Dennis and Evan drove into the Deems's drive just after three o'clock in the spacious Lincoln they had rented for the trip, and were surprised to find both Ann and Terri waiting with their luggage. Terri smiled stiffly at both men, as if afraid the expression might crack her face. While Evan helped her take her luggage to the car, Dennis looked questioningly at Ann.
"I told her," she said.
"About the Emperor?"
"Just about a double. She knows it wasn't you who… that night."
He nodded. "Evan knows too. But he knows everything. He's coming along," he said with parental pride. "To help."
"That's good," Ann said. "Things are getting better."
Still, they spoke little in the car. Ann sat up front with Dennis, and Terri and Evan were on either side of the wide back seat. Mostly they discussed A Private Empire. "It'll be a race," Dennis said, "to get it ready in time. You and Marvella will have quite a job on your hands, Terri. The Empire costumes were disbanded after the last show, so you'll be starting from scratch. Except for my costumes."
"I, uh, don't know," Terri said. "That might be a problem."
"A problem?"
"Your dress uniform? The red one? It kept getting misplaced," Terri explained. "Marvella would find it on one rack, then another, and now… we can't find it at all."
They stopped for dinner at a cafeteria on the New Jersey Turnpike. No one recognized Dennis. They spent a half hour backed up at the Lincoln Tunnel, and finally arrived at Dennis's East 85th Street apartment building just before nine o'clock. Dennis had not been there since before Robin died, but John Steinberg, with Dennis's approval, had had Robin's clothes and most of her personal possessions put in storage until her will was administered.
When Dennis walked into the foyer of the apartment, the others behind him, he was struck as never before with Robin's presence. The apartment had been as much hers as his, and he was reminded of her wherever his glance turned. There was the vase with the pussy willows she had bought in Paris, the Picasso etching she had given him for his birthday four years ago. She was everywhere. Her clothes may have been gone, but Robin, poor seduced Robin, whose only sin was loving him too well, was still there, an inescapable and ineffable spirit of the place. He could not help but feel that bringing Ann there was a betrayal.
Still, he ushered in his guests, and asked Evan, whose own room was still filled with his boyhood things, to show Terri to Sid's room. He took Ann to a small guest suite. "You may stay here until Terri leaves, if you'd rather," he said, taking her hand.
"That would probably be best," she said, nodding. "It won't be long. Besides, we've got all the time in the world."
He smiled and kissed her, then went to the spacious and memory-haunted bedroom he had shared with Robin, and lay awake for a long time. Robin's sweet and suffocating presence was part of it, but it was also excitement that would not let him sleep.
He was getting ready, his little army was behind him, no one had deserted. John, Curt, Marvella, Ann, Terri, even Evan, thank God, even his son. And most of them knew, if not the specifics of the creature they would help him fight, at least that there was a creature worth fighting, worth destroying for what he had done to so many they all loved.
When Dennis slept, he did so without dreaming. But when he awoke, and his eyes opened to the bedroom wall with its airy bamboo bookcase next to the small O'Keefe watercolor, his sleep-drugged mind assumed that it was years before, before everything bad had happened, and he turned toward where Robin would naturally have been, to hold her and kiss her good morning.
He cried softly when she was not there, when he had to remember all the things that had come after their last embrace in that bed. Even the thought of Ann did not stop his tears, and when the last of them had been wiped away, he whispered to the Emperor, "There, you bastard. I can still cry. I can still feel, can't I?"
It was Sunday, and after a breakfast made by Evan and Terri, he sent them and Ann outside and into the park to observe the signs of approaching spring, while he took down the battered set of sides of A Private Empire, and began to review his lines.
They were as familiar to him as his own name, his address, his social security number, and were nearly as dull. God, he thought, how can I make this alive again? I thought I was done with this, done with it because, let's face it, it didn't mean much to me anymore, because I felt my performances slipping…
And they were, weren't they? Slipping away to that bastard, to the Emperor. Slipping away from me because I had made him.
No. Get it back. Read it. Aloud.
He stood, struck the immaturely imperious pose that had caused millions to chuckle, and began.
" God! This is your servant, Prince Karl Frederick Augustus, soon to be Emperor Karl Frederick Augustus. And still, of course, your servant. I suspect that, of Europe's other monarchs, very few – if any – are praying at this moment. Therefore, since kings rule by divine right, as the more superstitious of us are apt to believe, I ask you to shut your ears to the peasantry and give me your undivided attention. It will not take long. Please.'"
Call on God indeed, thought Dennis. It will take at least God for me to bring life to that line. How many times have I said it? Hundreds certainly. Thousands undoubtedly.
He had never figured out how many performances of A Private Empire he had done, but the weight of them over the years sat heavily on him now, an infinite accumulation of words, songs, gestures. He tossed down the sides and sat down at the piano, picking out the introduction to "The Awful Thing About a King," his first musical number, a humorous patter song in which the soon-to-be emperor sings about his concerns, not over ruling a country, but taking a bride.
It was the first time he had sung in many months, and his voice sounded, he thought, weak. The low notes were tentative in tone, the higher ones unsure of pitch. His facility as well had suffered greatly from the lack of practice. Perhaps Dex Colangelo could help him as he had helped him before. Yes. Of course he could. The voice was rusty, that was all. With work, with practice, it would come back as strong as it ever was. And so would the acting. Everything would come back. Everything.
Everything except Robin. And Donna. And Whitney, and Tommy, and Harry Ruhl.
"Oh, you bastard," he whispered, bringing his hands down on the keyboard to produce a brash and angry cluster of notes. "I will beat you, you bastard."
At nine-thirty the next morning Dennis went to the building on Broadway and 54th where John Steinberg still retained an office for use when he was in the city. Steinberg's expression was weary, there were dark pouches beneath his eyes, and his suit was unaccustomedly rumpled. The first thing he said when he saw Dennis was, "Did you bring Ann along?"
"Not right now. But she's here in the city. Why?"
"Because I need her. I am up to my bulbous ass in work, Dennis, and, although I've accomplished a great deal by making phone calls all weekend and thereby annoying a great many agents, I have still more to do."
"Call her," Dennis said. "She's at my place."
"Excellent. Now, I suppose you'd like to know where we stand." He leaned back in his leather chair, steepled his fingers, and smiled. "We begin rehearsals at the Minskoff in two days."
"Wednesday?" Dennis said, amazed.
"Wednesday. It is indeed remarkable what an unlimited budget can do. I posted the bond with Equity Friday afternoon, the principals are all cast except for the villainous Kronstein. The way things worked out, they're all people who have done the show with us before, either here or in one of the road companies. And Dex and Quentin are putting the chorus together. They got half of them over the weekend."
"Who's playing Lise?"
"Kelly Sears. Pleased?"