Tuesday: So Much for Plan B
"Did it work?"
"Um, it's kinda hard to tell."
A horse drawn carriage rattled past in the misty night. Well, morning, by now.
"I guess not."
We had just finished retracing our steps from Sunday night, in the hopes we might run across…something. A large orange sign with an arrow saying "Time Detour" or "This Way to 20th Century" perhaps.
Alex thought it was a faint hope to begin with, but worth a shot. I thought anything, no matter how stupid it might appear was worth a shot. So we ended up schlepping halfway across London and back at 2 am, looking for a time machine.
"That old woman has something to do with this," Alex said. I didn't disagree, if only because if there was some sort of temporal anomaly on a random London street, there would probably be a fairly steady stream of cross-century traffic. The neighborhood we had been walking through was fairly popular with the college crowd, and someone would have probably noticed the drop in attendance if everyone who walked through it at night disappeared.
"I don't like this," Alex said in disgust. "Things ought to make sense."
"It might have been small, something that we didn't notice. We were worse for drink."
"I wasn't that drunk."
"I might have been," I said regretfully, "but I still remember you having a chugging contest with Kevin."
"You remember me winning a chugging contest," Alex corrected.
There were no loiterers at the back entrance at this early hour so we snuck in undetected, although the dark circles under my eyes drew some knowing glances from people coming down for breakfast. I borrowed some makeup from Brook and drank a lot of coffee in order to face the second act.
I dozed off during lunch, to the extreme amusement of Brook and a few other members of the chorus who were sitting next to me. After another infusion of caffeine, we attempted act two again, this time with the singers and dancers in place, and I perked up a bit to watch the interpersonal dynamics being played out on stage.
Opera, and theatre in general, is the repository of all those intense and dramatic sentiments that are normally bottled up, or at least toned down in everyday life. This is why people love theatre. It speaks to a part of the psyche that doesn't get out for air much. It also has the side effect of magnifying everyday dramas to epic proportions.
Marguerite was making a great show of being in a barely-controlled rage. She took every opportunity to shoot condescending glances at Brook, who remained perfectly oblivious, which seemed to infuriate Marguerite all the more. After the third aborted attempt at the opening song of the second act, Cocteau looked as if he wanted to shove his baton down Loman's throat, while the Corps de Ballet giggled and whispered behind their hands. Think junior high with more singing.
Cocteau gave in at about six o'clock, when some of the orchestra began glancing pointedly at pocket watches.
I followed the chorus backstage, thinking longingly of sleep, when Alex ran into me. Literally. I would have bounced off the opposite wall if Alex hadn't grabbed me by the shoulders.
"Terribly sorry, miss." He said, and tugged the brim of the cap he had mysteriously acquired some time during the day.
"S'all right." I replied automatically and closed my hand around the square of paper he had slipped into my hand.
I picked up a plate of food without really looking at it and sat in a quiet corner to read the note. I had just begun to unfold it when Brook sat down in a huff.
"I don't believe her!" Brook cried as I shoved the note into a pocket.
"What?"
"Marguerite. She accused me of trying to jinx her, can you believe that!" I had a sudden mental image of Brook holding a voodoo doll in a silk dress.
"Jinx her?"
"Oh, somebody put fresh flowers in her dressing room and she's accusing everybody of being jealous of her and trying to give her bad luck."
"Oh." This seemed odd to me, but I let it go. Brook saw my expression though.
"They're terrible luck." She explained patiently. "Hardly anything is worse than fresh flowers in an opera house."
"Of course," I said, shaking my head. The fresh flowers thing was new to me, but theatre people had an amazing number of superstitions. I'd seen one actress run screaming from the dressing room after being tricked into saying 'Macbeth'.
"Marguerite doesn't seem to like you much." I said, stating the obvious.
"I'm a soprano. She dislikes all the sopranos. The managers put up with her because she threatened to go to the Other Theatre. She was the biggest name on the bill."
It seemed less a threat than a bonus to me, until I remembered the "bad blood." Wait, what did she say?
"What do you mean 'was'?"
"I saw the posters going out," Brook grinned. "Your name in letters 5 inches tall."
Oh Lord. I was probably going to have to watch out for poisoned sheet music or something.
"Tell me about this Other Theatre. Are the managers worried about it?" I asked, reaching for a distraction, any distraction.
"They are more established, so they have the advantage there. And their agents are offering a pay raise to anyone willing to sign on with them. Some of the other singers already have. I prefer this troupe though. A new group, a fresh start. It's the sort of place you can really make your mark." She added with an air of proprietary pride.
"The building doesn't seem new, though."
"No, it's been here for decades, but it was empty for a while. The stage crew has had to make an awful lot of repairs."
"Why did Mr Loman start his own theatre?"
"I don't know really. Something about 'artistic differences'." I wanted to ask more, but several of the younger members of the chorus descended at that moment, full of gossip about Marguerite. I murmured an excuse and left the table unnoticed.
I returned to the empty stage and was momentarily caught unaware by the expectant hush which hung over the velvet seats. I was usually in the house when it was full of noise and music. Without the distraction of other people, I felt I was meeting the Opera House for the first time. I was in the presence of a Grand Lady fallen on hard times, powerful and imposing, but oddly benevolent.
I suddenly remembered the note in my pocket and fished it out.
Meet me in the foyer after dinner.
That was it. No explanation or signature. Of course, the signature was unnecessary, and Alex never gave explanations when he could give cryptic remarks or dramatic proclamations.
I hopped down off the edge of the stage and walked back into the foyer. It was still light outside and the sun streamed in through the high windows, putting a golden shine on everything. Alex was sitting at the base of the wide, sweeping staircase.
"What's up?"
"I wanted to show you something."
"What?"
"Everything."
Nothing beats exploration for the sheer joy of discovery. It doesn't matter if someone else has already found that shady clearing in the middle of Hyde Park; if it's new to you, then it's a discovery. Alex was the only other person I'd met so far who shared this philosophy.
I never realized how huge the place was. Anyone who's been to the theatre knows about the atrium with people wearing bow ties ready to sell you something and the red velvet curtain in front of rows of chairs. But for square footage, the house only occupies about a third of the actual building. There are rehearsal rooms for the dancers and musicians, storage rooms for sets and instruments, crawl spaces, the fly works for the stagehands to get to the lights, living quarters for the lower echelons of the opera's talent and any number of odd nooks and crannies.
"Brook tells me that this Other Theatre means serious business." I told Alex. "They're dangling juicy contracts in front of the star singers as encouragement to relocate. Hey, this one's unlocked. Oh, never mind. Janitor's closet."
"There's some sort of rivalry between the current owner and the guy who opened the new opera house." Alex said, taking a glance at the closet. It contained few buckets, mops and brooms; the basic of cleaning supplies never really change. "They seem to hate each other with a passion, but people are a bit fuzzy on the details."
"Instead of dueling pistols, they have dueling opera houses?"
"I guess. But the real talk among the stage crew is about a string of sabotages."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah. Tools gone missing, backdrops vandalized, props broken, that sort of thing. Staircases found."
"What? Oh. Looks like it goes to the roof."
"Let's find out." I waited at the base of a rickety ladder while Alex climbed up to fiddle with the lock on the trapdoor. It had been abandoned for a while. A thick layer of dust coated the steps and there were enough cobwebs for a haunted mansion. The air was musty, like an unaired basement.
"I guess the flowers count as sabotage too, then." I called up the stairs. There was a dull crack as the lock gave way. Dust filtered down and I sneezed
"What, like Venus Flytraps?" Alex said, looking down through the square of the trapdoor.
"No," I explained as I climbed up, "Marguerite, she's the lead soprano; someone sent her a bouquet of fresh flowers. Apparently this is bad luck."
"Interesting."
"What's that? Oh, check out the view." The edges of the roof were heavily decorated with carved friezes and statues of Muses in dramatic poses, but from this angle I could see that the sculptor had gotten lazy, and though the fine detail visible from the street, the backs of the Muses were only roughly carved. The night was clear, but there were no stars visible through the ever-present haze of pollution. But there was a nice crescent moon rising low over the lights of the city.
We leaned against the parapet, peering over the edge at the traffic on the street forty feet below. Carriages, actual horse-drawn carriages, clip-clopped past a man lighting the gaslamps, filling the streets with an orange-ish glow. And then there was the smell. The City in the summer was never at her best, but between the horses, the lamps, and the River, the smell could best be described as 'fried swamp.'
"What's interesting?" I asked again, several minutes later.
"Oh, nothing." Alex shrugged.
"Oh, no. I know that look. You're going to pull a Hardy Boys and start investigating."
"Hardy boys?"
"Never mind. Just leave it alone. I'm sure stuff always gets misplaced around here and little intrigues are always going on backstage. We have bigger fish to fry than the Mystery of the Cranky Soprano." After a few moments passed with no response I turned around to find I was alone on the roof.
I found Alex rattling the handles of the luxury boxes.
"Fancy meeting you here." I said. Alex rolled his eyes, and motioned for me to step closer. I did so and he whispered.
"I thought I saw someone." A chill ran down my spine before logic could reassert itself. The rest of the cast and crew were either at home or sneaking out for a night on the town.
"Paranoid much?"
"Doesn't mean I'm not right. All of these doors are locked."
"Wait here." I ordered and went back to the janitor's closet we had discovered.
Back in high school I had befriended one of the custodians and learned many interesting things about the building, such as the narrow hallway which connected the three chemistry rooms. I had also learned that in most large buildings, especially where security isn't at a premium, most doors can be opened by the same key.
The janitor's key ring hung on a nail beside the door. There were about twenty keys on it, all helpfully labeled. The one I was looking for was marked "lux box." I returned to find Alex looking from his Swiss Army knife to the door thoughtfully.
"That'll be real subtle." I said. Alex shrugged and replaced the knife in his pocket.
"A little paint and nobody would notice." He said.
"Let me give it a try first. Eenie, meenie, miney, that one!" I picked a box at random and tried the key. The door of Box Eight swung opened easily.
"Nice."
"Just one of my many skills."
"It was talking about the box."
"Oh, thank you." It was a luxury box, which apparently meant velvet drapes, gilt paint and monstrously ugly chairs.
"The possibilities are endless." Alex said, mostly to himself. I kicked back in one of the chairs, which proved to be quite comfortable despite the hideous design.
"What?"
"I was just thinking of all the possibilities for sabotage. Look at all the places we've broken into, and we're not even trying."
"I don't think it's breaking in when you have the key." I pointed out.
"Still, if someone was trying to really destroy this place, it wouldn't be very hard to do."
"So I guess that just makes him incompetent." I tried out one of the chairs. It was surprisingly comfy, the velvet just beginning to show some wear.
"And then there's the people," Alex said. I gave him a look. "They're a bit… odd."
I was about to say something like, they're theatre people, how can you tell? But he was right. It was hard to put your finger on, but people of the Opera company were an odd bunch. A combination of wash-ups, like the ancient cellist, up-and-comers looking for their big break like Brook and Sam, and a single star soprano who was being paid piles of money to keep her away from the Other Company.
"I wonder…" Alex stopped suddenly. We both heard it at the same time; the faintest of sounds out in the hallway, such as might be made by someone shifting their weight on the floorboards. Alex sprang for the door of the box. I followed and stuck my head out of the door. The corridor was empty.
"You think someone was listening?"
"Maybe." Alex replied. The same chill went down my spine, only worse because I'd heard it this time too.
"Nobody is supposed to be up here." I said, ignoring our own presence for the moment.
"Yeah. Time to go."
We split up in the foyer on the grounds that a mystery stalker couldn't follow us both. Alex headed up a back staircase and I went back through the empty house. As I went through the deserted backstage, a snatch of music caught my attention.
It sounded like someone trying to play "Chopsticks" with a pair of ping pong rackets. I followed the noise into the practice rooms, where Mr. Anderson was attempting to play. After listening for a minute, I retrieved a metronome from the storage room and returned. Anderson was staring despondently at the sheet music.
"Can I give you some advice?"
"I don't need any advice from you."
"Who's the understudy here?" He flushed furiously, but ignored me. He began playing from the chorus. The first twenty measures were decent, but then he began to lose track of the tempo.
"Here." I set the metronome next to the sheet music.
"Metronomes are for beginners."
"That's all well and good for you to say, but the fact is you can't find the tempo with both hands and a map." I gestured at the music, rather pleased with the metaphor.
"I'll look like an amateur." He said sullenly.
"But at least you won't sound like one." I set the metronome and walked out. A few moments later the music started again, this time mercifully on tempo. It wouldn't fool an experienced listener, but it was a start.
Questions? Comments? Criticisms? Complaints? Review!
.•´¨•»¦«•Kerowyn•»¦«•´¨•.