2. Chapter 2 #2
There was no judgement in the theatre. There was also no modesty.
Facing away from him, Odette raised her arms so her assistant and lady’s maid Nora could pull at the doublet’s cords and shimmy it over her head.
Cassius shut the door behind him and scanned the walls, the ceiling, staring everywhere but at her.
There was also no ogling, if one was polite about such things.
‘I hope you have brought something better than that rot you call vodka.’ Odette’s voice was muffled by the fabric.
Cassius pushed a pile of discarded clothes aside and threw himself into a chair. ‘You know I haven’t.’
Another grumble. Cassius stole a glance.
Nora was unfastening ties and hooks with quick, nimble fingers.
She slipped pins from their positions, then began to unwind a wide length of cloth that wrapped tight around Odette’s torso, over her thin-strapped chemise.
Odette rolled her shoulders and released a long sigh of relief, twisting and stretching as it loosened.
Forever the perfectionist, she’d insisted on every costumer’s trick to transform her into Romeo, which included having her chest bound to flatten her breasts.
She’d worn the bindings for every rehearsal so she could learn to sing and breathe despite the restraint.
‘Glasses are up there.’ She pointed at two mismatched tumblers on one of the higher shelves. ‘Next conductor, I am going to start a tradition of drinking champagne on closing night.’
Cassius laughed, set the glasses on the dresser, and unstoppered the bottle.
‘Next conductor? We aren’t like your princes, who you can swap out every season without noticing the change.
The next conductor may have no patience for you.
’ The liquid glugged as he poured. She flung on a robe, then thanked her assistant and bade her good night.
Once the door had closed behind Nora, he passed Odette one of the glasses.
Mouth set, she clinked her glass against his, then threw her shot back while he did the same.
They clinked glasses again and called ‘Brava!’ in unison.
She laughed. ‘Such a silly tradition. You are not to do this with any other soprano, understand? This is mine.’
‘A friendship with one soprano has been enough trouble. Why would I seek out another?’
‘Cruel, Cassius. You are cruel.’ Her lips puckered into a pout. ‘I will not miss you for one second. And I will not miss your terrible vodka.’
He would. Miss their tradition, that was.
It had been forged in the basement of a different theatre more than a decade ago, a theatre that, like so many of them, had burnt down and been rebuilt twice since.
Back then, he still played the piano, and they carried twin hopes that the show—some French farce—would launch their careers.
But it was poorly advertised and even more terribly run.
They opened to a half-full audience—if that—and numbers soon dwindled to almost nothing.
Closing night found them both moping around backstage, wondering what to do next.
Cassius had half a bottle of cheap vodka that he drank to stave off the hunger, and they toasted the end of their dreams. One drink turned into two, then four, and then she was singing while he played an out-of-tune piano abandoned in the green room.
They finished the bottle and somehow survived.
The following day, when he received a callback for a different opera house because their pianist was sick, he insisted that the theatre owner listen to the soprano who’d given him a bear head.
That manager had been Karl von Miller, and he heard what Cassius heard—that Odette was a rare talent, a powerful mezzo-soprano whose work ethic matched her commitment to her craft.
More than that, her striking beauty made most men question if she was real.
Karl pulled together an end-of-season showing of Così fan tutte, a familiar opera guaranteed to bring in a crowd.
Most musicians knew it well, which meant he could shorten rehearsal times and limit the financial risk.
He cast Odette as second soprano so as not to offend the divas, although their feelings wouldn’t matter for long.
Before opening night, Londoners asked one another if they were going to see the Mozart.
By closing night, they were asking who’d been fortunate enough to see that songbird, Miss Odette Delaney.
And amidst the charged celebrations of closing night, at the end of a sold-out, three-week run, she’d found Cassius.
Superstitious even for a player, she’d decided the toast had brought them both luck and insisted they perform the ritual again.
Since that day, whenever they worked a show together, he hid a bottle during the final performance, and they toasted their good fortune afterwards, raising a glass so it might hold a little longer.
Who was he to argue? Success in their world rested on a bizarre combination of hard work, natural talent, the whims of the public, and, more than anything, luck.