THE GOD'S WIFE

by LYNN VOEDISCH

  “What?” he asked, brushing aside her hair with tenderness.

  “I ... love you,” she said and buried her head on his shoulder, defeated.

  #

  Tulle, taffeta, velvet and lace filled the costume shop with an elegant disorder. Fabric has a way of casting a magic spell over onlookers, and it can completely transform a mere human who’s dressed in intricately woven material. Rebecca loved to hide in this burrow of fine textiles. Disguised by the long, hanging sheets of satin, she could think and dream without someone finding her.

  The theater shared space with a few other dance companies, so there were tutus stuffed in high cabinets and tiaras teetering on a shelf by the far wall. A wizard’s cap sat on a stool, and shoes of eras long gone stuck out in messy rows at the back of the room. The pointe shoes, which Rebecca loved to look at, hung from ribbons suspended from the wall. Famous ballerinas signed some; others, from dancers unknown, were in tatters from full-out performances.

  The costume shop felt like another land, and Rebecca reveled in the disconnect from her own world. She sat amid the bolts of linen the costume designer had planned for “Aïda.” The finely woven flax draped across her discerning fingers. It was delicate enough, but some of it was dyed in bright colors. This, she knew, was wrong. The Egyptians wore white linen almost exclusively during the thousands of years of their civilization. It marked who they were. The Hittites, the Hyksos, the Nubians and others all wore different hues, depending on what dyes they could acquire. But the Egyptians wore starchy white linen, often heavily pleated but seldom embroidered. There were a few cases of colored robes and shawls that were worn over the white base layer, but those were reserved for royalty or the priesthood.

  Elsa is not going to like it if I tell her this, Rebecca thought. She’s got half the costumes sewn up and ready for alteration. Some of the dresses and kilts matched the color scheme of the set. To be fair, most of the linen apparel shone in white. But on the whole, the wardrobe lacked accuracy.

  If I tell her, she’ll throw a fit. Should I tell Emmylou or Randy instead?

  She heard the wardrobe-room curtains part, and someone entered. The tall, thin shape was Raven, without a doubt. Rebecca jumped out of the pile of linen to greet her friend.

  “Hanging out with the rags now are you?” Raven said, gesturing at the mess of threads and cuttings all over the floor.

  “They’re wrong.” Rebecca pointed at the scraps of fabric.

  “What’s wrong?” Raven lifted one of her arched eyebrows and penetrated Rebecca with one of her patented stern looks.

  “The costumes for the show. They shouldn’t be in color.”

  “Try telling Elsa that. I guarantee you’ll be shredded like this poor fellow here.” She held up a pants leg that had been slashed several times around the thigh. When the costumer made a mistake cutting her patterns, she got vicious with her shears. It was a good thing no one had been wearing those trousers.

  “Listen, I’m hiding out because I’ve got a real problem here. You’re the only one I trust to hear this, so please try to understand.” Rebecca sagged again against the fabric.

  Raven moved to her friend’s side, putting an arm around her slumped shoulders. “What is it? I promise it will be just between you and me.”

  Rebecca laughed with a grim sound. “Yeah, and you play my nemesis in the production. Plus, you’re my under-study. That’s a great background for trust.”

  Raven spun her around till they stood almost nose-to-nose. “I’m also your best friend. Dance roles don’t get in the way of that.”

  With that, Rebecca flopped back down to a squatting position in the midst of the discarded linen. She sought for a way to describe her predicament. “It’s like those mirrors they have at the museum.”

  “What mirrors?”

  “You know, at the Field Museum. If you look in them long enough, you see what you’d look like if you were an Egyptian.”

  “Oh, yeah. My God, I haven’t been there in about seven years. I’ll bet you go almost every day you can get time off.” Rebecca nodded, and Raven continued. “What do you see there?”

  “Well, no, this is not about what I’m seeing at the museum,” Rebecca said. “It’s just a similar sensation. When I dream, I see myself living there, in Egypt, way back then. And it’s so real, Raven, I can almost reach out and touch the papyrus plants.”

  “So what’s wrong with that? You’ve researched this role until it has become the real thing to you.” The furrow in Raven’s forehead was deep and her voice husky.

  “What’s wrong is that I’m not alone. There’s someone with me. A woman just like me. Have you ever felt that? That you aren’t alone in the world and a … a ... you know ... a doppelganger, a copy of you, is living a life just like yours?”

  Raven shook her head, and her eyebrows formed a deep V. She took Rebecca’s hands and held them with a fierce grip.

  “Honey, none of us is alone. We are all one. I know that I will never let you go.”

  Rebecca felt her eyes go glassy. Raven thought she was talking about a spiritual crisis.

  “No, no. It’s not that.” Rebecca stomped a few steps away and punched at some bolts of cotton. “She’s right here with me, and I’m with her. And somehow, everything one of us does affects the other. And she’s in great danger. This is what I see at night when everyone else thinks I’m unconscious.”

  Raven cocked her head as if deciding something.

  “Let’s go over to Starbucks, and you can start all this from the beginning. Maybe then I can decide if you are just reading too much science fiction.”

  Rebecca let out a half-sigh, half-laugh. “Just as long as I get a latte with no sugar.” Raven would hear her out. She’s the only one who could.

  #

  Rehearsing the first love scene with Ricky Ramon thrummed like flying with wings of a hummingbird. Fast. Fluid. Darting in and out. Rebecca felt herself carried into positions high above Ricky’s head. At one point, she thought she’d ascend straight into the theater’s rope rigging near the ceiling. A pas de deux with Ricky rested on a foundation so sure and steady, so heady and steamy that Rebecca almost forgot he was gay. When he cradled and caressed her head at the end of the movement, she wanted to whisper, “I love you, too.” Because, at that moment, she did.

  However, once the music stopped and Randy clapped his hands announcing a break, Ricky sauntered off with his new boyfriend. Rebecca remained sitting on the floor, remembering the sheer silken wonder of the dance.

  Emmylou declared the entire production would be danced in Egyptian style, despite the fact that Aïda had been captured from Nubia.

  “I’m not turning this whole thing into a race issue,” she said with her famous long nose in the air. This meant Rebecca didn’t have to learn some obscure Nubian movement — which was convenient because Nubia is modern-day Ethiopia, a land perpetually at civil war and probably not too friendly with researchers from the United States. It also meant Rebecca could dance the steps that emanated from her soul. The steps she learned overnight. Every time she stepped into character, she became Aïda, a fact the directors noted with regularity.

  Could this be the time to tell Randy of her problem? It seemed hardly likely, not when things were working out so well. Then she caught sight of little Lenore staring her down like a petulant teenager with her lower lip sticking out.

  What if Lenore gets to Randy first?

  Rebecca got up on legs that wobbled a bit and remembered ballet class with the hated Buckley came next. Even in the midst of rehearsals, the dancers were required to take class. After bending herself into those Mediterranean/African shapes, the idea of doing delicate piqué turns in pointe shoes struck Rebecca as ridiculous. A chat with Randy could legitimately get her out of at least a half hour of torture at the hands of the ballet master.

  She took a leap of faith.

  “Randy,” she called to the figure retreating into his office. “Can I have a few minutes?”

&
nbsp; #

  “That’s what you wanted to tell me, that you pass out now and then?” Randy was sitting behind his desk, laughing, while catching his reflection in a mirror near his desk. He whisked a stray hair off his forehead. “You can’t seriously think this will jeopardize the production.”

  “Well, I’ve never blacked out while dancing,” she said, twisting her hands in her lap. “In fact, all this seems to make my dancing better.”

  “So I’ve heard from Emmylou. She has nothing but praise for you.” Randy fixed her with those laser-beam eyes of his. “I think you’re nothing but a worry wart.”

  “Well, enough people are concerned that they made me promise to tell you — in case I collapse in the middle of the high point of the pas de deux or something like that.”

  “It won’t happen. And Raven is a superlative under-study, although that darn Lenore …” Randy stopped talking and peeked out the window of his office door. He straightened in his chair, so he must not have seen anyone.

  “What about Lenore?”

  “She wants the understudy role. God knows she’d never be able to handle it, but she’s been in here at least twice lobbying for the job. And, come to think of it, she made some veiled comment about how I might need her if you are … what did she say?” he tapped his fingers on his cheek. “Ah, ‘incapacitated.’”

  That little bitch. It’s a good thing I got in here when I did.

  Randy drummed his manicured fingers on the desktop, as he pondered the issue.

  “You know, she’s not only unsuited to be an understudy, she really can’t do the corps dances very well. Sometimes, I wonder why I even took her on. And with that ungodly purple hair, we’d have to make a special wig for her. Can you imagine if it fell off ?” Rebecca started to laugh, but Randy’s attention went again to the mirror, where he probably hunted for a stray gray hair.

  “Well, as long as you aren’t worried,” Rebecca said. “I’ll continue as usual. I just felt I had to tell you —”

  “She hates you, you know,” Randy interrupted. “I can tell by the way she looks at you. Are you sure she’s not putting something in your coffee or something? Like a Lucrezia Borgia?” He chuckled, pleased with his own witticism.

  “She doesn’t bring coffee to me, Randy. And frankly, I don’t have anything to do with Lenore. If she hates me, it’s not for anything I did to her.”

  Randy let out a theatrical sigh. Everything he did was suited for the stage, but this time, his back bent as if he bore an intolerable weight.

  “Oh, it’s all part of running a company. These little petty wars. I’ve got a few romances that went sour, and now some dancers don’t want to work together. It’s a good thing that Ricky is …” he cut himself off.

  “We won’t be having a romance, that’s for sure,” Rebecca said with a wink. Randy winked back.

  “Okay, it’s decided,” he said, slapping his hand down on the desk. “You’ll come back to me if anything gets worse, but right now, the production is going beautifully. I can tell my financial backers they have a winner,” he said, holding up a palm for a high five. Rebecca’s palm met his, and Randy gave her a searching look. “You are coming to the dinner tonight, aren’t you?”

  “Dinner?” Rebecca wracked her mind for any miscellaneous memos she may have missed. “I’m afraid I wasn’t invited.”

  “Not invited? That’s absurd. You’re the star of the show, of course, you are invited. Didn’t you hear anyone talking about it? Someone must have been messing with the company mailboxes.” He bit his lower lip. She could tell he suspected Lenore. “Well, it would be a rush, but can you come tonight? It’s at eight at the studio.”

  “I don’t have a formal gown, Randy,” she said, her mind racing. “But, uh, sure. I probably can come up with something. May I take Jonas?”

  “With my blessings, my dear. I’ve got to show you off, and when you’re with your lover, you bloom like a precious flower.”

  Rebecca felt her face heat up, and she bowed a little as she stood to go, as if she were leaving a master class. With a start, she glanced at the clock and saw the hour was almost up. She’d missed ballet entirely.

  “You’ll tell Buckley I have an excused absence, won’t you?”

  “Him? Oh, God, yes. He’s such a pain in the ass. You’re fine. Fine.”

  She backed out the door and then hurried toward the front exit. A formal dinner in just a few hours. How to pull that off ? She needed to get Jonas on the cell phone pronto. She raced outdoors where she could get better reception.

  The conversation sizzled, popped and filled with cutoff sentences and cell phone stutters. But the gist of the noise meant her beleaguered boyfriend had to work late. She’d have to go to the dinner alone.

  She rang off and stood on the street, nearly mauled by rush-hour pedestrians in a panic to make their trains. Imagining going to the fancy soirée, she clambered down the subway stairs and tried to dream up sparkling conversation while jammed next to a man with an umbrella that kept hitting her in the rear.

  Released from the misery of the train, the walk up the street to her apartment filled her with a trepidation she didn’t understand. How many times had she gone down these tree-lined city streets, greeting the neighbors or tossing a ball back to the kids playing in the street? What was up? Certainly her nerves were tingling. She dug her keys from her purse and stumbled into her front vestibule, then fished the mail from her slot. No invitation. She started climbing the upstairs when she heard a loud male voice arguing with Greta and Alison.

  “Yes. She must be here,” a voice that pulled her insides rigid said. “I’m taking her to a dinner …”

  Rebecca ran upstairs, slipped behind the interloper and her roommates, and threw her dance bag down to break up the argument. Sharif, dressed for a formal occasion in a designer tuxedo, turned to face her, looking like an imp who had been caught mid-prank.

  “Sharif ?” Rebecca said, flustered and not a little disturbed. “What plans do you have this time?”

  Chapter Ten

  Neferet was too frightened to accept the offer of mere escort service and increased security at her apartments at Karnak. Instead, she slept that night at the palace on a small bed offered by Kamose’s sentry. The guard would be up all night, anyway, and she couldn’t imagine navigating the dangerous road home. Staying with Kamose was the most dangerous of any of her options, so she drifted in and out of a fitful sleep in the soldier’s little cot until dawn.

  The narrow cot was filled with straw instead of the down she was accustomed to, and nightmares interrupted her sleep. She spent most of the night, itchy, restless and irritable, eager to get on with her business.

  As soon as light began burnishing the tiny room’s walls, she arose, rearranged her sheath dress, fixed her wig and set out — although not without rewarding the sentry with a deben of gold. He was a sweet young man, and she knew he could prove useful in the future, with so many enemies around.

  There was only one place where she could go now to stop Zayem’s madness and that was at the feet of the Pharaoh himself. The time to get to him was early, before Meryt commanded his attention. If the living quarters were still as she remembered, her father slept in his own wing, only inviting the Great Wife on occasion. It was a place where Neferet remembered playing with her father and the nursemaids. The royal chamber lay just off to the left of the vine-patterned corridor she hurried along. She walked barefoot, careful not to make a sound in this cavernous hallway, lest Meryt’s spies discover her. When she reached the royal lodgings, a guard recognized her at once and allowed passage. She leaned over and whispered in his ear. This was not a royal audience she sought but a simple meeting between father and daughter. The guard nodded and said a few things to a young man in fancy palace dress who practically leaped through the door toward the king’s chambers.

  She waited, putting on her sandals and counting the number of renditions of the goddess Eset she saw painted on the tops of the walls. The goddess wo
uld watch over this encounter, yet Neferet wondered if her father would still act like an everyday parent and not a forbidding authority figure. Was he still the loving man she remembered? She thought of his smiles at last night’s state dinner. Four years away from him, living in the harem, had comprised a large part of her life, and she no longer could discern how distant he may have become. A ruler, considered by the entire country to be the living incarnation of god on earth, is a difficult image to snuggle.

  Within minutes, the boy came bobbing back, bowed to Neferet and then beckoned her forward.

  “We’ll be alone?” she asked. “Without the Great Wife?” The boy nodded with verve and urged Neferet into a luxurious room covered with wall tapestries and murals. On a simple ebony chair sat her father, bereft of crown or wig, looking fit for a man of forty-six years. When he saw his daughter, he gestured for her to come forward and offered her another chair. Delight danced in his dark eyes.

  “I wanted to see you not as a royal subject but as your girl,” Neferet began. The Pharaoh just laughed and got up to kiss her forehead. A warm flush filled her face as she felt the joy of a father’s love re-discovered. He sat again, crossing his legs, looking rested and calm. Neferet felt anything but relaxed, but she sat at the edge of her chair.

  “It’s been a long time since I could see you this way,” he said, looking almost wistful as he studied her face. “You have much of your mother in you, but I see myself in your eyes. In the expressions they make.”

  Neferet dropped her head. “Then you must be seeing fear — and I never saw that in your eyes in my entire life.”

  “Fear?”

  “Father, there is so much to tell that a starting point is hard to find.” She looked up. “My mother must hear nothing of what I am going to tell you.”