The Troupe (23 page)

“Bad news, folks,” said Colette as she came in. “Two spots before us is another damn dog act, so we’ll have to keep an eye out and make sure not to step—” She stopped when she saw George. “Whoa. Uh. Harry?”

“Yeah?” said Silenus, who was peering out at the audience.

“We might have a situation here.”

“What situation?” He turned around and jumped a little. “Holy hell,” he said. “What is that you’re wearing?”

“What’s what?” said George, affecting surprise.

There was a pause as everyone turned to look at him.

“Have you lost your damn mind?” asked Silenus. “Take that fucking thing off!”

“But why?” he asked.

“You look a little like a parade float, dear,” said Franny.

George looked around. Everyone’s face was fixed in an expression of either bemusement or outright horror. “Fine,” he muttered, and returned upstairs.

The next day Stanley took him out to the tailor’s as a gift. George was happy to accept this gesture, as Stanley shared his love of clothes. Furthermore, he’d made a habit of giving George little presents now and again, from combs to mirrors to nice pearl-handled razors. George often suspected Stanley pitied him for how Harry treated him, and wished to compensate.

“This is all very nice,” said George as the tailor fitted him for a smart black tuxedo, “but I thought my current wardrobe was good enough.”

Stanley’s face became curiously closed. He wrote:
NOT SURE IF TWEED AND WAISTCOATS FIT YOUR AGE
.

“But that’s what men of standing wear,” said George.

Stanley thought hard for a moment, chalk in hand. He wrote:
MAYBE. WILL NEED TO FIND SOMETHING THAT FITS A VAUDEVILLIAN BETTER, THOUGH
.

When they returned to the hotel with four new suits for George, Silenus called him into his office alone for a talk.

“It is clear to me that something in you has changed recently,” Harry said to him. “What, I don’t know. Maybe you had a fever and no one noticed, and now your mind is irreparably damaged and we’re all just seeing the effects. But whatever it is, I got to figure out how to put a stop to it. Because you are driving everyone absolutely insane. So, to be blunt, what’s with you, kid?”

George thought very fast. He was not prepared to negotiate, but he said, “I’m tired of just accompanying.”

Silenus’s eyebrows slowly rose and he leaned back in his chair. “Ah. I see.”

“Yes,” said George. “I… I don’t feel that it’s an efficient use of my talents.”

“An efficient use of your talents.”

“Yes. I feel like I could do more. I
should
do more.”

“And what, pray tell, would be an efficient use of your talents?”

George swallowed. “I want stage time.”

“Stage time?”

“Yes. I’m a member of the troupe, aren’t I? Shouldn’t I get the same amount of respect? The same amount of stage time?”

Silenus nodded. “All right. That’s what I wanted to know. It makes this all very easy.”

“It does?” said George. He could not believe that all he had needed to do was ask.

“Yes. It will be a very simple thing to put this matter to rest.” Silenus leaned forward, and said very clearly: “No. No, you cannot have stage time. There? Does that fix things?”

George blinked in shock. “Why?”

“
Why?
” said Silenus. “Pick a fucking reason, that’s why! Do you have any idea how hard it is to travel with four acts in one troupe, to negotiate scheduling and billing? We can’t just throw an extra goddamn act in there! That’d make things impossible!”

“But haven’t I proven that I’m good enough to belong up there?”

“Jesus, George, it’s not about being good enough. You could perform a whole fucking symphony all by yourself and it wouldn’t matter. If we don’t have room on the bill, we don’t have room on the bill, and that’s final.”

“What about joining one of the acts?” he asked. “Couldn’t I… I don’t know… play onstage with someone?”

“You want to elbow in on someone else’s applause?” Silenus laughed. “Be my guest. Try explaining that to Colette or Kingsley,
and let’s see how that goes. And I don’t think you’d want to play onstage with Franny, not unless you were wearing a helmet.”

“What about the fourth act?” he asked.

Silenus’s entire demeanor changed: his face grew cold and suspicious, and he sat up a little. “You don’t play during the fourth act.”

“But I could! I could learn a part, just like Stanley and Colette.”

“That is out of the question.”

“Why? All they do is just play along, don’t they? It’s you who invokes the song.”

“I am
not
discussing this with you,” said Silenus.

George paused, offended. “Why not?” he asked finally. “I’m your son, aren’t I? You’re always hiding things from me. So why not explain it, just this once? Give me a reason.”

“You want a reason?” said Silenus. “Fine. Have you forgotten what you’re carrying in you?”

George was quiet. He had worried this might be his father’s response.

“Yeah,” said Silenus. “You have something very,
very
important in you, kid, and the last thing we need is for you to be exposed. And that’s just what you’d be up there on that stage, in any capacity. The wolves have their spies, and they’d think, who’s this kid? Haven’t we seen him before? Why’d he suddenly jump in? And then they’d start sniffing around you, trying to feel you out. Is that what you want? Do you want all those black eyes fixed on you, looking you over?”

George shook his head.

“I didn’t think so,” said Silenus. “So for now you’re our secret. We keep you in the pit playing along, just as we’ve always done. All right?”

“So that’s it,” said George. “That’s what I’m supposed to be, from now on. Some package for you to carry around, and keep secret.”

“It’s not that simple.”

“It sounds that way. It’s not right. If I’d never come to you I
might have been able to make my own way on the stage. But now I’m just some load you have to drag around with you, like Franny.”

Silenus slammed a hand down on the desktop. “Don’t speak that way of Franny! You’ve no idea what she’s been through! And she’s not my ‘load,’ you got me? If I hear you talk that way about her again, I’ll…” Seeing George’s startled expression, he trailed off and sighed. “I’m sorry. Forget that. Listen, I know you don’t like it, but I can’t spare time and money just to make you feel happy, not when there are larger things at stake. But you are
important
, do you see that?”

“Just not the kind of important that could ever be of any use to you,” said George.

“Oh, damn it,” snarled Silenus. “I didn’t ask for you to be given to me under these goddamn circumstances, you know?”

“Well, you could at least try and make them better!” said George, and he stood up and walked out.

Things remained strained between George and his father for the remainder of the week. He could understand Silenus’s logic very well, but that didn’t mean it satisfied him. He had come to his father with grander dreams of the stage, but now Silenus’s troupe was slowly turning into a cage, penning him in.

As a form of protest, one night George decided he would not play to his usual standards. In fact, he decided he might fumble once or twice, or perhaps lose his place. He did not have the gall to interfere with Kingsley’s act—those puppets unsettled him far too much—and any errors in Franny’s could possibly lead to harm. So instead he varied the tempo during Colette’s dance, allowing her concertina playing to get a little ahead and a little behind, which made her struggle to land all of her steps. He did not enjoy doing it, for nothing gave him greater pleasure than seeing Colette dance, but it needed to be done. Both she and Silenus had to learn that he was much more crucial than they thought. And he could always apologize later.

“Very off night I’m having,” George remarked to Silenus after the show.

“Yes, I noticed,” said Silenus mildly. “You know, I don’t think you’ve ever missed a note since we first employed you.”

“Really?” said George. “Never? Well, I’m sorry that tonight was my first.”

“I think you’re about to be sorrier.”

“Why is that?”

“I’ll let Colette explain,” he said, and nodded over George’s shoulder.

“What?” said George. He turned around and saw Colette walking toward him. “Oh. Hello, Colette.”

She stopped in front of him. Then her mouth wove into a magnificent snarl and her shoulders darted forward, and there was a flash of smooth brown knuckles. The backstage started spinning around him, and the next thing he knew he was staring up at the ceiling.

And the next night, George, now sporting a superb black eye, hit every note he had to play.

Yet this only increased his resentment. He had tasted real applause only once, when he’d first auditioned for Otterman’s. The entire staff had clapped for him then, confounded by his playing. It had been such a wonderful feeling, like holding the world in the palm of his hand. He wanted nothing more than to experience that again, and use it to prove to his father what he could do. Then perhaps Silenus would allow him into his life just as he did Colette and Stanley.

So during his free day on Sunday George found another, much shabbier vaudeville hall (one that appeared to be a meat market during working hours), and arrived during its audition time dressed in his new tuxedo with the sheet music for the Mendelssohn No. 1. He did not, of course, intend to leave the troupe; he simply wanted to prove to himself that he could, if he wanted to. And it wouldn’t hurt at all if he heard the thunderous applause of the audience again, even if it was in such a disreputable place as this.

The audition audience was even worse than most theaters’. The stage was littered with rotten fruit that’d been hurled at all the actors. George, smiling, shook his head at the poor fools until they called out the fake name he had given them.

He climbed the stage and seated himself before the piano, reveling in the cold, pristine beauty of the spotlight. Then he coughed into one hand, adjusted his tie, and began to play.

He thought he did a pretty splendid job, considering the quality of the piano. Many of the keys were out of tune, and some of them were missing their ivory. And eventually he noticed there was something wrong with the acoustics: there was a persistent moan that kept building throughout his playing.

But when he hit one of the
pianissimo
passages he heard that it was not a moan at all. It was something he’d never heard before: the audience was
booing
. His playing wound to a stop as he realized that they were booing
him
.

“What’s this?” he said. “What are you doing?”

“You’re terrible!” shouted a man in the front row.

“
I’m
terrible?” said George. He reddened. “
You’re
terrible!”

The man in the front row made some reply, but before George could make sense of it something struck him on the side of the head. He blinked and touched his face and found there was a rancid, red juice on his cheekbone, and the sickly stench of something sweet and fermented began to permeate the stage. Then he saw there was something beside his foot, glistening and mottled with wrinkled skin, and he peered down and saw it was an ancient, graying tomato, lightly furred with some fungus that was happily devouring its putrid insides.

George’s mind whirled, incapable of making any connections between the fruit on the stage and the thing that had struck him; he absently wondered if it had always been there, and he’d only just stepped on it. “What was that?” he said, but as he lifted his head he saw a row of people in the back stand up and make a quick, violent gesture all at once, as if they were waving at him, and then at least a
dozen more tomatoes rose up in a fetid wave, arcing through the spotlit air to converge on where he sat.

George was not sure what one did after such experiences. It was the first time he’d ever encountered such overwhelming rejection. But he knew what his father often did when he experienced an obstacle, so George followed suit and went straight across the street to a bar. He ordered a drink and sat down, intending to stay until he’d drunk the anger and humiliation clear out of his head.

He was feeling pretty soused and lousy when he heard a voice over his shoulder: “So this is how you spend your free days?”

He wheeled around. There standing behind him was Harry, scratching his head.

“What are you doing here?” George slurred.

His father sat down beside him. “Jesus. How many have you had?”

“I don’t know. A lot.”

“He’s had three beers,” said the bartender.

“Oh,” said Silenus. “What’s this you’re covered in?” Then he sniffed, and almost choked. “And
Jesus
, what’s that smell?”

George sighed and tried to explain what had happened that afternoon. As he did he found his plan now sounded marvelously stupid, and he felt ashamed of what he’d done.

“So,” said Silenus. “You were going to run away?”

“No!” said George. “I wasn’t. Honest. I just wanted to… see.”

“See what?”

“I don’t know. If I was as good as I thought I was. It
felt
like I was. I thought I could do it. But I couldn’t.”

“Don’t listen to those assholes,” said Silenus. “They were going to boo you no matter what, I bet. And besides, you trot out Mendelssohn in, what, a vaudeville hall that’s mostly a butcher’s? They’ve got meat prices hanging in their window, for Christ’s sakes! That is not your intended audience, son.”

It was the first time Silenus had ever called him “son.” George shut his eyes. “You were right.”

“Right? Right about what?”

“I’m not ready for the stage.”

“I never said you weren’t ready,” said Silenus. “I said we didn’t have room.”

“I don’t want to anymore, anyway.”

Silenus sighed. “Listen, one day you’ll be up there. One day Stan and I will teach you everything we know about the stage. Little tips and tricks that can win over an audience. But until then, you’ve got to keep in mind that you are
very
young, George, and you are probably too talented for your own damn good. If this were a just world you’d be getting all the glory and praise you deserve. But right now you got to think about the bigger picture. You need to keep your head down and do as I say. I’m looking out for you, kid. I couldn’t bear it if something happened to you. Okay?”