Amberlough(91)

*

Finn left a manila envelope on the bedside table, overtop the property deeds. When his head stopped spinning, Aristide slit the seal and pulled out a copy of Cross’s latest expense report. Applying the key got him three terse lines.

reps gone tmrw. blown but im out. dont ask favors.

He crumpled the paper and climbed out of bed holding it in his fist. The grate in the bedroom was cold, and in the parlor. He stalked to the kitchen, where Ilse was putting together a plate of smoked salmon and sliced pears—a late lunch before Aristide went down to the Bee.

“Peckish?” she asked, winking.

“Peevish,” he corrected. “I need to use the range.”

She stepped aside. He turned on the gas and let it hiss for a moment, then lit the burner. Cross’s code withered into flame-edged, blackened curls. Aristide let the scraps fall onto the stovetop.

“Oh, that’s all right.” Ilse side-eyed him over her cutting board. “I need to clean it anyway.”

“Sorry.” Cowed, he swept the ashes into his cupped palm and dropped them in the wastebasket.

She handed him his plate. “Go on. Get out before you muck the whole place up.”

As he ate, he turned Cross’s message over in his mind. This piece of news—reps gone tmrw—meant it was time for him to leave as well. Tonight would be his last night at the Bee. It was, perhaps, foolish to take to the boards with so much at stake. But if he was going to say goodbye to Amberlough, he was going to do it right.

He made a vital telephone call, to one of the Clarion’s distributors, and passed on a code word. Then, with lunch dispatched, he dressed and went to catch the Temple line. He wasn’t wild about the prospect of his commute. Over the last month, he’d been squeezed between blackboots on the trolleys one too many times, suffering snide comments and derision and, on one memorable occasion, an Ospie pissing on his shoe.

Temple Street was pasted from Baldwin to the bay with ugly propaganda posters. A few of the storefronts had gray-and-white bunting over the doors, or the quartered circle within a circle, white on a field of slate. Several of these had suffered vandalism. One was burnt black, the windows burst into sparkling shards across the footpath.

Repairs on the Bumble Bee had the marquee looking even sharper than before. Aristide didn’t know what Malcolm had paid, or if he could afford it, but suspected that the answers were “too much,” and “no.”

He went through the front of the house. Malcolm didn’t like them to, but Aristide had never cared. When the black-and-gold weight of the doors swung shut behind him, he stood for a moment in the dark foyer, breathing stale smoke and the scent of mingled perfumes—the smell of the audience. His audience.

In the theatre proper, he tipped his boater to Ytzak behind the bar. Then he retreated to his dressing room to prep and warm up.

Sitting at the mirror, haloed by a half-circle of brilliant lights, Aristide stared at his reflection. His mother’s Chuli nose. His father’s jaw. He looked harder, putting his face closer to the glass. A loose curl, falling past his chin. Plum lipstick over a practiced, gap-toothed smile. Faint laugh lines at the corners of his eyes, earned rather than inherited.

Finn had stripped away every artifice of Aristide’s constructed self, tearing through the ribbon and tissue like a child opening his Solstice presents. It left Aristide raw and furious. Cyril had always treated the package with more deference—never even shaken it. Perhaps because he already knew what lay inside, didn’t care, and respected—preferred?—the character Aristide chose to present.

This man in the mirror was the man Aristide wanted to be. A man he’d made. A man who would be gone tomorrow, and not to some breezy foreign clime with red sand beaches.

He lifted an ivory comb from the cluttered makeup table and swept his hair down over one shoulder. Glossy curls twined between the teeth, dark as chestnut cases. Avocado oil every night, the careful teasing out of knots … He worked hard to keep it soft. And still, no gray. As he wound each pin curl and fixed it into place, he drew the coils through his fingers and tried to fix the sensation in his memory. It had taken years to grow it out. If it got this long again, he doubted it would be as thick and dark and free of silver.

Once his stocking cap was fixed in place, he opened a tube of white grease paint and slicked it over the contours of his face. Then powder, to set it. Talcum rose in ghostly tendrils from the pouf. Thin, black eyebrows drawn over the angles of his own. Rouge, high on his cheekbones. Red paint in a perfect bow to accentuate thin lips—long practice let him shape his moue with little effort.

As he pressed the corner of his second set of feathered lashes into place, he heard a distant shout. A crash. The thin walls of his dressing room bucked and shuddered. Wiping tacky fingers on a tissue, he stood and took a step toward the door. It flew open just before he touched it, and he staggered back.

“Raid!” Liesl’s knuckles were white on the door frame. “They’re looking for ballast, but they’ll take anyone they want. Go, now.”

He didn’t need to be told twice. Liesl peeled away and ran down the corridor, hammering on doors and flinging the chorus from their communal makeup table. As the chaos swelled, Aristide shucked his dressing gown in favor of the sweaty black jersey he wore for dance rehearsals. The straw boater covered his stocking cap and shadowed his painted face. He jabbed a pin through the hat to hold it in place, and to use as a weapon in a pinch.