Chapter Eight
CHAPTER EIGHT
S HE WAS A TEST ON T HOMAS’S RESOLVE. A STRAIN TO HIS WILL power. But he would not fall. He would not . They would get on with this little publicity stunt, she would sign a contract, and then he would have his star—and no further reason to be anywhere close to her. After this meeting, she would be a theatrical property to be assessed and managed, not a very beautiful woman with perfume like tuberose and hair like summertime sun.
At least, that’s what he told himself as he began the proceedings.
“Smith, make sure your camera is ready.”
“What do you think you’re paying me for? To sit here on my hands? Calm down, old man.”
Thomas opened his mouth to protest but Emile stamped his cane twice, calling the room to order. “If you gentlemen are quite finished!”
Appropriately chastened, Thomas took a seat beside Miss Cross in the audience … and focused his attention on the stage so as not to dwell on her closeness.
Fortunately, Mr. Deschamps proved somewhat distracting, speaking and bounding back and forth in front of his concealed easel like some sort of deranged scientist before a wicked experiment.
“Thank you. Now, last night, when Thomas requested I develop an act for Miss Evelyn Cross, I spit on the idea. It cannot be done. Evelyn Cross cannot be a star. She has been cast onto the ash heap of the artistic world, a passé delicacy. Even I cannot make her beautiful—no more than I could blot out the sun. Impossible.”
Thomas frowned. He could hardly believe that any man didn’t find Evelyn Cross beautiful. Onstage, Mr. Deschamps was still monologuing, with a sense of drama that could only be described as very French.
“Then it occurred to me, like a light from the heavens itself, a message from God almighty: We shall not make Evelyn Cross beautiful. We shall make Evelyn Cross a clown. Not a real clown, no, but a clown in spirit. As the public embraces the Gibson Girl, women like Evelyn are going to become the new bearded lady. A woman like that ? Dancing? What a sight. We will tell the joke about our star before audiences have a chance to tell it for us. She shall be a novelty.”
A metallic tang coated the back of Thomas’s tongue. A joke? This ridiculously mustachioed man wanted to turn Evelyn Cross into a joke?
“A great number of our potential audience members look like Evelyn, mind,” Andrew pointed out.
It was a point, Thomas thought, they would do well to consider. Manhattan and America at large were filled with women like Evelyn. Turning her into this spectacle … was it really the right play to make? Certainly not.
Surely not.
And yet—
“No one comes to the theater to see themselves up onstage. They go to escape themselves,” Emile snapped. “And to this end, I created a storm in my brain. A storm of ideas. First—consider our heavens. What do we see most when we survey them? The moon. A big, bright blot on our night sky. I thought first that Miss Evelyn Cross could be that moon, clumsily struggling across the sky amidst the firmament of petite stars. But then, I had another idea: an act entirely comprised of eating. She’s Queen Marie Antoinette, surrounded by food she devours, becoming increasingly violent and tyrannical as she demands the servants bring her more and more.”
When the director paused for breath, Thomas started to object. But Emile beat him to it, charging forward to his grand finale.
“But then I thought—no, these ideas are no good! This act of ours—this remaking of our leading lady—requires something funnier. Bolder. Bigger . So, without any further ado, please allow me to introduce you to The New Miss Evelyn Cross.”
With a flourish, he withdrew the cloth over the canvas, at last revealing the artwork beneath.
The image was of a woman—a woman who, if one squinted, looked something like Evelyn—standing in the center of a charcoal-drawn stage. However, upon closer inspection, the image was not of a woman at all. The figure beneath the words INTRODUCING EVELYN CROSS … only had a woman’s head. Her torso and legs had been replaced with that of a hippopotamus on two legs, its form made vaguely female by a loose-corseted dance costume inlaid with jewels and more ruffles than one woman could possibly wear.
Across the bottom of the image read THE WORLD’S FIRST DANCING HIPPOPOTAMUS .
A lightning bolt slammed right down Thomas’s spine. This was not what he had asked for. Not what he wanted. He rose from his seat.
“Emile—”
A small, gloved hand gently brushed his arm, holding him in place.
“Oh, no, Mr. Gallier. Please don’t say anything. I should like to have a closer look at this … conceptual rendering … before we proceed.”
With that, Evelyn abandoned her chair and made for the stage. Struggling to keep up and play the gentleman, Thomas followed behind and offered her his hand as they ascended—a gesture she ignored altogether.
At center stage, the men watched as long, manicured fingers removed their gloves and reached out to smudge the face of the dancer in the poster’s center. Emile, who had clearly anticipated rapturous praise for his brilliant work, looked on with some disgruntlement.
“Now. What do you think of it, Mr. Gallier?” Evelyn’s voice betrayed none of her thoughts.
Internal conflict, at least where his work was concerned, was not an emotion with which Thomas engaged very often. He was decisive. Direct. Dictatorial in his opinions, even. But here, he found himself at odds. If he told Evelyn the truth—that he hated it—and she actually liked it, then he might be out a director and a star. But if he lied, and it turned out that she found Mr. Deschamps’s idea as awful as he did, then she might be angry or offended.
With nowhere else to turn, he chose the path of least resistance. The path of cowardice.
“Emile is one of the finest directors of our age. And you are one of its greatest performers. I’m sure together, you two could turn this into something spectacular.” And then, when Evelyn remained silent: “I confess I’ve always cared more for the company of facts and figures than feather fans and frippery.”
“Quite a poetic evasion, sir,” she replied.
“If you have any ideas for improving upon Emile’s ideas, please,” he encouraged, doing his best to make her feel at ease, “do speak up.”
A pause. Evelyn pocketed her gloves as a delightful blush crept past her collar and all the way up to her cheekbones—exactly, incidentally, the path Thomas had kissed for her in one of his dreams the night before.
“Come to think of it, I do have an idea … But it’s only … It’s only that it’s so very scandalous. I’ll blush to even say it out loud.”
“We’re all grown men here,” Emile replied. “Whatever you have to say, we’ve likely heard it before. And besides, if you’re going to perform whatever it is you’re dreaming up, you’ll be doing more than talking about it.”
The woman in question dipped her head in a demure gesture that was a far cry from the woman Thomas had met in Evelyn Cross’s dressing room. She pressed her hands together almost as though in prayer and glanced up at Thomas through long, fluttering lashes.
She couldn’t truly be shy, could she? Not after the way she had acted the night before.
“Could I … Could I just tell it to you , Mr. Gallier?”
His own cheeks went hot. “Me?”
She stepped closer to him, picking up the canvas as she did so.
“You seem such a trustworthy sort.”
His skin hummed. Was she going to touch him? God, he wasn’t sure what would happen if she did. “Well—”
Another step closer.
“The look of a real champion .”
“I wouldn’t say that—”
She touched him. A small hand on the edge of his jaw, tipping his head down so deliberately he feared— hoped? —a kiss was next. “You could be my champion. Couldn’t you, Mr. Gallier?”
He spoke before he thought it through properly. “Yes. Of course.”
“Alright. Here’s my idea.”
In full view of director, photographer, and doctor, Evelyn’s hand slid from Thomas’s neck to his lapel, which she used to tug him down to her height. Once there, she whispered to him, with such vehemence that her tongue darted out against his ear every other word.
“My idea is that I burn this entire theater to the ground and dance naked in the demolished grave of your dreams, you spineless fraud.”
Thomas barely had time to process just what had happened when she stepped back, lifted the poster high, and smashed it over his head, letting the frame hang limply from around his neck.
Then, she turned on her heel and marched straight to the stage door, only pausing for the briefest of moments to shout behind her.
“This audition is over.”
A NOTE FROM THE HISTORIAN
In academic circles, the highly technical term for what happened between Thomas and Evelyn that day is “A big yikes.”
Alternatively:
“Not a good look.”
“0/10, would not recommend.”
“Not his best work.”
But this is such an interesting interaction between Thomas and Evelyn. I can’t believe I almost missed it when doing my original research pass.
Robert Smith, the newspaperman—well, it turned out that even Thomas’s money in his pocket didn’t keep him from taking a fantastic photograph of Evelyn smashing the drawing of her as a hippo over Thomas’s head and marching it to one of the most dangerous men in all of Manhattan.
That man was Nehemiah Alban. The owner of The Manhattan Daily . The moralistic one-man anti-vaudeville campaigner who had already been nothing but trouble for both Thomas and Evelyn. The man who would not hesitate to print a story that could thoroughly humiliate them both.
It was a juicy tale with an eye-catching photograph to go right alongside it. And would you believe copies of the paper with this sensational story were even printed, ready to hit the streets by the next morning? If there are any editions of this paper outside of the Gallier Institute’s collection, I have not been able to locate them. The copy within the Gallier Institute has been ripped up ( curious ), leaving some pieces completely illegible, and others (including the photograph of Thomas and Evelyn mid-fight, too delicate to reproduce here, as photocopying or photographing might jeopardize them in their delicate condition) barely so. It’s a shame, but let’s recall, these are old documents—this one, in fact, is about forty years older than the invention of the chocolate chip cookie.
The only words visible are as follows:
THE MANHATTAN DAILY, OCTOBER 17, 1897 (New York, New York)
AN EMPEROR REJECTED
It gets more interesting from here because, despite this sensational headline and its accompanying photograph, not a single copy of this edition of the paper was ever sold.
Instead, an alternate version of The Manhattan Daily went out—identical in every respect to the original version, except that the story about Evelyn and Thomas was notably missing, replaced by a racist cartoon about recently escalated Cuban-Spanish tensions.
The reasons for this adjustment will become clear soon enough. But I’ve got to hold some things back to keep you interested, don’t I?
For now, I’ll just share one more tidbit. In his daily ledger, where he kept single-line entries regarding the activities, appointments, and decisions of his day, Thomas Gallier wrote only this:
Today, I disappointed a woman.