Chapter 10 #2
Frohman’s Kismet had propelled her to a level of fame she had never imagined.
She played Marsinah, a beggar’s daughter in a fantastical Far Eastern realm, a girl swathed in diaphanous scarves and sequins, in love with a prince in disguise.
It was a typical story, yes, certainly one that had been told before in more ways than could be tallied, but the dialogue was crisp and modern and the actors dedicated.
It ran at the Knickerbocker Theater forever and a day, it seemed—although in truth, it was six months—with every show sold out, even the matinees.
Her dressing room brimmed with flowers; love notes from men she’d never met sat in stacks on her cosmetics table; love notes from women she’d never met sat alongside them.
Leaving the theatre after a show meant waiting and waiting until the mobs cleared out, and even then there’d remain a gauntlet of people hoping for autographs, hoping to touch her hand or shoulder, hoping to catch her eye and have her notice them, bless them, make them special.
A few of the fresher-faced girls would cry when she smiled at them.
There had been a time when such a thing would have charmed her.
At the least, it would have gratified her, because Rita had worked all her adult life at being irresistible, and those tears from her followers were an undeniable sign that she was succeeding.
But as the months wound on, and then the years, her smile grew more and more false, and the bouquets didn’t smell as fragrant, and the love notes grew tedious.
Everyone seemed to write the same thing.
Forgive my presumption, I admire you so.
May we meet?
Will you write back?
May I call on you?
Will you advise me?
I want to be just like you …
It worried her. It worried her all the way through the chambers of her heart, that instead of sparkling and rising in joy at her growing success, she was instead being drained by it.
She could act and dance and sing on stage, she could give witty interviews offstage, could sign her name on proffered programs or cards with panache.
Rita could fool everyone but herself. She arrived at the theatre each afternoon alone.
She left each evening alone. She dined alone on the meals prepared for her.
She went to bed alone and rose alone and then started the whole routine over again.
After Kismet came Where Ignorance Is Bliss at the Lyceum, and then, God help her, A Thousand Years Ago at the Schubert, which shot her so far ahead of her ambitions that she nearly couldn’t comprehend it.
There was still satisfaction in doing her job well, so well that the critics couldn’t imagine anyone else playing Turandot, the tormented princess who shunned suitor after suitor, sentencing to death those who answered her riddles incorrectly, until finally her hero arrived.
Another fantastical Eastern fable, with more scarves and sequins, but also a wig of long black hair down to her knees, tangled with flowers, as if the princess in question spent her days dragging her locks through meadows in full bloom.
It didn’t matter. The show was a smashing, smashing success.
The love notes multiplied, and she began to give away the overwhelming onslaught of roses and lilies and carnations, spreading them around the cast. She took her bow each night center stage, her raven hair brushing the floorboards, and made sure to throw kisses at the audience at the end of her third bow.
It was mad and loud and empty. She felt so empty.
One night, she’d waited longer than usual to steal away after the performance.
It was well after eleven, a cool evening beneath a sable sky.
A handful of people waited even this late, so Rita plastered on her smile and pulled out her pen, keeping an eye on the chauffeured motorcar awaiting her at the curb, saying Thank you; you’re so kind; I’m so pleased you enjoyed it; I’m so sorry, I really must run, all the usual babble, but then she was past them at last, her hand reaching for the back door of the motor.
(She never waited for her chauffer to jump out and open the door for her; it saved valuable getaway time to simply do it herself.)
Someone grabbed her arm. She spun about, startled. In all her years of performing, none of her fans had gone so far as to force her to a halt.
A young woman stood before her, blond and petite, her eyes smiling, her lips smiling, and it took Rita nearly three entire seconds to recognize her sister.
“Mon Dieu,” she laughed as they hugged. “Hello, hello! I thought you were in Cairo until next week!”
“George’s business concluded early, so we decided to just come home. The Mauretania docked last night.”
“You should have telephoned! I could have gotten you tickets to the show!”
“Don’t worry about that. I knew you’d be sold out. We can do it another time.”
“Where is your husband?”
“At the flat. Will you drop by? There’s someone I hope you’ll meet.”
Rita threw a glance at her lingering audience, then opened the door and pulled Inez in after her, shifting across the squabs. “Oh, I don’t know,” she said, after the door closed. “It’s late, I’m tired. And you know I’m not interested in meeting anyone right now, I barely have time to—”
“Please? You needn’t stay long, just for a cocktail.
It’s that we’ve met the most marvelous fellow—well, George met him in Naples a few months ago.
I met him just today, and he’s only in town until tomorrow morning.
He’s Italian,” she added, lowering her voice.
“An Italian count, as a matter of fact. Quite dashing.”
“Inez …”
“Only a half hour! Fifteen minutes! We told him all about you, and he’s so interested.”
“You told him about—”
“I know you’re not looking for a beau, Rita. Giuseppe has connections to the photoplay companies over there. In Italy, I mean. He says they’re hunting for fresh talent.”
Rita sat back, folding her arms over her chest. Finally, she said, “How did you get here? Did George give in and purchase a motorcar for the city?”
“No, I took a cab.”
“No maid with you?”
Inez sent her a heavy look. “It’s been ages since I’ve bothered to worry about a maid at my heels.”
Rita sighed. “Right. Well, we’ll get you home, at least.” She tapped the glass pane between them and her driver. “Mrs. Vernon’s place on West Eleventh Street, please.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“And after that,” Rita said, turning to her sister with a frown, “we’ll see.”
AFTER THAT, WAS Count Giuseppe de Cippico.
If she had gone straight home that night instead of giving in to her sister’s pretty pleas, would she have met him anyway?
Would she have somehow ended up in Italy, in the shadow of Vesuvius, caught in her tinseled world of elaborate sets and hot lights and motion-picture cameras that captured her face and movements in silver nitrate, which then cast back her image on wide, enormous screens?
Would she have ever touched his warm skin, admired his dark eyes, drowsed happily to his voice, that accent, late late in the night, when they were both so relaxed and sated that sleep was the only answer, and yet still his low voice seduced her, Buonanotte, mia amata, buonanotte?
She didn’t know. She was grateful she never had to find out.
INEZ AND GEORGE’S penthouse in Greenwich Village was only blocks from Rita’s own on Fifth Avenue.
It wasn’t quite a coincidence, but neither was it fully planned; the sisters simply gravitated toward each other, just as they always had.
In a city the size of New York, it would be far too easy to become lost in the busy grid of streets and avenues, to drift apart.
As it was, the Vernons traveled so frequently that it seemed to Rita they hardly saw each other anyway.
Time had shifted their roles, and these days it was Inez who sent postcards to Rita, silly ones, lovely ones, each with a note assuring her that all was well, wherever Mr. and Mrs. Vernon roamed, and almost always with a word in the local language that somehow struck Inez as useful, or profound, or just interesting.
Which was how Rita now knew that pan was the word for bread in Spanish and Japanese.
That habibti meant beloved. That ordering a cup of coffee in Barcelona would get you an intensely bitter espresso and asking for a coco natural in Manzanillo would not get you a fizzy soda drink, but instead a fresh green coconut with the top lopped off by machete.
That whispering ojalá from the middle of a certain decrepit bridge spanning the Conejos River meant the saints would hear your wish and, if your heart was worthy, would grant it.
With each new card, Rita would imagine Inez eating the bread, drinking the espresso, laughing over the coconut.
Standing on that bridge beside George, suspended between aspen-studded mountains, making her wish.
The irony of it was not lost on her: that shy, retiring Inez—the girl who never wanted to leave their childhood home; who deliberately counted only birds and music and her siblings as friends—was now happily hopscotching her way across the globe.
And yes, sometimes Rita would also imagine what it might feel like, to be so utterly unified with another.
To give herself so entirely to a lover. A husband.
To be safe in that love. Would their hearts come to share the same tempo?
Would their souls reflect an infinite sameness, like twin looking glasses that faced each other?
Would they sleep together, dine together, plan their future together, travel, sex, children, dreams …
and still it wouldn’t be enough, still their craving for one another would never be satisfied?
Rita had never known a love like that. She’d never wanted to. Life was too full, too fast, too rich to pause for a man, any man. And honestly? That love, that all-consuming sort of love sounded exhausting.
Yet since her marriage, there was no denying that Inez had bloomed; Inez seemed nothing but joyful. Rita wasn’t jealous of her, exactly. But in her more silent hours … those solitary, repetitive hours of eating breakfast alone, preparing for bed alone, day after day …
She couldn’t help but wonder if there was something wrong with her. If she was simply too selfish to surrender to another so completely.
She’d stuck the postcard of that Colorado bridge into the frame of her vanity mirror, pleased with the wild green and gold of the mountains, the deep cerulean of the river. Sometimes, when her eye would catch on it, she’d think about what she’d wish for, should she ever find herself there.
Worthy or not, Rita was fairly certain her heart had no right to any more wishes.
She had wealth and fame and her looks still, such as they were.
She had talent, and perhaps a bit too much pride in that talent, but also the tenacity to constantly work on her craft, and surely it was all right to be a little proud of that.
She was tired more than she liked these days, but that was to be expected, the price of her profession.
She was alone, but not lonely. No, not that.
GEORGE AND HIS aristocratic guest were in the parlor, if the hushed conversation and laughter Rita overheard from the foyer were any clue.
The apartment was spotless and the flowers in the vases fresh; there was no indication that its occupants had been gone for the past two months to Greece and Turkey and Egypt.
She handed off her coat and hat and gloves to the maid, turned to Inez, and warned for the third time, “I can’t stay long. ”
Inez only smiled, taking her by the arm, leading her forward.
The parlor lights were low, only a few table lamps burning. The Algerian alabaster pendant chandelier, carved with pacing tigers, hung ghostly from the gloom masking the ceiling. Two men sat in wingchairs before the fire. When they noticed the sisters in the doorway, both came to their feet.
George Rita knew, of course, even in this half-light, tall and smiling, the tumbler of bourbon in his hand lit to caramel by the fire.
The other man, the count, was just a little taller, no drink, with hair that seemed as inky as the night around them, a square jaw and eyes shadowed by long black lashes.
George was introducing them, and the count extended his hand, and their handshake was firm and impersonal.
Even so, Rita felt something, a small thrill along her spine, a hint of vertigo as she looked into his eyes, infinite and dark.
His smile, not so impersonal as the clasping of their hands had indicated, but slight and knowing, as if they’d met before, or he knew some secret about her that Rita might not have yet realized herself.
In any case, she knew to keep her own expression politely interested, nothing more.
This count had information she wanted, perhaps business connections she could use.
It was never wise to entangle her livelihood with personal gratification. She’d learned that lesson years ago.
“A pleasure,” she said, as their hands released.
“An honor,” the count replied, still smiling, “to meet the Pearl of Broadway at last.”
She gave a little laugh. “That’s a new one.”
“Pardon me?”
“The ‘Pearl of Broadway.’”
“The Shining Star,” Inez cut in, sidling up to George, touching her lips to his cheek.
“The Magnificent Moon!” George offered.
“No, the Pearl,” insisted the count. “Or at least, that’s how the Italian newspapers describe her. Miss Rita Jolivet, the mystic new sensation. Una perla afosa.”
“Afosa?” Inez repeated.
His smile grew more abashed; he looked away from Rita, then back. “Forgive me if I’m too forward. It means sultry. A sultry pearl. We Italians tend to embrace the poetry of our language.”
“Ah,” Rita said, flummoxed. She felt, astonishingly, her cheeks begin to heat. She was suddenly glad it was so late, that the room was so layered in night.
Count de Cippico inclined his head. “So indeed, Miss Jolivet, both the honor and the pleasure are mine.”
“Come,” George said, waving the sisters to the chairs, drawing two more near. “Let’s all sit and talk about our dreams, shall we? There’s no better time for it than the sorcery of midnight, surrounded by friends old and new.”
“Who’s the poet now?” Inez teased.
But Rita was looking at the count, and the count was looking back at her, and it struck her that George was right. It was a splendid time to dream.