ISOBEL HAD COMPLETED her traditional opening night rituals, but given the events of the past twenty-four hours, she decided it wouldn’t hurt to devise a few new ones for good measure. Hugh had given her a box of Godiva chocolates, and after choosing the red foil-wrapped heart, she resolved to save the rest and eat one before each performance. She also sang the song she’d learned in sixth grade listing all fifty states in alphabetical order and followed that with the first fifty digits of pi, which her brother Percival, a math prodigy, had set to music when he was six.
She wished Percival were coming for opening night and Delphi too, for that matter, but Percival was deep into midterms at Columbia, and Delphi didn’t want to give up any work hours, which Isobel understood. Percival, as was his wont, had written her a humorous light verse in praise of her achievements, but the opening night gift that was most unexpected and made her happiest was the bouquet of flowers from her friend James Cooke. She wondered if friend was the proper designation. He had started as her temp agent, when she sandblasted her way into his office a year ago and insisted he send her out despite her lack of office experience. Their relationship had progressed stormily, and he no longer worked at Temp Zone, but they had parted on good terms.
She had given James’s flowers pride of place on her side of the dressing table she shared with Talia, and as she reread his note, “Knock ’em dead—figuratively speaking, of course,” Isobel felt a rush of warmth and affection. James, who was not a theater person, had not only known the right thing to do, but had taken the trouble to do it.
Talia peered into the dressing room mirror, turning her head from side to side.
“What do you think?” she asked.
“You could use a touch more color in your cheeks. Those lights are bright, and you’re still a little peaky from last night.”
Talia reached for the blusher, and it flew out of her hands and into Isobel’s lap. “Sorry. I don’t know why I’m so nervous.”
“It’s opening night!”
Talia took the blusher from Isobel and applied it with a shaky hand. “It isn’t only that. I thought everyone was acting a little strange this afternoon. What if you’re right and someone is trying to sabotage the show?”
“Then only one person would be acting strange. If you ask me, it’s because now they know there are Broadway producers coming.”
“But Kelly said—”
“She’s just trying to keep everyone calm.”
Talia’s face went pink under her reinforced rouge. “So it is true? I thought Arden was a little delusional.”
“Well, Arden is a little delusional, but yes, it’s true.”
“You really don’t like her, do you?”
Isobel shrugged at her reflection in the mirror. “It’s more that she doesn’t like me.” She rose to take down her bonnet from the wig head on the shelf above the table. “Do you like her?”
Their eyes met in the mirror as Isobel tied a neat bow under her chin.
“I think it’s wise to stay on her good side.” Talia shuffled her feet in her white lace-up boots. “How do you know it’s true about the producers?”
“I heard it from Thomas, and the costume people always know everything.” Isobel bit her lip. “Sorry. That probably didn’t help your nerves.”
Talia positioned her own bonnet over her wig and tied it under her chin. “At this point it doesn’t much matter.”
“Break a leg,” Isobel said.
“Thanks. You too.”
Isobel left Talia in the dressing room and went off in search of Hugh. She found him pacing nervously in the pit.
“How’s it going down here?”
“All the parts are on the stands, and I’m guarding them like Cerberus. What’s the mood upstairs?”
“The usual jitters, magnified by the possibility of sabotage and Broadway producers.” She was seized by a sudden suspicion. “Did you know?”
Hugh smiled sheepishly. “I did.”
“And you didn’t tell me?” she cried indignantly.
“I didn’t want you to get your hopes up. I doubt it will come to anything. They probably won’t even show. You’ve seen Waiting for Guffman.”
She tugged his sleeve. “But what if they do? I know I don’t have a big part, and it’s all pretty sketchy anyway, but as long as I show some talent, even if they think the show is awful, which of course it is, they might like my performance and remember me, right?”
He took her in his arms. “Nobody who has ever seen you could forget you.”
An ostentatious cough startled them apart.
“If you two lovebirds are finished, I’d like to find out what the orchestration is going to be for my first-act song, since I didn’t get to hear it this afternoon,” Arden said.
“Actually, we weren’t finished.” Isobel planted a long, lingering kiss on Hugh’s mouth. She pulled away and smiled sweetly at Arden. “There. Now we are. Good luck tonight!”
Arden gasped and took a faltering step backward. “It’s bad luck to wish someone good luck, you idiot! That’s why you say break a leg or merde.”
Isobel caught Hugh’s eye and winked. “You don’t believe in all that superstitious stuff, do you?”
Arden huffed and looked away, but Isobel divined from the tightness around Hugh’s mouth that he believed in it. She hoped her irreverence hadn’t just undone all her brand-new good luck charms.
DELPHI LET OUT A LONG, slow breath as the opening number finished and the cast held for applause. The clapping started slowly after an overlong pause during which the audience, despite the unmistakable cue to clap in the form of a giant cymbal crash, collectively tried to decide what to make of what they’d just seen.
“‘Antonio is a happier pappy now’?” she muttered. “Please, God, tell me I did not just hear that.”
“Sadly, you did,” said a male voice next to her.
She glanced over and saw a slightly built man with round glasses, a boyish face, and receding ash-blond hair. He was scribbling in a notebook.
“Are you a critic?”
He raised an eyebrow. “Aren’t we all?”
Delphi bit her lip to keep from laughing out loud. Onstage, the scene continued with a medley showing young Sousa, known to his family as Philip, morphing with astonishing speed from a pink plastic prop baby to a boy of around ten, who was charged with playing Philip from ages five through fifteen, when he disappeared behind a gazebo and reappeared as an adult actor.
And to think I nearly killed a cabbie over this, Delphi thought.
Finally, Isobel and Sunil came onstage together as Emma and Benjamin Swallow. Isobel looked particularly fetching in a blue and white dress and flower-trimmed bonnet, but it was Sunil who took her breath away. His burnished complexion shone against his pale seersucker suit, and she could feel the heat of his eyes from her seat in the fourth row. She had seen Sunil onstage before and knew he had a gorgeous voice, but she’d never seen him costumed quite so attractively. The slim, nineteenth-century suit clung to him in an appealingly suggestive way, and she gained a new and visceral appreciation for why clothes that hid the body were considered sexy.
Sousa came back onstage, and the three of them had a brief scene. Then there was a duet between Sousa and Emma, “Song of the Sea,” based, according to the notes, on an actual poem of Emma Swallow’s.
I stood by the cruel, crawling sea
And this was the dole it brought to me.
A song so strange came in with the tide,
Mine eyes were blinded, my strong heart died.
The song was sweet, but it ground the action to a halt. Delphi applauded enthusiastically for Isobel, but the critic groaned and flipped a page of his notebook.
“Hey, that’s my friend!”
He continued to scribble without looking up. “Nothing against your friend—lovely voice—but you pays your money, you takes your chances.”
He was right, of course. If Isobel and Sunil were watching this debacle with her instead of appearing in it, they would be engaged in an eye-rolling competition, which would culminate in a full-scale takedown at the bar afterward. Or during intermission, because she couldn’t imagine they’d stick it out for the second act. But there were her two dearest friends, soldiering on in the face of material that was either intentionally sappy or unintentionally hilarious, and she had traveled the better part of a day to see them. If they could tough it out, so could she.
Oh, and here was Sunil again, putting the kibosh on the budding romance between Isobel and—Delphi glanced at her program—Chris. Somehow it was easier to process the actors as themselves, rather than their characters. And here was a stunning auburn-haired beauty in danger of being capsized by her anachronistically surgically-enhanced bosom. Delphi noted with some disgust that her seatmate was sitting bolt upright with a moony smile on his face. With a sharp intake of breath, she suddenly recognized him as the New York Post’s bitchy theater columnist, Roman Fried. What had brought him to the wilds of Albany—and how could she save Isobel from his poison pen?
The scene onstage continued, and Delphi realized that the beautiful redhead was the infamous Arden Claire—whose real last name, according to Isobel, was Horowitz—in the role of Sousa’s wife. She wasn’t a bad actress, but she seemed far too glamorous and contemporary for the role. Isobel’s complaints weren’t simply ego, Delphi conceded. The truth was, Isobel would have been much better as Jennie Sousa.
“The Washington Post” began—one of the few Sousa marches Delphi recognized—and she groaned inwardly as more embarrassing lyrics assaulted her ears. Next to her, Fried scribbled furiously on his notepad, while his eyes remained glued to Arden. Chris whirled Arden around and pulled her onto his knee. She sat for a moment, gazing at him with a look more of hatred than love, then jumped to her feet. Chris extended his arm, and Arden twirled into his chest, which reminded Delphi of the disco moves she and her sisters had spent their childhood perfecting. In a single, graceful gesture, Arden dipped backward and Chris caught her under the small of her back.
But then a strange look crossed Chris’s face, and he buckled under Arden’s weight and sank to the floor. He kept singing, but his eyes telegraphed panic. He looked toward the wings, shaking his head furiously, and as he gently set Arden down on the stage floor, the curtain fell.