She stopped humming for a moment, and loosed a content, sleep-filled sigh.
She leaned her head back and began to hum again.
Sur le pont d’Avignon/Tout le monde y danse, danse.
Henriette-Rosine was ready to go to sleep. She closed her eyes. The side of her face turned against the softened upholstery.
Sur le pont d’Avignon/Tout le monde y danse en rond.
The smell of sweet butter washed over her.
CHAPTER FIVE
May 17, 1906
MAX thought she looked at peace in the morning light. Her body in a deep slumber, something that eluded her almost every night since she had arrived in America. Now she slept soundly. Tucked into the railcar bed, lying on her back with her head propped up by a pillow set just below her neck. To some she might have looked like a perfect specimen at a viewing. He sat down next to her and stroked her hair. He froze when she had startled for a moment, twitching her head and making mumbling half-words. There were all those stories about waking people from sleepwalking, and how they never again recovered from the disorientation. Shocked into mental illness, permanently placed in a state of anxious melancholia. Max felt the warmth of her breath cross his cheek. It had floated with dandelion ease, stopping just before his skin in pure intoxication.
Kinney had arranged a brunch with certain patrons of the area. They had paid charitable prices for the front-row seats and had been promised an intimate brunch with the star. Although it was not for another hour and a half, Max needed to wake her. Most of her clothes, and the comfort of her bath, were in her room at the King George. She was not one who rose quickly in the morning, nor was she especially brisk with things like changing locations.
“You have come to kidnap me.” Her voice was gravelly. Her eyes only half open. She crossed her arms over her chest in a dead man’s pose and looked up at the ceiling. The blankets pushed down heavy on her, cocooning her in safety.
“I wish I could let you sleep all day,” Max said.
She lifted her right arm up and beckoned him with her hand. “Come here. You deserve to have comfort.”
“That’s all right.” He shook his head. “I’m fine.”
“Ridiculous. Come keep warm under the covers. We can watch the ceiling together.”
Max was the kind of man who lifted the world on his shoulders for show, and then forgot it was there. In such desperate allegiance to clocks and schedules. He had the strength to mow down the threats, yet when he looked in the mirror, he was still the same scared little boy who first peeked out from between his mother’s legs to see the world. He didn’t move, just maintained his stance over the bed.
“Let’s just hide all day here,” she said. “Keep the covers on and the curtains drawn. And we can read dialogue. We can pick a play that we have never read together and recite it for an audience of nobody other than ourselves. Then when we exhaust that, we can solve the mystery of Marguerite Gautier.”
Max grinned and told her that he wished that they could do that (and the truth was that he really did wish that they could do that), but it seemed like years had passed since their schedules had ever allowed for that kind of recreation. “I really am sorry,” he said. “But we have the Patrons’ Brunch.”
“Patrons’ Brunch?”
“Yes, I told you. It is on your itinerary.”
“It is just the way you say it: Patrons’ Brunch…Is that your term?”
“Well, that is how Kinney has billed it.”
“Can we please refrain from using his antiseptic vernacular. It is not only distasteful, but it is also in contradiction to the whole notion of what we are about. We produce art to give people a vehicle by which they can view the world in new ways—not limited jingoistic phrases that one can take comfort in without thinking.”
“Sarah, I will call it whatever you prefer.”
“No. Call it what you prefer. That is my point.”
“What if I prefer ‘Patrons’ Brunch’?”
She kicked the covers up and off, and then sat up. “You know, Molly, you are truly more effective than a two-bell alarm clock.”
“Come then,” he said.
Sarah sat on the edge of the bed. She braced her forehead in her palms. And for one brief moment, Max saw her as different from the Sarah that they had worked to preserve in reputation and memory. Almost as ordinary. Her unwashed face was stripped of makeup, other than black lines that traced her eyes. Shoulders stooped in resignation and wear. And she stared off as if there were no thoughts in her head. Then she dropped her hands to look back at him with a twinkle that was equal parts innocence, power, malice, and instability. He smiled for the Sarah that again he recognized. She dropped back onto the bed and kicked her feet up in the air. “Please tell them thank you, but I will have to decline.”
“I am afraid that that is not an option.”
She pouted out a blast of breath. “Then you can go in my place. I can sign some pictures now. You’ll bring them. And then you apologize for my current condition, of which they won’t even question because they will be certain that I must have at least one, and you can answer the questions. You have heard them all a thousand times before, and certainly you must have the quips and stories committed to memory by this point in our partnership.”
“I am flattered by your confidence, but this is not negotiable. Part of the contract. Plus we are never in a position to turn down money.”
“And then when do you expect that we can discuss the play? We are opening tomorrow, and it is still in chaos.”
“The play is not in chaos. Last night’s run-through was smooth. The set is working. The cast is comfortable. The only issue is the sudden change in your relationship to your character. Frankly, that is something for you to work out with me. Not to throw the entire company into disarray with.”
“Again, it is clear how little you know about acting.”
“But I do know about the theater.”
“And when do we meet to discuss these changes? We haven’t shared more than one or two serious sentences about it. You keep telling me we will get to it, but something else of greater importance manages to take precedence. And now it is a brunch that is sure to last half the day. Then you will have to attend to your new boyfriend Kinney, and then another silly run-through, and soon it’s dinner. And you will say that we should discuss the matter after dinner. So where does that leave us with tomorrow being opening night? What room does that leave for changes? You don’t think that I can ask the actors to rethink their entire motivations three hours before curtain. It’s ridiculous enough to bring it up to them with only one day in advance.”