Authors: Gen LaGreca
Sparkling reviews had poured in like champagne. “How did classical ballet become the stuff of Broadway, playing to record crowds for eight months?” one news program’s theater critic had asked. “The answer is simple: Nicole Hudson.”
“The sensational Nicole Hudson dazzled us with her virtuosity and exuberance,” a reviewer in a leading newspaper had written. “
Triumph
is the unbridled spirit of Nicole, innocent and happy, untarnished by the world, the way we all start out in childhood.”
A magazine devoted to the arts had agreed: “
Triumph
’
s
vibrant new star, Nicole Hudson, is as radiant as a princess from a distant world where pain is banished and hope is the only passport.”
With one willowy arm to her heart and the other sweeping out to the audience, Nicole Hudson bowed to wild cheers at the conclusion of the summer matinee. She wondered why, after eight months of a grueling performance schedule in
Triumph
, her desire to dance was never sated but only intensified the more she performed, like a sweet addiction nourishing itself. As she smiled at those she had stirred with her dancing, their cheering in turn moved her. She felt a burning rush of liquid fill her eyes and wondered why happiness could hurt. Bathing in the warmth of the spotlight, she knew that finally she, like Pandora, had entered a period of innocence, goodness, and joy, and nothing greater was possible.
*
*
*
*
*
Her dressing room smelled of men’s cologne when she entered it. The scent emanated from a tall, dark-haired man in a fashionable suit—her agent, Howard Morton, who had gotten her the role of Pandora. The nervous lines on his face were in stark contrast to the calm radiance hers still held from the performance.
“Hi, Howie.” She walked past him to remove her costume in the bathroom. “What are you doing here?” she called from the half-closed door.
“I want to be sure everything is prepared for your interview with Gloria Candrell.”
Nicole reappeared in a silk robe that tied at her waist, emphasizing its slenderness. “There’s nothing to prepare,” she said, sitting at the vanity, facing the jittery figure perched on the arm of an easy chair. “Relax, Howie.”
“Nickie, you’re
too
relaxed. This interview’s for
national
TV
. And because you’ll be in your dressing room, the viewers will form impressions about you from what they’ll see here. I want to be sure those impressions will be good.”
She glanced at the few furnishings in the room: a vanity, sofa, easy chair, coffee table, and taller table behind the couch. “It’s a pretty average room, but it’ll do.”
“It’ll do if we make one change—one small but very important change, dear.”
She waited. He fidgeted, as if expecting resistance.
“There’s one little matter, Nickie—some things we need to remove from this room just for the interview, then we can put them back—things that would not be understood and would make you seem . . . well . . . peculiar.”
“What things?”
He looked pointedly at the table behind the couch. It was cluttered with a motley assortment of vases, bowls, and baskets, ranging from large to small, crystal to wicker, elegant to simple. Each container held the flaky remains of flower arrangements long dead. Her eyes followed his.
“I want them to stay, Howie.”
“Why?”
“Because those flowers were gifts, the best gifts I ever received.”
“But they are
dead
now, my dear.”
“They are staying, my Howie.”
“What if we remove just the rotted flowers and keep the containers? Though I haven’t a clue on how to display such a hodgepodge.”
“I want them to stay just as they are. Why do you worry so?”
“But you don’t even know the guy.”
“The flowers stay.”
“Think of how preposterous it is, Nickie. He’s sent you flowers and written you love letters for months now, and he never shows his face.”
“They stay.”
“There’s something perverted about him. He could be a lunatic. I’m warning you.”
“They stay.”
“How do we even know it’s a he?”
“The flowers
stay
. Read my lips, Howie.”
“You know, you’re acting like a schoolgirl with a silly crush. I thought you were smarter than that.”
She seemed to be talking more to herself when she turned to the dead flowers and whispered: “I’d like him to know I kept them. I want the camera to pick them up. I wonder if he’ll be watching.”
“Nickie, really—you wouldn’t want the public to think you’re peculiar, would you?”
“I
am
peculiar.”
“Be reasonable. You wouldn’t want viewers to think you keep dead flowers. You wouldn’t want America to think you’re weird.”
“I
am
weird,” she said with finality. She grabbed a hairbrush and look at him through the mirror of her vanity. “If there’s nothing else, Howie, why don’t you excuse me, so I can get dressed?”
“Nickie, really! You need to let
me
guide your career. You can’t run things for yourself.”
Her arm made a wide arch to glide the brush through hair that almost reached her waist. She opened a drawer for a barrette. There she saw her first ballet shoes, the personal heirloom she had carried through the years. Whenever she had encountered something alien, the little slippers had brought her back to her purpose.
“I’ve run things for myself since I was thirteen.”
“But Nickie—”
They were interrupted by a knock on the door.
“Come in,” Nicole called.
A deliveryman entered with a gift-wrapped package.
“Oh, thank you!” Nicole sprang from her seat to grab the bundle, leaving Morton to grope for a tip to give the man.
She unwrapped a rectangular basket stuffed with dozens of wildflowers, wantonly thrown together, spilling over the sides and tangling each other in a violent battle of fragrance and hue. Though they seemed to be wantonly thrown together, they were actually aligned in a procession of color: red, orange, yellow, blue, indigo, and violet—a rainbow. The perky blooms made Nicole feel like running through a sunlit meadow and rolling in grass so fresh that it pricked her skin.
“Now
this
will make a perfect centerpiece for the interview!” she said, placing the disorderly array on the coffee table.
“Oh, great! Couldn’t the guy send roses? Wildflowers are so provincial!”
In the thicket of rowdy sprouts, Nicole found an envelope. Inside it was a letter in the precise script that was a trademark of the sender, the person she called the Flower Phantom.
“He has the most beautiful handwriting I’ve ever seen. Maybe he’s an artist.”
“Or a penmanship teacher,” Morton added, peeking at the letter from over her shoulder.
Clutching the note to her breast, she brought it to the vanity, out of Morton’s sight, then read:
Dear Nicole,
Sunday I walked to the theater in the pouring rain. I watched stray cats crawl into empty doorways to shake the damp chill from their fur with violent shudders. I wished it were that easy to fling off the cold drops of despair seeping through my skin and condensing on my soul. If the season is summer, I wondered, where is the sun?
Then I reached the marquee and saw your billboard. The proud line of your head drawn back and your mouth opened wide in an exultant laughter shouted at me with another message, one that lured me in out of the rain.
For the next two hours, if the music played, I was deaf to it; if there were other dancers, I was blind to them. I could not stretch my awareness beyond the one presence that filled it, the vision of you whirling through the air with devilish eyes and flying hair, leaping and spinning with more power than was possible for such a slender creature. You seemed to relish pushing your body to daring limits that made the audience gasp. Watching you move with the boundless energy of a fawn at play, for the first time in weeks, I laughed. For the first time in weeks, I could feel a long-dampened torch rekindle inside me.
Can we really harness the fire of heaven and become godlike, as you so boldly affirm in your show?
When I left the theater, the dark clouds had thinned into slivers and the sun was edging its way through the slits. The cold rain, that misfit from another season, had given way to a more pleasing companion, a summer rainbow, to soak my path with color . . . and my dreams with hope.
As was his custom, the Flower Phantom left the letter unsigned. As was her custom, she lingered on the words.
“Nickie.”
She did not hear Morton calling her. She saw only the extravagant rainbow of reckless blossoms.
“Gloria will be here in half an hour, dear. Don’t you think you should dress?”
She was unaware of the entity called Howard Morton. Someone was pecking at the wall with which she kept the human race at bay.
The Flower Phantom stirred something inside her that she had never taken the time to notice: loneliness. For years she had been a fugitive, pursuing her dance training by day, holding odd jobs at night, and obsessively concealing her identity. She had never found time to date, nor did the disappointments of her early years leave her open to trusting anyone. But the Phantom somehow disarmed her. He wrote passionately of a great aspiration in his life and of obstacles thwarting him. Did she not have a passion and a struggle in her life? She wondered about the nature of his battle, but he never revealed it. How odd it was, she thought, to feel the presence of someone she had never met in the room. Would she ever meet a man who could arouse in her what Prometheus had awakened in Pandora?
“Nickie . . .” Morton tried again.
She replayed the argument with herself that had become routine after receiving a letter from the Phantom. She would find him, she resolved. No, she would wait until he came for her. No, she would find him and demand to know why he wrote to her. No, she would forget about him because he seemed to have no intention of appearing. And that was fine, because she did not need distractions!
“Nickie.”
“Yes?”
“Will you be getting dressed now?”
“Yes.”
She had tried to trace the Phantom before, but each time, he used a different flower shop, paid in cash, and left no record of his name. She had inquired, but none of the shops knew who he was. She glanced at his previous gifts on the table. All of them had come from the vicinity of the theater, where he evidently worked or lived. How many local florists could be left? She knew the ones he had already used; their cards appeared on the arrangements. She could find the remaining shops and offer their clerks money if they’d call were someone to order flowers for her. No, she would do nothing of the kind! He obviously did not want to be found. Then why did he keep writing? And why did his words stir the calm waters of her soul?
“Nickie . . .”
She reached into her closet and removed the clothes she intended to wear. “I’ll get dressed now. Give me a minute, will you?”
“I’ll wait outside.”
As Morton left the room, she headed for the shower, and then stopped. She opened a drawer and removed a phone directory. Leafing through the pages, she found the listings for flower shops. She tore out the sheets and put them in her purse.
“To hell with waiting,” she said, shrugging. “I’m going to find him!”
Chapter 2
The Banquet . . .
The chandeliers in the grand ballroom, with their myriad of tiny lights, looked opulent, except for the scattered spaces where bulbs were missing. The great arched windows of the hall resembled a Florentine palace, but the velvet curtains around them were faded. Crystal glasses sparkled on a hundred tables set for dinner, although many of the stems were chipped. The ballroom of the Rutledge Hotel of Manhattan seemed to be resting on grandeur from the past that was slowly slipping away.
Eight hundred of the state’s business and government leaders were gathered there that July evening for a two-thousand-dollar-a-plate fund-raiser. Their tables curved around a flowered dais with a speaker’s podium. Above the dais hung a banner that read “Reelect Governor Malcolm Burrow in November.” The ends of the banner curled in a smile. The seals of New York State and its namesake city formed two bulging eyes above the grinning sign.
Dr. Marie Lang sat at one of the tables with the partners of Reliant Care, the large group practice that employed her. She looked poised in her black silk gown but for the persistent nervous tapping of slim tanned feet under it. Her sleek auburn hair brushed alluringly against her naked shoulders, while eyes of the same burnished brown darted anxiously around the room. Almost everyone found thirty-four-year-old Marie charming. The occasional more perceptive observer, however, found her puzzling, for when she smiled, her eyes did not follow suit.