IN HER CENTRAL PARK West co-op, Clara Rodrigo was running out of breath. Her voice clawed its way up toward the A-flat, got as far as G, and—with a grotesque squawk—cracked.
Her accompanist, who made house calls twice weekly, looked at her with an odd arch to his eyebrow. “Excuse me, madame, it’s difficult to sustain the line unless you breathe before the E-flat. In fact, Bellini inserts the rest for that reason.”
Clara squinted at the score and wondered why she had never noticed that rest before. “Kavalaris never breathed before the E-flat and my breath control is far better than hers.”
The accompanist drew himself absolutely straight on the piano bench and was silent.
“You’re useless,” Clara said. “You’re all useless. None of you understands what I’m trying to achieve. Well, there’s always Austin Waters. I don’t like him, but he at least understands the voice.”
She phoned Austin Waters. She got his answering service, who said he was in London and would not be back for ten days. She slammed down the phone. How dare he go off without telling her? Didn’t he know she might need him?
She made another phone call, this time to one of Austin’s students. She chatted. She offered passes for her performance of Cavalleria Thursday. Finally, “And what do you hear of dear Austin?”
She listened, and her mind became like a magnifying glass. She began to perceive the tiny links in the plot against her. “Thank you, my dear. Do enjoy the tickets.”
She hung up. A scream ripped out of her.
Clara hired a limousine and got to JFK airport barely in time for the 8:30 evening flight to London. She stopped at Claridge’s and freshened up, and at 10:00 A.M. she strode into the HMV Kingsway studio as though she owned controlling interest in the company. She waved a jeweled hand at the guard. He let her pass. She went directly to the control room and stood listening.
The Billings girl was floating a long arc of sound over a murmuring string accompaniment. The ache that went through Clara was part admiration, part envy, but mostly despair. She knew she would never again sing those notes as this girl did, in one unbroken breath.
She touched the engineer’s shoulder. “Stop the recording.”
A goateed face lifted two eyes of shock at her.
“She should have sung A-flat on douce,” Clara said.
The engineer hesitated, then leaned toward the mike and raised his voice over the torrent of sound. “Mr. Kinsolving, sorry to interrupt. We seem to have a problem.”
Clara refused the chair to which Boyd gestured her. “Boyd, you’re a rascal. Didn’t we agree she wouldn’t sing with you?”
“We agreed she wouldn’t sing at the Met.”
Steel edged into her voice. “But, dear Boyd, you are the Met.”
He looked into her eyes and saw the madness of Lady Macbeth, of Medea and Lucia. “Now Clara, we’re in London. Our orchestra is British.”
“You gave me your word. Either you keep your word, or I break my contract.” She opened her purse, took out a document, and began ripping.
Boyd went through a rapid calculation. For six years now Clara had been abusing her voice, jetting across continents and oceans to five engagements a week, taking on roles she couldn’t handle. Her pitch was insecure on the top notes and she had the beginnings of a wobble. On the other hand, she still had a following, and she could still count on reviews. Vanessa Billings had as yet no following, no friends among the critics.
For the moment, Boyd needed Clara more than he needed Vanessa.
He reached out and stayed her hand. “Clara, you’ve made your point. Stop ripping.”
They were sitting at a table in the Waldorf bar. Boyd was drinking his gin and tonic, Vanessa was stirring hers.
“I believed in this project,” she said. “I believed in you and for the first time in ten years I believed in myself. I learned the role and I really thought we were going to do something wonderful.”
“And we did do something wonderful.” He put his hand over hers. He could feel her pulling her strength back into herself.
“Have you had dinner?” he offered.
“No, thanks. I’ll eat on the plane tonight.”
Richard Schiller listened and nodded with carefully measured sympathy. He didn’t need her feeling sorry for herself. “Boyd Kinsolving made a mistake,” he said. “That’s his problem.”
Vanessa huddled in the chair. “Sometimes I feel so powerless.”
“Then sometimes you’re an idiot. You’re going to give a recital. We’ll book Alice Tully Hall. We’ll buy ads on the classical stations—and we’ll use your Manon tapes. You’ll sing some lieder, some folksongs, and since you went to all the trouble of learning them, you’ll sing Manon’s three big arias.”
For a moment she didn’t react. “I’m not sure I can face…”
“To hell with you. You’re going to do this for Ariana.”
“Hey, honey,” Ames called.
Fran raised a questioning smile. “Mmm-hmm?”
He was stretched in his bathrobe, leafing through the entertainment section of the Sunday Times. They were on the glassed-in sun terrace, and a pot of coffee was steaming on the table.
“How’d you like to go to a concert on the twenty-third?”
“We can’t. Cathy and Sid Guberman invited us for dinner.”
He groaned. “Dinner and slides of their trip to Egypt? Say your mother’s in town. Say mine just died. Say anything.”
“What’s so great about this concert?”
“It’s that woman I heard at Kavalaris’s funeral.”
“Since when are you such an enthusiast for song recitals?”
“I’m not going to miss this one, Fran. If you want to watch slides at Cathy’s, watch slides. But I’m going.”Alice Tully Hall was sold out the evening of the concert, and Fran and Ames squeezed into their seats just as a rising wave of applause welcomed the singer on stage.
Vanessa Billings stood erect and slender in a pool of light, graceful and smiling in a plain white gown that showed strong shoulders and a good throat. She bowed twice and then turned and nodded to her accompanist.
The concert opened with three Schubert lieder.
Fran knew nothing about voice, but she had spent eight years studying the flute, and halfway through the first song, “An die Musik,” she knew that this voice had all the qualities of a fine instrument: security and timbre and the indefinable something that separated the great from the good.
At the end of the set, applause ripped through the hall. Fran was surprised at its intensity, but she joined in and clapped.
Ames didn’t clap.
She looked at him. Suddenly there was nothing connecting her to him. Something was happening in the air. She felt a presence, like a shadow. A prickling current ran along her skin.
She realized that he was staring at the singer.
And the singer was staring straight back at him.
At that moment Vanessa Billings’s voice rose like a fountain of sound in the opening measures of Schumann’s “Frauenliebe und Leben.”
The last applause was slowly dying when Vanessa hurried into the green room. She dumped herself into a chair and mouthed a silent groan. Richard Schiller embraced her and was surprised how limp she felt in his arms.
“Hey, pull yourself together. You’re going to have visitors.”
“Do I have to meet them? Now?”
“Glory has its tiring side.”
She sighed and pulled herself into the bathroom. He heard a long, drumming splash of water in the sink. She looked a little better when she came back.
He gave her a hug. “And remember—be nice to the critics.”
“How do I know who’s a critic?”
“I’m going to have to teach you everything, aren’t I.”
“You’re going to have to hold me up.”
He opened the doors. People were lined up into the hallway and down the stairs. He let them in ten at a time.
He could see it was difficult for her to meet strangers. At least thirty people asked her to autograph their programs, and six or seven even gave her little gifts: flowers, candy, sheet music. When she made a nervous and mildly humorous remark they all laughed. That seemed to confuse her. He had a sense this was her first taste of being a big deal.
Alan Cupson of the Times made an elaborate show of kissing her hand. He had grown a gray goatee since Richard had last seen him. “I’m not reviewing you, Miss Billings. Just here for pleasure. And what a pleasure it was. What about that high F in ‘Der Gärtner’? I never heard anyone but Kavalaris interpolate it. Were you by any chance imitating her?”
“High F?” She seemed confused.
“Don’t misunderstand me. I’m not criticizing. Certain liberties are entirely appropriate. Particularly with a middling composer like Wolf. He often needs a little—enhancement.” The critic caught her hand and his eyes held hers a moment. “I thank you for a lovely evening.”
Richard was about to open the door to another ten visitors when Vanessa stopped him. “I feel doped with all these people around me. I really have to lie down. Richard—please?”
She looked much too pale and he could believe she was about to faint.
“Okay. Take five.”
In thirty-five years he had never waited more than two minutes for anyone. But Nikos Stratiotis stood almost a half-hour in the corridor. It was a little past eleven. He was the last admirer still waiting when the door of the green room finally opened.
“Sorry to keep you,” Richard said.
A small light was burning on a table. Vanessa Billings was sitting up on a chaise longue. Richard made the introductions.
Nikos bent to kiss her hand. “Thank you for the concert. I admire your music very much.”
She raised her eyes to him and there was an instant of contact. “Thank you.”
“Are you hungry? Could I offer you dinner?”
“That’s very kind of you, but…”
“Or, if you’re tired, I could drive you home.”
She hesitated, and Richard quickly cleared his throat.
“That’s all right, Nikos. I was planning to take Vanessa home myself.”
“Of course.” Nikos took her hand once again and kissed it. “In that case, goodnight.”
He was at the door when her voice stopped him.
“Mr. Stratiotis—I’d like to drive with you. But could we walk just a little first?”
They walked south along Broadway, and the limousine crawled alongside them. It was a warm night, and the streetlights glowed like peacock’s spots in the hovering mist. For three blocks they were silent.
She looked at him, and he saw the eyes of someone else questioning him. “It’s you, isn’t it?” she said. “You paid for the hall and the ads. It was your money that got the critics there and filled the house and bought the applause.”
“You’re wrong. No one bought that applause. I’ve been giving you $800 a month. I rented the hall and paid $5,000 for publicity. Your agent says that’s standard.”
She stopped. “Why are you helping me?”
“It’s a debt.”
“You don’t owe me anything.”
“I owe it to someone else.”
They reached Fifty-ninth Street. A horse-drawn carriage was waiting at the curb, the driver and animal both dozing. “Would you like to ride in that?” he said.
She smiled, and Nikos woke the driver.
The clipclopping horse took them on a leisurely tour of the park and the avenues around it. Sometimes they spoke, sometimes they lapsed into long silences. There was a strange lack of tension between them. It was as though they were old friends reunited after a long separation, sifting through separate memories of the same events.
They rode for well over an hour. It was close to one in the morning when Nikos pointed and said, “Look, there’s a newsstand. Let’s see if your reviews are out.”
He stepped down from the cab and bought the papers. He read her reviews to her. They were good. The Times predicted that Vanessa Billings would be moving to the front ranks of America’s young vocalists. The News said she was Kavalaris without the flaws.
“You’re going to be very busy now,” he said. “But some evening—when you have time—may I see you again, Miss Billings?”
Richard Schiller’s desk was an island of inefficiency. He had to dig through notes on five contracts to find the letter that had come for Vanessa that morning.
She stood at the window. She read it and then she reread it. The words had a counterfeit ring. Like the sender.
“I’m gratified,” she said. “I’m very flattered Boyd Kinsolving liked my reviews. But…when I think of that man and what he’s put me through…”
She tore the letter up. She came around the desk and opened her fist and let the confetti rain down into the wastebasket.
Richard watched her. “There isn’t room in your career right now for a grudge. You’re going to sit right down and write him a sweet little thank-you note.”
“I’m not going to write him a sweet little anything.”
“Then I’ll forge it myself, because he’s the best game in town and I want you working for him.”
“I’ll never work for that man again.”
“Hey, I make the deals, you stick to making the music, okay? I don’t care who you hate or who hates you, you’ll be singing for him on the Metropolitan stage in three months.”
Fran walked in from the kitchen carrying a tray of yogurt and fresh strawberries. She saw Ames ripping something out of the Times.
“What’s that you’re tearing out?” she said.
He threw her an almost startled glance. “Nothing,” he said, folding the piece of paper. “Just an ad for Dill’s book.”
“Didn’t know he’d published it yet.”
“Sure. Last week.”
Ames took the article into his study and reread it for the twelfth time. Vanessa Billings had sung a recital at a veterans’ hospital. There was a photograph of her and he spent a long time looking at it.
He closed the study door and then he opened the metal cabinet. From behind the IRS forms he withdrew a folder that was beginning to bulge with clippings on Vanessa Billings.
He added the article to the file.