Daniel watched the two minutes disappear on his wristwatch, then put on his ever-so-dented top hat, and made his entrance, smiling. Aside from the mildest tingling in his legs and lower back he had no symptoms of stagefright. The Cardinal was sitting in the third row of chairs with Rey, benignly impassive, beside him. Claude was in the first row next to the nun from Cleveland. Many of the Cardinal’s other guests were familiar to Daniel from the Metastasio. One or two had taken him to dinner.
He lifted his hands, fingers spread wide, to frame his face. He let his eyes roll, slowly, to the back of his head. He began to sing. “Mammy!” he sang. “How I love ya, how I love ya! My dear old Mammy.” He kept very close, vocally, to the authorized Jolson version, while exaggerating the body language. It was a polite version of the fractured minstrel-show he would perform to freak out selected strangers. He finished suddenly and, before there could be applause, moved right in to the next number, “Nun wandre Maria” from Wolf’s Spanisches Liederbuch. Daniel accompanied its tortured and rather schizzy pieties with the same overwrought gestures he’d used for “Mammy.” They seemed, in this context, more like kabuki than schmaltz.
“The next song I’d like to sing for you,” Daniel announced, removing his top hat and reaching into his pocket for a pair of rabbit ears, “needs a bit of introduction, but only a little bit. The lyrics are my own, though the idea behind them originates with the woman who wrote the music, Alicia Schiff. It’s Bunny Honeybunny’s opening number from a little musical we’re putting together called Honeybunny Time.” He fixed the rabbit ears in place. “There’s nothing much you need to know about honeybunnies that the song doesn’t pretty well explain, except that they’re very lovable.” He smiled. “So, without more ado—” He nodded to the pianist. The rabbit ears wobbled on their wire stems and went on wobbling to the end of the song.
He sang as if transfigured by delight, negotiating the various vocal hurdles with room to spare. The music was ravishing, a chocolate box of a song that managed to make his dopey lyrics seem not only sincere but even, in a disturbing way, devotional. Where it really came alive was at the refrain, a long, looping chain of alleluias and la-la-la’s that soared and swooped and skittered around the steady swirling compulsions of the piano. Wonderful music, and here he was, standing in front of Cardinal Rockefeller and all his guests and singing it. He was aware, all the while he sang, of faces beginning to break into smiles, and aware, as he took in their reactions, of the music, and there was no disjunction between these two awarenesses.
Off he went on another roller-coaster ride of la-la-la’s. This time, knowing that he’d brought it off once and could therefore bring it off again, he began, diffidently, to camp it up in proper honeybunny style. The people in the audience — that’s what the faces had become: an audience; his audience — were grinning now, were eating out of his hand, were loving him.
Suddenly a switch flipped inside him, and a light came on, one bright flash of everlasting glory, and there was no way to explain it but he knew that if he’d been wired into a flight apparatus at just that moment (and the moment was gone already) he would have taken off. He knew it, and it made no difference, because he was flying already — up to the ceiling, around the chandelier, over the housetops, and across the wide blue sea.
He sang the last verse at full tilt, with wierd, bemused exuberance.
For the third chorus he did, impromptu, what’d he’d never dreamed of doing during the weeks of rehearsaclass="underline" he danced. It was unabashedly naive, the merest hop and shuffle, but just right (he guessed) for a honeybunny. Anyhow it felt right, if also risky. Once, concentrating on his footwork, he almost lost hold of the vocal line, but if he’d fallen on his face it wouldn’t have made any difference.
He had become a singer. Which nobody could deny.
“And will there be more honeybunny songs?” Cardinal Rockefeller inquired, after Daniel had returned from the green room in his own human character.
“I hope so, your Grace. We’re working on it.”
“When there are, I shall try to persuade you to exert your fascination over us again. Such charm and, if I may call it so, innocence are all too rare. You, and your distinguished teacher, are both to be commended.”
Daniel murmured thanks, and Rey, by way of advertising this accolade to the company at large, knelt to kiss the Cardinal’s ring. The Cardinal then led Rey off to an adjoining room, and Daniel was left to receive various metaphorical posies of praise and a single matter-of-fact posie, from Monsignor Dubery, of six rather washed-up lilies. The nun from Cleveland apologized for her snub and gave him the address of her convent so he might send her the sheet music of this and all future honeybunny songs. Old acquaintances from the Metastasio offered prophecies of greatness.
When the circle of well-wishers had dwindled to a few garrulous shoulder-rubbers, Shelly Gaines, asserting the privilege of prior acquaintance, came forward with a drink in each hand — beer for himself, a screwdriver for Daniel — and commandeered the new-born star for, as he said, “some man-talk.”
“Your own song is, of course, beyond all praise, and entirely anomalous, if that isn’t the same thing. It isn’t pop, though it is in a way, and it isn’t bel canto, though it requires a voice of bel canto elasticity, and it’s nothing at all like operetta, though I suppose that’s what it must be nearest to. Really quite amazing — and in that I speak only of the song, nothing of the singer, who was—” Shelly rolled his eyes in imitation of Daniel’s own neo-darktown-strutters style. “—the prophet of an entire new form of madness.”
“Thank you.”
“But beyond compliments, Ben… May I call you Ben?”
Daniel nodded.
“Beyond mere rapturous applause, Ben, I would like to make you an offer.” He raised a finger as though to forestall Daniel’s objections. “A professional offer. I gather, from the second song on the program, that your goals aren’t entirely limited to the, how shall I say, commercial side of show biz.”
“Really, I don’t have any goals.”
“Now, now, no false modesty.”
“I mean, I’m still a student. A student’s goal is just to learn.”
“Well then, my offer should interest you precisely as a student. How would you like to sing at Marble Collegiate? As one of our soloists.”
“No fooling?” Daniel said, lighting up. And then, “No, that wouldn’t be possible.”
“Ah, the Cardinal has already taken you to his bosom, has he? One just can’t be quick enough.”
“No, not at all. And I’m sure he has no intention of doing so. He’s got the whole Metastasio to take his pick from. I’m simply not up to that level.”
“You’d certainly be up to ours, Ben. And then some. We’re not especially notable for our music program. A Bach cantata is about our farthest stretch, and that only once or twice a year. On the other hand, we try for more than a sing-along. From your point of view it would represent experience, which is a commodity you won’t be lacking for long, but do you, at the moment, have any other plans? Rehearsals are on Wednesday evenings. And I think I could get a hundred a week out of the budget. What do you say?”
“What can I say? I’m flattered, but—”