DELPHI KRAMER WAS STUCK in traffic and furious. It was the last straw in a twenty-four-hour period that had gone from bad to worse and was now careening headlong into disastrous.
“What the hell is going on?” she barked at the cab driver.
He caught her eye in the rearview mirror. “There was an accident on the exit ramp from the thruway. Everyone’s detouring. It’s a big mess.”
Delphi gave an exasperated sigh. “You couldn’t have told me before I got into your cab?”
“What’re you gonna do, walk? It’s two miles from the train station to downtown, almost three to Livingston Stage. At least you’re sitting.”
“I just spent two and a half hours sitting on a train—no, make that three hours, because we sat outside fucking Poughkeepsie for a half hour—and now I’m totally late!” She kicked the seat in front of her and fumed.
“Calm down. I see a coupla cops up ahead, and it looks like it thins out after that.”
Delphi grumbled and sank lower in the backseat. This whole plan was harebrained. Isobel was the impulsive one. Unlike her roommate, Delphi preferred to stake out a situation and calculate the odds of a satisfactory outcome. But when Carlo Alessandrini, the maître d’ at the restaurant where she waited tables, had unexpectedly—shockingly, in fact—fired her last night, she had been at a complete loss. Without Isobel there to absorb the blow, Delphi had found herself channeling her absent friend, stalking the small L-shaped studio apartment they shared and regaling the indifferent furniture with the kind of nonstop, stream-of-consciousness monologue Isobel was prone to delivering. Delphi finally wore herself out, drained what was left of their Bushmills, and fell into a heavy, self-pitying sleep. When she woke up, it had taken several minutes before she remembered what had prompted her to down a third of a bottle of whiskey, and then she burst into tears—a reaction even more uncharacteristic than indulging her wounded pride the night before.
As she soaked in the bathtub, her Botticellian blond curls piled high and secured on top of her head with a retro hot pink hair pick, she missed Isobel more than ever. Tonight was opening night of Sousacal, and Delphi knew their dress rehearsal was that afternoon, but she’d hoped she could at least get Isobel on the phone that morning. When her call went to voicemail, she realized Isobel was probably still asleep after their ten-out-of-twelve. She could have tried Sunil, but he was the last person she wanted lobbing questions at her. It was painfully obvious that he carried a torch for her, and the truth was she was on the fence about him. Delphi found talent attractive, and his smoldering good looks made him distinctly her type, but she wasn’t certain enough to jeopardize their friendship. Delphi, who hailed from a family of similarly floral-named sisters (Delphi was short for Delphinium), placed special value on platonic male friendship.
Even so, she was feeling distinctly left out. While she had been trapped in the restaurant’s wine cellar fighting off Carlo’s aggressive advances (which Isobel had long predicted, but Delphi had never actually expected), her two best friends had been enjoying the exciting run-up to opening night of a new musical. Granted, Isobel said the show was terrible, but Isobel was a snob. Delphi was sure it couldn’t be that bad.
She was about to find out for herself. Or would be, if the traffic from the Albany train station weren’t impossible. She had leapt out of the bathtub that morning, propelled to her laptop by the inspired but obvious solution. Naked and dripping (a benefit of being alone in the apartment), she had navigated to Amtrak’s website, done some quick calculating in her head, and found a train that wouldn’t kill her whole day, but would get her there in plenty of time for the eight o’clock curtain. Then she’d indulged in some retail therapy, grabbed a quick lunch, and returned home with enough time to throw some necessaries into a bag and race out the door to Penn Station.
She needn’t have raced, because after sitting on the train for an hour, it was announced that there was a mechanical failure and they would all need to take the next train. She waited another forty-five minutes for that one to depart, and then there was the inexplicable half-hour hiatus in Poughkeepsie. When she’d asked the conductor why they were stopped, he had returned the singularly unhelpful, “So we can have this conversation.” Finally, they had started moving again. The train had pulled into Albany-Rensselaer at seven forty, and here she was, stuck in traffic.
It was only now that the true cost of her impulsiveness dawned on her. In the middle of everything else, she’d neglected to buy a ticket for the show.
“Son of a bitch!”
The cabbie scowled in the mirror. “Hey, lady, I’m doing everything I can!”
“I know, sorry.” She let out a strangled groan and pulled out her cell phone. She quickly located the theater’s phone number. After three tries, she got through.
“I’m sorry, we’re totally sold out. It’s opening night,” the woman intoned disapprovingly in her flat, upstate New York accent.
Of course, thought Delphi. Because nothing was going right today.
“Please,” she begged. “I have friends in the show. I decided to come up from the city last minute to surprise them. They don’t know I’m coming. Don’t you hold house seats?”
“They’re all spoken for.”
“Standing room?”
“Against fire regulations. But come anyway. We sometimes have subscribers who don’t show. When you get here, come find me. My name is Miriam, and I’m the box office manager. I’ll see what I can do.”
“I’ll be there in ten minutes!”
“Five,” said the cabbie as a policeman waved them past, and the taxi picked up speed.
“Five,” Delphi repeated into the phone. “Miriam, thank you so much.”
“No promises. By the way, who are your friends?”
“Isobel Spice and Sunil Kapany. And Hugh Fremont.”
“Oh, that Hugh.” Miriam giggled. “He’s such a charmer.”
“How’s the show?” Delphi asked.
Miriam paused. “You’ll see.”