After Colette arrived Silenus announced he was taking them all out for dinner. Everyone in the troupe was irritated at this bizarre proclamation. Colette was tired from the trip and in no mood to celebrate anything, Franny’s hands were heavily bandaged from when she’d fought the wolf, Stanley looked sicklier than ever, and George had still not fully recovered. But Silenus would not be dissuaded. “My son has been returned to us at great risk,” he said. “We must celebrate that, and we must also make a show of respect to commemorate the dead who have been taken from us. I won’t let this night go by like any other. There must be something done to mark the occasion.”
They ate at a questionable French restaurant on the outskirts of Toledo. Colette, who of course knew French, pointed out many spelling errors in the menus. The food had received about the same type of preparation, and was all oversalted, though Silenus commented that at least the wine worked.
Before they started Silenus gave a toast to George and to Professor Tyburn, speaking of the man as one would of a fallen comrade. “Thought it would appear he fell by his own hand, we know now he did not,” he said. “If anything, he was poisoned, though it was a poison of the mind, of the soul, and not one of the flesh. I will not say he was a perfect man. Though he was flawed, he made his choices, and tried to play his part as best he could in the world he saw unfolding around him. For that, we must salute him: a player silenced, a role now hanging vacant, and many lines left unspoken.”
They all muttered their own salutes and drank together, and turned to eating. They did not make very good conversation. Franny tried to fill Colette in on what had happened, though she was as daffy and confused as ever, and Stanley kept pestering Silenus with little notes written on napkins.
“I told you for the last time, no,” said Silenus angrily. “I won’t consider them.”
George happened to catch a glimpse of what Stanley’s last message said: THEY ARE THE ONLY ONES WHO COULD BE OF HELP NOW.
“That’s if they give it. They’d much rather have me dead. I won’t even think about it, Stan.”
“Who are you talking about?” said George.
“None of your business,” said Silenus.
PEOPLE WHO COULD HELP, Stanley wrote.
“Are these… the people you talked about back in your office?” asked George. “The ones who gave you the tower?”
Stanley nodded.
“I would never engage their agencies,” said Silenus. “Not without a bribe to smooth over how I last left them. And there’s almost nothing that would be that valuable. Besides, we don’t even know what they could do for us.”
“Well, I’m sure that if a bribe’s necessary then they’re not the sort of people we’d want to speak with anyway,” said George.
“Half the world runs on bribes, kid,” said Silenus. “Bribes, threats, and lies. And there’s not much I wouldn’t do to get to the next piece of song. But going to them? If I say it’s reckless, you better believe it’s fucking reckless.”
George wondered who they could mean, but then had an idea. “Couldn’t you just do what you did in Parma?”
“And what’s that?”
“Make a distraction. Create… copies. For them to chase?”
Silenus bobbed his head side to side, considering it. “I could try. But I don’t possess the arts to make anything last that long. The wolves are entrenched around the parts of the First Song. We’d need to lure them a great distance, and that takes more than I have.”
Stanley whipped out another napkin and hurriedly scrawled: MORE THAN YOU HAVE. BUT NOT MORE THAN THEY DO.
Silenus read his note. At first he looked angry, but then he sat back in his chair and his eyes grew distant. “Do you think so? For a distraction?”
Stanley nodded earnestly.
“Hm,” Silenus said. He grew contemplative, and said nothing more. He stared at his wine, letting the liquid slip back and forth in the glass, but hardly drank a drop.
“So we’re really going to try and continue on?” asked Colette.
“Rather than what?” said Franny.
“Disbanding, of course,” said Colette.
“Disbanding?” said George, startled. “Are you serious?”
“Well, yeah,” said Colette. “Let’s think about this practically. Things are getting dangerous. We’re running out of money. And we’ve lost our lead act. It wasn’t our strongest, but it was maybe our most curious.”
“Are you sure it’s appropriate to be discussing business so soon after this tragedy?” asked Franny.
“I buried him,” said Colette icily. “I was the only one there to see him interred. I have paid my respects. And now we have to think about our own lives.”
The idea of losing Colette horrified George. “So you would what?” he asked. “Go on… alone? Without us?”
“Yes,” she said. “I would.”
“But there’s no need for that, is there?” he asked. “I mean, Harry was covering for Kingsley before, maybe he could just continue in the start. Or maybe I could cover for him.” He tried not to grin hopefully.
“Monologues aren’t fit for Kingsley’s spot, George,” said Colette. “Nor is piano playing. People want dumb acts when they walk in after intermission. Silent acts, or silly acts. Acts they can ignore.”
“Well, I… I could play very softly,” said George.
“I told you, no. That’s not what managers are looking for in that spot.”
“I’m sure we could think of something,” said Franny.
“Is anyone listening?” Colette asked. “Our budget can’t afford the time to let us come up with a new act. I should know. We can’t risk a break in income.”
As Colette spoke an altercation began at the table next to theirs. An elderly couple had just sat down to eat, but both were mortified when they saw the waiter who came to serve them was colored. “I can’t believe the indignity of it,” sputtered the old man. He refused to speak to the waiter at all, and demanded to see the manager. The waiter assumed the most obsequious pose he could, not even meeting the man’s eyes, and bowed away.
They tried to ignore it. Stanley wrote: YOU WOULD REALLY LEAVE US?
“I’m saying we may not have a choice, Stan,” Colette said. “We can’t tour with the remaining acts, they don’t align with any spots. No manager would take us on. Almost no one tours with multi-act sets anyways. I’m saying we can split what’s left and go our separate ways.”
Stanley wrote: AND ABANDON OUR MISSION?
Her lips tightened. “That was always your mission. Not mine, or anyone else’s. You two barely let us know what was going on all the time, anyway.”
Stanley nodded, dismayed.
At the table behind them the manager had arrived to try to quell the elderly couple’s anger, but the old man was having none of it. “I can’t believe you would allow such a thing,” he said. “This location was said to be particularly esteemed. And to think, I almost considered bringing my grandchildren here…”
“I am so sorry,” whispered the manager. “Sir, I deeply apologize. He’s a new hire, but… but in venues of this type it’s very common to allow coloreds to wait upon customers.”
“What!” said the old man, nearly choking. “Can you possibly be serious? We would never allow such a thing at home! Then is it true that cities have some moral infection in them? Letting negroes in to work in their kitchens, to touch their plates, their food?”
The elderly woman gasped as if she’d been injured by the very idea of it. Colette began slowly grinding her teeth.
“I think,” said Silenus finally, “that the issue may be moot.”
“And why is that?” asked Colette.
“Do you really think you can strike out on your own, Lettie?” said Silenus. “Do you think you’d find success as a single act?”
“Are you saying,” she said, “that I don’t have the chops?”
“No,” said Silenus. “I’m not saying that at all. I’m just saying that talent doesn’t overcome everything. There are barriers in the way. Especially for those dreaming of big-time success.”
More pops came from Colette’s mouth as she ground her teeth. “And what barriers are those?”
Silenus sighed and looked at her pleadingly. He attempted a smile. “Come on, Lettie.”
“Don’t come-on-Lettie me,” said Colette. “Not over this.”
“… I absolutely will not stand for it,” the old man was saying behind them. “I’ll have you know my family owns several newspapers in Branson and, yes, even the country, and I will… I will have the name of this establishment in every single one of them!”
“Please, sir, be reasonable,” said the manager, still attempting a whisper.
“We’ve talked about this,” said Silenus to Colette. “You were to stay with me until you’d become strong enough to—”
“Then I’m not strong?” said Colette. “I’m not good enough?”
“Not for the hardship you’d encounter if you went out on your own and tried playing New York,” said Silenus. “Which is what you want, isn’t it?”
Colette crossed her arms. “Others have succeeded there.”
“They were lucky, and they spent years working at it.”
“… Absolute disgrace,” muttered the old woman behind them.
“I’ve spent years with you!” said Colette. “Does that not count?”
“Not in the big time, where you want to go,” said Silenus. “You’d need to establish contacts, build an accepting base.”
“And I can’t do that with what I’m doing now?” she asked.
“You don’t know what you’d be up against, Lettie,” said Harry. “They wouldn’t let you do what you’re doing now. They’d want you to play like… to wear makeup, and be like…”
“Like what?” said Colette savagely.
“… Not fit for such work,” said the old man behind them.
“Like what, Harry?” said Colette.
“Come, now, Lettie…” said Silenus.
“… As if they belonged in here, with us…”
“Go on,” said Colette. “Say it. Say it, Harry.”
“Colette,” said George. “Please calm down.”
“Stay out of this, George,” she snapped. “Come on, Harry. Go on and tell me what they’d want me to be like.”
The old man behind them stood up. “I refuse to believe that you could have possibly thought this could go unnoticed. This is a moral stand that I take, and I demand you pay attention to me and treat me with some resp—”
“Oh, be quiet!” cried Colette. She stood up and spun around to face the old man. Her chair toppled over and crashed to the floor. The elderly couple flinched, and the manager stared at her as if he hadn’t seen her before.
Silenus stood up beside her. “Yes, please keep it down,” he said calmly. “We’re trying to eat over here.”
“What… what are you doing in here?” said the manager, staring at Colette. “How did they let you in?”
“You see?” said the old man. “Do you see? They’re letting them eat in here, too! I simply cannot believe it!” His wife looked as if she was about to faint.
Colette did not answer. She was staring at the floor. George saw her hands were trembling.
“You are mistaken, sir,” said Silenus. He laid a hand on Colette’s shoulder. “My lovely colleague here is not a negro. She is a Persian, and royalty at that—she is Colette de Verdicere of the Zahand Dynasty, Princess of the Kush Steppes.”
“Is this true?” said the manager.
Colette still did not answer. Her chest was heaving and her eyelids were fluttering. George thought she might start weeping.
“Go on,” said Silenus. “Tell them.”
But Colette did not tell them. She shook off Silenus’s hand, turned around, and walked out without a word.
The rest of the meal was soured by what had happened, and Silenus harangued the manager into giving them a discount. When that was done he dismissed them, sending Franny and Stanley to two separate hotels on the other side of town to avoid any watchful eyes, and sending George back to his secret bedroom in the theater. As to where he himself stayed, Silenus did not say. Presumably with his door he could stay anywhere.
George returned to find the theater was shutting down. He slipped in and wandered unseen up the backstage stairs. When he came before his bedroom door he stopped. There was a scent in the air, like honeysuckle and lavender. He recognized it as the perfume Colette wore so frequently.
George’s sense of smell was just as good as his hearing, and he followed the scent up the rambling stairs of the backstage and eventually came to the door to the roof. He walked out and found the weather was much better than when he’d last been on a theater roof, outside Chicago. This rooftop, however, was a tumbling, decrepit mess, featuring uneven growths of plumbing and sprouts of twisted chimneys, many of which did not seem to serve any function. The theater must have been worked on and reworked on, without anyone’s ever cleaning up the work from before.
He saw a figure standing on one of the more ancient chimneys at the edge of the roof, straddling the gap with each foot on one side. She was in the middle of performing a marvelous and alarming feat of acrobatics: she would shove off with one leg, and while balancing on the other she’d perform a full rotating pirouette on the edge of the chimney. Then she’d smoothly spin around and replace her foot, reassuming the original position.
“Go away, George,” said the figure.
George walked forward, stepping around the dodgier parts of the roof. “Why?”
“Because,” said Colette, “you are interrupting my concentration.”
George did not say anything. She was filthy from chimney ash and breathing hard from the exertion. She had evidently fallen once already, judging from the small scrapes on her hands and their slow, glittering leak of blood. He watched as she did another turn, and another.
“I don’t seem to be,” said George. “But please, come down from there. It’s not safe.”
“I know it’s not safe,” said Colette. “That’s why I’m doing it.”
George winced as she performed the turn again. The chimney looked very unsteady.
“I hate the fucking sticks,” she said to him. “I hate these fucking little people and these fucking little towns and these fucking little theaters.” She did yet another turn. “But do you know what I hate most?”
“I hate knowing that they’re probably the same way in the big time,” said Colette. “They’d treat me the same way, wouldn’t they?”
She did three more turns, each one quicker and harder than the last. She wore a grim look as if this was some kind of grave self-punishment to be meted out in solitude. Yet even in these circumstances George still found her powerfully alluring, this ash-streaked girl performing for him on this squalid rooftop.
On the fourth turn the brick she was standing on separated from its mortar and began to rock. She gasped as she tried to steady herself. George did not hesitate. He sprang forward and grabbed one of her arms and heaved her off. She fell on him and they both tumbled to the ground.
“What did you do that for?” she asked as she tried to get off him.
George gasped for breath. When he finally got it back, he said, “You were going to fall.”
“I wasn’t going to fall!” said Colette. “I could handle a brick moving a little! That’s part of the practice!”
She stood up and strode away to the side of the building. To his horror, she climbed up and stood on the very edge, looking out at the street below. “The threat of falling is part of it.”
“Please get down,” said George. “Please.”
“I won’t get down,” said Colette. Then she thought, and said, “But I will sit down.” And, very smoothly, she bent her legs and plopped down to sit on the edge of the roof, her feet dangling off the side. “These little towns,” she said. “They’re killing me, piece by piece.”
George walked over to her, moving much more slowly as he came to the edge. Then he sat next to her, facing inward. “I know.”
“You do?”
“Sure. Small theaters, small applause. I understand how dull it is.”
“That’s not the problem.”
“Oh? Then what?”
She was quiet for a long, long time. She reached up and pulled out the inscribed, ornate amulet that hung around her neck. “Do you know what this is? What the writing on it means?”
“No.”
She laughed. It had a very bitter sound to it.
“What is it?” he asked.
“Neither do I,” she said.
“I’m sorry?”
“I bought this little trinket in some pawnshop in upstate New York, George. It’s not some royal heirloom. It’s a piece of gypsy junk that just looks pretty.” She turned it over in her hand. “But I didn’t need to tell you that,” she said quietly. “You know I’m not really a princess, right?”
George did not immediately answer her. After a while he nodded. “Well. Yes. I thought it’d be rude to say something about it, though.”
“Do you know what I really am?”
“I don’t understand. What do you mean, ‘what’?”
“I mean what I really am, George. Why I have to make up that princess stuff.”
He was still not sure what she was suggesting. To think of Colette, whom he thought the most beautiful and most frustrating person in the world, in terms of ‘what’ was not something that came naturally to him.
“I’m not from Persia,” she said. “I’m from New Orleans. My daddy was white. But not… not my momma.” She turned to look at him, eyes burning. “Do you see?”
He thought about it. Then he nodded. “Yes. I do.”
“And what do you think of that?”
He shrugged. Then, in a move that evidently surprised her, he patted her hand. “I don’t think anything.”
“You don’t? Why?”
He thought about it for a bit and shrugged again. “I’ve had… a trying last couple of days, Colette. I saw things I never want to see again. Right now I’m just happy to have a pleasant moment with you.”
Colette was quiet.
“This is why you came up with the princess story, isn’t it?” he asked.
“I didn’t,” she said. “That was Harry. He found me in New Orleans, performing on the street. Said he had an eye for talent, and I had it. Said I could get out, if I wanted.” He noticed she was unconsciously rubbing her upper arm as she spoke. There below her shoulder was a small patch of glossy whitish skin, a winking scar that, to his eye, was about the exact shape of the end of a cigarette. “But I couldn’t just jump into performing. I’d only be able to get on TOBA. You know what that is?”
“Yes,” said George. TOBA referred to the Theater Owners’ Booking Association, which worked the East Coast and served as the circuit for black acts. In vaudeville it was commonly referred to as “Tough on Black Asses” due to its grueling pace and poor pay.
“I was light-skinned enough that he came up with this idea,” said Colette. “I pass as a foreigner tolerably well. I don’t look like most black folks, and who the hell out here knows what a Persian looks like? Plus I speak French pretty good. So instead he dolled me up as royalty.” She cracked a smile. “Smart-ass. Every time, I can’t believe we get away with it. Some negro girl making white people bow to her and buy her drinks. Just because of a dress and a bad accent and a piece of gaudy jewelry.”
“It’s a performance,” said George. “He must have taught you well.”
“Yeah. He did. It may be my best performance,” she said. “Better than anything I do onstage.”
“That’s not true.”
“Maybe not. But I can’t keep it up forever. Harry knows this schtick won’t hold up in New York. I can only pass for royalty out in the sticks. But it’s more than that. I don’t want to keep this up anymore. I’m sick and tired of pretending. I hate this goddamn princess I’m supposed to be. But without her, where would I be?” She sighed. “Do you remember when I told you about the Palace? How I got to see it?”
“Yes.”
“I didn’t get to go in there when I was in New York, but I went to another theater. One about as good, it seemed. And there was a comedian playing there. Everyone had crammed in to go see him. He was the act to see, you know? And as it turns out, he was colored. And not just colored, but not even in blackface,” she said, referring to how colored entertainers were expected to perform in the same makeup that white performers wore in minstrel routines. “That was something I’d never seen before. And he did this bit, just about the funniest bit I ever saw. It was a dumb act, a pantomime bit where he pretended like he was in a poker game, gambling against some others. He did this great thing where he’d lift his head up and think about his cards—which weren’t there, of course—and he’d flutter his eyes real fast and mumble to himself a little. And everyone just howled with laughter.”
“Bert Williams,” said George, who recognized the bit from reports he’d heard. Williams was a titan in vaudeville, especially after his success in the Ziegfeld Follies. He was one of the very few blacks to have achieved such fame, whether people liked it or not.
“Bert Williams,” said Colette. “Yeah. I don’t know how, but he did it. Playing in the best theaters, for the best audiences. And I figured, if he can do it, why can’t I? All it takes is talent. Talent, and practice.” She was quiet. “How much further can I get, do you think? I won’t ever manage the troupe. If Harry gives it to anyone, he’ll give it to Stanley.”
“Stanley? Why Stanley?”
“Because they’re related, of course.”
George’s mouth fell open. “Related? They don’t look anything alike! How do you know they’re related?”
“Well, I don’t really know for sure. It’s just how they talk to each other, I suppose. But if my hunch is right, I’m never getting the troupe,” she said. “I’ll always just be Princess Colette, stuck out here in the sticks, doing little turns for little theaters. I’ll never be big-time. Just some silly colored girl, nursing silly dreams, a sideshow to the real thing.”
“That’s not what you are,” said George.
“And you would know that?”
“I think I do,” said George. His heart was beating very fast. He could feel his pulse in his wrists and ears. “Do… do you know what it was like, seeing you for the first time?”
“No. I guess I’ve never heard your opinion, as an audience member.”
He swallowed. His mouth felt hot and thick. Was he supposed to do this now? It seemed there’d be no better time.
He said, “I know vaudeville isn’t supposed to be art. It’s supposed to be entertainment, which is different. But I think art… I think it’s making something from nothing, basically. It’s taking something as simple as a movement, or a few notes, or steps, or words, and putting them all together so that they’re bigger than what they ever could have been separate. They’re transformed. And just witnessing that transformation changes you. It reaches into your insides and moves things around. It’s magic, of a sort.
“I never really knew that until I saw your act. But when you walked out on that stage, I knew I was seeing something… different. Something maybe more amazing than what the professor and Silenus had done. You were making something up there, out of just a few notes and steps. It was like a little glimpse of perfection, made out of the simplest elements possible, and seeing it changed something in me. I’d never encountered anything like that. And when it was done, I… I knew I had to see you, to meet you.”
Her eyes had grown wide. “W-what? Why? What are you saying?”
“I’m saying I knew that… that whoever that girl up on that stage was, in order to make that she had to have something inside her that made her more beautiful than anything else in the world. And I don’t think I was wrong.”
He looked at her. Her mouth was hanging open slightly, and her eyes were searching his face. He steeled himself. He had never given one of these before, and had received one only once, but still he shut his eyes and leaned in…
“Wait,” said Colette. “Whoa, wait. Stop.”
George opened his eyes. Her hands were up, like she was ready to hold him back if he continued. “Stop?”
“Yes, George. Stop.” There was an awkward pause. She scooted away a little and looked out at the street. She took a breath like she was going to say something, but did not.
“I’m sorry,” he said quickly.
“Mmm-hmm,” she said, as if she could not trust herself to open her mouth.
“I’m sorry. I really am sorry.”
“Just… stop talking, George.”
“All right.”
She stared out at the city, thinking. She did a lot of head-shaking, he noticed. Then she spun around to sit facing in at the roof, alongside him. She did not look at him. “That was… a lot to take in.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry, George. Just don’t. It was a very beautiful and… and flattering thing to hear, but… Listen, just… I don’t know. Just forget about it.”
George did not say anything. He stared into his lap.
“Oh, Christ,” she said. “Listen, you’re… a very nice boy, and you’re clever, but… I’m sorry. I really don’t think of you like…”
“I see,” said George.
“Jesus, George,” she said. “What did you have to go and say that for?”
“Because that was what I felt.”
“No. You don’t want someone like me. I’m all beat-up and broken.”
“Not to me, you aren’t.”
“You don’t know me,” she said, now angry. “You don’t, George. You said it yourself, you’re looking for that girl on the stage.”
“But that was you,” George said.
“No, it wasn’t,” said Colette. “Not really.” She stood up. “Just forget about it, George. It’s better for you that way.”
“I love you,” he said suddenly. Even as the words left his lips, he knew they had a hollow and desperate ring to them, and he regretted it.
“Jesus Christ,” she said.
“I’m sorry,” he said again. He bunched up his fists and held them to the sides of his head, hiding his face from her. He wished he could strike the sides of his skull and rid himself of the memory of these last few minutes.
“Go to bed, George,” Colette said. “It’s late and cold and you still look sick. Just… just go to bed.”
George did not answer. He just sat there bent with his fists pressing into his temples.
She sighed. “If I leave you here, will you jump off the side of this fucking building, or something stupid?”
“No,” George said softly.
“Promise?”
He nodded.
“I’m sorry, George,” she said. “I really am. I never meant to make you unhappy. I really didn’t.” Then she turned around and walked away.
When her footsteps faded he peeked through his hands at her. Before the door she stopped as if she wished to look back at him, but she did not and opened it and slipped through, and he was alone.
George stayed on the roof for a long time. In between bouts of self-loathing he would relive moments when he should have said this instead of that, or done that instead of this. For one moment it’d all been going so well… Perhaps the slightest alteration in the night’s proceedings would have changed all this, and he’d now be sitting here with her hand in his, happy at last.
Maybe he’d missed his opportunity long before now. He thought of other close moments when he should have perhaps been more aggressive, and pressed his case. Yet it was in one of those memories that he stumbled on an evening that made him feel the most ashamed yet.
It had been nearly a month ago, when they’d arrived in town to find they had a free evening. Almost on a whim George had suggested going to a show and seeing the competition, and no one but Colette had been game. As they sat next to one another in the back of the theater they’d traded quiet barbs about the sloppiness of the acts, or the poor quality of the orchestra, or how such and such line was the exact copy of one they’d heard weeks ago. They’d been happily smug critics, sharing secrets the rest of the audience couldn’t understand.
Yet then the third act had come on, and things had changed. George, for his part, had kept up his critique, but Colette’s line of observation had quickly dried up. It wasn’t until the act was almost over that he’d glanced over and seen her sitting still in her seat, eyes thin and mouth even thinner. With the laughter of the crowd echoing around their ears, he couldn’t understand her sudden change in mood.
He supposed now that he should have noticed what had been different about that act: unlike the others, it was a minstrel routine. George had seen and even played for many of them in his time. He’d encountered his first at Otterman’s, and, since he’d never seen a black person in Rinton, he’d not been sure what these gleaming, ebony-dark people with odd red mouths were meant to be at all. Tofty the violinist had told him the act was meant to be aping negroes, but in later performances George found this explanation still did not satisfy. Many coon acts did not make any reference to negroes at all, and in the few colored shows he saw (certainly not at Otterman’s, but at other theaters) the colored performers had been wearing the same kind of makeup. What did the makeup signify? What was its intent? He’d never been sure.
He should have realized then that the makeup had a very grave meaning to Colette. Knowing what she’d just told him on the roof, he realized now that to her it had a meaning of such awful importance he doubted if he’d ever fully understand it. How must she have felt, seeing that distorted, puerile version of what people thought her to be dancing and singing and clowning on the stage? She, this elegant thing he worshipped so nakedly? God, he thought… had he laughed at that show, there in front of her? He did not think he had, but he felt horribly ashamed to even imagine it. Every laugh the act garnered surely wounded her, and to hear a friend laugh as well would have been pain beyond pain.
But thinking about it now made what had happened after the show even more troubling.
They had exited together, and George, still ignorant but sensing her discomfort, had asked her what was wrong. Did she feel ill? Or cold? Had she not found the show funny?
At that, she had stood up straight, and slowly picked her head up until her nose was in the air and her shoulders were thrown back, a posture of immaculate haughtiness. She’d smiled coldly, as if she would never be so vulgar as to admit genuine amusement, and said with a trace of a French accent, “Oh, certainly. After all, they are a very funny people.” And she had walked away, her stride stately, almost queenly.
It had been, he’d recognized, a part of her Princess Colette act. But now he wondered how she’d meant those words. Had she referred to the actors on the stage? Or had she meant something more? Or perhaps she had briefly felt that she would rather be a false person, a fabricated character, than a real one in such a bitter and callous world, and sought comfort in her little creation.
George thought about it. After a while, he sadly realized she was right: he did not really know her at all.