Chapter Thirty-Three
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
T HERE WERE A GREAT NUMBER OF THINGS THAT COULD GO WRONG when building an empire. Revolutions and mutinies, lost battles and surrenders. And building The Empire was no different. As the day of their opening grew close at hand, the furious energy with which the rehearsals, the construction, and the entanglements were conducted grew ever more intense and frenzied. Most moments, unless she was pinned beneath Thomas or vice versa, Evelyn hardly knew which way was up. Her life was dominated by the counting shuffles of dancers, the tightening of modiste tape around her wide, fleshy hips, the tuning of the orchestra, Thomas’s hand in hers …
And the drumbeat repetition of Bea’s disapproving tuts in her ear.
But Evelyn ignored those.
Or, at least, she tried to.
“I won’t be having this conversation again, Beatrice,” Evelyn muttered. Onstage before them, Annie rehearsed her act with her usual aplomb, even briefly employing the help of one of the electrical workmen, impressing him with the escape-artist feats she performed in her wheelchair. “We have too much work to do, and this is absurd.”
“I’m only saying that you have a chance to leave now. Before you get hurt even worse than you already will.”
“I can leave him any time.”
“And what if he leaves you?”
That won’t happen . Evelyn knew that with an unshakable certainty. But she didn’t dare say it out loud. Because it was such certainty that often led to those heartbreaks about which Beatrice always warned her.
The lights in the theater flickered. A symptom of the maintenance work, no doubt, but Evelyn wouldn’t have been surprised if she’d caused the energy fluctuation with her own mind.
Evelyn excused Annie with a few notes about her act, then waved Betsy to center stage. Her act was not an elaborate one. Once the stage was set with a single table, two chairs, and a crystal ball, Betsy settled in.
“Evelyn?” she asked.
“Yes, Betsy?”
“My plant’s not here,” Betsy said. “With all of the construction going, they must not have let her in.”
What a fortune-telling act lacked in the ability to truly foresee the future, they made up for in stagecraft. True talents didn’t go in for indulgent props or effects, but that wasn’t to say there wasn’t plenty of strategy or style to be had. Betsy employed a rolling rotation of audience plants who made her mystical work possible. Evelyn checked her watch and glanced at one of the stagehands lingering in the corner.
“Will you please rescue Miss Washington’s audience plant? Thank you. In the meantime, I’d like to work with someone else. Keep this train rolling—”
“I could work with you ,” Betsy offered. “Just for practice.”
“I’m not an audience plant. I don’t think that would be productive.”
“She doesn’t mean her act,” Nathaniel Fry offered from the wings. “She means her gift , Miss Cross.”
Betsy shuffled her tarot cards. “You don’t believe in the magic, you’re all the more likely to get cursed by it, Nathaniel Fry!”
“I’m a man of reason and science. I believe in fortune-tellers as much as I believe in God or demons.”
“C’mon, Evelyn,” Betsy said gamely. “Let me show him wrong. I’ll read your palm—free of charge, too. Used to be three-bits when I worked down on the boardwalk.”
Years in the theater had taught Evelyn the tricks behind this hokum. There was no real magic. There were no proper soothsayers. It was all smoke and mirrors and lies.
But it was her job to keep these rehearsals rolling.
“Very well, then.”
They sat across from one another, and whether true prophecy was about to occur, Evelyn felt as if the entire room settled into a tense, watchful silence. The hand she offered Betsy was slick with sweat.
“I should warn you,” Betsy began, low, “the future isn’t always what we should expect or hope.”
Evelyn’s heart banged against her ribcage, though she wasn’t quite sure why. This was, after all, complete bunk. “I think I can handle it,” she said, before turning to the assembled parties all around her. “Everyone else! I want corner rehearsals. Dancing Dozen, drill that last sixteen count until you’re moving like a perfect unit. Cansino, work with the orchestra on that aria of yours. Tyrone—”
Betsy gave her hand a small squeeze. “Miss. They know what to do.”
“Right. Of course.” Oh, why was she delaying? Why was her hand now shaking ? Why did it take sincere effort to smile? “Let’s begin, shall we?”
Needing no further instruction, Betsy rose and began her usual introduction, something about calling down the ancient magicks and uncovering the secrets of the future and the hidden lies of the past. Once she was done, she swept into her seat and collected Evelyn’s hand once again, trailing her fingers along the fault lines in her palms.
“Let’s start by establishing some facts—that’s how you know I know what I’m talking about. You had a tumultuous childhood. Poor.”
Evelyn nodded. The accuracy only served to soothe her. Nearly everyone in vaudeville—an art form of runaways and immigrants—had the exact same backstory. Not much magic in guessing that. Just a good cold reading. Betsy continued.
“No father. Mother did the best she could. You had a great trauma around the age of … thirteen? No, fourteen … that shaped the rest of your life. It ruined you, but also made you, didn’t it?”
Evelyn thought involuntarily of the casting director and his private office. That … Anyone could have guessed that.
Couldn’t they?
Betsy’s grip tightened. Her words gained speed and intensity. She was no longer speaking to Evelyn, but to something deep inside her—the part of her that parsed out the truth from lies.
“You reached nearly the pinnacle of success, but now, you fear you are losing your grip. You have everything you could wish for—love, fame, fortune. But you worry that everything you hold now will be lost to you.”
Evelyn’s breathing went shallow. “How do you know that?”
“The same way I know that you will lose everything.”
And with that, every light in the entire theater snapped out.