Chapter 22 High-Wire Act #3
Cora perches on the edge of her seat and stares at the Vandemeers’ box. For once, Alice isn’t watching her. Of all the luck!
Cora takes her own turn boring holes into Alice, wishing she could channel Prospero and will the woman to look up and see
her. Seconds pass. A full minute, a quiet romantic scene below, and then finally, finally Alice takes a sip of her wine as she glares accusingly across the theater.
She catches Cora’s pointedly wide eyes, her own expression faltering.
Cora furtively downs her glass of champagne. She discreetly mimes dumping the glass beside her, careful not to draw any unwanted attention.
Alice raises her eyebrows. Cora knows this expression. It is Alice’s signature “have you gone entirely mad?” look.
Cora puts her glass down, clandestinely rattles her hand back and forth, before miming dumping the invisible contents of this
invisible glass onto Harry’s lap.
“Everything all right?” Harry murmurs, wide-eyed, beside her.
“Quite,” Cora says. “This scene is just so romantic. I feel rather fevered.”
“Your temperature is rising?”
“Only in the figurative sense,” Cora hisses, eyes on Alice, who now glances at Mimi. Perhaps she understands?
Alice shifts in her seat, eyeing Mimi’s lap.
Do it, Cora pleads silently, an incantation. Now, now, now—
But rather than spill her own glass, Alice adjusts her body suddenly so that it’s Mimi’s glass that’s jostled, dumping its
contents straight onto her lily-white gown.
Mimi leaps up, shaking her dress—fully splattered, not with champagne but cabernet!
Alice, clever thing that she is, backs away in apparent horror, signaling to the box steward to bring fresh napkins.
Cora rises, clutching her fan tightly.
“On second thought, Mr. Peyton, I do think I need to excuse myself. In the corporeal sense. Be right back.”
Cora whisks out of her box just as Mrs. Vandemeer and Mimi exit theirs.
She picks up her skirts, racing down the lush, red-carpeted hall and around the nearby circular set of stairs. She needs to
beat the Vandemeers to the parlor water closet or this is all for naught.
“Do be careful, madame,” an opera officiant tells her as she rounds another corner.
“This is me careful,” she mutters, flying past.
Cora hears muffled voices—complaints?—emanating from the opposite side of the hall. She ducks into the parlor’s water closet,
shuts the door. She attempts to calm her breath, arranges herself right at the entrance, braces for impact.
The door to the water closet hits her squarely as Mimi and Mrs. Vandemeer barrel inside.
Cora stumbles forward, knocking shoulders with Mrs. Vandermeer exactly as her hand finds the back of Mimi’s neck as if scrabbling
for purchase and—
Mimi’s necklace clasp comes undone, the emerald solitaire sliding to the floor with a clink.
“Goodness,” Cora mutters dazedly, staggering one step forward so that her long gown overhangs the necklace on the floor.
“Why, Miss Ritter.” Mrs. Vandemeer sounds more irked than concerned. “Oh, what a night this has been.”
She waves vaguely at her daughter’s ruined dress, appearing just as dazed as Cora herself is feigning to be. But then, Cora
is getting the distinct sense that “dazed” is very much Mrs. Vandemeer’s modus operandi.
“More drama offstage than on,” Mimi mutters, swatting furiously at the stain. “And not even the fun kind.”
“Are you all right?” Mrs. Vandemeer asks Cora, inspecting her rather reluctantly.
Cora feigns wooziness, clutching the washbasin.
“Yes, I . . .” She blinks rapidly, reeling back, as if confused. “Oh dear, your necklace, Mimi.”
She stoops down to pick up the glass counterfeit she’s slipped from between the folds of her fan and hands it to Mrs. Vandermeer with a frown.
“Perhaps the clasp broke?” she says, carefully handing her the fake. “Let’s hope it’s a simple fix.”
“I didn’t feel it fall off,” Mimi squawks.
Mrs. Vandemeer swats at her idly with the edge of her fur stole. “And yet another moment of carelessness. You simply do not value a thing we buy you.”
“And your lovely dress . . .” Cora frowns in sympathy as she considers Alice’s handiwork. She isn’t entirely unskilled in
dexterity—Alice succeeded with a direct hit, a large bloom of red from beaded waistline near to the hem.
“It wasn’t my fault, Mother. It was that German woman.” Mimi spits the word out.
Mrs. Vandemeer’s pretty face goes pale in the mirror. “Enough histrionics. My nerves simply cannot take it. Oh la. At least
there will be few people milling the halls to watch us go.”
“Go?” Mimi whines. “Now? But I wanted to see Carmen get stabbed.”
Mrs. Vandemeer closes her eyes and inhales. “Mimi, darling, you’re the one who looks like she’s been stabbed. I do believe
I’d like to call this night what it is—a disaster. Let us cut our losses and go.”
Cut our losses. They have no idea.
“I’m sorry to hear that.” Cora sighs in commiseration. “Would you like me to accompany you out?”
“That is hardly necessary.” Mrs. Vandemeer stares down lovingly at the green glass pendant cupped in her hand, none the wiser.
“If you don’t mind letting my husband know .
. . and better invite your cousin into the Ameses’ box.
Oh, what a muddle. Give the duchess my thanks, I suppose.
This emerald had the entire mezzanine in a tizzy. ”
Mrs. Vandemeer shares a laconic, superior smile with her daughter.
“They do like to gawk.” Mimi smirks. “The peasants.”
Any sympathy Cora might have felt for either of them evaporates once again.
Still, Cora laughs along with them. “Part of the price of admission, I am sure.”
Then she bids adieu to her unsuspecting marks, only allowing herself a hearty exhalation once she’s out the door, the real
Colombian emerald safely tucked into the cutout compartment in her fan.
A showstopper of a trick, if she does say so herself.