STRIPED MARBLE COLUMNS with gilded caps marched stolidly down the center of the Savoy lobby. The tray ceiling was frescoed in gold leaf and framed ten brass and smoked-glass chandeliers. Kirsten knew because she counted them as she waited. Three steps away, Erin stood surrounded by fans and photographers and chatter. Twice Erin looked her way, imploring her to join in. But Kirsten felt no desire to be a star by proxy. As she watched Erin revel in the diva’s role, Kirsten almost wished she could resign herself to falling tonight and never rising again. At least then she would end the terror of being wounded anew by myths of love and hope.
Erin returned then, slipping her arm around Kirsten’s waist and smiling as photographers trapped the pair of them in electric epoxy. Another soft grip of her hand, an even softer “Come.”
Erin led her to the side hall, away from the lower lounge with its live jazz quartet and smoky elegant din. They entered what was more of an alcove than a restaurant, one named merely “Upstairs.” A dozen stools lined the narrow bar, with nine tables set along the windows overlooking the hotel’s front entrance. The talk was as muted as the illumination from the Savoy sign over the hotel portal.
Erin stopped by a table where a bottle of champagne already peeked from a glistening bucket. “I only drink champagne and I never smoke. Those are the only traits I covet of the baritones and their breed, how deep-voiced men can have whiskey and cigarillos and still sing. I have tried both and love them too much for a fragile-throated woman.” She waved Kirsten into a seat. “Are you always so quiet?”
“Usually.”
The look Erin gave her was liquid with tenderness. “You poor fragile beauty. They’ve robbed you, haven’t they?”
“What?”
“Words do nothing for what you’ve been forced to carry around inside.” She leaned across the table, drawing in so close Kirsten could not help but breathe her spiced perfume. “Listen, my sister. I know you. So very, very well.”
Erin turned away momentarily, and spoke to the hovering waiter. “Bring us a selection of whatever is freshest and best.”
“Of course, Ms. Brandt.”
Erin stripped the foil from the champagne bottle and expertly twisted out the cork. “I love doing this, releasing the night’s music. Why should I allow a strange man to have this pleasure?”
She poured them both a measure, then raised her fluted glass by the stem. “To sisters bonded by what the world will never understand.”
Kirsten listened to the crystal bell and sipped from her glass. She tasted only bubbles.
Erin raised her chin until the faint cleft was accented. The skin of her neck drew tight as an artist’s line. She kept this position as she set down her glass. Her dark eyes targeted Kirsten along the bore of her nose. “I know,” she murmured. “It’s so hard to speak of, all you have inside, all you’ve been forced to choke off. No words will ever do.”
Kirsten drank once more, swallowing tiny fragments of air her lungs could not find.
“How do I know? Because it has happened to me. I said we are sisters, did I not? The world has hurt and cheated and stolen from me as it has from you.”
Kirsten looked out the window, down to where the tide of wealth and people passed beneath her. Try as she might, she could not convince herself the night’s gaiety was any more real than smiles off a backlit strip of cellotape. She sighed. Perhaps the only way to endure it all was through finding a comfortable lie.
Erin reached across the table and gripped Kirsten’s hand with both of her own. “Let me be your voice. Let me sing my arias for both of us. Let me shout the pain. Then, when we are alone, let us find one another in the intimate sharing of our secret.” Fiercely she clenched Kirsten’s hand, though her voice remained an enticing murmur. “Shall I tell you what that secret is?”
A shadow appeared and hovered by their table. They looked over together to find a nervous young man in the Savoy’s uniform of starched shirt and tails. He handed Erin an engraved calling card. “Excuse me, Ms. Brandt. But the gentleman says it is most urgent.”
“Impossible. The man is utterly impossible.” Erin tossed her napkin aside. “Forgive me, my dear. This will require two seconds only.”
Kirsten tried to lose herself in the champagne and the theater outside her window. But this unbidden space could not have come at a worse time. Now that she was alone, she could not help but acknowledge the inaudible lament. This was not working. Her mental confusion was a serrated blade sawing at the night’s façade.
She found herself recalling the high school guidance counselor who had helped her graduate early. Such memories were normally dreaded events, yet this image merely came and spoke and lingered, like a dawn delayed by a passing storm. Once a term she and the counselor had held the same terse conversation, a ritual between two people who were almost but not quite friends. The counselor asked Kirsten if everything was all right. Kirsten always gave the required answer, that she was fine, her home was great, her parents the best. Then the counselor spoke the words that echoed now in the smoke and the chatter and the clink of fine crystal. Know when to ask for aid.
So ask she did. Then and there. Her eyes were wide open, yet she saw nothing save the vague reflection of a lonely young blonde in the window beside her. Kirsten stared into a candlelit gaze of empty confusion and spoke the words. Help me.
So swiftly it could only have been in response, a barrier rose between her and the opulent chamber. The unseen curtain blanketed even sound. Kirsten stared anew at her reflection, this time searching with the honesty of total isolation. Her reflection said nothing. Merely waited.
She knew then what it was she needed to apprehend. Softly she spoke the words, You do not belong here.
Her translucent apparition stood up, and she rose as well. The image guided her out of the restaurant. She walked down the stairs and through the fancy foyer and out the front doors. She thought perhaps she caught sight of the apparition in the window of a departing taxi, moving so swiftly Kirsten had no choice but accept that she was both alone and where she should be. She looked up in time to see Erin return to the table, sit down, drink from her glass, and laugh at something the waiter said. At home in a realm from which Kirsten had been forever expelled.