Winner Take All

by T. Davis Bunn

  “I’m here to see Erin Brandt. But I don’t know if she’s signed for me.”

  “Name?”

  “Dale Steadman.”

  “Steadman. Sure, you’re down. Ms. Brandt must’ve had them call you in from upstairs.” He ticked the name off the sheet. “I have to have somebody show you up.”

  “No problem.” Dale pointed to the loudspeaker from which he could hear his former wife singing. “Are they running late?”

  “By almost two hours.”

  “Makes for a long day.”

  The guard shrugged. “We go time-and-a-half in exactly eleven minutes.”

  Dale waited while the guard signaled for an escort, then followed a harried young woman through the backstage maze. Formerly known as Philharmonic Hall, Avery Fisher Hall had been the first building to open and was by far the coldest and least imposing of the Lincoln Center structures. Low ceilings and massive pillars transformed the lobbies into a series of tight marble-lined cages. The foyer’s soundburst sculpture had no real space from which it could be appreciated, and so looked more like bronze blades threatening to plummet at any moment.

  The hall itself was functionally excellent yet aesthetically horrendous. The four levels and twenty-eight hundred seats had originally been decked out in royal blue plush, which looked fabulous but held the acoustic quality of a sealed coffin. Avery Fisher, the founder of Fisher Electronics, had redesigned the hall and paid for it himself. Like his world-famous speaker systems, the result was a minimum of fancy and a maximum of functionality.

  Not even the New York Philharmonic, the oldest symphony orchestra in the United States, nor its roster of famous conductors which included Zubin Mehta, Kurt Masur, and Leonard Bernstein, could overcome the fact that Avery Fisher Hall resembled nothing so much as the interior of a kettledrum.

  The backstage was a tangle of settings and wires and lighting. Entrance stage right was made between the chief pulley system for the fire curtain and the principal video monitors. As soon as he heard the first note, Dale understood how Erin could never have refused this chance to return. They were performing Puccini’s La Bohème, a vastly popular work that had become Erin’s signature piece since the pregnancy. The stage of Avery Fisher Hall was definitely not the Met. But it was still a vital part of Lincoln Center. She was coming in to save a gala charity event. The publicity would be enormous. It was one giant step closer to her goal.

  The hall contained no orchestra pit, which meant she would be giving a concert performance—no theatrical backdrop, the singers and orchestra onstage together, the crowd there for the music alone. Dale arrived stage right just as Erin concluded the Abandonment aria in the third act. Her back was to him, and she sang to an almost empty hall. A group of children were assembled stage left. Most were in wheelchairs. Many bore the shaved heads and haunted features of recent chemo. Still more children filled the auditorium’s first few rows. The aria was a tragic crescendo of potent sentimentality, and Erin sang with the alluring force that was all her own. Several of the children’s faces were stained with tears. A pair of photographers moved about the aisles. It was a traumatic blow for Dale, seeing these hollow-faced children captivated by her spell.

  At the aria’s conclusion, the children broke into spontaneous applause. The conductor waited them out, then began reviewing last-minute changes with Erin and the musicians. Erin smiled for the children before turning toward the conductor. And spotted Dale.

  She showed a bewilderment that under different circumstances would have been truly comic. “What are you doing here?”

  “You called me.”

  “I most certainly did not.”

  “Your assistant, then.”

  Her incredulity gradually became a flush of genuine anger. “That is ridiculous.”

  “Then how do you explain my having a backstage pass waiting for me?”

  “I don’t need to explain anything!” All eyes were upon her as she crossed the stage toward him. “I told you I would come down Monday.”

  “And I was waiting at home for you to get there. Until your staffer called and said it was urgent I drop everything and fly up.”

  “This is absurd!”

  “Oh, wait, let me guess.” He knew his voice was rising, but no longer cared. “This is just another of your classic maneuvers.”

  Fire flashed within those dark eyes. She hissed at him, “Stop making a scene!”

  “It won’t work this time. I’ve spent years enduring your tantrums and your tactics. But not now. Not over Celeste.” He jabbed his finger at her, wishing with all his might for the freedom to drive it right through the place where, in any normal person, a heart would be beating. “You’ve lied every step of the way. Everything I’ve done has been for the sake of Celeste. But you’ve done nothing except use our baby girl like a pawn. It’s enough, Erin. It’s too much. It’s over.”

  “This isn’t the time or the place!”

  “Yes it is! You’re going to answer me now!”

  “Answer you? You want me to answer you?” Her control slipped away. The observers no longer mattered, the fury would not be denied. In the space of two heartbeats she aged twenty years. “You want the world to hear how you’re the one responsible for all this?”

  “Forget what I told Reiner. The deal is off. My lawyer is going to have you arrested.”

  “Arrest me?” Her shrieking laughter filled the entire stage. “Am I the one who got so blind drunk he set his own house on fire and almost murdered his own wife and child?”

  “That’s not true and you know it.”

  “I wouldn’t have had to do any of this if you weren’t a drunk and a brute! There’s only one person to blame for all this. You’ve threatened me and you’ve bullied me and now I’m the one saying it’s over!”

  “This isn’t about you, Erin! It’s about—”

  “No! It’s about you!” She backed a step away. “You’re just trying to get at me again! You want to destroy me, and I won’t let it happen!”

  He took a step toward her, saw the triumph flare in her features, and knew he’d been duped.

  She confirmed it by lifting her voice even louder now, singing for the rafters and the farthest tier. “Keep away! Don’t hurt me again!”

  He froze, trapped by the realization he had become just another prop for her to use and destroy. “You know I’ve never laid a hand on you. Never.”

  “You don’t control me anymore! I’m in control now. The days when you could abuse me are gone!” She stomped to where two gaping stagehands held open the rear doors, then spun about and shrilled, “You need counseling! You need serious help and you need it now!”

  As she took her exit to awestruck acclaim, he shouted, “I want my baby girl!”

  She could never let her supporting cast have the final note. “You country fool!” Her disembodied laughter shrieked overhead. “Whose child did you say?”

  CHAPTER

  ———

  33

  FOR KIRSTEN, New York was a desert of the soul. Memories of earlier times rose unbidden, taunting her with the hollow knowledge of circular mistakes. She slept as much as she could, only to wake from dreams of gaily laughing skulls and streets filled with death dances and shrill dirges. She dressed and walked to Seventh Avenue and had an afternoon breakfast at the Stage Deli. She walked down Madison and up Fifth, staring at shops with the names of her former world. Passersby showed the viper’s habit of seeking prey even while gorged.

  She walked until she was hopefully tired enough to sleep once more. She returned to the hotel and decided to try Marcus first on his home phone. To her surprise, Fay answered the phone. “How you keeping, honey?”

  “Fine. Where’s Marcus?”

  “Off doing man things, I ’spect. Where are you?”

  “New York. Isn’t it a little late for you to be over cleaning?”

  “Deacon felt like one or the other of us ought to keep an eye on him and the place.”

  “What’s the ma
tter?”

  “Nothing, so far as we know. But things are heating up, that’s for certain.”

  “Is Marcus in danger?”

  “Honey, there’s danger in breathing. But ’round here he’s safe as anybody can be. We’ve got a lotsa years behind us, learning how to deal with folks wanting to mess up our neighborhood. Now what about you?”

  “I’m still here.”

  She huffed softly. “Child, what I said the other day, it wasn’t ’cause I wanted answers. I just wanted to know if you were asking these questions yourself.”

  “I am now. I can’t stop.” Once more, the air seemed to compress about her. “Just tell Marcus I called.”

  The Angus Barn was a bastion of Old Raleigh, stationed off Highway 70 in what once had been rolling pastureland. Now the only remaining old forest belonged to Umstead Park. To its south encroached industrial parkland and the Raleigh-Durham Airport. North and east and west was just more residential sprawl. When it was first built, the Angus Barn was as close as Raleigh came to big-city cuisine, with steaks known statewide for quality and size. Nowadays its patrons sought a semi-clubby atmosphere where families let kids run about the plank flooring, the adults visited from table to table, and locals pretended their little hometown had never grown into the stranger it now was.

  As Marcus stood in the doorway waiting for Dale, he spotted Rachel Sears leading a very young rendition of herself out of the restaurant. The diminutive judge was dressed in cream and lavender. “Debbie, can you say hello to Mr. Glenwood?”

  While the child possessed her mother’s intense gaze, her eyes were still unafflicted. “Are you another lousy lawyer?”

  “Debbie, shush.”

  “I sure am.”

  “Mommy doesn’t like you.”

  “Marcus is one of the good ones, honey.” The judge’s glance became scathing. “Most of the time.”

  “I can’t tell you how sorry I am.”

  “Shame on you.” She held to a musical tone for her daughter’s sake. “Putting me in a position where I had to search for some way not to give in to that man.”

  “I know.”

  She lifted her daughter up to where Debbie’s face nestled in close to her own. “Are you meeting someone?”

  “Dale Steadman. He’s late.”

  “It wouldn’t be proper for me to wait around and greet him.” She waved to where her husband was extricating himself from a table full of good old boys on a steak and scotch binge. She swept her hair back in a practiced manner, and seemed perplexed as to what to say. “I hope you have a nice evening.”

  Marcus nodded a hello to her husband and decided he had no choice but to venture a single comment. “Something tells me we’re not seeing the full story in this case.”

  She took her husband’s arm, then showed Marcus the first hint of approval since their confrontation. “Maybe that’s why I’m glad you’re still on the job.”

  Marcus stepped to the porch’s far end, drew out his cell phone, and checked for messages. There were none. He then called his home, intending to do the same. Fay answered his phone with “Glenwood residence.”

  “Have you been there all day?”

  “The boys spelled me for a while. Why didn’t you let Deacon come with you, you had somewhere to go after dark?”

  “Go home, Fay. I’m fine. The house will be fine.”

  “Time you understood something, Marcus. You can’t handle all things life sends your way alone.”

  “I realize that.”

  “Nosir, you do not. You shape the words with your mouth all right. But you don’t swallow them down. You don’t want anybody to hear you say the words, I need something.”

  “Has anybody called?”

  “Kirsten did a while back. And you ain’t getting off so easy. You ever think maybe you ought to let her hear you say those words?”

  “She knows I need her.”

  “Sure she does. But you still got to let her hear you say it yourself. Know why? Cause till that happens, you’ll always be able to class her wisdom as a little something extra, ’stead of making all the difference in the world.”

  He turned from a jolly crowd entering the restaurant. “Nobody else called?”

  Fay gave a dissatisfied harrumph over his response. “Your business phone rang a while back. But I didn’t bother with it.”

  “Thank you, Fay. Now please go home.”

  She hung up on him. Marcus cradled the phone to his chest, staring out at the muggy dusk. Traffic roared up and down the Durham highway, oblivious to the fact that the old black woman had managed to rock his world yet again.

  He dialed his office phone and coded in the voice mail instructions. He listened to Dale announce his arrival in New York, then hung up. His hands dropped to his side. He stared at the sunset-drenched horizon, and said quietly, “Something is very wrong here.”

  CHAPTER

  ———

  34

  NORMALLY ERIN FED OFF TENSION. Early in her career she had learned to channel all energy, particularly the negative and disharmonious, into a greater brilliance upon the stage. It was a secret seldom mentioned and never shared, that lights and the camera’s eye feasted upon whatever created a greater craving in the viewer. For Erin, calamity was merely more fuel for the fire. But this only worked when she was in control.

  She made an utter mess of removing her makeup. Nor could she call someone else. The makeup woman was a typical New York hag, all greedy eyes and gossiping tongue, who would dearly love to know Erin could not stop her hands from shaking or her chest from heaving tight little gasps. The gown’s cloth hooks drove her borderline insane before she finally gripped the two top edges and ripped them all out. Erin swiped away the worst of the smeared eyeliner, then donned her Yves St. Laurent day dress and her Hermès overwrap and heels. She checked her reflection and gave her lips another quick jab, brushed some fury out of her hair, and faced the door as she would an adversary.

  “I am a star,” she quietly declared. And she knew it was so.

  The backstage area was a rat’s warren, ill designed and windowless. All the Lincoln Center nonpublic areas were a horror. Water seeped down cracked walls and puddled around live wires. Wallpaper draped like last year’s marquees. The buildings showed their crumbling flaws nowhere so well as backstage.

  Where the dressing rooms joined with the main hall leading to the guard and the stage exit, Erin faltered. What if Dale was still waiting for her outside the main stage door? There in front of the fans waiting to beg for a moment of the diva’s time, with the photographers and the tourists and the reporters, all eager to see the disastrous second act—she couldn’t face him. Not like that.

  Eyes were on her now, she could feel them like snakes coiling to strike. Thankfully, she had taken time to charm the young guard manning the stage-door booth. Erin flipped the silk shawl higher upon her frame like a countess arranging her cloak. The guard watched her with the careful gaze of one who knew Erin Brandt had her moods, and that he should speak only when she addressed him first. Then he noticed her smile and rose to his feet. It was good to know the magic worked, even in her present wounded state.

  “Ms. Brandt, how are you today?”

  She recalled his name at the last possible moment. “Greg, you’re looking positively delicious.”

  He grinned and hitched the heavy gun belt all the guards wore. Greg’s smile broadened to where he showed every stained tooth. “Thanks, ma’am.”

  “And that Southern gallantry, why, I don’t know if I can control my baser instincts.” She leaned over the panel so that he could catch a whiff of her perfume, a concoction made specially for her by an Oriental spice merchant off the Rue St. Honoré. “Would you do me a great kindness?”

  “Anything, Ms. Brandt.”

  “I don’t feel able to meet the public today.”

  He was already raising his walkie-talkie to his lips. “Jimmy, you think you could step inside for a sec?”

  Avery Fisher
Hall’s stage door opened directly onto 65th Street. For dress rehearsals and major performances, a guard the size of an industrial refrigerator was stationed outside. Jimmy had to bend over to make it through the door. “What you need?”

  “Ms. Brandt wants a hand to the side door. You mind taking over here for a second?”

  “No problem.” All the guards came to know the quirks and fancies of the major stars. Erin Brandt had a rep for showing little patience to the fans and would-be singers who collected around the back entrance. “You got a car coming today, ma’am?”

  She hesitated. This was something Reiner would have seen to. But Reiner was still in Germany. “I’m not sure.”

  “No problem. I saw a couple of limos cruising out front, I’ll call one around.”

  She could have kissed the man. Really. “Thank you so much.”

  Greg shifted his bulk out of the tight guard chamber and walked to the steel side door. He used his guard’s passkey to unlock the door, and held it open. “Right this way, Ms. Brandt.”

  Greg scuttled ahead to the end of a drab concrete hallway and opened the second connecting door. This joined to the hall’s side entrance. Greg then held open one of the glass doors connecting to the underground parking lot. The lane made a tight U around the bank of backstage service elevators and exited just before where 65th Street met Columbus Avenue. On this late July afternoon, the hot air held an astringent stench. Erin could not help but glance over to the Met’s main stage entrance. She felt her features draw back in bitter wrath. That was where she should be. It should be her full-length photograph staring loftily down from the long hall leading to the guard’s station. This should be her era.

  Her bitter reverie was interrupted by someone calling, “Ms. Brandt?”

  The driver was a stranger, not uncommon in a city where the limo listings took over ten pages of the phone book. He was standing alongside a new-style town car, which she particularly detested. “Yes?”