by Tineka Brown
The common interests, perhaps? Obviously, they’d had singing in common, and Olympia had to admit that Valentine had rather good taste in music. Some of her best memories involving the man were centered on listening to their favorite records together.
But music certainly wasn’t enough to hold two people together, especially people with such glaring differences.
What music did Everett like? He obviously had a thing for 1950s-style lounge jazz, all those songs that Olympia liked to cover. But surely, he had more far-reaching tastes. She tried to imagine him as a poor boy in Louisiana. Would he have had a favorite band, back then? Would he even have had access to a tape player, or CDs?
It occurred to Olympia that she already missed Everett. It had barely been twelve hours since the last time she’d seen him, and she could already feel the memory of that kiss fading from her lips, her skin craving his touch once again. Even just to hear his voice or look into his eyes.
You’ve got it bad, Olympia, she thought, resting her head back against the edge of the tub, shutting her eyes. You’ve got it bad.
So, what? She deserved to feel attraction again, after all that she’d been through.
*****
Olympia caught a cab to the casino and managed to arrive at exactly quarter to six. Entering through the front door, she immediately ran into Everett, who was on the phone.
“Hey,” she said, perhaps a little too enthusiastically.
Everett raised an eyebrow and his hand in a half-wave. “Hm? Oh, yes… yeah. Have them sent here.” He was speaking in the partially hushed tones of someone who was trying to keep a very public phone conversation private. Olympia suddenly felt as though she was intruding, and looked away from Everett, feeling her face go slightly red. Perhaps she should just make her way to the dressing room. She turned and began to walk.
“Hey! Olympia! Wait!”
She spun around too quickly for her pride. Everett was standing with his phone held away from his face.
“I just wanted to let you know that I haven’t had time to book your hotel room yet. I’m sorry. You’re welcome to stay at my place as long as you want.”
Olympia’s face burned as she nodded and turned again. What was I expecting? Some sort of last-minute confession of love?
She felt tears stinging in the corners of her eyes as she half-ran the rest of the way to the dressing room. Thankfully, there was no one there when she opened the door — the space was dark. She let the door slam shut behind her and stood for a moment in the pitch black, listening to the sound of her own shuddering breaths as the tears overtook her.
What’s wrong with me?
It was no good denying it anymore — Olympia had fallen hard for Everett. And she’d never, ever, fallen this fast for anyone. Certainly not Valentine, and not even any of the boys in her youth, the various young men who’d smiled at her for just slightly too long backstage, or while she was singing, or even earlier, at school.
Get a hold of yourself, Olympia.
Any pain she was feeling right now was entirely her fault, she reasoned. Everett might appreciate her, he might think she was a pretty face, but asking him to feel the same way that she did was a lofty demand, and one that she couldn’t justify. Besides, he was busy. He had an entire show to put on. She’d be better off putting her head down and showing him that she could be a good worker, a diligent, down-to-earth performer — at the very least, someone with better life skills than Valentine.
She flicked on the lights and was met with her own reflection in the vanity. There was fear, on that tear-stained face, but also a growing hardness, her own protective instincts firing up underneath her soft veneer.
Do the show. Knock it out of the park. Everett’s just a stepping stone, she thought. She chanted it like a mantra, in her head, as she sat down to wipe her face with a tissue.
*****
Half an hour later someone knocked on the door. Olympia had been flicking through the wardrobe selections that now filled the formerly empty clothing hangers on one end of the room. The dresses that Everett’s production company had provided were far more glitzy and sumptuous than anything Olympia owned, or had ever worn, for that matter. When she’d first noticed them, she’d spent a good five minutes kicking herself for even bothering to pack anything aside from jeans and T-shirts.
So she was holding up a midnight-blue velvet gown when she called for the mystery knocker to come in.
It was a woman that she didn’t recognize. In spite of all her earlier meditations, she felt her heart sink ever so slightly. She’d been hoping it was Everett.
“Hi,” said the woman, a blonde of probably about 55. “I’m Sally, I’m your costumes manager. Have you been briefed on your costumes yet?”
“Uh… no.”
The woman seemed to hold back an exasperated sigh. “Okay. Well I’ve got a list of the outfits we’ve planned for you to wear during your set. So what we need to do now is to get you to try all these on and make sure they fit you. If we come across a selection that isn’t fitting properly, then we’ll choose something new. Okay?”
“Uh… sounds good.” Olympia nodded quickly.
“Great.” Sally pulled up the pair of reading glasses around her neck and squinted at her clipboard. “First outfit when you come out on stage is A-6. There should be a tag… somewhere around the neck… it’ll be bright yellow…”
Olympia jumped to the task. She quickly located the dress -- a shimmering, silver fitted dress with a plunging neckline.
“Okay. I’ll go sit at the vanity, you come out and do a turn for me when you have it on.” Sally disappeared behind the corner of the mirror, and Olympia realized that there was no change room, per se. They were in the dressing room already.
She stripped off her clothes, leaving them in a neat bundle at the foot of the clothing rack, and stepped into the gown.
Sally wrinkled her nose slightly as she appraised Olympia. “Turn around,” she said, gesturing with a finger. After staring at Olympia’s back for a moment, she stood up and Olympia felt cool fingers fiddling with the clasp on the back of the collar.
“This will have to get adjusted slightly. And the hem…” Sally stood back. “It’s quite long. Can you find the shoes that are supposed to go with this one? They should also be labeled A-6. There’s a rack behind the vanity.”
Olympia held up the hem of the dress as she knelt to search for shoes. As it turned out, the shoes in question were a pair of strappy stilettos in the same shade of metallic silver as the gown. She slipped them on — they fit perfectly. Should I be feeling like Cinderella? She wondered.
Wobbling slightly, she walked back around to face Sally, still holding the hem of the dress halfway up over her shins.
“Can you walk without holding it up?”
Olympia let the dress fall and took a few tentative steps. “I think so,” she said. “Though to be honest I’d be a little nervous.”
Sally nodded and tapped her chin with a pen. After a moment she said, “Okay. I’ll get the seamstress to take up the hem at the front, just enough so you can be certain you’re not going to trip over your own feet.” She made a note on her clipboard. “Okay, next one. B-3.”
They spent an hour going over Olympia’s various costumes. Two of the dresses had to be changed out, and almost every one of them had to be altered in some minor way. Olympia shuddered to think of the workload that was about to be lumped onto one poor seamstress, but she tried to put the thought out of her mind. She was doing her job, that was someone else’s.
Sally informed her that makeup would be in tomorrow, that it wasn’t as important to test out the makeup beforehand — provided she had no allergies.
“None,” Olympia had said absently.
“Good.”
Then they’d left the dressing room and headed for the wings of the stage.
Olympia, again, felt her heart sink slightly when she realized that the man sitting the director’s seat in the front row of the audience was n
ot Everett but someone she’d never seen before. Again, she chastised herself for imagining that this was some small-town production. This was the big time, and as producer, Everett would have far more pressing matters to attend to than to oversee rehearsals.
She went through the motions as the director lead her through each stage direction. Every movement was carefully choreographed, down to how much time she should spend out on the thrust, high-fiving audience members during the chorus breakdown of her last song. When they finally finished for the night, it was nearly midnight, and once Olympia had five minutes to sit down in the dressing room, reading over the notes that the director had given her, she realized she was starving.
She pulled her phone out of her back. No messages — not from Everett, not even from Valentine. A lump rose in her throat — no messages from Valentine probably meant that he still hadn’t been let out. She’d lost track of anything but her own movements during the rehearsal, and so hadn’t given too much thought to the idea that she hadn’t even seen Valentine.
Maybe Everett is still up. Maybe we can get dinner. Her exhausted brain seemed intent on driving her with this special brand of false hope.
She dialed Everett’s number.
There was no answer.
Chapter 6
Olympia was confused at first when she woke up in the spare bedroom of the penthouse. She sat up straight, her heart pounding, until she remembered. No hotel room. I’m still at Everett’s.
She rubbed her eyes and found her phone. Her heart skipped yet another beat when she noticed she had a message from Everett.
“Hi Olympia. Sorry I wasn’t around yesterday. My family’s in town for the opening, I’ve been showing them around. Help yourself to whatever you need. Break a leg tonight.”
Olympia re-read the message three or four times as if she were trying to decode some sort of secret that was held within those five short sentences. Eventually, she gave up. This was no declaration of love or affection, not even a real apology. In fact, it didn’t answer any of her questions — she still had no idea about the status of her hotel room, or Valentine. She felt anger welling up inside her now and threw her phone down to the foot of the bed, where it sank into the plush white duvet.
Her mother’s voice sounded in the back of her mind as she rested her head against the pillow.
Shh, darling. He’s not worth it. You’re going to be a big success, with or without him.
Mrs. Jackson had been talking about Valentine when she’d said those words, but they seemed fitting enough for Olympia’s current situation.
She got up and made breakfast, trying a different variety of cereal this time. Walking stoically past the television with her bowl and mug of coffee, she instead made her way back to her room and out to the balcony, sitting down the wood lawn chair — still shaded by the angle of the morning sun, but not for long.
Olympia looked out at the city below. Here she was, in a tall tower, overlooking hundreds, maybe thousands of people simply going about their day. Somehow the novelty of Everett’s penthouse had already worn off — now all she felt was lonely. Perhaps it hadn’t been the expensive furniture, or the organic food, or the spacious rooms. Perhaps what she’d really been so enthralled with had been Everett.
*****
She was at the casino at ten sharp for morning rehearsals. Dressed in her newly adjusted silver gown, she walked onto the stage with as much confidence as she could muster, and noticed a few new faces in the crowd, sitting next to the director.
Everett was sitting sandwiched between an older couple — they looked to be in their mid-to-late fifties. Both were well-dressed but, oddly, didn’t seem to know it. There was something about the way they were sitting, the way they were looking at Olympia, that seemed out of place.
Of course, Olympia was too busy staring at Everett to really think too much about it. In Everett’s expression she saw something like mild discomfort, but when he looked at her he seemed to calm down. He smiled broadly, but still there was something behind the smile — guilt, perhaps?
There was no time for Olympia to analyze the situation. All that was left for her to do was sing.
Still, a few times during her biggest number she looked over to see Everett grinning with all his teeth — even singing along, on a few occasions — while the couple sitting on either side of him seemed stoic to the point of being rather grumpy. Olympia wondered at this. Were they other producers? The stage lights made it rather difficult to make out their features, but they did bear a resemblance to…
And suddenly she knew. These were Everett’s parents.
Of course, she thought, and suddenly all the anxiety that she’d buried came flooding to the surface, and she stumbled over her words.
“Pause please!” Called the director, standing and waving his hands into the black expanse of the seating, probably trying to get the attention of someone in the audio control booth.
Olympia had never felt so exposed. She felt a bead of sweat beginning to form on her forehead, one that had nothing to do with the heat of the stage-lights.
“I’m so sorry,” she called down, squinting into the darkness of the audience, pretending she couldn’t see the director looking between her and his clipboard.
“It’s okay, it’s okay.” Not the director’s voice, but Everett’s. The producer had stood and was ambling toward the stage with his hands up. “It happens. Good to get this kind of thing out of the way during rehearsal, right? Then it doesn’t happen in the actual performance.”
“Uh… yeah. Yeah, I guess you’re right.”
“Are you okay Olympia? Do you need any water? A break?”
Olympia drew in a breath and shut her eyes for a moment. For just a moment, she was back at home, in that familiar lounge, staring down empty tables under bright, oppressive house lights. It was a show she’d performed many times before — she could do it with her eyes closed, with her hands tied behind her back. Easy.
And so was this. She was a singer. She knew exactly what she was doing.
She opened her eyes, meeting Everett’s. “No,” she said. “I’m fine. Can we keep going?”
Everett smiled, then gestured back up at the invisible tech booth.
“Let’s take it from the top of this number.”
Olympia trotted back to her mark.
*****
Lunch was delivered to the dressing room after rehearsal was over. Olympia picked at the food. She was hungry but eating seemed like the furthest thing from her mind. She was relieved, then, when someone knocked at the door.
“Come in,” she said.
“Olympia.” Valentine appeared in the doorway like a summoned demon. He wore a scowl on his face, and his eyes were bloodshot and wild.
“Oh, uh… so… you’re out?”
“Finally,” spat Valentine, stepping into the room and letting the door close behind him. “I was in that damned place for over 24 hours. What the hell were you doing?”
“I…” Olympia stood, cautiously, not daring to take her eyes off Valentine. Eyes where I can see them, please, she thought desperately. “I was here. I was rehearsing.”
“Oh, you were rehearsing. To make sure that you’d get all the fanfare while I rotted away in jail, right?”
“Everett… Everett said he was going to bail you out.”
“Oh, Everett said. Let me tell you, Olympia--” Valentine was far too close, now, and Olympia was backed up firmly against the vanity, her hands gripping the edge of the counter with white knuckles as it pressed into her buttocks. “That man isn’t to be trusted. I can’t believe you’d go for… for… a white guy -- and his parents… oh man, they’re pieces of work, you can tell just by looking at them. Run far away while you still can, Olympia. All he wants is to use you.”