“Sarah, why don’t you just play Marguerite as you have always played her—for now. We can look at revamping the production once we have some time. When we are back in Paris.”
“And act a part that I don’t feel? I might as well quit.”
“I promise we will make time today to discuss this.”
“You will put that on the itinerary?”
“Once we are back at the hotel, yes.”
“Because I cannot perform as Sarah Bernhardt reciting the lines of Dumas’s Marguerite.”
“I know.”
“I can only go on if I am Marguerite.”
She straightened herself into a firm posture. Patted her hair into place. Tugged down on her dress and then grabbed the material at the hips to center it. She arched her chin up slightly, as the photographers always tried to suggest. Shoulders rolled back. A long breath to expand the lungs. “I wish you were a playwright who could write me out of this scene,” she grumbled. Then she knocked her knuckles twice against the warm door for luck, before opening it. She stood in the doorway, a one-dimensional die-cut of radiance pasted between the deep blue sky and the haunted red train. Like a spirit revealing itself to the day.
Off to the Patrons’ Brunch.
Time to be Sarah Bernhardt.
VINCE BAKER SAT INSIDE the King George Hotel lobby, keenly aware of how different the air felt, trapped and rarefied. He had been camped for about an hour, staking out the place. He still had no real objective other than to see her. It had been twice now that he had been in her presence, and each time he had the strange feeling that the distance made him understand her a little more. Soon he was going to be forced to have to talk with her (although he worried her allure might seduce him into a dumb state, one that extended beyond the physiology of the mouth, more like a brain that temporarily lost its ability to form thoughts). He wasn’t scared of her. But he did recognize her ability to reshape charisma into control. She would probably want to speak with him once she was told that it was his name on the article that publicly flogged her. She would want to set the record straight. They all do. He still needed to figure out what he would say to her. And be able to say it.
Bernhardt pressed through the lobby doors in a dramatic fashion that was likely her calling card. All eyes instantly leaped toward her. Baker presumed this as normal. She was trailed close behind by the escort from the other night who at once appeared controlled and hurried. She looked slightly disheveled. Her hair, which both times before always seemed on the edge of kempt now sprang out as though unsuccessfully matted by tap water and a comb. Her dress appeared a bit wrinkled, as almost an elegant housedress, but certainly not what one would imagine her to be seen wearing in public. And perhaps that was the very reason that her escort guided her quickly through a small crowd that was as eager to get a glimpse of her as she was to see them. He took her right into the stairwell and effectively locked her in, before swinging open the door with the gracious hands of a politician on a whistle-stop to announce, “Thank you for coming. I am sorry to be so brief, but Madame needs her rest.” And the small crowd, an equal mix of old and young, accepted this proclamation, not for one moment questioning why the ingenue would need to rest so early in the morning.
Baker watched the group disperse and noticed a slight change in their demeanors. It was as if they walked a little taller, somehow ingesting her confidence and charisma by proxy. Maybe this is the allure of the autograph. It is more than obtaining proof or having a keepsake, and even beyond establishing connection—it is removing part of that person, a graft, and infusing it into your own system, the momentary feeling that you are one and the same.
In an odd way Baker felt it too. He had the same sense of empowerment from having witnessed something historic, where your place in the world quickly feels more relevant. Your feet know what it is like to fall in the trail of greatness. And as with the autograph, you completely rise to a new level. Baker felt ready to talk with her. A sit-down interview to try to understand the illusion of her power. How this petite old French woman whose vocation was in repeating words from a playwright’s hand could cause such an upheaval.
He stepped up to the desk and leaned over, bracing himself by the elbows. Eye to eye with the head clerk. “Can you please direct me to Sarah Bernhardt’s room?” he said, cutting off the salutation.
The clerk coughed into his fist. “You understand that I cannot give out that information.”
“I’m a reporter from the Los Angeles Herald. Vince Baker. I only wish to interview her.”
“I am not allowed to.” His voice nearly broke.
Baker was not accustomed to encountering this type of situation. His credentials and reputation usually gave him a free pass through any door, from the top-floor office suite to the mistressed boudoirs. “How about a message to her, then.” He reached for a pencil in his coat. “Have some paper, please?”
The clerk’s lips barely moved, uttering something inaudible.
“There a problem here?”
“I just don’t know if I should be bothering her.”
“Let me tell you something”—he leaned forward to read the clerk’s nametag—“Dolph. You don’t think Miss Bernhardt finding out that she missed a chance for an interview with the Herald will cause some problems? She’s a celebrity. That’s what they live for. And I am especially guessing that you don’t want to read in the article that Bernhardt was not available for comment because old Dolph at the King George Hotel refused to pass the request along. Actually, I imagine that you don’t want Abbot Kinney reading that either.”
Dolph’s complexion turned white, with a thin but visible band of sweat banding his forehead.
“Well?” Baker spoke. This time sounding more impatient.
“I suppose there is no harm in delivering a message.”
Dolph disappeared for several minutes, leaving Baker strangely alone in the lobby. The room was deserted as if the victim of an evacuation. It crossed his mind that he had missed some crucial piece of information while sparring with Dolph. After a time measured by breaths, a collection of couples passed through the lobby into the restaurant. They were paired by gender. Men set the pace with hands dug into their pockets, their brows furrowed as they nodded in conspiracy, trailed by the women who spoke in hushed voices, trying to smolder smiles that their husbands would view as treasonous.
In procession, Bernhardt and her escort shortly followed behind. She was dolled now, walking a brisk stride as though the barrel of a pistol were set deep in her kidneys. Rounding out the parade was Dolph who, out of breath, said to Baker, “Madame Bernhardt says that she will meet with you at one o’clock.”
THREE WAITERS WERE POSTURED patiently, standing at military arms upon the guests’ arrival, hands at their sides, shoulders squared back, and chins subtly arched toward the ceiling. It was Kinney’s private dining room at the hotel. It had a certain genuine elegance that was hard to find fault with. The other guests were already seated when Sarah and Max arrived. The white-coated waiters took over, one guiding them to the table while the other two were dispensed back to the kitchen to begin relaying silver-trayed meals.
The dynamic was fairly simple. Abbot Kinney sat on one side of the table, his big hands resting on the white linen, interlacing his fingers that looked too small for those hands, while the two thumbs rubbed gently against each other. And Sarah sat opposite him. Her posture erect and her face stern and serious, pretending to be listening and attentive to all his stories as her mind drifted in and out. While at the end of the table, seated directly center, Max Klein drummed his foot nervously against the floor, accidentally clanking his fork against the china plate more than once, clearly in terror that this intimately confined setting had the potential to explode at any moment. The patrons lined the table. They sat man, woman, man, woman (although it might have made better sense to stack one side with women, and the other with men, as most couples did not engage with each other, instead they leaned and arced behind the chair backs when private discourse took precedence).