Anio Szado (38 page)

The production was coming together. The sets had been built. Under Bernard’s patient guidance, student volunteers were honing their skills at lighting. The entire collection had been designed. Most pieces hung complete under wraps at Studio Saint-Ex.

Philippe had insisted on supervising the sale of the tickets himself. He had asked, with dignified shyness, to join the show as the musical accompaniment on piano, while Yannick had claimed that the production required his expertise on oboe.

“How are the ticket sales going?” I asked two weeks before the opening night.

The old man had grinned. “Brisk, Mademoiselle Mignonne. I see an extended run in your future.”

I hoped that age had brought him wisdom and not senility.

It had taken some doing to convince Leo to get involved. I had been walking him through the script after he returned from work, but lately he had become irritable and uncooperative. He’d begun asking, “Can’t we do this at the pub?”

“If we pull this off, I’ll buy you all the beer you can drink. Come on, let’s go through it once more.”

“I’m just reading the bloody thing. I don’t need to keep going over it. I’m not memorizing it.”

“But it’s important that the inflection is right. It has to sound natural.”

“You want natural, put a bottle in my hand and another in my pocket—or don’t complain if I sound like an automaton. The tongue don’t get loose on its own.”

In the end, I began allowing him to drink while he practiced. Fortified, Leo’s narration was warm and sincere. But the alcohol did nothing to extend his patience. He had come to most of the rehearsals—marching from the front entrance to the microphone backstage with put-upon grunts and rarely even a glance at Bernard, Consuelo, and me—but not once had we managed to get through the script in a sitting without stopping to deal with some frustration or request. His disruptions had made it difficult to judge the persuasiveness of his narration over the entire arc of the story.

With the exception of Consuelo, who seemed to get progressively stronger, the models had grown tired. Their fatigue lent a trace of melancholy to their movements, tinting their youthful exuberance with a richness that would have been impossible to prescribe.

Now it was the day before the opening. The models were arriving for the final dress rehearsal, laughing and chattering as they made their way through the halls of the Alliance. The weeks of hard work, and the resulting improvements and achievements, had created a bond among the cast. They were excited, certain they were ready to make a brilliant impression from beginning
to end. And it was true, I thought, that even without the words, even if the show were simply a dramatic fashion parade set against the backdrop of Bernard’s scenery, the presentation would be impressive. The emotions conveyed by the girls, the actions they mimed, the gestures they had finally embraced and mastered, worked to display the clothing to exceptional effect.

But it took the narration to make it a story. And Leo was quite capable of doing a fine job—when he bothered to show up to do the job.

I had waited for him at home tonight for as long as I could. Please let him be at the Alliance already, I prayed. Let him have gone straight from work.

But when I arrived for the dress rehearsal, Leo was not there.

Backstage was bustling. Gleeful girls were fixing each other’s makeup and their own, zippers were being zipped, giggles were rising. Consuelo and Bernard stood at the back of the auditorium, watching the set transform again and again in rapid succession as the lighting crew ran through their standard equipment tests. Philippe and Yannick practiced their music smoothly.

Only I was unable to focus on anything. I paced back and forth, returning to the hallway, looking for Leo in the lane and in the hallway that led backstage, peering out at the street front, checking with Eddy at the bar.

Bernard grabbed me as I reentered the theater by its lobby doors. “What’s wrong?”

“Leo hasn’t shown up yet. Did he come in the side while I was out here?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Okay. Don’t tell Consuelo yet. If she pulls the plug on this now, we’re done for.”

“He’s never missed a rehearsal without giving you notice.”

“Right.” I didn’t mention that he’d missed plenty of our kitchen table practices, and that lately when he had shown up it had been with a good amount of drink already flowing in his veins.

“Still,” said Bernard, “I wish we had a backup plan.”

“Leo was our back-up plan. The only other option is you.”

Bernard’s look was apologetic, but his voice was firm. “Don’t ask me to go against my convictions. I won’t put my friendship with Saint-Ex on the line.”

“I know. I just wish there were another way.”

Just then, the door beside us opened and Leo burst through. “Hello, Miggy! Where’s the show?” He gestured sloppily—and Bernard plucked a bottle of whisky from his outstretched hand.

“We’ve been waiting for you,” I said.

“I was busy. I’m a busy man.” He reached for his liquor, but Bernard moved it away.

“Start the music.” Bernard took Leo by the arm. “He’s full of beans now, but give him a few minutes and he’ll be falling asleep.” He called out, “Philippe, can you order up a pot of coffee?” He steered Leo toward the stage, up the stairs, and into the wings. “Everyone in your places,” he yelled.

Within minutes, the piano was sending out the right notes and coffee was disappearing down Leo’s throat. I pressed the script into my brother’s hands and adjusted the microphone to his sitting height. “You remember your cue?”

“I remember everything. What’s my cue?”

“After this comes the oboe, then it quiets down. When you hear the piano rise again, start reading. The girls will take their start from your lines. I’ll be in the audience, watching and listening.” It was such a relief to have him there. “I’m glad you came. It means so much to me. Now do a good job. Give it your all.” I planted a kiss on his unshaven cheek, my nose objecting at a whiff of his breath, and hurried out to the seats.

The oboe began the opening passage, then faded while the notes of the piano rose to the fore. I bit my lip and rolled the script in my hands. I was just about to rise from my seat when Bernard,
sitting beside me, touched my wrist—and the sound of Leo clearing his throat came through the speakers.

His amplified voice filled the room: “I had an accident in the Sahara Desert …”

The sky above the stage flared as the curtains parted. Lights flashed and illuminated the downed plane resting in fine sand. The sky seemed to hum with energy. Suddenly a figure appeared in the center of the stage: the Little Prince, the first of a series of Little Princes, each with golden hair and a waif-like physique, each simply elegant in a captivating, androgynous outfit of white or pale green.

This first prince wore a coat over her pantsuit—
his
pantsuit—a regal coat with golden epaulets and wide red turned-back cuffs. It was based on the sketch I had created months ago as I listened to Antoine’s story the very first time; now it was the first item in the order book for the
Little Prince
Collection. The model wore it exquisitely.

As Leo continued his reading in a relaxed voice that was at once curious, thoughtful, and reverent, as the music swelled and fell, as Consuelo dazzled in the dress that even now still made me catch my breath, as the princes and the flowers and the animals played their roles through, I thought I would never again feel so glad, so blessedly relieved.

“It’s going to be fine,” I whispered to Bernard as Consuelo rejoined us following her scenes. “We did it, Bernard. Look at those girls! Look at your sets!”

He laughed quietly and put a finger to his lips.

Toward the end of the rehearsal, Consuelo got up from her seat. She moved to the side aisle away from Mignonne and Bernard and their precious little murmurings. They were happy. Good for them. Let them smile and nod at each other in their self-congratulatory sappiness. How quickly they had both forgotten that there would be no show without her. Soon they would be pulling out their handkerchiefs to weep at the ending and congratulating themselves for their tears, too. You’d think they had never heard the script before tonight.

Consuelo, of course, had heard all of it and more. Tonio had read the full story to her at the Bevin House; she had demanded it. The fact was, a wife shouldn’t have to beg and cajole her author husband to read to her. A husband should involve his wife in every step of his creative work. But Tonio had long ceased coming to her with paragraphs or chapters, with ideas, with opening lines. So when he had finally agreed to read to her, he should have known Consuelo would not receive it in quiet servitude.

She had sat meekly as his opening lines soared up like a geyser, strong and sure. He had carried on, relaying the story from a place deep inside himself.

You can tell a lot about a man from his voice, she thought. With her fine ear, she had noticed every ebb in the forcefulness of his delivery. She knew that each almost-imperceptible hesitation signaled a word choice or passage that he knew, in his heart, was not yet quite right. Consuelo had taken it upon herself to guide him through the rough spots. She had done so with guileless
comments that any writer might expect to hear. “How hilarious! Oh, I’m sorry—you didn’t want me to laugh there?” … “I love how you made him so boring; you are absolutely brilliant at that.” … “What a marvelous scene, darling! The only thing left to fix is the words.”

Well, that’s what he got for thinking he could disappear into other people’s studios and homes, or into his own apartment or room, and come out with a creation fully formed without any input or advice from her! She had made her point. She had made it cleverly, with the innocence of a tot poking about in rubber boots. Tonio was incapable of faulting a child.

If Tonio believed in the story the way he had written it, let him defend himself. Consuelo would have been thrilled to engage him in debate. But he had not mustered the will to engage. Every time she had tendered an observation, the strength of his speech had weakened. By the end, the conviction in his voice had been reduced to a trickle.

That was Tonio now. All those years he had spent throwing himself fearlessly into the most dangerous of airborne circumstances, focused, forceful, accumulating a list of crashes that defied all odds of survival, disappearing into lands barren of shelter, food, or drink—making her sick with worry, hoarse with weeping, too grief-stricken to rise from the floor—she would take that all again over what Tonio had become in New York: a sad and sensitive soul. Once, he had been like a cannon. Now, reduced to nothing but his voice, with no clearance to take action, he had become a violin of a man.

Whereas Leo … There was no musical instrument that could symbolize Leo. He was a hammer: hard, unbending, uncomplicated.

Leo narrated the
Little Prince
story like a man with a job to do. He had a deep, straightforward voice; he took his time; his tone lifted and fell. He used his voice as a tool. No doubt he was good with tools.

His voice said other things about him, too. He had mastery
over himself and his world. He wasn’t the type to be swayed or hurt. He didn’t have a pathetic sacred fount inside his core that had to be protected. God, no! Leo would laugh at the idea. He wouldn’t hesitate to laugh at Consuelo. He wouldn’t put up with trickery or dissent.

He was—as she had sensed from the moment she had set eyes on him—a savage among the softest of elites.

She wanted a drink. And she wanted to have it with Leo.

By the time he came to the last page of the script, Consuelo was walking toward the stage, leaving those other two to their hankies and their glee. They probably didn’t even hear the last few lines; they were probably weeping with relief that Leo had come through.

Not that Consuelo was really listening, either. She was on the hunt for her own sort of relief. It was on the other side of the curtain, up the stairs, in the wings—his long, lean body slouched at a bistro-style table, his mouth still close to the microphone.

He was young, of course, but he didn’t look like he would complain about the age of any woman who would buy him a shot.

“Well done, darling.”

“Thanks, doll.”

Consuelo clicked off the microphone. “You know, Leo, Mignonne didn’t think you would show up.”

“I wouldn’t miss it for the world … uh …”

“Consuelo.”

“I wouldn’t miss it, Consuelo. Mig’s my sister, you know.”

“I do. In fact, I was the one who asked her to bring you in.”

He looked her up and down. “Aren’t you the dress with the rose?”

She had changed into slacks and a black angora sweater with metallic detailing around the dropped neckline, but Leo’s eyes had a good memory: they lingered where they should linger on the rose. She shifted one high-heeled foot in front of the other,
assuming a stance she had held on the stage, one that accentuated the profile of her bust and the shapeliness of her hips. “Yes, darling, I am the rose. You can tell, though I’ve slipped out of my sheath?”