Chapter Six
CHAPTER SIX
T HE THEATER WAS A MARVEL. A TRUE WONDER. N O CONSTRUCTION as grand had been attempted since the first cornerstones were laid at the Taj Mahal, and after, only fantasies would be so elaborate.
Or rather, it would be all of those things once it was finished. For now, as Thomas situated himself in the primary lobby facing the bustle of 34th Street, the entire building shook under an endless onslaught of construction. Walls trembled and electric lights flickered as hammers and drills worked their incursions into the building’s facade. Every once in a while, a sprinkling of dust would rain down from above, a side effect of the carnage.
All of it added to the fraying of his nerves, externalizing frustrations he wished to keep buried.
As he sat on a workbench and sipped the last of his fourth cup of coffee, he gave orders to the two men in front of him—one, a dark-haired freelance newspaperman named Smith; the other, Emile Deschamps, the fine French director Thomas had hired to direct his vaudeville show.
“Shall we review the plan again?” Thomas asked, helping himself to another cup of coffee. He needed it after last night—it had been positively sleepless.
Smith and the director shared a sidelong glance.
“It is not complicated, sir,” the newsman said, answering for them both.
Thomas clapped his hands together. Though Andrew always scolded him for “excessively and needlessly” instructing his “already extremely capable employees,” he didn’t care. Anything to ensure success. “Clocks aren’t complicated either, but we still tune those, don’t we? Now, Emile, when Miss Cross arrives, you’re to present your concept for her new act. And Smith—”
“I’m going to make it into a story. Or try, anyway.”
“You will make it a story,” Thomas amended, handing him the first half of his fee in a small envelope.
A snort from the other man. “Sure. One big, fat story.”
Thomas didn’t appreciate the joke or have the energy to feign a laugh, so he changed the subject. “Don’t you have flashbulbs to polish?”
He must have—or the dollars in his pocket made him biddable—because he disappeared, leaving Thomas behind with his director and his director’s fine European mustache.
“I wouldn’t worry, monsieur,” Emile purred, petting his facial hair with a flourish. “Mademoiselle Cross may not be the draw she once was, but I, the great Emile , can turn even a dress-wearing pile of cream puffs into a surefire hit.”
There it was again. That condescension toward Evelyn and her looks. Thomas swallowed his disgust.
“Yes. Well. Please. Don’t let me keep you from preparing.”
A moment later, Thomas was totally alone in the lobby. Perhaps he could review his notes for the afternoon’s meetings? But when his attention kept slipping to the clock, he rose from his chair and began to wear a path back and forth across the freshly laid carpet. Pacing and checking the grand clock on the wall—rumored, at least when he paid an outrageous sum for it, to have been smuggled out of Versailles during the French Revolution—he knew he must look like he was going mad … but he couldn’t help it. There was only so much nervous energy one could bear before it had to be expelled somehow.
“Thomas, as your medical advisor, I feel it is my Hippocratic duty to inform you that you have had entirely too much coffee today.”
At the sound of the doctor’s arrival, Thomas’s steps stuttered. “Good morning to you too,” Thomas scowled, determinedly ignoring the twitch of a smile on Andrew’s lips.
“Good morning, Thomas. Shall we?”
The good doctor waved him over to the bench. Thomas knew better than to protest. This was their morning routine, after all. And at least it gave him something to do other than pacing.
With the kind of ease that could only be learned at a prestigious medical school, Andrew touched his fingers to Thomas’s pulse, keeping count on the pocket watch in his free hand. Checking his vitals.
“Care to enlighten me?” Andrew murmured.
“On what?”
“On whatever it is that’s got you tied up in knots. Pacing, Thomas. I’ve never seen you pace. Really . You thought that wouldn’t concern me?”
Thomas didn’t answer asinine questions like that—not even from his doctor.
Andrew continued without being prompted. “Does it have anything to do with what went on in Miss Evelyn Cross’s dressing room last night?”
Thomas’s thoughts skipped like a scratch on a phonograph vinyl. “I don’t know what you’re implying.”
“Not implying anything,” Andrew said, too casual. “Merely observing that when I said her name, your pulse jumped.”
“More innuendo. I won’t listen to another word of it.”
“Alright, then. What happened last night?”
What happened. Facts. Thomas could handle facts. “I offered her an audition. She’s coming here today at noon. Emile is going to pitch her an act. Smith is going to make a story of it. By the time the evening edition of the paper hits the streets and the news of our star hits the populace, The Empire will have several new investors, George Westinghouse and his withdrawn funds be damned.”
“Rather a lot of words to avoid telling me what really happened, don’t you think?”
“I told you everything that happened.”
Andrew was quiet for a moment as he withdrew a sphygmomanometer from his kit. Hoping they had reached the end of the doctor’s line of questioning, Thomas took the liberty of relieving himself of his jacket and rolling up his sleeve. But once Andrew began tightening the cuff around Thomas’s biceps, the questions came back with such offhanded casualness that Thomas choked.
“Did you take her to bed?”
“Andrew . ”
“It’s just a question, which I ask out of an interest in your health.”
“Of all the—Last night, you seemed thoroughly opposed to the idea of her.”
“Yes, well, the way you spoke about her, the way you ran off after her last night, the way you’ve thundered around here this morning … it made me reconsider.”
Andrew pressed fervently on the pump end of the air line, causing the device to clench Thomas’s flesh painfully. He then continued: “You, my friend, are what we in my profession call severely repressed. I’ve never been worried about you losing your marbles as the papers suggest, nor have I been worried about the health of this professional enterprise of yours. But I have been worried about this … inability you have to connect with—”
“Showgirls?” Thomas snapped.
“Anyone,” came the solemn reply.
Thomas’s jaw tightened. His inability to connect with people … a wholly inaccurate diagnosis. He had the ability. He knew that. But he also knew better than to allow himself the pleasure.
The cuff around his arm felt tighter than usual.
“I thought last night might have changed that,” Andrew confessed. “That’s all.”
“Well. Nothing changed last night. And I wouldn’t have—what you suggested I did with Miss Cross.”
“But you wanted to.”
There was no judgment in Andrew’s tone. That didn’t change the fact that having his love life picked apart by his personal physician was nearly as humiliating as having it picked apart by all of Manhattan’s newspapers and gossip rags.
Heat spread across the back of his neck. He ripped the cuff from his arm and shot to his feet—just out of the doctor’s reach.
“It wouldn’t have been appropriate,” he said, fussing with his shirtsleeve, returning himself to visual, unrumpled perfection. “She’ll be my employee soon enough.”
“Most men in your position would have pressed their advantage. No matter the business hierarchy,” Andrew pointed out.
“Just because most men would doesn’t mean they should.”
“True. Was she willing?”
Willing . She hadn’t just been willing. She’d been luring . A plush, warm, delicious treat laid out for him, waiting to capture him between those bitable, thick thighs of hers.
She was perfect. Which, of course, made her the worst sort of temptation.
“She was confounding,” Thomas said. “A hurricane of a person. I’ve never met a woman as thoroughly unsuitable—brazen and unchecked and wanton. I repeat: even if I was in a position to press my advantage , as you say, I wouldn’t have.”
“Despite the fact that you are clearly attracted to her.”
Thomas replied before he could consider the consequences. “ Due to the fact that I was clearly attracted to her.”
Andrew glanced at him from over the rim of his gold spectacles. “Care to elaborate?”
“No.”
Evelyn Cross presented an existential threat to a man like Thomas Gallier. He trusted his initial assessment. She was a hurricane. And he had been a man desperately clinging to a rock beneath her.
Dr. Samson didn’t need to know any of that.
“It’s just business, then? That’s what you’ve chosen to claim?”
“Just business. That’s the truth.”
Andrew, understanding that the daily physical was over, tucked his instruments back into his bag.
“Do you want my professional advice?”
“I didn’t hire you for your professional advice. Not really,” Thomas said. “I hired you to keep the papers from questioning my health.”
“Well, I hope you’ll forgive me if I give it to you anyway. I have never met a man with as much drive as you. You are endlessly determined. Formidable in every respect. But I have also never met a man as empty. When I say I’m worried for your heart, Thomas, I don’t just mean that we have to keep it ticking. I also mean that we must keep it from rotting due to lack of nourishment. You do not need to control everything. Everyone. And you also don’t need to insist on doing so alone.”
Thomas straightened his cuffs. Andrew was being obtuse, as usual. “I don’t bear it alone. I have an army of employees at my disposal.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“Then what did you mean?”
Andrew sighed, heavy and solid. “If you’re not careful—”
“If he’s not careful with what?”
The room stopped. Thomas’s heart stopped. Time itself, even, seemed to stop. Because a third had joined them. And she was just as stunning in the daytime as she had been by stage light.
No. Even more so.
“Miss Cross,” Thomas said. “What a pleasure to see you again.”