Max squeezed her hand. It was sweaty. He didn’t say anything. She knew he was terrified that his words would only come out sounding maudlin.
“Things have to be different is all.” It was only when the words left her mouth and vanished into the room that she truly understood the impossibility of the statement.
Max bit down on his bottom lip. “You should just come to the rehearsal. Once you’re there…” He was starting to lecture. He stopped himself. “You should just come.”
And she thought to say something about the old days. About how they would never have moved another inch without a blast of cocaine or a smoke of opium. And the feeling was nostalgic without the brilliance of sentimentality, a statement only designed for sharing a laugh or common connection. But Max, in his vigilant patrol state, would take that as a sign of weakness. Being lured by a temptress. And he would say it as such, leaving her to feel mortally stupid and pathetically old. Instead she just nodded, and said, “I know. I am planning to come to the theater.”
“It is only a few minutes from now.”
She flamboyantly threw her arms around his neck, roping him in closer to her until she held his cheek an inch from her mouth. She smacked her lips in a kiss that deliberately fell short. “Molly, I know that you care for me. Enough so that I can forgive you treating a sixty-one-year-old woman as though she is a wide-eyed girl. But leaving the theater is something that I am going to do.” She then leaned in the extra inch, feeling her spine extend, and touched her lips to his properly smoothed cheek. “Let’s go,” she whispered. “I plan to tell the company myself.”
“I’m only looking out—”
“Love me and you’ll trust me.” She kissed his cheek again, and then released him from her hold.
He turned his back slightly. Not out of shame or irritation, but more in the manner of one who finds himself helplessly helpless. When the power is tripped, and the words that would usually come to mind just seem to form sounds that predate language. His toe ground into the floor, smothering out the last ember of righteousness, and she knew that if he did turn his head around, that she would see his eyes filled by tears. He never liked to disappoint. Even the slightest suggestion sent him back into his shame. Bishop Conaty ought to get hold of him.
SARAH ASKED TO WALK the long route. She wanted some fresh air. Stretch her legs. Feel the freedom of the setting sun. She wanted to clear her head. Stroll by the canals. Ingest the ocean salts. They walked until they came to the edge of Venice Canal, where they stopped and looked across at Abbot Kinney’s estate. For a moment it was almost tranquil. As though they could have been the sole occupants of this magnificent planet. They might have resigned themselves to an infinite monastic silence if she had not spoken in a sudden voice: “It is okay. You may stare if you like.”
Max asked what she said.
“Him.” She pointed over to the thin shadow from an adolescent tree.
He was a young man, perhaps still a boy. Nothing remarkable in stature. He looked afraid. He pulled at his fingers. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I don’t mean to stare.” He held a notebook and a pen, trembling in the presence of the woman he had waited for, just for an autograph.
“Is it that you have never been in the presence of a star, or that you have never been in the presence of a French woman?” she said to the boy, ignoring Max elbowing her side.
The boy kicked his feet a little. He ran his hands along his chin, one that would not be bristled by a sloppy shave for a few more years to come. “I’m not sure I know how to answer that.”
“Pardon?” She leaned forward. “You will have to speak louder.”
“I said, I’m not quite sure how to answer that.”
“Well, how about either, or.”
Max tried to intercede by stepping forward to reach for the boy’s book and pen. He tried to place his body between the two of them, hoping to ward her off. Perfectly timed she blocked Max, maintaining her place at the center stage marker.
“Look at him twisted into a knot,” she said to Max. “His free hands are feeling up his arms each time I make eye contact with him. Like a misfit who wandered onto the stage and just noticed the audience through the footlights.”
“I only request…,” he sputtered.
“Is it the mystique of the French woman that is throwing you? You no doubt have heard all the legends of the passion and seduction. And the way they can toy with a man. Or maybe it’s our sophistication. That is always a threat to an American. But it makes you nervous. Right? Nervous. A woman who is your mother’s age awakening you. Is that right, Monsieur Oedipus? You are afraid of the legend of the French seductress?”
The unfortunate boy could not look away from her. “I just wanted an autograph was all.”
“A signature? Or is it the thought swirling through your head that you might be able to have this actress if you don’t make any mistakes. This actress who is your mother’s age—although you can’t say that you really think that I look it. Nor would you admit to yourself, either.” She pushed herself upright and shook her hair out. Smiled. Pleased with this scene. She then ripped the book from the boy’s hand and stretched her name along the length of the page. “My name,” she said to him. “And a story to go with it.”
She turned around and took Max by the arm, pulling him to walk away. “Pardon me for not issuing a formal good-bye,” she said, turning around. “But I am due at the theater any moment to bid a heartbreaking farewell to ones who love me even more than you.”
The boy scampered off quickly, running as if guard dogs nipped at his heels, yet staring at the page the whole way.
Max just shook his head and said, “Sarah, you really shouldn’t have.”
“I know, Molly. I just wanted to be Sarah Bernhardt one last time.”
They paused for a few minutes, staring over at Coral Canal. They didn’t talk. Eventually they turned to make the processional march to the theater.
“I swear I smell steak searing,” Sarah spoke. “I must be hungry.”
“Maybe the little café at the end of Rose Street.”
“Listen to you reciting the street names like a local.”
“After the last few days I’m starting to feel like I was born here. And that I will die here.”
“Oh, Molly.”
Sarah closed her eyes. Inhaling the fantasy fragrance of red wine, pure chocolate, and savory meats. Imagining they were back in Paris and dreaming of possibilities. She rolled her shoulders forward in pleasure. “I swear,” she cooed, “if you were not such a Molly I could really fall in love with you.”
A STRANGE ANTICIPATION welcomed Sarah Bernhardt as she walked into the theater. The cast stood idly, scattered about the stage. Constant Coguelin and Edouard de Max were deep in thought, trying to recall their characters and hoping they hadn’t been left behind in Salt Lake City or some other stop along the way. Irma Perrot, Marguerite Moreno, and Sacha Guitry formed a triangle, walking a circle in metered breaths while training their eyes on the person directly across from them. Standing in the darkened back at stage right, Ibé was guarding his wigs like a devastated parent, cracking his finger like a whip at anybody who dared approach him without invitation or permission. The technical crew all scattered about, tying off knots, testing footlights, ensuring the spot would work with the calcium carbonate gathered from Pasadena. And to outsiders like Kinney, it must have looked frantic. Disorganized bumbling fools crossing paths, unknowingly holding ends of the same rope and pulling in desperate frustration. But to Sarah, who stood a pace behind her longtime confidant, the evening sea air still following her through the shutting door, this looked as magnificent as the play itself. Stripped away of all the conneries and redundant exercises that Molly insists on for three days prior, and just leaving this night-before energy. Each crew member was so perfectly placed, doing exactly what he or she needed to be doing, flowing in and out of one another with the precision of ants stocking their kingdom. And in this one moment, this single solitary moment, she was glad that she had not quit from afar. Max looked back at her and nodded with a gingerly proud smile on his face. As though he had known that all he had to do was get her in the door, and all would return to normal. Maybe he had been right.