Prima Donna at Large (42 page)

She knocked four times, waited, knocked once more. Antanas quietly opened the door. His face was as serious as always, but Mrs. Bukaitis was quick to notice his eyes were dancing. The man had come! After disappointing them twice, this time he had come!

There were nine people in Antanas's room. Eight of them Mrs. Bukaitis knew; a few nodded to her, but no one spoke. The ninth person was a man she'd never seen before. He was leaning against the far wall, a small table covered with unfamiliar objects in front of him. The room's two chairs were taken; Mrs. Bukaitis sat on the floor and wrapped her arms around her knees. The poorly lighted room was chilly and damp; someone was coughing.

They waited without speaking until two more people had joined them. Then Antanas announced it was time to begin. The silence in the room was tense as the stranger stepped up to the small table and began to demonstrate how to build a bomb.

Emmy Destinn waved a hand impatiently through the cloud of cigarette smoke that drifted over from the next table and tried to concentrate on what Antonio Scotti was saying. It was difficult; he'd more or less been saying the same thing for the past fifteen years.

“She has new lover!” Scotti moaned. “She does not tell me, but I know it! Why does she do this to me?”

“Toto, you're being silly. She probably just had something to do today.”

“Oh yes, she has something to do today! She has to see
him
instead of me!”

“You can't expect Gerry to spend every free minute with you,” Emmy pointed out, bored to death with the subject. “Be reasonable.”

But Scotti didn't hear, caught up as he was in his perennial lament. He enjoyed his role of persistent suitor, Emmy thought, and he played it to the hilt. Emmy suddenly found herself thinking about another man. He was a man from whom she'd parted after a years-long affair, and the parting had not been amicable. Scotti knew about the affair, but it hadn't seemed to occur to him that his lament about his own romantic misfortunes might be a source of pain to her. He would have done better to choose a different confidante.

Scotti was off on a nostalgic journey now, remembering all the good times. Emmy tired of hearing of the perpetual wonderfulness of Geraldine Farrar and let her attention wander. They were in a large basement room. Someone had hung a few pictures on the brick walls and placed several overly optimistic potted ferns here and there about the place. The small tables and their uncomfortable chairs were shoved close together; at one end of the room was a Lilliputian bandstand, little more than a low platform. The place was only half full; it was early yet.

Emmy was not comfortable there. She objected to having to break the law to get a drink; but ever since last year, when the United States of America in its infinite wisdom decided to make the consumption of alcoholic beverages illegal, these semi-hidden little speakeasies were the only answer. On a Saturday night the place would be packed. In a few hours three or four musicians would squeeze on to the tiny bandstand and start playing that ragtime or Dixieland or whatever they called it. Emmy could enjoy that kind of music for about ten minutes before she started getting bored; she couldn't understand Rosa Ponselle's enthusiasm for it. But then Rosa liked being different. Oh, yes. Rosa
worked
at being different.

“All through her marriage I wait for her,” Scotti was complaining. “I marry no one! I wait for Gerry.” He broke off long enough to admire the shortness of the skirt a young woman was wearing. “She knows I am waiting.” He managed to establish eye contact with the young woman. “But does it make any difference to her? No!” A husky young man stepped in front of the woman and glared darkly at Scotti, who turned smoothly back to Emmy. “She has no heart, that woman.”

“And yet you managed to survive somehow,” Emmy remarked dryly.

“Eh, we must all bear our burdens as best we can,” he said with a long-suffering air. “But I grow no younger. And Gerry, she is no longer the early chicken.”

“Early chicken? Do you mean early bird?”

Scotti frowned in concentration. “
Spring
chicken, that is what I mean. It means no longer young, does it not?”

“She's not forty yet.”

“Ah, but the day comes soon. It is time to settle down. For both of us.”

Emmy consulted the lapel-pin watch she wore. “I must leave, Toto. I want to go to Brooklyn to hear Rico tonight.” That wasn't true; Emmy was one of those who thought
Elisir
was not one of Caruso's better operas, but she'd listened to Scotti's complaints about Gerry as long as she could without becoming rude. “I must go home and change.”

“And I,” Scotti said with sudden resolution, “I go to Gerry's place and I wait. I meet this new lover face to face! I confront him!”

And make a fool of yourself, no doubt
, Emmy thought. The speakeasy was beginning to grow crowded; the two singers worked their way among the tables to the door. Outside, it had turned dark. Scotti's limousine was less than a block away; he told the chauffeur to take Emmy home first and then drive him to West Seventy-fourth Street.

A fine time to get a coughing fit
, Enrico Caruso thought,
fifteen minutes before curtain time
. If only his side didn't hurt so!

“Let me call the doctor,” Dorothy begged. “You're in no condition to go on!”

He shook his head
no
and sprayed his throat generously, leaving enough liquid there for a good gargle. But even he became alarmed when he saw blood stains in the washbasin.

“That does it,” Dorothy said firmly. “I'm calling the doctor!”

“No, Doro, I cannot wait for doctor! Now is time to start! You go take your seat now—you do not wish to miss curtain!”

Dorothy protested, but found herself gently shooed out of the Brooklyn Academy star dressing room. It was time to sing.

Caruso's throat hurt him. His side hurt. He was sweating. He got halfway through the first act of
L'Elisir d'Amore
without having to cough, but then when he did he looked down at scarlet flecks all over the front of his costume. He kept on singing, but he could feel the blood coming out of his mouth. He could see the first few rows of the audience staring at him, horrified.

A movement offstage right caught his eye; someone was standing there waving a white towel. He sang his way over to the side, snatched the towel, and wiped his mouth. He kept the towel with him as he went on with his role, patting at his mouth in between phrases. Before long, the towel was thoroughly soaked and useless.

Part of the scenery for
Elisir
was a well, placed in the exact center of the stage; that's where Caruso decided to deposit his bloody towel. Unfortunately, the audience saw him do it. Unfortunately, he was still slobbering blood.

A chorister nudged him and passed him a fresh towel. The chorus kept relaying towels to him all through the rest of the act.

Scotti was surprised to find Gerry about to sit down to dinner with Pasquale Amato and Rosa Ponselle. What was this? The new lover was not here? “Where is he?” Scotti demanded.

“Where is who?” Gerry asked.

“Where is this man you spend the afternoon with?”

“I am right here,” Amato said, puzzled.

“You, Pasquale?”

“He was helping me do some Christmas shopping,” Gerry said. “What
are
you carrying on about?”

“Why you take Pasquale shopping and not me?”

“Do not be
stupido
, Toto,” Amato whispered behind his hand.

“
Non capisco
,” Scotti muttered. “What do you say?”

Rosa was laughing. “I'd guess he's telling you they were shopping for your present, Toto.”

“Oh, do let's change the subject.” Gerry sighed. “Toto, have you had your dinner?”

Finally he caught on. “
Cara mia!
” he cried, and swept her up in a bear hug. “I think such terrible things! Can you forgive me? I am desolate! Forgive, forgive! No, I do not have dinner yet. You invite me?”

Laughing, Gerry disengaged herself from his embrace. “I think I may invite us all to go out to dine.” She summoned the maid. “Will you ask the cook if she could possibly feed one more? I don't suppose she can.”

“Oh, there's plenty of food,” the maid answered easily—and then blushed. “I made a mistake. I told her Mr. Caruso was coming tonight.”

Gerry laughed again and asked her to set another place. The four singers sat down and actually managed to forget the troubles at the Metropolitan Opera for a while—until Rosa started talking about what the chorus had done to her that afternoon. Only this time she told it wonderingly instead of angrily, as if amazed at the depth of the mean-spiritedness the chorus had shown her.

“They are changed,” Amato said, shaking his head. “They are not really a chorus anymore. They are many angry people who happen to be on the stage singing at same time.”

“Anarchists,” Scotti muttered.

“Oh, now the
choristers
are anarchists?” Gerry asked, amused. “But Pasquale is right. The chorus has changed.”

“The Metropolitan itself is changed,” Scotti added sadly. “And Emmy—perhaps Emmy most of all. She is not
simpatica
as before.”

“Try spending a war virtually locked up in your own house with armed Austrians watching every move you make and see how
simpatico
you are when it's over,” Gerry said. “No wonder she's changed—” She broke off suddenly, catching sight of Rosa drinking it all in, hoping for some gossip. “Besides,” Gerry finished, “can you name something in the world that has
not
changed?”

The evening was well advanced by the time they'd finished dining, but no one seemed inclined to leave. Rosa tried to turn the talk back to Emmy Destinn. “I know she's had an unhappy love affair and she had a hard time during the war—”

“Do you think it snows before morning?” Amato pointedly asked Scotti.

“
Sì
, I think so,” he answered, wishing he'd never brought up Emmy's name. She was still a friend. He walked over to a window. “Eh—it starts already! It snows now.”

The maid came into the room. “Miss Farrar, telephone. It's Mr. Gatti.” As Gerry passed her she whispered, “He sounds upset.”

Dear God, not another ‘accident
'. Gerry hurried away to the phone.

“Why won't you people talk about Emmy Destinn when I'm in the room?” Rosa complained crossly to the two men. “Is there some big dark secret about her?”

“No, no secret, little one,” Scotti said kindly. “But Emmy, she does not have easy life during the war, and she does not wish to talk about it.”

“But she's not here, is she? Why won't
you
talk about it?”

Amato spoke up. “Because Emmy is lady we know for longer than you are alive, young Rosa.”

Rosa made a self-mocking face. “None of my business, hm?”

The two baritones smiled at her. Scotti glanced up to see Gerry standing frozen in the doorway. “
Cielo!
Do you see ghost,
cara mia?
”

White-faced, Gerry stammered, “That, that was Gatti.
Elisir
… in Brooklyn—oh, it's Rico! He started hemorrhaging. He was coughing up blood on the stage. It got so bad they had to stop the performance.”

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About the Author

Barbara Paul is the author of numerous short stories and novels in both the detective and science fiction genres. Born in Maysville, Kentucky, she went on to attend Bowling Green State University and the University of Pittsburgh, earning a PhD in theater history and criticism. She has been nominated for the Shamus Award for Best PI Short Story, and two of her novels,
In-Laws and Outlaws
and
Kill Fee
, have been adapted into television movies. After teaching at the University of Pittsburgh for a number of years, she retired to write full-time. Paul currently resides in Sacramento.

All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 1985 by Barbara Paul

Cover design by Jason Gabbert

ISBN: 978-1-5040-3244-5

This edition published in 2016 by
MysteriousPress.com
/Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

180 Maiden Lane

New York, NY 10038

www.openroadmedia.com

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