks. I do adore a challenge!"

"Jesus," Jason groaned. "What's it going to cost us?"

"Plenty," she said as she marched over to me. "I'm Dulcie, sugar. Jason told me we had a new ingenue, but I had no idea you'd be such a treat. You and I must get together right after lunch to discuss costumes—I'll have to take measurements as well. I see you in pink for Cora, very pale pink, a layer of tulle over satin, perhaps, embroidered with delicate white flowers. And for Evelina—"

'' Later, Dulcie!'' Jason snapped.

Dulcie gave me an enormous hug and told me how pleased she was to have me with the company. Overwhelmed by her effusion, I thanked her and told her Laura had said several nice things about her. Billy Barton came tearing into the foyer, blond wave flopping, brown eyes snapping, face white with outrage. He raised one fist in the air and began to wave it.

"Do you know what that bloody woman has done? She's burned the cabbage! And the corned beefs so tough Theodore wouldn't even touch it. Know what she plans to serve for lunch? Ham? Last night's ham!"

"Out of the question," Ollie said, coming down the stairs on the arm of Michael Prichard. "I don't know what she did to it, but that ham was so salty, I almost died from indigestion. You'll have to do something, Jason. I have a delicate stomach, as you very well know, and I refuse to eat any more of her ham."

' 'Theodore can't eat ham, either,'' Bartholomew put in.' 'Ham isn't good for him, particularly Birdie's ham."

"Hello there," Michael Prichard said, sidling up to Laura.

'' Get stuffied,'' she told him.

The front door burst open. A very grand woman in a very damp gray satin gown and long pink velvet gloves stalked fiiri-

ously into the foyer, followed by a black-clad cabbie who held a huge black umbrella over her. A very wide gray hat with now limp pink ostrich plumes was slanted atop her glossy blond coiffure. She took us all in with one blazing blue glare and then focused her attention on Jason Donovan. He turned pale. Car-melita Herring, I thought. It couldn't be anyone else.

"You son of a bitch!" she shrilled. "Why didn't you meet the train!"

"I thought—Jesus, Carmelita, I didn't think you were due to arrive until four-thirty."

"That was my original schedule. I wrote and told you I was going to take an earlier train that arrived at eleven-thirty. Sharp. I arrive at the station and there's no one to meet me and I have to find a carriage myself in the pouring rain and those bastards lost one of my bags and—"

"Have that man close the umbrella, Carmelita," Bartholomew said. "You know it's bad luck to have an open umbrella inside the—"

"Go to hell!" she shouted. "I've had just about enough, Jason! I'm an artist and I expect to be treated like one! It's bad enough having to stay in this god-awful dump because you're too cheap to put us in decent lodgings, but if you expect me to —" She paused, fuming, looking as though she were planning a particularly gruesome murder. "I won't stand it!" she shrilled. "Do you understand me! / won't stand it!"

Theodore started barking. Ollie raised her eyes heavenward. Bertha lumbered in to announce that lunch was served. Laura caught my eye.

"Welcome to the theater, love," she said.

chapter Seventeen

I WAS NUMB WITH TERROR and knew I would never be able to go through with it. I was going to be violently ill, I could feel it coming on, and I wouldn't remember a single line and I would make an absolute idiot of myself and disgrace the entire company and it would be much better if I just slipped out of the theater right now. I hated to leave them in the lurch, particularly since everyone but Jason and Carmelita had been so kind to me, making me feel a part of it all and making me feel important, a member of the family. Jason hadn't really been unkind, just snappish and distracted, and Carmelita was bitchy to everyone. Ollie and Laura had worked with me until I was ready to drop, and I hadn't really been that bad in company rehearsals. Billy and Bart had been very supportive, helping me through the scenes, giving me advice and showing me little tricks to make my performance more effective. Michael had been a dream, like a teasing, affectionate older brother, constantly encouraging me. They were all in on my secret and thought it was a lark, pulling the wool over Jason's eyes. Carmelita didn't know, of course, nor did Jason, and Dulcie couldn't have cared less as long as the costumes were right and "moved" onstage.

We had left Memphis three days ago and arrived in this little town in Alabama whose name I had already forgotten in the confusion, and yesterday had been spent blocking everything out on the stage of this rickety, dusty theater, and I had felt the terror coming on then. Jason had been in a fury because the crew hadn't arrived on time and the set hadn't been ready and one of the painted canvas backdrops had been damaged in transit. Confusion reigned. Tempers flared. Nerves were on edge. Carmelita threw a fit. Laura and Michael got into a loud shout-

ing match. Ollie was testy and out of sorts. Billy was more interested in the girls who had been following him about ever since we arrived than in doing his job and threw away all his lines during rehearsal. Bartholomew was upset because Theodore had mmed down his food, and Dulcie still wasn't completely satisfied with the fit of my pink ball gown and kept dragging me away whenever I wasn't actually onstage in order to make yet another adjustment. Somehow we managed to get through the block-out and, late last night, the dress rehearsal, and now—I glanced at the clock—in forty-seven minutes they expected me to step out onstage as Cora and fend off the advances of the wicked Hugh Northcliflf, and I couldn't do it.

The play had already started. Even as I sat here in this cramped and dingy dressing room staring stony-eyed at my reflection in the mirror, Michael as the widowed Lord Roderick was wooing Carmelita as the poor but aristocratic Angela Hampton and telling her that his pure young daughter Cora would be leaving the convent and returning in time for the engagement ball, even as, unbeknownst to either, Billy as the wicked Hugh Northclifl" was plotting with Laura as femme fatale Lorena to kidnap Cora the night of the ball and hold her in hiding until Lord Roderick handed over the priceless Manners-Croft rubies which had once belonged to Good Queen Bess. Thank God I didn't appear in the first act. I wondered what they would do when the curtain came up on Act Two and the lovely and virginal Cora didn't wander into the antechamber where Hugh was lurking. Cora would already be on her way back to the hotel to pack her bags and head for the train station as fast as her feet would carry her.

The dressing room door opened. Laura came in, looking very exotic in dark brown velvet and blue egret feathers. Her face was heavily made-up, eye shadow and black liner and dark lip rouge giving her a look of wicked sensuality suitable for the scheming Lorena.

"My word, love!" she exclaimed. "Act One is almost over and you haven't even put on your ball gown."

"I'm not putting it on," I informed her. "I'm not going on tonight. I'm sick. I'm going to throw up any minute now. I've forgotten every single line. I'm leaving. I'm leaving the company. I'm leaving town. If I'm lucky, I can still get that job in St. Louis."

Laura wasn't at all alarmed. She plucked the arrangement of

egret feathers from her head and removed the fake sapphire jewelry that adorned her wrists and throat.

"Nonsense," she said. "You're going on and you're going to be fine. You were wonderful in rehearsal."

"I was awful. Everyone said so."

"Carmelita is the only one who said so, and she's a rotten bitch scared to death you're going to steal her thunder. Michael said you have a natural flair for acting."

"You two are speaking again?"

"Barely. And Ollie said you were the best student she'd ever had. You're just experiencing first-night nerves, love. All of us do. I played Cora when I first joined the company, as you know, and you're much better than / ever was. It's hard to believe I was ever an ingenue," she added wistfully.

"I—I can't do it, Laura."

"Of course you can. Let me help you dress."

I stood up like a zombie, and Laura took down the exquisite ball gown Dulcie had done up for Cora. It was pale pink satin, overlaid with a paler pink tulle embroidered with delicate white and silver flowers. I stepped into it and put my arms through the puffed sleeves, and Laura fastened it up in back. The bodice still didn't feel right. It felt loose on the left side. Dulcie had let it out twice. The last time she had let it out too much, I thought. My bosom was half-exposed, and the cloth didn't cling to my left breast as it should have done.

"The dress doesn't fit," I said.

"If fits fine. You look positively glorious."

"If Cora is so sweet and virginal, why would she be wearing such a low-cut gown?''

"For the paying customers, love. Here, let me put your hair up. Sit down and hand me the hairpins. Really, Dana, you should already have done this. If Jason knew you weren't ready he'd have conniptions."

"He'll have conniptions anyway when I ruin his rotten play."

"It is rather rotten, I've always said so, but the yokels do love thundering melodrama. There. Perfect. Let me just fasten this spray of white flowers above your temple."

"What—what's that terrible noise?"

"The audience, love, applauding the end of Act One. They adored it. Carmelita was so grand and affected you wanted to boot her backside, but they like her that way. Michael was

good—I hate to admit it, love, but he really is good, he really can act. I was marvelous, of course, and you should have heard them hissing Billy."

"Was he that bad?"

"He was that good. They always hiss the villain. He's in fine form tonight, has three local belles meeting him at the stage door after the show. I have no idea how he's going to manage all three."

"He's young," I said dryly.

Laura stepped back, looking at me admiringly. I stood up and tried to adjust the bodice of my gown. It didn't look wrong, I saw in the mirror, but it still felt loose on the left side.

"You might apply just a touch of lip rouge," Laura said, "You don't need any other makeup. Dark pink. Here, use this."

I applied it, feeling like death. She wasn't going to let me get away. I finished rouging my lips and looked at her with stoic resignation.

"We'd better get out to the wings," she said. "I have plenty of time to change. I don't appear again until the middle of Act Three when Hugh discovers I 'm double-crossing him and stabs me to death. How's the stomach?"