"Eat me." He jerked his head forward, opened his eyes, and saw that the marble carving of the face of the faun was moving.
It grinned.
"Eat me," it said again, and began to pull itself from the marble vines that imprisoned it. Its arms came out first, and it reached up, grasped the edge of the mantel, and, like an athlete chinning himself, dragged the lower part of its body from the marble foliage, revealing its erect phallus, small in reality but obscenely large in proportion to the carving's body.
The faun hung now, a black and shining figure nearly two feet tall, from the mantel. Then it dropped to the floor with a clatter of marble hooves, grinned its grin that showed teeth like little black razor blades, and walked with sharp clicks toward Quentin.
And then the faces of the cherubs and the winds began to move, and fell from the ceiling like ripe, white fruits.
"'She is… dead?'" Dennis asked Linda Bartholomew as Gretl, Lise's friend. He had been gradually feeling his strength and the strength of his performance return. He had been weak at the beginning of Scene 2, but had improved by the end, and now felt as if he had captured the character once again. When he heard that Lise has been murdered, he felt the Emperor's grief, felt it as deeply as he had when he stood over Robin's body.
He stood for a long moment, letting the emotion wash over him even as he was aware of the sympathetic response of the audience. He could feel them feeling his own emotion, and knew that if it would continue, he would triumph.
"'I thank you,'" he said, "'for bringing me word.'" He slowly raised his hand and gently gestured her out, then turned to Bill Miley as Rolf. "'Tell Basil I wish him to come to me immediately.’” Rolf bowed and exited, and Dennis walked slowly to the throne and sat down.
At this point he was to reach into his uniform tunic and take from it a pressed flower that Lise had given to him at their first meeting. He started the move, but as he slid his hand into the tunic, something shook his soul with the power of a stroke. He gasped for air once, twice, three times, and his hand fell to his side on the throne.
He sat there like a machine that had stopped, and the audience stirred. Was this part of the show, an unexpected emotional response to show how much Lise's death had devastated Frederick? Or were they witnessing the further collapse of Dennis Hamilton, the actor?
Alan Singleton, who played Basil, entered, and his poorly concealed discomfort was all the hint the audience needed. Something else had gone wrong. Dennis Hamilton was falling apart before them.
"'Majesty,'" Singleton declaimed in a voice that shook with more than practiced emotion, "`How may I be of service?'"
Dennis looked at him slowly, knowing the move with the flower was irretrievably lost, and wondering what else was lost as well.
You feel me now, Dennis. You feel me coming, and growing strong, taking your strength. One final performance, Dennis. Just what I needed. Just what we both needed.
I will see you soon. Very soon. I'm practicing now. Honing my skills. Like you, I've been in retirement for far too long.
Can you imagine that I even have to audition in order to appear with you?
Even now I am in the midst of my final audition.
For your director.
Some of the cherub heads broke when they struck the lounge floor, but reformed immediately. Several of them landed on the sofa next to Quentin, and either flopped end over end toward him, or rolled on edge. He jumped up, looking around in panic for a way to escape, but the fat little faces came at him from every direction, and the black faun was closing in fast, less than six feet away from him now.
He cried wordlessly, turning about, looking for a breach in the nightmarish line. He could have jumped over them, but his legs were trembling so much that he knew he dared not try it, lest he trip and fall among them. Then he saw a break in the direction of the men's lounge, and in a moment he was through it, racing across the tile floor, and now he was in the small chamber, and there were two doors – the open one into the lavatory itself, which would give no means of escape, and a closed one. He grasped the knob and turned it, but it was locked. Screaming with rage and fear, he kicked it with his dancer's legs, felt the frame give, looked behind and saw the faun and the cherubs in the doorway behind him, kicked again, harder. The door flew open, and Quentin saw, several yards away down four wooden steps and a long, dirt-floored tunnel, the hanging, eviscerated corpse of Abe Kipp.
The sight made him stagger back, and his heel caught one of the rolling faces. He tripped, fell, felt them bumping against him, then felt the pain of the black faun's teeth as it buried them in his ankle. Screaming, he batted away the faces and crab-walked into the lavatory. He wrenched the doorstop up and tried to push the door closed against the creatures, but its pneumatics made it close slowly, and several of the things rolled through. The faun got an arm and a cloven foot into the crack, and although Quentin pressed as hard as he could, battering the door with his shoulder, the marble would not shatter. The gap grew wider, allowing more of the white faces to enter, and Quentin, as he moved further away from the door, saw to his greater horror that now the cupid mouths were opening wider than he would have thought possible, showing teeth within. The little round chins dropped, and the jaws snapped as they clattered toward him. One was larger than the others, and he knew that it must be one of the four corner winds.
Now the faun was inside, phallus rampant, teeth gnashing, scuttling toward him, its shoulders swinging with each step, and Quentin retreated further, crawled into the end booth, shot the bolt even as he realized the futility of it. He climbed onto the seat, grasped the top of the partition for balance, watched as the cherub heads, their mouths chattering like wind-up teeth, rolled under and into his booth and rattled like saucers as they toppled over and came to rest, glaring up at him with white plaster eyes. They kept rolling in, dozens of them, clattering next to each other until they overlapped, hiding the tile floor, their baby mouths with predators' teeth still working.
Then everything was quiet. Quentin hung on, balanced on the toilet, panting, bleeding from his ankle where the faun's teeth had raked him.
The faun…
" Eat me! " grated a voice next to his ear, and pain ran red through his hand. The faun had climbed up the other side of the partition and was shredding his fingers like a hulling machine strips corn.
Quentin screamed and let go. His left foot plunged down into the bowl, and his head struck the wall.
It was a great mercy that he was unconscious when he fell among the white faces.
"'There will be no marriage, Prime Minister. Not ever.'"
The lines were as listlessly given as those of a weary conductor calling station stops.
"'But, Majesty,'" a jittery Alan Singleton replied, "`Your responsibility – to your throne – to your people!'"
Ann Deems watched from the wings, her heart filled with fear and love, and she thought, If only I could give him what I feel now. If only I could give him what he needs…
The show went on. And the audience remained in their seats. Not one left for a cigarette, or a breath of fresh air, or a visit to the rest room. They sat there as repelled and fascinated as a crowd at an execution.
Dennis's singing "All My Life to Grieve" was almost drowned out by the orchestra, in spite of Dex Colangelo's noble efforts to pull the orchestral volume down as low as possible. The next two scenes were without the Emperor, and the other performers gave their all – some felt too much – to counterbalance Dennis's lack of fire. In the following scene where Rolf tells Inga that the Emperor is behaving like perfect royalty, there were audible if uncomfortable chuckles from the audience, appreciative not only of the absurdity of the line in context, but of Bill Miley's zeal in its delivery, as if saying a thing strongly enough would make it so.