I'll Sing for my Dinner (15 page)

Turning to me, she put her arms around my neck and kissed me gently on the lips. “There’s a girl, Myra, who’s not much older than I am. She’s at my beck and call, and she takes care of anything I need.” She gave me a grin. “You’ll like Myra. All the men do. But only look, don’t touch, at least when I’m around.”

“I won’t have eyes for anyone but you,” I said.

“If you don’t notice Myra, and look more than once, I’ll have serious doubts about you,” she said, the grin growing larger. “If you look in the dictionary, her picture is right there next to the definition for eye candy. She’s an ex-model, and she’s really nice. Shall we go?”

We took the limo to the Kennedy Center, and went to the restaurant on the top floor. We were conducted to a table next to the window, with a view of the Potomac River. Georgetown, and beyond it Capitol Hill, could be seen in the distance.

I was a bit disappointed that we wouldn’t be dining alone. Her agent, Marcus Neuberger, and the afore-mentioned Myra Cromwell were waiting for us. Cecily hadn’t exaggerated. Myra was beautiful, tall and slender with large breasts and dark brown hair. Next to her, Cecily would fade into the background for most people.

As I held her chair for her to sit, Cecily murmured, “I told you so.”

I whispered back in her ear, “Does she sing arias when she climaxes? I’m kind of hooked on that.” Cecily giggled like a schoolgirl.

My seat in the theater was front-row center, with Myra sitting next to me. Every time I took a deep breath, I smelled her perfume. It wasn’t unpleasant. To my great surprise, on the other side of her was Donald Kerrigan, who nodded to me.

Cecily’s harp sat in the center of the stage, near the front, with a single straight-backed wooden chair and a low table with a glass of water next to it. A hand-held microphone also sat on the table.

The house lights dimmed, and a single spotlight found her at the left wing of the stage. She walked out, stood in front of the crowd and bowed. The applause seemed heavier than I would normally expect for an entrance. She picked up the microphone.

“Thank you for coming tonight,” she said. “It’s been a long time since I performed, almost three years. I’ve had some personal difficulties, but those are now past, and I’m sure they would bore you. I’m a little out of practice, so I hope that you’ll be gracious and forgive any bobbles I may make. But I promise, I am going to give you my heart tonight. I never thought I would stand on this stage again, and seeing all of you here makes me feel more wonderful than you can imagine.”

In the silence that followed, she took her seat. Lightly strumming her fingers over the strings, she picked up the microphone again.

“If you have taken a look at the program, and you’re puzzled that you don’t recognize any of the selections for harp, that’s because I will be performing all of these numbers for the first time. I’ve never played my own compositions in public before. I do hope you enjoy them.”

I looked at Myra. This was the first that I had heard of this. I didn’t know Cecily composed classical music. Myra leaned close and whispered, “She insisted. She has total artistic control. It was part of her contract, you know. If she wants to play nursery rhymes or the Beatles, or change the entire program at the last minute, it’s entirely up to her.”

“Have you heard any of these pieces?” I asked.

Myra looked nervous. “No one has. Literally no one. She wouldn’t allow anyone to hear her practice.”

The first piece started with two strings being plucked, over and over like a heartbeat. And then a trickle of sound from the highest register, like a waterfall of silver bells that made me think of her laughter. The sound grew, and grew, until it filled the chamber, and as I sat and listened, I realized that she was telling a story. The music grew to a frantic climax, and then softened into a languid interlude before picking up again and sparking images of running through a meadow on a bright sunny day. When the harp fell silent, she mouthed, ‘I love you.’

And then the hall erupted. Everyone was on their feet clapping, and calls of ‘bravo, bravo’ came from everywhere. Cecily rose, and bowed, and raising her voice, called, “Thank you! Thank you so much!”

When she sat back down and put her hands to the strings, the applause died down and she began her next number. She played four compositions. I was sure the third one told the story of Eddie’s death and her flight across the country. It was dark, and dismal, with an early loud, heavy crescendo that morphed into a fast, frantic movement, leading in turn to another dark climax. It didn’t repeat itself, but you could feel the progression. It was one of the most stirring and yet depressing things I’d ever heard.

The final number that followed evoked images of flying, a joyful paean to life and freedom. The contrast was so huge, that I felt as though I was floating out of my seat. The rest of the audience seemed to like it, too. The ovation when she finished, stepping away from the harp and bowing, was tremendous, going on and on for over five minutes. Other than stepping back on stage once to take another bow, she did not stay until the applause finished.

Myra clasped my arm. “I need something to drink,” she said. I nodded and escorted her out to the lobby.

“My God,” Myra exclaimed after we each got a glass of wine. “I knew she was talented, but that was one of the most powerful things I’ve ever heard. She plays the harp as though it was an extension of her soul.”

“I don’t know when she wrote those,” I said. “Until three weeks ago, she hadn’t touched a harp in almost three years.”

The violin portion of the program consisted of her standing alone on the stage in a spotlight, with the orchestra in the pit. She played two concertos, a complex piece by Brahms first, and finished with a sensuous concerto by Max Bruch. I knew both pieces and her renditions were not only flawless, but passionate and inspiring. Again, the applause was thunderous.

For her vocal performance, she pulled out the stops. Not playing it safe, for her finale she sang
Casta Diva
, or
Pure Goddess
in English, from the opera
Norma
by Bellini. It was an aria closely associated with Maria Callas, and also sung by Beverly Sills and Joan Sutherland. For a young singer to invite comparisons to those immortals was a daring gambit. I was sure every person in the audience must have a recording of the aria by one of those three. I did.

It brought down the house. Cecily walked to the front of the stage, tears running down her face and ruining her makeup. She bowed and waved and threw kisses to the audience, over and over again. Flowers rained down on her. I felt a tug at my elbow. Looking down, I found that a smiling Myra was trying to hand me a huge bouquet of roses. I took it and walked toward the stage.

Cecily bent down and I handed the flowers to her, along with a handkerchief. “You’re destroying your makeup,” I shouted over the din.

“I don’t care,” she shouted back.

~~~

Chapter 18

Cecily

I was sure I had played and sang better, but I knew I had never put so much passion into a performance. When the last note of
Casta Diva
died out, the room was totally silent. I dropped my chin to my chest, completely spent. The silence seemed to stretch, and I wondered if I had chanced too much.

And then an avalanche of sound rose up out of the audience and rolled over me. I looked up, and everyone was on their feet, clapping and stamping their feet and cheering, calling ‘bravo’ and ‘encore’, calling my name. An encore was out of the question. I felt like a used dishrag.

Walking to the front of the stage, I bowed and raised my hands in the air and bowed again. The applause increased. I had never given a performance where the audience was so loud. I looked down at Jake. He was clapping and had a huge smile on his face. I could barely hear him as he shouted, “Fantastic! You nailed it!”

I looked back out at the audience and a flower hit me in the shoulder. People were coming down the aisles, throwing flowers on the stage, and then someone placed a bouquet on the stage. Something tickled my cheek and when I brushed at it with my wrist I saw a black stain. I realized that tears were running down my cheeks and my mascara was running.

Jake brought me a bouquet and I took it from him. He also handed me a handkerchief to wipe my eyes. I started to back up, in preparation for leaving the stage, but the ovation went on and on. The house lights came on, but the people continued to clap and cheer. Hardly anyone was reaching for their coat or looking like they wanted to leave.

Completely overcome, I fell to my knees and held my arms out to them. The clapping intensified again. Finally, Myra and Jake appeared beside me out of nowhere and helped me to my feet. They led me away, but just before I walked off stage, I turned and waived one last time.

Take that, Mommy dearest,
I thought to myself.

Classical venues can’t survive on ticket sales alone. The balance of the money they need to operate comes from donations from wealthy benefactors. For that performance, the tickets ranged from a hundred to three hundred dollars. But the theater had less than three thousand seats. One of the things big donations give you is an invitation to an after party, where the privileged audience members meet with the cast and the stars. It was a solo show, so I wasn’t done yet.

Myra took me back to my dressing room and we fixed my makeup. Jake came in and hugged and kissed me, and then Myra helped me fix my makeup again.

Marcus handed me a glass of champagne when I arrived at the party. He looked really happy. I was hungry, so I hit the buffet and downed half a dozen toast points with caviar. I fed one to Jake, and he made an awful face.

“Don’t you like it?” I asked, laughing at him.

“Not at all,” he said, washing it down with champagne.

“That’s great. I can keep it in the fridge and know you won’t eat it,” I said, eating another.

I shook hands and exchanged pleasantries with a couple of dozen people, most of them old enough to be my grandparents. Several commented on the harp music, and several asked if the music was intended to tell a story. I said yes, it was about my personal journey the past three years.

As the crowd thinned out, I was chatting with Jake, Myra and Marcus when Jake asked, “What was the story you were telling with that first piece? I think I understood the others.”

I grinned and winked at him. “That was the first time we made love.”

Myra blushed, Jake turned beet red, and Marcus guffawed. “Are you going to explain that in the cover notes when you record it?” Marcus asked.

It was my turn to blush a little.

When we got back to our room that night, Jake asked, “When did you compose the harp music you played tonight?”

“When I was in jail. Oops, I mean protective custody. The first three, anyway. The last one I played I wrote this week. I don’t sleep very well when we’re not together.”

“You wrote it this week? How many times have you played it?” The look on Jake’s face was priceless.

“All the way through? Twice. Once yesterday and once tonight. Why?”

He just shook his head.

I laughed. “Jake, how would anyone know if I made a mistake? No one ever heard it before.”

We stayed in the room the next day until noon, eating a room service breakfast. I sent Jake down to the lobby, though, to get the morning papers. I didn’t know if there would be a review since the concert ended so late, but I was hopeful. He came back with the local paper plus the one from Baltimore.

I picked up the Washington Post, and searched for the entertainment section. The review was on page three with the headline ‘Buchanan Conquers Kennedy Center in Triumphant Return’. It was a glowing review, filled with praise such as ‘a tour de force on the Celtic harp’, ‘a virtuoso performance on violin’, and ‘challenging Callas, Sills and Sutherland, Miss Buchanan claimed a place among that exalted pantheon with her rendition of
Casta Diva’
.

“My God, Jake. I have an admirer,” I breathed.

Chuckling, he said, “He can look, but he can’t touch.”

Jake flew out the following day, and my little company moved up to New York, with a week until a performance at the Met. We had a Wednesday concert there, then a Saturday concert in Boston and one the following Friday in Toronto. Then it was on to Europe. I wouldn’t see Jake again until my final performance in Vienna.