The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2016 Edition

by Rich Horton

  (He should be faithful some way. It was the least he could do.)

  Peter was sitting at the kitchen table, drinking tea and staring at the kitchen cupboards.

  “Just get home?”

  He gave a guilty start, nodded.

  “You need to come home at night,” she said, sitting opposite him. “It looks—” She stopped.

  He flinched into his tea. “Do you think I’m hurting you, Em?”

  “Just come home,” she said, which wasn’t a real answer, but he took it. The real answer wasn’t something to examine. No point, after all this time.

  He rubbed his forehead with his thumb. “I’ve always cared for you, Em, you know that.”

  “I do.” You couldn’t go thirty years on nothing.

  He leaned in. “And you?”

  She never remembered Peter onstage; he was charismatic, but it was all for the audience and not for the actors, and she forgot.

  What she remembered was Peter taking the piss with Phil or Rose, brainstorming their next break. And it worked, right up until the War.

  Even after, with the Dramatons, they’d put up a better fight than most. Peter was married to the troupe, even if he forgot he was married to Emily.

  “Let me get tea,” she said, standing up.

  In the early light he looked his age at last, the wrinkles that had gouged the rest of them finally showing up under his eyes, bracketing his mouth.

  He didn’t look at her, like her answer had upset him, but when she handed him the cup he drank, and when she sat down across from him he rested his hand on her hand, and that was how Roger found them.

  “Peter’s staying late,” she said when she met Roger outside the Metropolitan. “We should go out.”

  “But we’ve seen that one already.”

  She grinned. “Get your coat.”

  It wasn’t the same play. (“That’s what I get for whinging,” Roger said, “wind out of my sails.”) It was a preview, The Rendezvous. They had to queue to get in.

  At the door, one reporter stuck out a microphone. “Mrs. Elliott—sorry, Miss Howard? The Understudies?”

  “Yes.”

  “Last of a dynasty! Sporting of you to be here!”

  Emily managed not to make a face, but when she shot a look at Roger the reporter followed the gaze and piped up, “And who are you with?”

  “I’m the carpenter,” Roger said.

  “Oh, the stage is gorgeous, congratulations!”

  “Thank you,” he said. “We worked very hard.”

  After that it wasn’t worth trying to sit through the play, since Emily couldn’t even keep a straight face in the lobby, so they cut out and went home.

  Her bedroom door was closed.

  “Pretend we’re alone,” she said.

  “If only,” he said, but closer than that they never got, and he banged around the kitchen making tea as she tuned the radio.

  They listened to the news, and the local society-page gossipeuse blew a lot of smoke about the beauty of the Dramatons in the new production, and how they were without doubt the best artistic invention since the violin.

  “Even human actors can’t deny the appeal of Dramatons,” said the broadcaster, “as Emily Howard of the Understudies made an appearance in the company of one of the set designers.”

  Emily laughed herself into a coughing fit.

  “ . . . at her best, even as her smile masked heartache. Ex-husband Peter Elliott was announced as the new Artistic Director before the curtain rose, and received with thunderous applause. The premiere Saturday should be a smashing success, and well deserved. Best of luck to Elliott and company!”

  The broadcast continued in the silent room. There were five minutes of compliment-clips from the audience. Two minutes of pre-recorded audio from the play.

  Roger got up and switched off the set.

  “First you’ve heard,” he guessed, looking at her.

  She cleared her throat.

  That’s what Peter had been talking about in the kitchen. You couldn’t make new coats from old cloth. The moment he’d met the secondary cast he must have known.

  He’d been a clever boy. Selfish, clever boy.

  The Understudies were down to two.

  She washed her face, and ate a bit off a chocolate bar, and at last she sat down beside Roger with a bottle of Scotch and got to work a glass at a time.

  The couch seemed smaller.

  “A prince among men,” he said, like he’d been waiting to get it off his chest, and after he’d finished that little speech he took the glass from her hand and drank.

  “It’s not a tragedy,” she told him a little later.

  They were sitting at the table, with tea and some pastries he’d conjured out of nowhere. It felt strange to be really alone with him.

  “That’s just how it is,” she said. Her voice was worn, like she’d screamed. “It lights like a candle, and it just burns out.”

  “I see,” he said.

  Steam slipped past the cheap seal on the kettle, dissolving into the dry air, and she felt like something had cracked that could never be repaired.

  He didn’t ask her any questions; closer than that they never got.

  III. Everyone Take Your Places

  As Roger expected, Mr. Christie was not pleased.

  “It’s unconscionable!”

  Emily folded her arms and said, “As unconscionable as making your leads rehearse for a month without wages?”

  That threw him, and before he could go on Emily said, “Roger and I have both directed. The shows are blocked. There’s no reason the run can’t go on, if you’re willing to back us.”

  “Mr. Elliott was in all three plays. Where will you find an actor to fulfill the terms of the contract?”

  Phil, Roger thought at once.

  He looked at Emily, and she said to Mr. Christie, “Give us a day.”

  Phil owned a hotel in Kensington that had a dress code just for the lobby.

  Roger put on his gray suit in the cramped bedroom. The reflection in the mirror looked more dignified than the first time he’d put it on; he’d looked solemn and foolish then, like a boy in an old photograph. Now he had the wrinkles and the bearing that suited him; now, when it was too late to put them to any good use. He was too obsolete to act, and too tired for love affairs.

  “Emily?” his reflection called. “Are you ready?”

  From inside the other bedroom Emily said, “One moment. Trying to look as though we’re worth throwing in with.”

  “Too late for that,” he said. “Just mend up your shabby and come out.”

  “This dress makes me look like a coffin.”

  “It does not,” Roger said, and when she opened the door he amended, “Only slightly.”

  “I’ll just wear a suit,” she said with a sigh, closed the door again.

  “Whose?” Roger asked, though he knew.

  She even wore Roger’s top hat, so when they walked side by side they looked like a vaudeville team. The black trousers were too long on her, and only her heels kept the hems out of the dust.

  The host stepped in front of them before they had set foot on the soft carpet.

  “Madam—”

  “Miss.”

  “ . . . I’m very sorry, but the Maitland maintains a very strict dress code.”

  “And I’m wearing the full suit,” she said, and Roger tried not to laugh in the poor man’s face.

  “Yes, thank you, but I’m afraid I can’t allow it.”

  “Let the poor woman through, she’s only gone senile in her old age,” said Phil from behind them, and then Emily was laughing and embracing him, one hand pressed against the crown of her hat to keep it from falling.

  Phil was still tall and thin and elegant. The white at his temples was the same they painted in when he was Colonel Preson.

  Frozen in time; that’s what a life of honest business did for you.

  The hotel restaurant was discreet to the point of being underlit,
and Roger fumbled his way through the four courses guessing what he was eating.

  Emily hardly ate; she and Phil traded horror stories and laughed and made small talk like he didn’t know why Roger and Emily had come by his posh hotel.

  Phil was lovely about these things, though; always had been. Back when they all might as well have been shooting at each other, Phil was the one who smoothed over quarrels, who stayed friendly with flings in every city.

  When Phil left, Roger had acted from Phil’s example; someone had to smooth things over.

  Roger had forgotten how he’d missed Phil until they were sitting in the club after dinner, in a comfortable silence, and Phil sat forward and said, “Children, children, what a bloody mess you’re in.”

  Roger laughed, and even as Emily nudged Phil she was smiling.

  Emily should have married Phil—better to have been stuck with Phil all these years, Roger thought, stopped himself.

  “How are you holding up?” asked Phil.

  Roger looked at Emily.

  She shrugged. “Don’t know, really. It’s like my parents are divorcing, not me. I feel old, is the pity. You shut your face,” she said, and pointed, and Roger closed his mouth with exaggerated care.

  Phil laughed. “And Roger?”

  “Unemployed,” Roger said, “now that Peter’s fucked off and left us.”

  Phil sucked in air through his teeth. “God, I hadn’t thought of that. That’s awful.”

  Emily gave Phil the full force of her concentration. “Don’t suppose you’re dying to play one last London run?”

  Phil sat back and looked at the cigarette in his fingers. On the dance floor behind him, couples were swaying to the music of a human orchestra.

  Roger held his breath, prayed there was something he hadn’t thought of that would convince Phil to come home.

  “Don’t suppose I would be,” Phil said after a long time. “That was ages ago. Different time. I’ve got a reputation, you know; can’t go about at my age trying to relive an old dream.”

  Phil had bowed out right on the cusp of the trouble, the first of them to go. He kept his eye on sales, and after two seasons of Dramatons outselling them he was gone, quietly investing in the hotel, quietly wishing them well, quietly stepping back.

  Roger looked up at the crowd swanning in and out across the marbled lobby outside the club; and Phil, across from him, master of it all and not aged a day.

  Phil had been very wise.

  Beside Roger, Emily tapped on the brim of her hat.

  “We could really use you, Phil.”

  “I’m sorry.” He sat back. “After all this time, I couldn’t.”

  Before Roger could think better of it, he asked, “And should we quit, do you think?”

  Emily looked at him, back at Phil.

  Phil, to his credit, met their eyes.

  “No shame in it,” Phil said. “Better that than a dead run. Leave them wanting more.”

  Roger could see in Emily’s profile that the gears were already turning; she was calculating odds, weighing her chances, looking ahead with those hard eyes.

  “Phil, let’s have a dance,” she said. “It’s been ages since I heard a human orchestra.”

  Phil grinned and took her hand as he stood. “It’s one of my amenities,” he said. “No automatons. Unless you count some of the concierges, they’re dull as planks, but what can you do?”

  “You can stop with the hiring practices and dance with me,” Emily said.

  She left her hat at the table. Roger rested his fingertips on it. It was smooth; too smooth in some places. Soon the brim would fray.

  Her hair was bobbed, and with both of them in suits she and Phil looked like the beginning of a burlesque. They danced with half-closed eyes and happy smiles, Emily chatting and grinning like she was content.

  You’d never guess anything was wrong, if you didn’t know how she looked when her heart was broken.

  Roger tapped the beat with two fingers on the crown of the top hat and gathered his nerve.

  The next song was slow, and before he could second-guess himself Roger was standing, taking her hand, leading her onto the floor.

  They’d danced together onstage. For three years in London they’d done society plays where half the dialogue took place on the dance floor.

  (He’d always felt sorry for Rose, who was a foot shorter than any of the men and got trod on six nights a week for three years.)

  Roger wasn’t sharp at it, but he could trudge back and forth to a sad song as well as anyone.

  He took the stage embrace, but she stepped closer into his arms, like the beginning of The Condemned Woman. Conspiratorial. End-of-the-line.

  After a moment, he lowered his head until his chin was beside her temple.

  “Rose is here,” Emily said to Roger’s lapel. “She and her lady friend live on the sixth floor. And the Theatre Dramaturgica just checked someone into one of the suites.”

  Peter.

  Roger frowned. “What a reunion.”

  “We should decide what we’re going to do,” she said. She tightened her grip on his shoulder, turned to look at him. Her nose brushed his cheek. They were nearly kissing.

  “Tomorrow,” he said.

  They were going to fall to pieces later, but they hadn’t danced in ten years, and it was a beautiful song.

  After a beat, she said against his jaw, “You’re a bit crap at all this.”

  “I know,” he said, kept dancing.

  It was raining on the way out, and he nudged her into a taxi over her protests about the expense. They were penniless, but he’d be damned if they were going to run into Peter sopping wet like a couple of refugees.

  “I was thinking of writing,” she said to the window. “People may want things performed the same way, but they always need new things to perform. People are odd.”

  Her face reflected off the glass; against the cityscape he could see narrowed eyes, a pressed mouth.

  “Peter could use the help,” he said.

  “Don’t.”

  He watched the streets sliding past the window. It felt like something pressing on his throat.

  “I could voice,” he said. “They’re always looking for people to do interpretation. Poor sods can’t do it themselves, can they?”

  “Oh. I hadn’t thought of that.”

  He frowned. “You disapprove?”

  “For you? Nonsense, you’re wonderful. Brilliant idea.”

  His chest tightened. “And you?”

  She shook her head.

  “God, I need a smoke.”

  “You do,” he said, watched her tap out a pattern on the glass.

  Mr. Christie was a man of discretion; their contracts and canceled lease were delivered, so they wouldn’t waste a trip to the theatre to be sacked in front of the secondaries.

  Roger poured them each a drink. They finished in single swallows.

  “Right,” he said. “Let’s pack up, and we’ll go flat-hunting this afternoon.”

  “If you want anything of Peter’s, now’s the time to claim it.”

  He had no interest in anything of Peter’s, but he said, “Would you like a hand?”

  “No,” she said, closed the door.

  Emily packed Peter’s things neatly in his case and sent them to the Maitland Hotel.

  “No big scene?” Roger wasn’t sure what to expect, but after a quarter-century of marriage she might feel like setting his good shirts ablaze.

  “I kept all his braces. He’ll have to buy belts.”

  “Petty theft is the best revenge.”

  “Hush,” she said, and handed him a paper bag. “Enjoy your braces. I have to bring these downstairs.”

  He started to offer, but she shook her head and went down alone.

  The bedroom bore no sign of Peter, as if he’d only been an overnight guest; as if a single suitcase had carried away anything he’d ever done.

  When Emily came back he had her drink ready.

&nb
sp; “I always said you were a gentleman,” she said, toasted him silently.

  “To whom?”

  She shrugged. “There must have been someone I talked to besides you.”

  It was the last of the Scotch, and as Emily cleaned out of the bathroom and her bedroom, Roger found things in the kitchen, and they ate the last bits of cheese and fruit from the icebox so they wouldn’t go to waste.

  Emily moved slowly, seemingly unconcerned that the landlord was coming for the keys at five. She rolled her perfume bottles into her socks, folded her good dress in newspaper.

  “Keeps the wrinkles off,” she said when she saw him looking.

  As they were putting on their hats and coats, the porter returned from the Maitland with an invitation for Mr. Roger Cavanaugh and Ms Emily Howard to avail themselves of his hotel, free of charge, until such time as they should find suitable employment.

  “About time,” Emily said, and then Roger realized why she’d made the good-faith gesture of sending over the luggage; a guaranteed guilt response from Phil, who did so love settling quarrels.

  The relief stung him.

  “God, I could kiss you,” he said.

  She looked at him for a long time before she said, “Let’s get a taxi.”

  At the Maitland the concierge nodded when they gave their names. “And would you like adjoining suites?”

  “Just the one,” said Emily.

  Roger frowned, but Emily only touched his back and said, “We shouldn’t take more space than we need.”

  Long after they were in the suite and she’d gone into the bedroom to hang her things, he could feel where the warmth of her hand had seeped through his jacket.

  There was no mention of parting.

  After a debate about whether or not to dine downstairs (“Should we?” “No.” “Right.”), they got bread and cheese and pears from a grocer. Roger insisted they get something from the hotel, so they ordered tea from room service and paid the tab promptly. It made Roger feel less in Phil’s debt, though he knew one night in this suite was probably worth Roger’s salary for the entire run.

  They listened to the news on her bedroom radio. The Dramaturgica got another interview.