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“Then if you like, I’ll take you to her between the acts.”

“But you mustn’t prepare her!”

“It’s a promise. If I did, she might get cold feet and not show up.”

“Tuesday, then. And shall we come here again after, for a bite?”

“Sure. The three of us.”

“That assumes, caro, that there are three of us.”

“Just wait. You’ll see.”

On Tuesday, at the intermission, Rey appeared in the lower lobby of the Metastasio, already decked out in the costume of Eurydice and seeming, even close up and without the lights assisting, a very sylph, all tulle and moonlight — albeit a sylph of the court rather more than of the country, with enough paste jewels to have equipped a small chandelier and enough powder on his face and wig to have sunk a thousand ships. Being so majestical, he moved with the freedom of a queen, parting the crowds before him as effectively as a cordon of police. He commandeered Daniel from his post at the orange juice stand, and together they mounted the grand staircase to the Grand Tier level, and then (to everyone’s wonder) went up the much less grand staircase to the balcony, where, as Daniel had been certain they would, they found Marcella at the edge of a group of the faithful. Seeing Daniel and Rey advancing upon her, she stiffened into a defensive posture, shoulders braced and neck retracted.

They stopped before her. The group at whose edge Marcella had been standing now re-formed with her and her visitors at its center.

“Marcella,” Daniel said, in a manner meant to assuage, “I’d like you to meet Ernesto Rey. Ernesto, may I present Marcella Levine.”

Marcella dipped her head slowly in acknowledgement.

Rey offered his slender hand, dazzling with false diamonds. Marcella, who was sensitive on the subject of hands, backed away, pressing knotted fists into the brown velvetine folds of her dress.

“Daniel tells me, my dear, that it is to you that I am beholden for a letter I lately received.” You could almost hear the clavier underlining his recitativo, so ripe was his delivery.

“Pardon me?” It was all she could manage.

“Daniel tells me, my dear, that it is to you that I am beholden for a letter I lately received.” His reading of the line did not vary in any particular, nor could you tell, from his regal inflections, whether this statement portended thanks or reproof.

“A letter? I don’t understand.”

“Did you, or did you not, give this charming young man a letter for me, enclosed in a box of chocolates?”

“No,” she shook her head emphatically, “I never.”

“Because,” Rey went on, addressing the entire crowd that had gathered about them, “if it was your letter…”

The long blonde braid wagged wildly in denial.

“… I only wanted to say what a very kind, and warm, and wonderful letter it was, and to thank you for it, personally. But you tell me that you didn’t send it!”

“No! No, the usher must have… confused me with someone else.”

“Yes, that’s what he must have done. Well, my dear, it was a pleasure to make your acquaintance.”

Marcella bowed her head, as though to the block.

“I hope you enjoy the second act.”

There was an approving murmur from all the onlookers.

“And now you must all excuse me. I have my entrance to make! Ben, my little trickster, I shall see you at eleven.” With which he spun round in a billow of tulle and made his way, royally, down the stairs.

Daniel had changed out of his uniform into a ragtag sweater and a pair of jeans and would not have been allowed into Evviva il Coltello if he hadn’t been accompanying the great Ernesto. Then, to compound the offense, he told the waiter he wasn’t hungry and wanted nothing more than a glass of mineral water.

“You really should take better care of yourself, caro,” Rey insisted, while the waiter still hovered in the background.

“You know it was her,” Daniel said, in a furious whisper, resuming their conversation from the street.

“In fact, I know it wasn’t.”

“You terrified her. That’s why she denied it.”

“Ah, but you see I was looking at her eyes. A person’s eyes always tell the truth. It’s as good as a lie detector test.”

“Then look at mine and tell me if I’m lying.”

“I’ve been looking for weeks now — and they are, all the time.”

Daniel replied with a subdued Bronx cheer.

They sat in silence, Daniel glowering, Rey complacently amused, until the waiter came with wine and mineral water. Rey tasted, and approved, the wine.

When the waiter was out of earshot, Daniel asked: “Why? If you think I wrote that letter, why would I go on denying it?”

“As Zerlina says: ‘Vorrei e non vorrei.’ She’d like to, but she also wouldn’t like to. Or as someone else says, I forget who exactly: ‘T’amo e tremo.’ And I can understand that. Indeed, with the baleful example of your friend before you, Bladebridge’s innamorata, I can sympathize with your hesitations, even now.”

“Mr. Rey, I’m not hesitating. I’m refusing.”

“As you like. But you should consider that the longer you resist, the harder the terms of surrender. It’s true of all sieges.”

“Can I go now?”

“You will leave when I do. I don’t intend to be made a public mockery. You will dine with me whenever I ask you to, and you will display your usual high spirits when you do so.” As an object lesson Rey splashed wine into Daniel’s glass until it had brimmed over unto the tablecloth. “Because,” he went on, in his throatiest contralto, “if you do not, I shall see to it that you have no job and no apartment.”

Daniel lifted the glass in a toast, spilling still more of the wine. “Cheers, Ernesto!”

Rey clinked his glass with Daniel’s. “Cheers, Ben. Oh, and one last thing — I don’t care how else you choose to pass your time, but I don’t want to hear that you’ve been seen in public with Geoffrey Bladebridge, whether alone or in a group.”

“What’s he got to do with anything?”

“My sentiments exactly.”

The waiter appeared with a new tablecloth, which he spread deftly over the one stained by the spilled wine. Rey informed him that Daniel had regained his appetite, and Daniel was presented with the menu. Without needing to look he ordered the most expensive hors d’oeuvre and entree that the restaurant offered.

Rey seemed delighted. He lit a cigarette and began to discuss his performance.

15

March was a month of judgements. The annual disaster of winter seemed to have rent asunder all the rotted threads of the social fabric in a single weekend. Social organization collapsed beneath successive shocks of power failures, shortages, blizzards, floods, and ever more audacious acts of terrorism. Units of the National Guard sent out to arrest this avalanche defected en masse. Armies of crazed urban refugees spilled out of the ghettoes and swarmed over the fallow countryside, only to suffer the fate of Napoleon’s troops in their retreat from Moscow. That was in Illinois, but every state had a tale of similar terribilità. After a while you stopped bothering to keep track, and after a while longer you couldn’t anyhow, since the media stopped reporting the latest disasters, on the hopeful theory that the avalanche might stop misbehaving if it weren’t spoiled by so much attention.