The Cure for Dreaming(58)
Frannie’s nose turned red and sniffly, and her chin shook. “I don’t want to see you escape clear across the country.” She wiped her eyes with the back of her sleeve. “But . . . if you genuinely believe you need to endure all of this rubbish to save this person’s life, then, my goodness”—she heaved a heavy sigh—“let’s help that girl.”
he stage door was locked. At first all I could think to do was grumble and pace about the sidewalk while holding the brown hood of Frannie’s cloak over my head. Just as I was about to run to the theater lobby and spin a story about needing to deliver an urgent item to Henry, fate intervened in the form of a few small beasts.
The side door opened. The middle-aged dog trainers and their half-dozen curly-haired poodles burst from the theater in a gust of high-pitched barks.
“Let me hold open the door for you,” I said over all the yipping, and I sprinted up the stairs, nearly tripping over my skirt.
“Thank you, dear,” said the man of the group with a tip of his hat.
The flurry of fur and leather leashes and pitter-pattering feet traveled down the stairs, and I slipped inside the theater.
A heart-seizing note from the organ beyond the curtains soldered my feet to the ground. I stood there in the half dark, rooted to the floor, while the force of a loud waltz reverberated up my calves and knees. Laughter boomed from the audience. Lights poured through the black curtains separating the stage from the wings, luring me over . . . Come see, come see.
I rounded a small table topped with a pitcher of water and a bowl of peppermint-scented candies and came to a stop in the wings.
My eyes widened.
Three couples were dancing a waltz on the stage, but the women—not the men—were leading, with their hands on the gentlemen’s waists. The gentlemen followed, their left fingers lifting invisible skirts off the ground. The peculiar pairs glided around the dusty floorboards with silly smiles on their faces, paying no heed at all to the wild shrieks of laughter from the audience.
“Mesdames et messieurs”—Henry strutted into my view, his red vest shimmering in the stage lights—“let us give a warm round of applause for the Reversed Portland Dancers.”
The audience clapped and chortled, and I slithered farther into the backstage shadows. The silhouettes of stagehands in caps and suspenders rushed toward the wings.
Henry guided his subjects out of their trances, and an even grander applause swelled for the great Monsieur Reverie. A smoky-smelling fellow showed up a few feet away from me and pulled on a long rope that clattered the main curtain closed.
I held my breath and crept out of my hiding spot.
Henry staggered off the stage, and my eyes beheld him falling apart. Literally. The bottom half of his coat unraveled at astounding speed, and the seams of his pants stretched and ripped from his ankles up to his knees. He grabbed hold of one of the wings’ black curtains and rested his forehead against the cloth, inhaling deep breaths that made his shoulders rise and fall.
“Henry?” I unclasped Frannie’s cloak from my neck and approached him. By walking and blinking I stopped the illusion of his fraying garments, but he still hunched over as if he might collapse. “Are you all right?”
He lifted his head. “Olivia?”
“I’m sorry I snuck backstage . . .”
“No, it’s fine.” He let go of the curtain and took my hands. “It’s nice to see you back here. Is everything all right?”
“I’m fine, but how are you?”
“I didn’t sleep well last night.”
A stagehand brushed past us, so Henry led me away from the wings and toward the table with the water and candies.
He poured himself a glass with shaking hands. “Genevieve has a fever.”
“Oh, no!”
“The doctor thinks it might just be a regular cold, not her illness, but she’s supposed to take a pill and stay in bed.”
“Does it seem like a cold?”
“She’s sneezing and coughing, but I don’t know . . .” He guzzled the water like a man downing whiskey.
I wriggled Frannie’s coat off my shoulders. “I’m so sorry, Henry.”
He came up for a loud breath. “It reminds me too much of the typhoid—and my mother’s illness. I really hate this. Why can’t she just be healthy?”
“Is there anything I can do?”
“No.” He shook his head and wiped his lips. “Nothing besides what you’re already doing.”
“If it’s of any comfort, I have an idea for Tuesday evening.”
“You do?”
“I—” I held my tongue, for the substitute organist lumbered toward us from the wings with stacks of sheet music poking out of her carpetbag.
“Here.” Henry gestured with his head toward the back of the theater. “Let’s go speak in private. There’s something I need to give you, anyway.”
He set down the glass, popped a candy into his mouth, and took me by the hand again, while the organist frowned at us and fished her hand into the candy bowl.
Henry and I wound our way through a dark maze of set pieces and sawdust and down an echoing stairwell that smelled of fresh paint and cigarettes. We arrived in a large underground space crammed with props and extra stage pieces packed onto shelves and crowding the passageways. Bare bulbs dangled from the ceiling, casting a yellow light that produced hulking shadows shaped like masks and trombones and Wild West pistols.