Chapter 1 In the Wings
In the Wings
Coraline O’Malley—known as “Cora Mack” to her current troupe and company—stands at the ready as assistant stagehand, watching
from behind the scenes as her aging boss, Prospero the Great, performs feat after feat of manufactured wonder for tonight’s
enraptured audience. A parade of ghosts slinking through his labyrinth of onstage mirrors. A kaleidoscope of butterflies spiraling
out from the floor and over the crowd. A tree growing in rapid time from a plot of dirt, a sprout unfurling and blooming into
an orange plant taller than Prospero himself in a matter of minutes.
But the most confounding magic of the night, at least in Cora’s opinion, lies offstage: the wealthiest, most afternoonified
audience she has ever encountered, currently seated in Mrs. Iris Witt’s two-hundred-guest-capacity private auditorium housed
inside her palatial Madison Avenue home.
Incredibly, Prospero’s show is only one of the evening’s many diversions, a themed “Night of Illusions,” which seems intended to herald the arrival of November and another New York social season.
The Witts’ foyer has been transformed into a circus, complete with fire-eaters.
Their ballroom, a ribboned carousel of real live zebras and giraffes.
Partygoers decked in costumed gowns riddled with brilliants, skirts swathed in lace, fascinators of gems and exotic feathers.
Mrs. Witt’s own peacock headpiece is so enormous that it blocks the views of the ill-fated dozens seated behind her.
Cora swallows. The sheer overwhelming excess, the unfairness of so much concentrated wealth in one room in one corner of one city—
Just breathe, she tells herself. Breathe and reset the stage. Jealousy won’t get her back Long Creek Farm, after all—but picking this audience’s gilded pockets postshow certainly might.
“Are you sure you can handle her?” Maeve, the show’s lead stagehand, sidles breathlessly beside Cora. A hefty magnet—usually
Cora’s responsibility during performances—is balanced precariously across Maeve’s back, further rounding the old woman’s stooped
shoulders. “Dinah can be a handful, ye know, so if you’re having second thoughts—”
“Maeve, I’ll never manage a raise if I can’t master all the tricks,” Cora says.
Maeve’s crinkled lips pull into a worried frown. “Told ya, love, Prospero don’t give raises.”
“And I told you, I’m gonna be the exception.” Cora sighs, hiding her frustration with an assuring smile. “I can handle her,
honest. You can trust me.” Although, come to think of it, Dinah should certainly be out of the dressing rooms by now.
“All right, love. Break a leg.” Maeve flashes Cora a small smile before glancing at the stage. “That’s my cue.” Readjusting
the large magnet across her shoulders like a donkey pole, Maeve hurries down the backstage stairs and into the trap room.
Onstage, Prospero welcomes his latest volunteer. “Mr. Vanderbilt, would you consider yourself a man of great strength?”
The volunteer flexes his muscles, and the crowd laughs.
Prospero lifts a small box, opening the container for the audience to see. “You all bear witness, evidence that this box is
empty.”
Cora peers around the backstage area, her concern beginning to mount. Dinah is a handful indeed. She has been Prospero’s assistant
since the Grant administration and fashions herself a true star—dismissive of Cora and Maeve, generally abrasive, and habitually
late. Cora considers dragging her out of the dressing rooms when a high-pitched voice sounds behind her.
“Well, don’t just stand there!” Dinah spins around in her glittering stage dress, giving Cora access to the unbuttoned back.
“Hitch me up!”
Cora bites back choice words and jumps to, affixing the wooden plank to Dinah’s corset, just like Maeve showed her during
dress rehearsal. If she can somehow prove to Prospero that she deserves to make as much as Maeve—maybe even work onstage alongside
him, split the stage tricks with Dinah—well, she’ll be that much closer to getting back her home.
Onstage, meanwhile, Prospero has placed the empty box on a small table before him. “Mr. Vanderbilt, please, if you might lift
the box . . . with your unparalleled vigor.”
The volunteer pulls on the trick box’s handle. It doesn’t budge, thanks to Maeve now standing sentinel with the magnet in
the trap room below the stage. Mr. Vanderbilt mutters to himself, pulling, yanking, cursing, much to the crowd’s delight.
“That box must be made of steel!” he crows, returning to his seat. “I couldn’t lift it an inch!”
Onstage, Prospero smiles and bows. “And now, for my final demonstration!”
“Are you finished yet?” Dinah hisses. “Tonight needs to go perfect for this smart set! Why are you here anyway? Where on earth is Maeve?”
“She’s got the magnet downstairs,” Cora huffs, working fast. “Which leaves you to me. Not to worry, you’re in good hands,
Maeve trusts me—”
“Her first mistake,” Dinah scoffs. “This is taking twice as long as it should—”
“Ladies and gentlemen,” Prospero cries, “please welcome back my lovely assistant, Miss Dinah!”
Hearing her cue, Dinah attempts to hurry onstage, but Cora yanks her back into the curtains. “I’m not finished!”
Prospero laughs uneasily while the crowd titters. “Come, my darling Dinah, now don’t be shy!”
“Just hold still.” Hands shaking, Cora finally hooks the mechanical crane’s thin metal rod, meant to lift Dinah into the air
on Prospero’s command, onto the plank’s clasp. She fumbles to cover it with Dinah’s dress buttons.
“You trying to make me look bad?” Dinah shrills. “Think you’re gonna steal my spot?”
“Stop squirming—”
“I know your type, always plotting and scheming. Don’t think I don’t know about your own act, little thief. If I had my way, we’d have left you in Charleston.”
“You’re ready, go!”
Dinah disentangles herself from Cora, strutting onstage to more applause.
Prospero’s finale, his showstopping “levitating woman,” brings down the house.
Cora watches the trick with detached, dread-filled certainty.
“Little thief.” Forget a raise. She might have just lost her job, and her own home, for good.
“Did you tell her?” Cora demands, cornering Maeve in their makeshift prop room after the show, Prospero and Dinah both having
retreated to this evening’s dressing quarters, a series of ornate parlors right off the Witts’ private theater.
Maeve cocks her head. “Tell who what, love?”
“Dinah!” Cora blinks back tears. “My methods are flawless. There’s no possible way she could have caught on, unless you specifically
ratted me out.”
“I . . . I had no choice!” Maeve’s sunken cheeks flush. “Dinah was going through your things one day and—”
“My things?”
“Found a stack of cash and didn’t understand how you came into so much money, given what you get paid is . . . well, you know.”
Maeve clears her throat. “She accused you of far worse vices, Cora. I was only defendin’ your honor.”
“Hell’s bells, Maeve.” Cora flops onto a trick box. Just breathe. “She’s going to tell Prospero. She’s going to have me fired.”
“No, Cora, no.” Maeve hurries toward her. “There’s nothing to worry about. I told her I’d handle it, on my honor, set you
straight.” Maeve takes Cora’s hands. “Dinah promised she wouldn’t tell the boss—not unless you do it again, anyway. I swear,
everything’s going to be right as rain.”
Cora shakes her head. “Listen, Maeve, you really don’t understand .
. .” How can Cora possibly explain that at three dollars a week, without her subsidized earnings, her unique style of sleight of hand—pickpocketing, purse-lifting, sneak thievery, all conducted discreetly on select patrons after the show—she might be Maeve’s age before she can take back Long Creek Farm?
A lifelong dupe, just like her father. Forever a pawn in a smarter player’s game.
Maeve keeps staring at her, looking about to cry herself.
“All right.” Cora sighs. “Yes, fine. I’ll stop the filching, Maeve. Honest.”
A cacophony of impatient knocks sounds from the door before Prospero thrusts it open. The magician is now dressed in a clean,
crisp white shirt, his face freshly painted, his haughty showman veneer still firmly affixed. “Our hostess desires some parlor
tricks. Come. Out we go.”
Cora and Maeve follow their boss, Dinah, and the rest of their crew past the temporary dressing rooms. They soon reach the
main artery of the stately home: a long marble hall awash with sculptures, decorative armor, and massive oil paintings, where
black-clad waiters are busy bussing champagne and canapés through Mrs. Witt’s crowd of glamorous party guests, the warm light
from her three giant tiered crystal chandeliers coating the entire scene with a dreamlike glitter.
“The smart set,” Dinah had called them. For once, Cora must agree. The “haves” of this country versus her current company of “have-nots.”
By dint of what? she wonders. Inordinate family wealth hailing back to the Mayflower? Else gained through merciless business practices or duping easy marks—like those Ross & Calhoun bank lenders, preying on
her father’s financial ignorance. What shiny American victors they are, with their fancy balls and private shows and homes
large as city blocks.
Cora feels the whole world slipping from her fingers as she trails her troupe into the festive melee.
What if she never rises above her current station, playing backstage lackey to a troupe of fools?
What is she to do now if she can’t pickpocket on the road?
Cora needs three thousand dollars more to approach the bank with a credible offer for Long Creek Farm, and that’s assuming no one else offers first. Absent
thieving, that kind of money will take her twenty years to put together.
Twenty. Years.
“Pardon me, kind friends, please do excuse us.”
Cora watches as a bearded, stout gentleman with a cane expertly threads a tall blonde woman through the crowd. The lady on