Abe was on call that evening in case of emergency cleanups, and John Steinberg had actually given him a beeper for the occasion. "You can watch the show if you like, Abe," Steinberg had said, "or just hole up somewhere. If we need you, I'll give you a beep and you can come to the lobby."
Abe didn't expect to be needed. Everything backstage would be taken care of by the crew people, so the only way Abe was going to have something to do was if the toilets overflowed or some rich theatre-goer threw up in the lobby. So he sat and relaxed in a small room next to the orchestra members' green room. It had a worn sofa that some prop department years before had decided to discard, and a rickety desk whose drawers held an assortment of girlie magazines and the sexier varieties of the spy paperbacks of the sixties. It was one of these, an opus called Fraulein Spy, that Abe now perused as he put his feet up and tried to ignore the cacophony over, around, and in his head.
After a few minutes, he heard the clash of instruments die down. Applause followed, and when it ended, the music began again, but this time it was no warm-up, no frenzied assortment of tuning. This time it was music that Abe had heard a quarter century before, sitting in the same room. He had not known Dennis Hamilton then. He had only seen him rehearsing, and never exchanged a word with the boy who seemed to have such a sense of quiet command for a person so young. He had watched the show one time, from the last row of the balcony, during one of the few matinee performances that had not sold out, and even at that great height he had felt the dramatic power of that young man who played the Emperor.
Now, as he heard the music, the years seemed to vanish, and he closed his eyes and remembered what it had been like before all the deaths had come, before he himself had been responsible for one of them, in the days when, though cruel, he was still innocent of blood on his hands.
At last the music ended, the audience applauded, and the music began again. He heard singing now, but where he sat it was greatly overwhelmed by the orchestra. For a while he struggled to make out the words, but could not, and turned back to his book.
The musical numbers passed in quick succession, and Abe thought the applause was as loud and strong as any he had ever heard from this particular hiding place. He recognized some of the songs that had become standards, particularly "Someone Like You," which had been a Barbra Streisand single in 1968, and hummed along with it. He sat there for a long time, trying to read, stopping, listening to the music, trying to read again, dozing off from time to time.
When music woke him up again, he looked at his watch, saw that it was nearly ten o'clock, and thought that the first act must almost be over. He licked his dry lips with a furred tongue, and decided to go get a drink of water. There was a fountain in the green room the musicians used, but there were always some of them in there, and Abe was uncomfortable around them. Part of it was the contrast he felt between their full dress and his own dark green work clothes, and the rest was the cool attitude with which most of them viewed him, as though he were an interloper in the halls of the Muses. No, better to go through the cellar and into the lower level lobby. No one would be there while the show was going on except for maybe some security people, and they knew who he was.
Abe stood up, stretched, heard, very dimly, voices speaking on the stage above him, and walked to the door that opened onto the long corridor that led to the lower lobby. He opened it, stepped through, and flicked on the light switch, illuminating the dank passage through which he would have to walk.
Though Abe had traversed that damp, dirt-floored corridor a thousand times, the shadowy bays whose contents Curt and Evan had catalogued now seemed to Abe like alcoves in some carnival house of horrors from which people dressed as monsters would jump and yell boo, or like tunnels opening into haunted caverns…
Yeah, he thought. Haunted.
Harry? He thought the word, then spoke it. "Harry?" Frightened, but needing to know, he stepped onto the dirt floor and closed the door behind him. The voices were still audible, but even more faraway now, as in a dream. And as in a dream Abe began to walk down the corridor, fearing to look to either side or in back of him.
Quentin Margolis stood at the rear of the Venetian Theatre and watched the show. The standing wearied him not at all, for the strength of the performance that Dennis Hamilton was giving gave him strength as well.
Dennis was, Quentin thought, nothing short of wonderful tonight. Every word, every note, every gesture was so unmistakably right that it seemed sacrilege that he had ever done the role any other way. All the tenderness, all the passion, all the boyish exuberance was there, along with subtleties of which youth was not yet capable. And they were not lost on the audience either. The mass seemed to hang on Dennis's every move. Nothing escaped them, because his artistry was such that he did not allow it. It was the most brilliant, yet the most spontaneous performance Quentin had ever seen, the only one in which not a line seemed written or thought out ahead, but rather sprang from the mind of the Emperor Frederick as they all watched, as though the role Dennis Hamilton was creating was creating itself, as though they watched, not artifice, but life.
And then something went wrong.
It was minor, but because of the perfection of Dennis's performance up to that point it stood out all the more rawly, like a sudden slash of blinding white on a dark, brooding Rembrandt. The scene was Act I, Scene 6, where Frederick tells Count Rinehart that he may send troops to assist the peasant revolt against the brutal usurper, King Andrei of Wohlstein. It was intended as the turning point, the first moment in the play that Frederick steps unmistakably into his position as Emperor.
Franklin Stern, as Rinehart, laughed bitterly and gave his line, "'Oh, of course. And I suppose before too long you'll grant your own people democracy.”
Dennis rose from his chair, clasped his hands behind his back, became Frederick becoming the Emperor Frederick, fixed Stern with a look that would have made lesser actors quail, and began his line – Better rule by the people… than rule by a fool, Rinehart! – but did not finish it.
"'Better rule by the people… than rule by -'" Dennis choked off, went pale, seemed to sway for a moment, then caught himself on the arm of the chair.
Quentin's breath locked in his throat, and he felt the sweat of fear suddenly moist on his face and chest. "Oh God," he whispered, as he watched Dennis struggle. "Oh dear God, please…”
The change was so abrupt that the audience could not help but notice, and in that instant Quentin saw hundreds of heads come together, and heard the static of whispers fill the air of the theatre like an audible cloud.
"Than rule by what, your majesty?" Franklin Stem none too gracefully fed Dennis.
Even from the rear of the auditorium, Quentin could see Dennis press his eyes closed, trying to bring back the character who had seemingly evacuated his body.
"'Than rule by… a fool!'"Dennis shouted, the outburst totally out of character. They were words said in desperation by a faltering actor, rather than from the strength and emotion of character, and Quentin 's heart sank. What had been there in all its glory was now lost, although he hoped not irretrievably. He felt like the handler of a prize fighter who was staggering and bloodied, praying he would get through the round and come back to his comer so he could tell him to…
What? Keep up his left? Jab? Keep moving? If Dennis was able to get to the intermission through this scene and the song and quintet that followed, what in God's name would Quentin tell him? It was only Dennis, Dennis alone, who could save himself now.
The scene went on, but instead of the Emperor Frederick revealing his soul, it was now Dennis Hamilton who read lines.