Gemma spotted Nellie’s work the moment she made her way into the Grand Opera House. She didn’t know a smidge about art, and even rooming with Nellie in the Bronx for five years hadn’t taught her the difference between impressionism and art nouveau, or why oil paint was different from watercolor (except that it made their petticoats smell), but she knew Nellie’s art. I’ve been hired to touch up the frescoes in the Grand Opera House, Nellie had written perhaps eight months ago in her careless scrawl. I doubt they’d have hired a woman, but their usual artist hared off to San Diego without finishing the job, so here I am. Just the usual trompe l’oeil rubbish, cupids on clouds in nausea-inducing pastels!
But Nellie could never resist putting her own irreverent touches into her work, even routine work. The cupids on the Grand Opera House’s entry fresco had all been given droll expressions: this one smirking, that one batting his eyelashes, the pop-eyed one with a cloud added behind his bottom, so it looked like he’d just released some noxious smell. And the various Muses in Greek draperies on the ceiling, Gemma thought as she tilted her head back—the prim one with the lyre looked like the Taylor Street landlady, and was the one with the flower wreath Alice Eastwood? Yes, it was, right down to the friendly beam and the sprig of violets. Portraits had always been Nellie’s specialty.
Gemma wandered farther into the building, not taking the double doors into the terraced tiers of seats, but the side doors that led backstage. All it took was a word with the dozing doorman, and a flash of her card as the Metropolitan Opera traveling company’s newest member, and she was in. How many opera houses and theaters had she explored by now? The usual warren of dingy back passages, curling posters of old productions flapping on corridor walls, buckets parked out to catch the occasional leak . . . Gemma looped up her fringed hem as she wandered down toward the backstage area, inhaling the smells of violin resin, dusty velvet, and old scores, not seeing a soul. Opera houses were always quiet as crypts in the morning. Was there a musician alive who ever got up before nine? Noon if they could help it?
Normally she counted herself in that category, but she’d hardly slept a wink in her new Taylor Street lodgings. The migraine hadn’t been so bad—only half a night of huddling in her darkened room with a cold-pack on her forehead, wishing she could scoop her eyes out with a spoon—but by the time she’d been able to sleep, wrung out and numb, her whole head still feeling fragile as glass, she’d slipped right into a nightmare about that horrible day in New York last month, scrabbling on her hands and knees and cringing as people laughed—so at dawn she rose, fed Toscanini a handful of seeds and a few chunks of apple, and headed out bleary-eyed into the already-bustling city.
But now she heard the distant sound of a piano and felt the night fog clearing away. It was the “Habanera” from Carmen, in fact, being played with considerable panache. Humming along, Gemma followed the sound to a practice room and poked her head around the door left ajar.
The man at the piano stool turned to look over one shoulder, broad hands finishing up the complicated final flourish of the “Habanera.” “Looking for someone?”
“Looks like I’ve found someone.” He was olive-skinned, burly, black hair mussed and sleeves rolled up. “I’m the newest member of the traveling Metropolitan Opera company,” she said, giving him the day version of her stage curtsy—a flick of the train, a graceful sinking of the knees, a sparkling smile. Her armor, arriving at a new opera house. No one in San Francisco, after all, had any idea what had happened to her in New York. “Gemma Garland.”
“You’re a couple weeks ahead of Signor Caruso and the rest of the company,” the burly man observed, swinging around on the piano bench.
“I’m to take the place of a soprano departing in Kansas City and thought I’d come early to see the sights. This morning I’ve already walked down a hill so steep it could have doubled as an Alp, seen a Chinese woman with the tiniest bound feet imaginable as I was passing Chinatown, and heard the latest city gossip about a local Pinkerton detective who has gone missing. Foul play is suspected, according to the trolley car driver who let me off past Market Street. That is, south of the slot,” Gemma corrected. “Is that how a San Franciscan says it?”
“It is.” The pianist lifted a hand to his head as if only belatedly realizing he didn’t have a hat to doff. “George Serrano—” He pronounced it with a Latin roll, Spanish or maybe Brazilian, though his English was unaccented. “I’m one of the repetiteurs here. I imagine I’ll be rehearsing you in the practice rooms once the company arrives.”
Gemma was glad she’d turned on the charm. Repetiteurs, those invaluable rehearsal pianists and accompanists, were very good allies to have in an opera house. Win them over, and they’d rehearse you an extra half hour if you were feeling insecure in your Act III recitative. Alienate them, and they’d start your aria in the wrong key just to see you squirm. “I don’t suppose—” she began, tilting her head under her narrow-brimmed straw laden with blush-pink roses, but he cut her off with a grin.
“You want to try the stage? Sopranos always do.”
“Mezzos, too,” Gemma protested, but smiled back. “Would anyone mind if I . . .”
“Help yourself. Straight back and up the stairs.”
He gave a friendly wave, about to turn back to the piano, but Gemma stopped him on impulse. “I don’t suppose you remember a woman artist working here, Mr. Serrano? She was hired to touch up the frescoes in the entryway—dark hair, often wore trousers?”
“I remember her. She quit last summer. Left the work half done, which had the management in a froth.”
Gemma would like to say that didn’t sound like Nellie, but it did. They’re only paying me half what they’d pay a man, Sal, she’d say as she lit out for a better opportunity, so they shouldn’t be astounded if I only do half the work. And of course, the opera house wouldn’t have Nell’s new address, wherever she was. After Gemma left their shared Bronx apartment flat for a traveling opera company in Boston and Nellie departed for the Hudson River Valley to paint landscapes for a summer, the two of them had conducted much of their friendship through letters—they’d fall back into room-sharing whenever they were both passing through New York, which was relatively often, and then Gemma would tease Nellie all over again about her mugs of brush water lying everywhere, and Nellie would tease Gemma about her ever-present throat lozenges, but letters had become their lifeline: a conversation carried on for nearly eight years. And in eight years, how often did scatterbrained Nell ever remember to leave a forwarding address?
She should have left one this time, Gemma couldn’t help but think. She knew I was coming to San Francisco, and she knew I was in a bad way. But Gemma pushed that persistent, piercing little hurt aside for now, saying, “Thank you, Mr. Serrano.”
“George,” he said with a cheerful salute, going back to the piano. “Come back anytime you want to run some arias—” And she wandered back the way he’d pointed, ascending stairs and ducking through stage doors, until she found herself in the wings, looking at it.
The stage.
It’s a splendid space, Sal, Nellie had written. I can just see you up there draped in diamonds, slingshotting your big high C’s over the footlights! Gemma found herself holding her breath, as she did the first time she came onto any new stage. Just a raked expanse of boards, dusty in the harsh overhead lights, showing every scuff mark. None of the sets, the costumes, the music that turned it into an enchanted space; just a bare stage. The thing that lived on the back of Gemma’s eyelids, had lived there ever since seven-year-old Sally Gunderson opened her mouth in church and poured out “Abide with Me” in such a pure, ringing flood of sound that nearly the entire congregation fell silent. Opening her eyes and realizing people were looking at her, and thinking yes.
Yes.
This is what I want.
Standing there in that Nebraska church in her achingly white spats under her frilly Sunday frock . . . that hard-backed pew had been her first stage, and it hadn’t needed a spotlight for her to know it was where she wanted to be. “Little girls should be seen but not heard,” her mother had told her, growing up, but Gemma had known from age seven that she wanted to be seen and heard. Her mother’s gentle chiding hadn’t nudged that desire out of her, and neither had the orphanage matron’s birch switch, later.
Gemma looked out over the shadowed tiers of empty seats (twenty-five hundred of them, her new landlady had told her in that odd accent between Boston and Brooklyn that seemed to be the local San Francisco twang) and imagined this place two weeks from now: packed to the rafters, flashing with diamonds, the scent of expensive tobacco and even more expensive perfume wafting up, the drone of a hundred different conversations that stopped only when the conductor lifted his baton . . . everyone who was anyone in this brash, bustling city, come to hear the great Caruso. Maybe they wouldn’t notice Gemma in the ranks of the chorus. But Caruso might. He was said to be a man who appreciated a pretty soprano, after all.
She walked center stage, hummed a little to wake the voice up, ran through some scales and vocalises. She didn’t need a piano; she had perfect pitch—she’d warmed up before auditions in tiled washrooms, in crowded corridors, even once in a broom cupboard. Her vocal cords now thrumming, she started with some Mozart, Cherubino’s aria from The Marriage of Figaro, simple and familiar, then on to the Countess from the same opera. One of Gemma’s favorites, the Act III aria, sorrow giving way to hope, and that thrilling fall from the high A . . . She could hear her voice resonate, rising through these empty tiers, filling the nooks and crannies, and started on some Handel, feeling out her higher register despite the postmigraine tenderness of her head. What she’d give to sing the Queen of the Night here, hurl her high F’s into the void like crystal bullets . . .
The sound of slow clapping followed her final tripping run. Gemma peered down into the house. “Hello?” she called.
He came toward the stage from the back of the opera house, still clapping. A man in a dark suit—she couldn’t see more from this distance. “Zerlina,” he said.
Gemma blinked. “I beg your pardon?”
“New York, ’98 or ’99. Don Giovanni.” He nodded, as if flipping to the end of some mental index. “You sang Zerlina.”
“That was ’98. I only sang the role for one night—I was the understudy.” Twenty-four years old, her first contract with a small opera company, steadily making her way out of the chorus into modest roles. That one night of Zerlina had been Gemma’s first chance at a larger part; she’d been borderline delirious at her good luck. “How on earth do you remember me? I was just a last-minute replacement for—”
“I never forget a voice, and yours is unusual.” The man came out into the light by the orchestra pit, doffing his hat, and she could finally take the measure of him. A lean, rather homely face; dark hair in need of a trim; a long jaw in need of a shave. His suit was expensive but he wore it carelessly, collar open to show a tanned throat, fine gloves half stuffed into his pocket. He stood with head tilted back, hat in one hand, the other jangling a charm on his watch chain, and he had yet to take his eyes off her. “Your singing has a silvery quality, but most voices like that sound silvery and cold. Yours has a warmth, like silver and Christmas incense.”
“You flatter me, sir. I have to tell you, I’m not at all averse to being flattered.” There hadn’t been much of it lately.
“Oh, I’m not flattering you at all.” He sounded businesslike, as though he were stating figures for a board meeting. “I don’t really bother with people I need to flatter. I look for the best, the ones who don’t need it. What you have in that throat of yours is something special. Better than it was eight years ago; it’s put weight on. Gravitas. You should be singing Donna Anna now, not Zerlina. The leads, not the ingenues.”
“Gracious,” Gemma said, trying to catch hold of this odd conversation. “I didn’t think a man could tell a woman she’d put weight on without sounding like a cad, but I was wrong.”
“Pardon me, I have no manners at all. A complaint I hear frequently.” He smiled, eyes still not moving away from her. Gemma was suddenly glad she’d put on her best walking suit this morning, the blush-pink faille with blond satin collar and cuffs exactly the same shade as her hair. “Might I inquire after your name, Zerlina? The program from eight years ago didn’t list the understudies.”
She introduced herself, gave him her story—the Metropolitan Opera Chorus, her early arrival in San Francisco, coming to the opera house to look for a friend—but she gave it with a bit more verve and sparkle than she’d given to Alice Eastwood or George Serrano the repetiteur. Silver and Christmas incense . . .
“Chorus work?” The man in the rumpled suit tilted his head. “Why?”
Gemma evaded. “I don’t believe I know your name, sir.”
“Henry Thornton, of Thornton Ltd. Also Thornton Railways and Thornton Ironworks.”
A man of means, then. Perhaps. Gentlemen did like to inflate their standing when looking to impress a woman. “A man of business, who knows something about music. How very rare.”
“Business is boring. It exists to fund the things in life that matter.”
“Such as?”
“I’m not certain how to answer that.” He rubbed his jaw, reflective. “If I say art, then I sound like a pretentious boor. But it is what I believe. Business isn’t worth much, in the grand scope of things. Art—beauty—music—those are the things that matter.” A shrug. “So perhaps you’ll think me a pretentious boor. I can’t help that.”
Gemma was inclined to warm to him, but reminded herself: hard-nosed! Pretty phrases did not make for sincerity. “Are you musical yourself?”
“Oh, no. Hopeless,” he said promptly. “Can’t sing, can’t play, can’t sketch or draw or dance. But I know great art when I see it.” He bowed slightly. “And great artists.”
“Favorite opera?” Gemma challenged.
“Pelléas et Mélisande. I saw it in Paris.”
“How modern of you. I was sure you’d say something trite. Barber of Seville.”
“Overdone.”
“I admit it’s never been my favorite.”
“Because the starring role isn’t a soprano.”
Gemma burst out laughing.
“You laugh like a bell,” he observed. “I’d give you a railroad to sing the ‘Bell Song’ for me.”
“I sing the ‘Bell Song’ divinely, but what would I want with a railroad?”
“I would invite you to have dinner with me instead, but . . .”
“But?”
“You look like a nice girl, Miss Garland.” He smiled again. “I’m not very nice. Better steer clear of me.”
“I always steer clear of stage-door Johnnys,” Gemma parried, even as she thought, A nice girl? Not exactly what a woman dreamed of being called when she was trying to reinvent into a tougher, steelier version of herself. Gemma busied herself with her handbag, crossing the stage with a rustle of taffeta petticoats. “If that’s all, Mr. Thornton—”
“Dammit,” he said. “I’m going to invite you to dinner anyway. Call it a business meeting.”
“I should still say no. Since I’ve heard you aren’t very nice.”
“I’m not, but at least you’re forewarned.” He came to meet her, reaching up to assist her down the stairs. “Does tomorrow suit you?”
His hand was ungloved, and as her own alighted on it, she saw it had been badly burned at some point. Not a fresh injury: his fingers curled inward slightly as if the skin had healed too tight to stretch; the last two fingers were missing their nails, and the scarred knuckles were as rough to the touch as a tree root. He could have easily hidden it with a glove, but he hadn’t. Gemma didn’t let so much as a flicker of reaction or curiosity show, and she thought she saw his eyes crinkle in response. He was clearly used to stares.
“The Palace Grill,” he said. “Tomorrow?”
The best restaurant in San Francisco, Gemma already knew that much. Take it, she could practically hear Nellie crow. Order the oysters and the champagne! Rich admirers should be soaked for everything you can get, Sal. Nellie had always been better than Gemma at being hard-nosed.
Still . . .
“Perhaps I’ll have dinner with you, Mr. Thornton.” Gemma glided down the last step. “It really depends on what else you have.”
“Shall I show you my stock certificates?”
“Your marriage certificate, if you have one. You see, I don’t accept dinner engagements from gentlemen who are already engaged at home.” She wasn’t quite unscrupulous enough for that, and never had been. Rich patrons pay the bills, Nellie had said before, more than once, and most of them are married. You think their wives don’t know they keep dancers and singers and the odd painter like me on the side? With that voice and that bust, you could have your own suite at the Park Avenue Hotel and your own carriage driving you to rehearsal every day.
I’m an artist, Gemma had protested, knowing she sounded like a prig. Not a courtesan! Nellie had looked a little wounded at that, clearly feeling her roommate was sitting in judgment, and maybe she was right—Gemma did judge. In most ways she’d left Red Hook, Nebraska, behind her, but not all. In her entire career, she’d never taken so much as a pair of gloves from a man with a wife at home.
And yet, where exactly had all her Nebraska morals and standards gotten her? In a very bad New York mess, that was where . . .
“No wife at home,” Mr. Thornton said, breaking the scatter of her thoughts. He was nearly a head taller than she, looking down steadily. “Here, or in New York, or anywhere.”
He might be fibbing, of course.
“You probably wonder if I’m lying.” He read her mind easily, scarred fingers still holding hers. He made no effort to pull her closer. “I sometimes lie, but never in business. And it is a business proposition I wish to make to you, Miss Garland.”
She raised her eyebrows. “Oh, really?”
“Not the kind you’re thinking of. A true business proposition, from a hardheaded man to a clever woman.”
“I’m clever now, am I?”
“Better than nice.”
He was still toying with the charm on his watch chain—a white jade disk with a hole in its center, polished smooth and shining. “Is there a story behind that?” she asked.
“I’ll tell you tomorrow,” he answered, releasing her hand. “At the Palace Grill. Eight?”
“Eight.” Gemma nodded crisply, thinking of her lean wallet. In truth, she couldn’t really afford to turn down a free dinner. She’d just keep the oyster fork at hand in case his proposition turned indecent (and didn’t they usually? Sigh). She moved past him toward the opera house doors like a no-nonsense artist who knew her worth, a sensible woman who wasn’t going to be bamboozled by pretty words, and he didn’t try to crowd her or brush against her as gentlemen so often did. He just stood back, watching, and Gemma’s hand tingled briefly inside her glove where he’d held it.
Don’t look back at him, she thought. A no-nonsense woman wouldn’t, so she didn’t.
Besides, she didn’t have to look back to know that he was still staring.