Defiant Diva (Singers in Love Book 3)

by Irene Vartanoff

  Jackie added, “I couldn’t get Dex to admit it, but I suspect he’s shedding his commitment here so he can follow you wherever your career takes you.”

  My eyes opened wide. Could it be true? “You only see the sunshine in life, don’t you?”

  She grinned. “Why not? Life’s for living, not moping. Break a leg tonight, honey.” She gave me a quick hug and then bustled off down the hall.

  I retreated to the small rehearsal room earmarked for voice coaches. She’d given me a lot to think about, but this afternoon I would set aside all my cares and concentrate only on the job ahead of me tonight. I had to, or I would go insane.

  The opening night of Carmen was exciting, as all opening nights were. Like most singers on a performance day, I did my best to warm up my voice before I had to go on stage. Otherwise, a critic might note a flaw or might even say I hadn’t enough power, or whatever. There were many ways to fall short of perfection, and critics knew all the words to describe a singer’s shortcomings.

  I vocalized and got last-minute coaching from the assistant director as well, but I had to be careful not to overdo the warming-up process because I needed all my strength and concentration tonight. Except for an occasional moment in the opera that focused on Michaëla, Carmen was on stage the entire time. It was a long opera, too. But I could handle it. I’d always had stamina. I was depending on my careful preparation to keep at bay the frightening weakness of last Friday. I’d slept in this morning. I’d eaten. I’d brought sensible snacks from the list on my dietary plan, and I’d rested and eaten again after my coaching session. I was in costume, made up, and ready. Now all I had to do was sing for four hours.

  Dex sent flowers to my dressing room, and texted me that he would come backstage once the performance ended. During intermission, he’d be mingling with the Potomac Arts Center’s most generous patrons and the board members.

  My fingers touched the petals of the orange roses, which sat in a crystal vase in a place of honor on my dressing table. Somehow, he’d managed to find outstanding blooms larger and more perfect than any roses I’d ever seen before. How beautiful. Were these amazing roses a symbol of the happy future we might have together? That we could have a relationship larger than life?

  My hand dropped. I felt peculiar again. My eyes refused to focus properly. My arms and legs were languid with tiredness. I opened my purse and gazed at the bottle of pills. The doctor had told me one pill was all I needed to feel remarkably better. It was tempting to take one, but I wanted to be sure I could sing. I would have to shake off any feeling of weakness. I zipped the purse shut and put it in the drawer I kept locked during performances.

  We assembled in the wings. The opera began. The sparkling, lively music of the overture set the scene. Once past Don José’s first song with Michaëla, it was time for the cigarette girls to parade. My costume for this production was outrageous. The other factory workers wore plain, ill-fitting uniform smocks over dull colors. Carmen blazed with gypsy necklaces of gold coins, a tiered, multicolored skirt, and of course, a very low-cut top. I had a uniform smock, too, but I had shrugged it onto my arms like a sexy shawl.

  We pranced through the orchestra section, causing a ripple of surprise as the spotlights picked us out, followed by applause. Although the libretto called for it, none of us smoked. In this new production, we all wore headsets. We were customer service reps, a modern job as mind-and-body deadening as nineteenth-century cigarette factory work. I located Dex in his front row seat as I sailed by. He acknowledged me, and I raised one eyebrow, but otherwise I could not spare him a response. I was in my role. My job was to deliver the gypsy temptress to the eager audience.

  The music was light and easy as I began my “Habanera.” I was the rebel bird who loved where I chose. Everything went smoothly tonight. I had no trouble with my “Seguidilla.” The dancing in Act II with Frasquita and Mercédès sparked much applause, and Escamillo the boastful toreador heightened audience enthusiasm, as always. From that high point, the story went downhill, as Don José’s romance with Carmen faltered even before the act closed. The story could have ended right then, when he harkened to the bugle call of his regiment instead of paying attention to her as she danced for him alone.

  Louis sang Don José’s show-stopping flower song, “La fleur que tu m'avais jetée,” confessing how all through his days in prison, he’d kept the flower she’d tossed at him. José revealed how he’d been split open by love, but Carmen wouldn’t accept mere love as enough. She wanted him to let go of his former life. She contradicted him, saying he didn’t love her, “Non, tu ne m’aime pas.” She demanded the classic choice men had always demanded of women: Give up you old life and embrace mine.

  Don José chose the army. The affair with Carmen had ended before it began. There would be no tragedy. Alas, when his superior officer came to the inn seeking romance with Carmen, Don José jealously attacked him, which was a court martial level offense. Knowing this, Don José deserted the army and joined Carmen’s lawless life as a smuggler. Yet what motivated Don José was not love but the desire to possess Carmen exclusively. It would come back to haunt them both later.

  Of course I was on stage for all of this, but I didn’t have to do much. I could conserve my fragile energy. Finally it was time for an intermission. Carmen was written as a four-act opera, but in modern productions the first two acts and the last two acts were usually combined so the evening wouldn’t run late. It still made for a long night of singing. I was glad to have a few minutes to rest and eat in my dressing room after I changed my costume yet again. In some productions, Carmen wore the same traditional gypsy garb through the entire opera, but the Potomac Arts Center was generous. I had a different gown for each major scene.

  Physically, I was holding it together, but barely. I had eaten a power snack between scenes, and I’d ruthlessly commanded my body to behave. By intermission, I knew it wasn’t enough. I felt weak and achy, and the wobbly feeling was increasing. My eyes still gave me trouble. I unlocked the drawer and got out the bottle of pills. If one dose would work at all, I must take it right now.

  Still, I hesitated. I hated and despised drugs and all forms of addiction. Would this one pill cause me endless problems? Or would it be the benign aid the doctor had claimed? I put the white pill in my mouth and swallowed it with a glass of water.

  Ten minutes later, I was on stage again, bickering sourly with Don José, and then singing my fateful card song. Finally, I would win over the audience to sympathize with me. My world-weary acceptance of the cold hand of fate was in stark contrast to the next scene and the pure sound of Michaëla singing in the hills that God would protect her as she searched for José. Clearly, she was fated to be the winner in the contest for his soul.

  By this point in the opera, I always got a lump in my throat. True, Carmen was not exactly a model citizen, but falling out of love should not mean her lover had a right to kill her.

  They parted angrily in Act III, and again that could have been the end of it, if only Don José had stayed in his village and married his not-entirely-angelic local girl.

  We had a quick scene change and an even quicker costume change before the grand parade to the bullring that opened the next act. I felt much better now. The weird vision issue was gone, and my arms and legs didn’t ache. The true test of the medication would be if I could still sing. I had done my card song mere minutes after taking the pill, too soon to know if the medicine interfered. I’d made it this far. Only this scene to go, and I didn’t have any arias in it, only lines of recitative set to music.

  In Act IV, Carmen and Escamillo were established lovers. She had moved on. After an up-tempo parade admired by cheering crowds, they parted outside the bullring. Frasquita and Mercédès warned her that José was lurking nearby, but Carmen refused to fear. Soon, despite the many people attending the bullfight, the crowds all melted away and Carmen was alone. José accosted her, begging her to come back to him.

  In this production, the scen
e took place in a kind of undercroft to the bullring, with tall support pillars at intervals extending high above the visible portion of the stage. Don José appeared from behind one of the pillars to confront me.

  Louis and I tore up the stage on our last scene, him desperate and me scornful, him pleading and me refusing, leading to the final moment when I would try to pass and go to the bullring and Escamillo. We had a huge stage to fill, so we didn’t stand close. Instead, we moved toward and away from each other as our passionate expressions demanded, Carmen dodging and José blocking, weaving in and out of the pillars. There was only one exit from the set, and that meant Carmen must pass José to achieve freedom. Our motion built toward the moment when I would try to make a break for it and he would stab me.

  Michael Rather leapt out from behind one of the pillars, a knife aimed at my heart.

  Chapter 20

  He’d found a costume from somewhere and donned it, complete with gypsy headscarf, but I knew him. Above the dramatic music that still continued, Michael shrieked, “I saw you with him! You belong to me!”

  As he lunged at me, Louis grabbed at his arm. Michael threw him off. The music ground to a halt as the maestro saw what was happening. Michael lunged again, but in the seconds he was distracted, I’d remembered my self-defense training. I ripped off my shawl. I yelled as I threw it straight at him, tangling the arm that held the knife as I dodged it. Then I punched his nose as hard as I could.

  A moment later, Louis, James, and Dex tackled Michael together. He fought like the wild man he was, threatening everyone with his knife. I backed away. As several burly stagehands ran onto the stage, Michael grabbed at the pillar behind him and began to climb, all the while waving the knife to keep the men back.

  Waves of sound buffeted me. The audience roared in confusion, shrieking and shouting. The curtain dropped, but the noise hardly abated. I collapsed, dazed, against the set wall where Michael had cornered me.

  Dex and Louis stood in front of me as a human shield so Michael couldn’t throw his knife at me.

  Someone yelled, “Come down. Give up. You haven’t got a chance.”

  “Keep back, or I’ll hurt you!” Michael shouted. He kept climbing, perhaps hoping to escape through the catwalks high above the stage.

  Opera sets were always huge. The pillar went up forty feet, with metal rungs on the back that Michael used. No one was crazy enough to follow him, not with him waving his knife around like the madman he was.

  Then he lost his balance. He swung out over us and fell off the pillar. He dropped like a stone. When he hit the wooden stage with a nasty thwack, he groaned once.

  There was a moment of silence. Then someone shouted, “Where’s the knife? Get the knife!”

  James approached Michael, who lay face down, not moving. “He fell on his knife, I think. There’s blood. A lot of blood.”

  As more people poured onto the stage, I wondered if they would make me finish the opera. I decided they wouldn’t. After all, the audience had seen a desperate knife attack, as promised. Just not the one they expected. My thoughts were hysterical, of course. I was in shock.

  Dex said, “Get Daylia away. Don’t let her see.”

  I didn’t resist when someone led me to my dressing room and forced a cup of coffee on me as a stimulant against shock. It may have helped, but I still felt emotionally removed from where I was. I simply sat and stared at my gypsy reflection in the dressing table mirror.

  A while later, a doctor came to check me out.

  I asked, “Is he…?”

  The doctor hesitated, then said, “Aside from all the broken bones, the knife wound caused severe internal damage. He’s been transported by helicopter to a trauma center.” He wouldn’t say any more.

  I shuddered. I said a silent prayer for Michael.

  The doctor suggested I rest and make sure I wasn’t alone tonight, in case of delayed shock. I wondered why Michael was in danger of dying and I was safe and healthy. How had we come to this?

  After the doctor left, Gayle came in and embraced me. “Are you okay? I had to use my court ID card to get in here. It’s a madhouse. Police everywhere. The audience is refusing to leave. No one took a bow. The musicians are still in their places, but the conductor is missing and they aren’t playing.” She repeated, “Are you okay?”

  I shook my head. “I’m numb.”

  She held me in her loving arms for a while, but then the police insisted she leave while they interviewed me. Two male police officers, very polite.

  I don’t remember what they asked, or what I told them. They were sympathetic. I listened and I responded, and my brain refused to think. Or rather, my mouth carried out my duty as a citizen, but the emotional, feeling part of me had switched off and my brain was prey to random thoughts. I was still in shock. Finally, they left me, but Gayle did not return. Instead, the maestro and Régine entered the room and told me how brave I had been, and how much they admired me, and how glad they were that I had lived. Not quite in those words, but close enough.

  Perhaps I was happy to be alive, too, but part of me was still stunned and shut down. I felt nothing, not even curiosity about where Gayle had gone. When I was at last alone, I realized I was still sitting on the hard bench in front of my dressing table, within reach of Dex’s roses. I put a hand out to one of them, feeling its velvet softness, and I began to cry.

  “Daylia, you’re safe now.” Dex’s familiar voice and his strong arms encompassed me.

  I leaned in, absorbing comfort from his embrace. “I’ve prayed that Michael lives.”

  Dex knelt beside me. “It’s extraordinarily generous of you to say that.”

  “We first met at church, you know.”

  Dex spoke in a soothing tone. “So you once told me. Perhaps you could ask your pastor to remember him in the weekly prayer list, if you have those in your church.”

  “We do,” I said. “I can do that for Michael.” The tears still leaked from my eyes.

  “Are you crying for him?”

  I swiped at my damp cheeks. “Many times, people have called me stubborn when I have been convinced I was right. Michael was stubborn, too, holding onto his obsession. We aren’t so different.”

  Dex tightened his arms. “That’s very philosophical of you, although I don’t agree.”

  “I’ve got something to show you,” I said, and twisted away. Dex stood as I opened the dressing table drawer and pulled out my purse. Unzipping it, I showed him the bottle inside. “See these? Pills a second doctor gave me. He says I don’t have diabetes.” I shoved them back in the drawer. “I’ve suffered a lot of pain in the last few weeks because I was too stubborn. I wouldn’t see a doctor, wouldn’t get a second opinion from another doctor, and I wouldn’t take the medication until I absolutely had to. I also was too stubborn to believe in you and accept your love. I caused you pain.”

  “It’s okay, Daylia.”

  “No, let me finish.” The words were difficult to speak, even though I knew they must be said. Fighting the urge to shield my eyes and protect myself, I looked at him openly, letting him see my regret. “I’m sorry. I’ve always been absolutely convinced I am in the right. The exorcism was the right thing. I do believe that in my heart. But sometimes I can be wrong, and I’ve never admitted it. Refusing to seek medical help was arrogant folly. Michael was arrogant, too, thinking I belonged to him. Like Don José with Carmen. He went off the rails because of the strength of his conviction.”

  Was I speaking of Michael or Don José? Did it matter? The parallels were too strong to ignore.

  Dex said, “You aren’t Carmen, and I doubt very much you played the temptress with that nutcase.”

  “I have with you.” I said it with guilt in my heart. “I led you on and frustrated us both with my lack of trust. Now you’re tired of me and you’re leaving DC.”

  “Don’t beat yourself up like this. I resigned my seat on the board so I can travel with you. If you’ll let me.” Dex pulled me up from the hard seat in f
ront of my dressing table and settled us both into the comfortable lounge chair in the corner of the room. He wrapped his arms around me again and held me nestled against his chest.

  Minutes passed, or perhaps hours. I cried some more and said silly things. He patted me and petted me. He occasionally dropped a kiss on my hair or my cheek.

  I woke from a doze to find myself still held safely in Dex’s arms. I turned my head to look up at his face. “This is the way I want to wake up for the rest of my life,” I said with conviction.

  He smiled. “I’m all for it. Marry me?”

  “Wait. I still haven’t told you I love you. You said it to me, but I’ve been holding back.”

  “You think I don’t already know?” His large fingers touched my cheek softly. “You’ve said ‘I love you, Dex’ with every kiss and caress you’ve given me. If fate is kind, you’ll continue to for another fifty or sixty years.”

  My mouth curved in a smile. “That sounds about right. Time enough to have a family, live out careers, and grow old together.” I put my hand to his slightly beard-roughened cheek and stared into his eyes with my whole heart. “I love you, Dex. Let’s promise each other our forevers.”

  A Note from the Author

  Thanks for reading Defiant Diva. I hope you enjoyed it and will tell your friends. Please consider writing a review and posting it, too.

  Haunted Tenor is Book 1 of the Singers in Love series. If you haven’t read it yet, you’re in for a treat as a newcomer to opera struggles with supernatural compulsions—and the suspicions of a sexy tenor who thinks she’s a stalker. Click here to check it out.