Winner Take All

by T. Davis Bunn

  “Usually.”

  The look Erin gave her was liquid with tenderness. “You poor fragile beauty. They’ve robbed you, haven’t they?”

  “What?”

  “Words do nothing for what you’ve been forced to carry around inside.” She leaned across the table, drawing in so close Kirsten could not help but breathe her spiced perfume. “Listen, my sister. I know you. So very, very well.”

  Erin turned away momentarily, and spoke to the hovering waiter. “Bring us a selection of whatever is freshest and best.”

  “Of course, Ms. Brandt.”

  Erin stripped the foil from the champagne bottle and expertly twisted out the cork. “I love doing this, releasing the night’s music. Why should I allow a strange man to have this pleasure?”

  She poured them both a measure, then raised her fluted glass by the stem. “To sisters bonded by what the world will never understand.”

  Kirsten listened to the crystal bell and sipped from her glass. She tasted only bubbles.

  Erin raised her chin until the faint cleft was accented. The skin of her neck drew tight as an artist’s line. She kept this position as she set down her glass. Her dark eyes targeted Kirsten along the bore of her nose. “I know,” she murmured. “It’s so hard to speak of, all you have inside, all you’ve been forced to choke off. No words will ever do.”

  Kirsten drank once more, swallowing tiny fragments of air her lungs could not find.

  “How do I know? Because it has happened to me. I said we are sisters, did I not? The world has hurt and cheated and stolen from me as it has from you.”

  Kirsten looked out the window, down to where the tide of wealth and people passed beneath her. Try as she might, she could not convince herself the night’s gaiety was any more real than smiles off a backlit strip of cellotape. She sighed. Perhaps the only way to endure it all was through finding a comfortable lie.

  Erin reached across the table and gripped Kirsten’s hand with both of her own. “Let me be your voice. Let me sing my arias for both of us. Let me shout the pain. Then, when we are alone, let us find one another in the intimate sharing of our secret.” Fiercely she clenched Kirsten’s hand, though her voice remained an enticing murmur. “Shall I tell you what that secret is?”

  A shadow appeared and hovered by their table. They looked over together to find a nervous young man in the Savoy’s uniform of starched shirt and tails. He handed Erin an engraved calling card. “Excuse me, Ms. Brandt. But the gentleman says it is most urgent.”

  “Impossible. The man is utterly impossible.” Erin tossed her napkin aside. “Forgive me, my dear. This will require two seconds only.”

  Kirsten tried to lose herself in the champagne and the theater outside her window. But this unbidden space could not have come at a worse time. Now that she was alone, she could not help but acknowledge the inaudible lament. This was not working. Her mental confusion was a serrated blade sawing at the night’s façade.

  She found herself recalling the high school guidance counselor who had helped her graduate early. Such memories were normally dreaded events, yet this image merely came and spoke and lingered, like a dawn delayed by a passing storm. Once a term she and the counselor had held the same terse conversation, a ritual between two people who were almost but not quite friends. The counselor asked Kirsten if everything was all right. Kirsten always gave the required answer, that she was fine, her home was great, her parents the best. Then the counselor spoke the words that echoed now in the smoke and the chatter and the clink of fine crystal. Know when to ask for aid.

  So ask she did. Then and there. Her eyes were wide open, yet she saw nothing save the vague reflection of a lonely young blonde in the window beside her. Kirsten stared into a candlelit gaze of empty confusion and spoke the words. Help me.

  So swiftly it could only have been in response, a barrier rose between her and the opulent chamber. The unseen curtain blanketed even sound. Kirsten stared anew at her reflection, this time searching with the honesty of total isolation. Her reflection said nothing. Merely waited.

  She knew then what it was she needed to apprehend. Softly she spoke the words, You do not belong here.

  Her translucent apparition stood up, and she rose as well. The image guided her out of the restaurant. She walked down the stairs and through the fancy foyer and out the front doors. She thought perhaps she caught sight of the apparition in the window of a departing taxi, moving so swiftly Kirsten had no choice but accept that she was both alone and where she should be. She looked up in time to see Erin return to the table, sit down, drink from her glass, and laugh at something the waiter said. At home in a realm from which Kirsten had been forever expelled.

  CHAPTER

  ———

  20

  THE NIGHT PROGRESSED at the creeping pace of finely tuned torture. Kirsten fought her bed until it could hold her no longer. She dressed and went for a walk. But the night tracked her every move. Defeated, she returned to the stale room with its bleak lighting. There should have been some reward, some offering of peace for turning from Erin’s lure. Instead, the ghouls of her past gibbered and shrieked in panicked fury. And right alongside this clamor was the truth she could no longer escape. She longed desperately for Marcus. She craved his voice, his touch, the smell of him. The strengths and the weaknesses, the wounded gaze, the resolve. Yet she feared him as much as she yearned for him. Probably more. She could hear him now, speaking in that soft tone that left her quivering with hunger and terror both.

  Her desire for Marcus was an affront to all the rules she had used to rebuild her shattered existence. She survived by never, ever wanting anything this much. Most especially a man.

  Finally at five in the morning she reached for the phone. Which meant it would be midnight, Rocky Mount time. But that could not be helped.

  Deacon Wilbur answered on the second ring. He sounded instantly awake, in the manner of one who had fielded his share of late-night entreaties. He brushed aside her apology. “Where are you, daughter?”

  “London. Can I speak with Fay, please?”

  There was the rustling and the murmurs, and a longer pause than Kirsten would have expected. Then Fay demanded, “You really in England like my man says?”

  She heard another phone click off, and realized the old woman had moved to another part of the house. “Yes. I’m sorry about the hour.”

  “You forget who you’re talking to here. Ain’t that long ago, a night without the midnight alarm was so rare we talked about it for days. We still keep the old coffee sitting on the counter.” There came the sounds of a door shutting and a microwave fan whirring. “Marcus’ granddaddy used to like me to drop half an eggshell into his pot.”

  “It sounds horrid.”

  “Adds a certain tang, is all. If the pot’s been sitting all day the brew don’t grow so bitter. I ’spect after a while, the taste is just natural. You perk every cup up fresh, I suppose.”

  Kirsten sighed her way down to the floor by her hotel bed. “Usually.”

  The oven timer pinged. “I’m glad you called, child. I didn’t have any right talking to you the way I did.”

  “We both know that’s not true.”

  “Well now.” Fay took a noisy sip. “You’re not running scared, are you, honey?”

  Kirsten was trapped, not by this woman, but the day. “All my life I’ve made it work by not caring too much. Not showing too much. Not talking too much.”

  “Let’s see what you got going into this. You lost both your folks, isn’t that right?”

  “When I was twenty.”

  “You’re a pretty lady. You must’ve had yourself other men friends along the way.”

  “I don’t even want to talk about them.”

  “So your trial runs didn’t turn out that well.” Another sip. “Not too far back, your best friend Gloria went and got herself killed over in China. Now you’re living down here in a strange place without any family of your own. And you’re looking at life with
a man who’s carrying his own set of scars.” A tight trace of humor colored Fay’s words. “I’d say you’ve got every reason to be scared.”

  “I’ve tried my best to run away.”

  “And it didn’t work.”

  “No.”

  “You aim on giving life with Marcus a chance?”

  “I want it and I don’t want it.”

  “Sounds to me as though you don’t think you’re good enough for him.”

  Kirsten dropped her head. This wasn’t working. The tumult was just growing worse.

  “Don’t you go hiding behind that silence of yours. Answer me, child. You figure something’s just so wrong and all messed up you can’t do right by this man. Is that it?”

  “Pretty much.”

  “Okay. Now we’re getting somewhere. You got something inside yourself that makes you feel impure. So you’ve been trying to convince yourself you don’t love him. Which we both know is a lie.”

  “But it’s a comfortable lie.”

  Fay snorted. “Would be if it worked.”

  “Yes.”

  “Honey, people like to think they come into any new relationship all cleaned up. That’s just a fable the world wants you to believe, so you’ve got an excuse to walk away when things don’t go right. Child, love is a filthy business. You got your problems, he got his. But love gives you the strength to walk through the messes of life together. Love is a process. You commit yourself to getting in there and working together to make sense out of what life’s done to you both.”

  “I don’t know if I can do that. Make it work.”

  “Of course you don’t. I lived with this man of mine for fifty-six years and I still don’t know how I’m gonna meet tomorrow.”

  “What does Deacon think about me?”

  “You’re nothing to that man of mine ’cept one more daughter. And that ain’t what we’re talking about here.”

  “What do I tell Marcus?”

  “Honey, you tell him what you can.”

  “What if …” She couldn’t even finish the sentence.

  Fay’s voice reached across the void and gripped her. “Believe you me. He knows. That Marcus is a smart young man. He’s seen inside you long time ago. He’s just been waiting for you to say your piece.”

  “I don’t think I can.”

  “Then you just go and tell God first.” The matter-of-fact tone struck hard as fists. “You’re ready to pour out the oil from your alabaster box now. Ain’t nobody else will ever know the cost of that oil you’re ready to pour on the Master’s feet, or how much you done paid for those tears you’ve been waiting to shed. But he knows. Oh my. Ain’t that the blessed truth. And that’s all you need to remember, child. He’s waiting for you to kneel there and weep for him. He’s already done counted every one of these jewels. And they are precious in his sight.”

  CHAPTER

  ———

  21

  MARCUS SPENT THE MORNING at a remembrance service for Charlie Hayes. There was no way of telling which held more intensity, the mourners’ tears or their laughter. By the time he excused himself, he felt internally disfigured by loss. But he had an appointment to keep, as he explained to the family. And the prospect of work offered an illusory means of bottling his grief, at least for a time.

  He drove through the Research Triangle Park and exited the highway by the Duke Medical Center. Marcus parked his car and stood in the hotel lot, wishing for a clearer separation between what he had just left and what waited up ahead. An early gloaming had assembled overhead, a harbinger so thick and close the air seemed already wet with the storm still to come. He resigned himself to carrying one more burden with him, and headed inside.

  The Wyndham presidential suite was as close to big-city opulence as the region offered. Lightning cut jagged scissor-lines through the cloud cover as Evelyn Lloyd let him in, then returned to the sofa facing the empty fireplace. The suite’s parlor had a wraparound view of forest greens and approaching rain. The entertainment center’s front doors were open, and an opera poured from unseen speakers. Evelyn Lloyd motioned him into a seat, then signaled for a few moments of silence. She paid the approaching storm no mind.

  She used a brief hiatus in the music to inquire, “Do you know opera, Mr. Glenwood?”

  “Not at all, and please call me Marcus.”

  Her voice held a dreamlike quality. “This is one of those essential moments of classical opera. Discovering her lover is dead, Tosca commits suicide by leaping off the battlements of the Castel Sant’ Angelo.”

  Marcus’ seat granted him a view of both the woman and the tempest. Lightning danced behind cottony veils, still so distant the sound was muted and constant. From this man-made perch he watched as rain shadows bowed the trees into drenched and windswept submission. The storm offered a soothing balm to his wounded day. There was both harmony and comfort in watching the heavens weep.

  When the music ended, Evelyn refocused on him. “In such times, one must take pleasure whenever one can.”

  “I’m sorry for bothering you.”

  “Your company is most welcome. There is tea and coffee on the counter. Might I ask you to serve yourself?”

  Marcus walked over to the bar and plied the silver thermos set beside the stacked china and the spray of champagne roses. Evelyn continued, “For those of us who love the milieu, an opera star is the most talented artist on earth. They must sing for hours at the level of a full-throated bellow, embracing four thousand listeners with no amplification whatsoever. They must be consummate musicians. They must also act. And they must be linguists, knowing not only the language, but that culture’s musical styles.”

  He took his coffee back over to the suede sofa with its view of the storm that touched neither this woman nor her wealth. “Quite a feat.”

  She smiled merely with her eyes. “I suppose you prefer banjos plinking against the stars, lanterns for lighting, and peanut shells covering a hard-plank floor.”

  “Add a dose of Carolina barbecue,” Marcus replied, “and you’d be describing my perfect evening.”

  The storm flailed their window with liquid whips and the noise of a thousand drums. “Singers lead a strange life, moving from the subterranean world of rehearsal and voice-coach chambers to the blinding light of stardom. It engenders a schizophrenic viewpoint. The worst of them take the normal duality of human nature and magnify it all out of proportion. Incredibly pleasant one moment, venomous the next.”

  “What do you think of Erin Brandt?”

  She studied him a long moment, then declared flatly, “A costumed snake with the smile of a seraph. Only those who have been around her for a time and seen her on life’s backstage manage a glimpse of her delicate aura of evil.”

  “But your husband likes her.”

  “My husband is even more of an opera fanatic than I. The Met’s board position originally belonged to my grandfather. My family has been involved with the company since the last century. In the old building we owned one of the boxes in what was referred to as the Diamond Horseshoe. I had allowed the board position to slide. My husband begged me to have it reinstated for himself.”

  Marcus did not even pretend to understand. “What does this have to do with Erin Brandt?”

  “Everything. Kedrick wanted to claim her as his own personal find. But the Met had recently brought in a new intendant, a sort of combined chief conductor and artistic director. The gentleman refused to have anything to do with Erin.”

  He caught the grim satisfaction. “You don’t agree with Kedrick’s assessment?”

  “I do not care for the woman personally. As far as Kedrick is concerned, personal traits hold no importance here. Erin is a draw. Not merely a star, you see. Someone who could in time virtually guarantee a sold-out performance. The female equivalent of Placido Domingo.”

  “And the conductor, I’m sorry, I don’t recall the word you just used.”

  “Intendant. His reasons follow the few critics who have not been sw
ept up in the Erin Brandt craze. He feels that she is too young. He claims that her intonations are off and the quality of her sound comes and goes. She works too hard, or so he says, giving her high notes a shrill edge, a fraction off an actual shriek.” She shrugged. “His is the professional ear, I suppose.”

  “I’m still trying to get a feel for her relationship with Dale Steadman.”

  “Wilier prey than Dale have been duped by a conniving female.”

  “You’re suggesting she went into the marriage planning for it to fail?”

  “Those who care for Erin suggest she wanted to give married life a try. See if she could do the family thing and still be sufficiently driven to continue her rise to stardom.”

  “You don’t agree?”

  Evelyn escaped the intense scrutiny by rising and moving to the bar. “More coffee?”

  “I’m fine, thanks.”

  “Everything in life affects a singer’s voice. Technique can overcome a great deal, but not all. And never for very long.”

  Marcus rose to join her. “What are you trying to tell me?”

  “Erin Brandt is by nature a lyric coloratura soprano. She is quite young to try and bridge the gap between the lighter roles and those of dramatic coloratura.”

  “Sorry, you’ve lost me.”

  “No matter.” She made a great procedure of spooning sugar into her tea. “If all goes well with a pregnancy, a soprano’s voice can become much rounder and fuller. It adds an entirely new dimension, one that otherwise might not be gained for years. Afterward she sings with far more feeling and depth.”

  “And if things go wrong?”

  “The biggest risk is a C-section, of course. It cuts all the lower breath muscles in half. These lower muscles are a singer’s greatest support. Most singers who have a C-section never recover their full range.” She sipped her tea and studied the diminishing storm. “Sometimes even the best of pregnancies can destroy a soprano’s career. The muscles may never recover their full strength. Or worse still, there may be a long-term hormonal imbalance. If the hormones are off, the vocal chords can swell. The voice becomes raspy, the notes not as clean. It can also generate extra fatigue, which is death for a singer who must hold the spotlight for four or five hours a night.”