Ariana

by Edward Stewart

  Monte hugged her to his shoulder. “They never forgot.”

  Mort Degan phoned Ariana at three o’clock that afternoon. “It’s a sellout. Scalpers are getting fifty bucks for balcony seats.”

  There was too much to do: dresses to be chosen and fitted, a white gown for the first half of the concert, a lower-cut black gown for the second; interviews, press agents who had to be lunched with, columnists who had to be cultivated, parties to go to, parties to give, all the day-and-night labor of promoting a concert that was still two months in the future.

  It was hard to judge how the concert was shaping up. Ariana was too close to her fears. The numbers she rehearsed with Monte—candy like “La Ci Darem la Mano” and “The Merry Widow Waltz” and “Tonight, Tonight” from West Side Story—embarrassed her. With Monte bellowing beside her she felt like the sun setting behind a billboard advertising gelati and tortoni.

  It was even worse with her solo numbers.

  She attempted “Caro Nome” and her voice felt swollen and damp. Every note above the staff seemed to blister her throat. She closed her eyes and plummeted through the empty space where a high B-natural ought to have been.

  I was able to sing it once. What happened?

  She listened to her records. They made her thoughtful and sad. As she walked back to her bedroom her back ached. For the first time in her life she felt middle-aged. She lay down and wept silently.

  Monte sat on the bed and stroked her forehead.

  “Nothing lasts,” she said. “Sooner or later everything we have is taken from us.”

  “Except our appetites,” he said. “Let’s go out to dinner.”

  She took to staying up late. She took to getting up late. She took to Monte’s set because they didn’t know music or, thank God, talk it. Tennessee Williams and Natalie Wood were her friends for an entire week and they didn’t raise eyebrows when she lit a cigarette.

  She tried to eat well, and Monte arranged that all important discussions took place over meals at Côte Basque, the Russian Tea Room, “21,” L’Escargot, or—if they didn’t want to be recognized—La Grenouille.

  But even nourishing food didn’t put energy into her. She was losing weight and turning edgy, overreacting to things: jumping when a teaspoon clattered in a saucer; brooding when the mailman was late. Dreams took her back to her childhood and she kept seeing her father’s corpse and waking up in a sweat.

  As he stepped into the cubicle Dr. Worth Kendall saw a figure in a green smock perched on the edge of the examining table, her head twisted around to look up at him. Her face might have been drawn with gray chalk and if he hadn’t had her chart in his hand he’d never have recognized Ariana Kavalaris.

  He was careful to hide his shock. “Hello, Ariana. How are you?”

  “I thought I’d come in and find out.”

  “Good idea.” He tapped her, probed her, shone a light in her ears and down her throat. He had a sense that something had broken in her. “Look up. Look down. Look at me.”

  Dark rings underneath her eyes gave them a ghostly luminosity. “I have pains.” She pointed to her chest.

  Dr. Kendall probed lightly where the ribs joined the breast bone. “I see a little swelling and some redness. How does it affect your singing?”

  “It’s hell when I have to take a deep breath.”

  “Well, relax, it’s not a tumor. It’s called costochondritis and it’s not as bad as the name. It can hurt like hell but it goes away with treatment.”

  “What’s the treatment?”

  “Mild pain killers, heat, rest.”

  “I can’t rest. I have a concert next month.”

  “I don’t think you should be giving any concerts.”

  “You just said that costo-chondro thing isn’t serious.”

  “It’s not only the costochondritis. Your weight’s down. Your blood pressure’s up. Your pulse is irregular, there’s a flutter in your heartbeat, I can hear fluid in your lungs. You had TB as a child?”

  “I got over it.”

  He looked at her a moment. “Your reflexes are much too slow. And don’t try to blame it on all the coffee you’ve been drinking or all the cigarettes you’ve been sneaking.”

  Her eyes slid away from his. “I haven’t been sneaking anything. I make no secret…of my morning cigarette.”

  “A for honesty and E minus for conduct. People shouldn’t smoke and singers shouldn’t and above all you shouldn’t. But we’re not here to argue about nicotine. The point is, you’re exhausted and you’re driving yourself to a collapse. You’ve got to postpone that concert.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Then cancel.”

  “Doctor, if I cancel the concert I might as well cancel my life.”

  “You have no strength. How the hell do you expect to get up on a stage and sing?”

  “You can give me something to get me through the month.”

  “Nothing can get you through the month except a complete change of lifestyle.”

  She phoned Mort Degan.

  “Glad you called,” he said. “I need $850 for lights. Has to be cash. I’d go to the bank myself, but I’m waiting for the features editor from the Times.

  She sighed. “All right, I’ll have a messenger send it over. Mort, I need a doctor. Do you know anyone good?”

  “I know someone great.”

  “What seems to be the problem?” Dr. Ted Gorman had a smile that seemed ready to understand any pain, any confusion in the world. He was a bald, trim man in his late forties, wearing a neatly pressed white linen doctor’s jacket.

  “I’m having trouble sleeping at night,” Ariana said, “and trouble staying awake during the day. I’m very nervous about my concert next month. The tension’s affecting my throat muscles.”

  Dr. Gorman wrote quickly on a prescription pad. “Are you allergic to cortisone?”

  “I’ve never had any reaction to it.”

  “Planning to do any driving or operate any heavy machinery?”

  “I’m a singer, doctor.”

  He glanced up at her. “Sorry. The heavy machinery was a joke. My wife keeps telling me to leave the comedy to the pros. Will you be driving?”

  “No.”

  “Fine.” He began dealing prescriptions at her like playing cards. “You’ll take these to sleep. These for energy. These for nervousness. These for your throat and these for general muscle tension. Take off that blouse. I’ll give you a shot now and I’d like you to come back twice a week till your concert for more.”

  31

  DR. GORMAN’S SHOTS PROPELLED Ariana through the days. His blue pills soothed her through the nights. But tiredness gnawed at her. She had trouble producing an even tone, trouble keeping on pitch in the high register, astonishing trouble with memory.

  And then there was trouble with Monte. He was morose, drinking two or three martinis at lunch. When they ran through their duets at Austin’s, he did not even know five of the songs. His voice cracked on an A.

  Austin was granite-faced. “We can take that down a tone.”

  In the taxi going home Monte asked her, “Are you still sure you want to do the concert with me?”

  She realized how much doubt had seeped into him. She patted his hand. “Of course I’m sure, Monte.”

  Four days later Monte bustled her to Carnegie Hall. Mort Degan was waiting with a pudgy, balding man with thinning gray curls. His name was Stu Waehner and apparently he was a sound technician. There seemed to be some possibility of putting panels behind the singers, reflecting the sound out into the hall.

  “Every house is dead to certain frequencies,” Stu Waehner said. “Carnegie happens to be poor from F above middle C up to D.”

  Which was news to Ariana.

  Stu Waehner asked Ariana and Monte to stand on the stage and vocalize. He sat in different seats wearing earphones and holding something in his lap that looked like a tiny recording machine.

  “What sort of panels?” Ariana asked afterward.

/>   “Acoustic,” Stu Waehner said, too busy jotting equations into a tiny notebook to meet her eyes.

  Mort phoned that afternoon. “Good news, Stu can do it. Five panels. It’ll cost thirty-two.”

  “Thirty-two hundred?” Ariana said.

  “Thousand. Custom-built. I got him down from thirty-nine. They’ll make all the difference. And Monte will feel more secure. Maybe he hasn’t told you, but he’s pretty nervous.”

  “Let me call you back, Mort.”

  She got the briki from the kitchen and went into the living room. A small pile of cedar logs was burning in the fireplace. She held the long-handled copper pot over the flames till the water boiled, and then she added Greek coffee and sugar. When the mix foamed up she tipped it into her cup.

  She drank the coffee down to the grounds, then clapped a saucer over the cup and inverted it. She stared at the swirls of sediment. They told her that events were in a downward spiral.

  We’ll need all the help we can get, she realized. Besides, it’s only $32,000.

  She phoned Mort.

  “All right, Mort. Have the panels built.”

  “Come on,” Mort Degan said, “I gave you that money.” He moved the receiver to his other shoulder and took a bite of his liverwurst.

  The voice on the phone disagreed. “According to our records you paid a $1,250 deposit. The $5,000 balance was due last Friday. We need cash today or you’re out. Sorry.”

  Mort hung up the phone and sat stiffly in the swivel chair.

  And then it came to him.

  He had $3,000 cash in the envelope Ariana had given him for the sound men. He could give Carnegie $2,500, promise to have the rest tomorrow, hold the lighting men with $500 …

  He opened a desk drawer. No envelope. He foraged through old receipts and contracts and canceled checks. Mort, you’re no good like this. You’re not thinking, not functioning. You need something to take the pressure off.

  He locked the office door, opened the bottom desk drawer. He lifted out the petty-cash box, took out the cellophane envelope and the sheet of tinfoil and the one-edged razor blade. He carefully poured the white powder over the tinfoil, then did a series of fast parallel chops with the razor. He rolled an almost-virgin bank note into a cylinder, put one end to his nostril, passed the other over the mound of white powder and inhaled.

  Twenty seconds after the first snort he began to feel a lot better about the concert, about himself. He had bent down for a second snort when he noticed what he was holding to his nostril: a rolled $100 bill.

  Where the hell did that come from?

  And then he saw where it had come from: From the petty-cash box. Dummy, you stashed Ariana’s $3,000 with the coke.

  Suddenly everything was laughter and carnival and can-do. At that moment there was only one thing in Mort Degan’s world that mattered, and it was not Ariana Kavalaris’s concert or Carnegie Hall’s deposit. He lifted the phone and dialed. All the time in the world seemed to pass before the two buzzes and the answering click.

  “Lou—hey, Lou—it’s Mort. I gotta see you. Like right away.”

  The phone pushed out a thundering silence. “You’re into me for $2,200, Mort,” his coke dealer said.

  “Look—let me have a gram right away. I can give you $1,200 cash.”

  The voice on the phone was a woman, full of apology. “I wasn’t supposed to, but I like Mort, so I gave him an extension. He never showed. There’s no answer at his office.”

  Ariana turned, holding the phone, and watched Monte in his bathrobe sipping coffee and working out the Times crossword puzzle. “But surely, with the house sold out, you can trust us.”

  Monte looked up at her.

  “Miss Kavalaris, we don’t have those ticket receipts.”

  “Who does have them?” Ariana asked, and fear was suddenly running like poison in her veins.

  “They went straight into the bank.”

  “Whose account?”

  “You’d have to ask Mr. Degan.”

  Ariana realized that the one thing that mattered now was to put on a convincing face. “Mr. Degan was called out of town,” she said, “and I’m afraid the oversight is mine. The money will be there in an hour.” As she hung up the receiver she had a sense of time running out, life running down. “Monte. Phone the bank. Ask for the balance in the concert account.”

  His tone was instantly defensive. “Cara, why are you so upset?”

  “Monte. Phone.”

  He phoned and asked and then, overweight and shaking, he gazed with numbed eyes at her. “Mort closed the account yesterday.”

  She drew in a deep breath and let it out in a whisper. “Panagia mou…voïthia.” This time the words were no unthinking Greek reflex. She needed help and she was calling on the Virgin.

  “Everyone’s ripping her off. Sound men, lighting men, agents, managers.” The informer had stooped shoulders, a tight, damp mouth, a red-veined blob of a nose. “Even the printer’s charging her for five thousand flyers that never got printed.”

  Nikos listened and his soul vomited. It pained him to hear these stories. He had thought her life would be different. He had expected more for her.

  “If the rent’s not paid by five tonight,” the little man said, “they lose the deposit and the hall.”

  Nikos sat thinking a moment, and then his smile opened up like a little boy’s. “That brother of hers—used to strong-arm delicatessens for a bakery—is he still around?”

  “Stathis Kavalaris. Changed his name to Stanley Kaye. He owns a liquor store in Brooklyn Heights.”

  “Have him here in my office in an hour.”

  “She needs $5,000 to pay for the hall. There could be other expenses too. She’s in with sharks.”

  “Yeah.” Stathis Kavalaris, a.k.a. Stanley Kaye, sat uncomfortably erect in the office chair. The Scuff Kote on his shoes didn’t quite match the leather. “Well, she never had any business sense.”

  “I want you to go to her, Stathis. I want you to offer her money. You understand me, Stathis? We’ve opened an account for you and you sign the checks. Whatever she needs, she gets. But my name is never mentioned.”

  “Okay. Only…” Stathis hesitated. “What do I get?”

  “You’re my agent, right? Agents get ten percent.”

  “The big ones are getting fifteen.”

  “Are you a big agent, Stathis?”

  “I think a job like this deserves fifteen.”

  “I haven’t had time to go to the hairdresser.” Ariana’s eyes met her brother’s. “Is that what you’re staring at?”

  “Hell, no.” Stathis shifted nervously. He would never have recognized his little sister in this tired forty-nine-year-old woman with gray carelessly streaking her hair. He laughed uneasily. “Remember that slum we used to live in? And here you are in a house like this. It’s funny, isn’t it?”

  “What are you here for, Stathis?”

  “I hear you’re having problems. I want to help.”

  “How do you think you could help?”

  “Money.”

  She looked at him a long moment and then she began to smile.

  “I’m not bulling you. How much do you need? Ten thousand? Twenty? I’ll write you a check.” He snapped a checkbook out of his breast pocket. He leaned over the chest of drawers and mumbled as he wrote. “Twenty…five…thousand.” He handed her the check.

  She stared at him and then she began very quietly to cry.

  Stathis made his hand soft. Bending toward his little sister, he stroked her to quiet the pain. “Come on, what’s a brother for? And don’t worry about paying me back. You can have all the time you need—three, six months, no rush.”

  Ariana arrived with Monte at the artists’ entrance two hours before the concert, scheduled for 8:00 P.M. Carnegie Hall was already a mob scene. TV crews had set up minicams on the front steps, in the corridors, waiting to trap the glitterati of two coasts and three continents.

  She vocalized in her dressing room.
She knelt on the carpet and tried to pray.

  “Dear God, I beg you, don’t let me disgrace my art. Whether it is Your holy will that I succeed or fail, I only implore You not to leave me on this earth when I am of no further use to music.”

  She rose and opened her purse. She drew out the locket on its thin gold chain. “Help me,” she whispered. “Help me tonight and I swear I’ll keep my promise.” She kissed the portrait and slipped the chain around her neck.

  In the corridor, she embraced Monte. He sang the opening segment of the program. She stood in the wings. She listened with her skin.

  He could still stir an audience. They applauded loudly between numbers. They seemed especially to enjoy the “Drink, Drink, Drink” song from The Student Prince.

  He came bounding off the stage to a sound of rushing applause. “Cara, this will be the greatest moment of our lives. Listen to that audience. They love us.”

  “It’s you they love, Monte. They haven’t heard me yet.”

  The houselights dimmed again. Hovering in the wings, at the outer edge of the dying tumult, she felt her courage falter.

  Austin Waters led her out and the entire audience rose on one count.

  She stood a moment, harbored in the crook of the piano, then stepped forward and bowed to the applause.

  The hall was packed. People had jammed into the seats, onto the railings, onto the steps. She could not see a single empty space—except the center box in the first tier.

  She gave Austin the nod to start the introduction. Her voice came out small, but the note held steady. She attacked the next note and swelled it. With gathering confidence she floated a high A-flat. It made a beautiful soaring arc.

  I’m singing! she realized. I’m really singing!

  Suddenly the notes were there: the high B’s and B-flats, the F’s and A’s and E’s that she had thought were lost forever; even a high C, secure and radiant and endless (Where am I getting this breath from?) and—did she dare? Yes, she dared!—a high D-flat that she held miraculously still and quiet like a firefly barely glowing in the palm of her hand. She tossed in a grace note, the E-flat above, then trilled, and then a high F shot out of her.

  A shout broke out from the audience. They were standing, screaming, throwing programs. She glanced again at Austin. He smiled at her. We did it!