She walked back as slowly and evenly as she could. She was too terrified to turn around until she got to the door, but sure enough, he was still watching. He hadn’t even started unchaining. He gave a little wave.
This was very, very good.
There was a fervent knocking at the Orchid Suite door around five in the morning.
“What?” Lola groaned, putting the pillow over her head. “Make it stop. It has to be Spencer. Kill him.”
Scarlett dutifully rolled out of bed, tripping over her blanket, to kill her older brother as requested. She loved Spencer, but she saw Lola’s point in this case. But it wasn’t Spencer. It was Mrs. Amberson, dressed in a faintly see-through blue robe and not much else.
“You weren’t answering your phone,” she said.
Scarlett took a second to figure out what she herself was wearing. She looked down to find it was a stretched out T-shirt and a pair of underpants. She pulled the shirt down as much as she could with one hand.
“Do you need something?” she asked.
“I need you in forty-five minutes.”
“I…”
“Make it forty minutes. Do you have any matches?”
“No,” Scarlett said.
“Dammit.”
She shut the door herself. Lola looked over from her bed, her blonde hair tumbled over her face.
“She’s not going to do that a lot, is she?” she asked.
Scarlett half-blindly reached for her shower basket and towel and pulled on some shorts. Out in the hall, she bumped into Spencer, who was unused to seeing anyone floating around when he got up. He was leaning out of the bathroom door and brushing his teeth with a puzzled look on his face. He held up one finger to Scarlett, indicating she should wait. He stepped into the bathroom, spitting out the toothpaste foam loudly.
“Was that my new director, your boss, just now?” he asked. “Kind of naked?”
“Yes,” she said flatly.
“Does she do that every morning? Because if she does, I’m going to start being late more often.”
“Don’t do this to me.”
“That lady works out. Do you think she does Pilates? I hear that’s very effective.”
“Spencer,” Scarlett said slowly. “Lola told me to kill you earlier. I’m thinking about taking her up on it.”
Spencer held up his hands in surrender.
“I’m just saying, if this is too early for you, she can come to my room at the crack of dawn. I am all about service.”
He moved swiftly along when Scarlett gave him a stare. Even as a baby, Scarlett Martin had a stare that could remove a strip of wallpaper at ten feet, and it had not weakened with time.
Scarlett was admitted to the Empire Suite forty minutes later by Mrs. Amberson, who was now dressed only in a matching chocolate-colored bra-and-panty set. An unlit cigarette hung from her lips, and a pile of discarded outfits were thrown all over the bed, all of them stretchy and dancerlike. Scarlet tried to avert her eyes, but it was impossible not to notice how slender and muscular Mrs. Amberson was, especially since Spencer had been kind enough to point it out.
“Where are we going?” Scarlett asked.
“We are going to see Billy Whitehouse.”
“Who is Billy Whitehouse?” Scarlett asked.
“A
genius.
A genius of the first order. Everyone in the theater world knows Billy. I knew him when he was just a poor young actor, right out of Yale. He was always unnaturally gifted with voice—had studied every great vocal technique in the western world. I also used to feed him for free at work, let him stay with me when he lost his apartment. He wore sneakers all the time because he couldn’t afford any other shoes. I watched him rise to become the great man he is today.”
“Why are we going to see him at six-thirty in the morning?” Scarlett asked. “Don’t theater people come out at night?”
“Billy is a busy man. Normally, his time is booked months in advance. But I helped him meet his husband. He makes time for me. Have an umeboshi plum. You look a little tired.”
She thrust the box of the disgusting little plums at Scarlett and stood there until she took one. Scarlett ate it, cringed, and spit out the stone. Mrs. Amberson tucked the cigarette behind her ear and pulled on her outfit.
Altogether too soon, Scarlett was being ushered out into the heavy morning, full of humidity and the first signs of New York morning traffic. Not even the dry cleaner was open yet. Scarlett never went out before the dry cleaner was open. Mrs. Amberson saw a still-burning cigarette on the ground and pounced on it, using it to light her own. Then she leapt into the street and easily snagged a cab, palming the cigarette as she did so. She mumbled something at the driver and settled back in her seat, slinking down to surreptitiously smoke.
“This has been the problem all along,” she said.
“What’s been what problem?” Scarlett said, stifling a yawn.
“My voice. It’s like I have a…
cork
…a cork bottling up my thoughts…and keeping them from my head. It’s here. Here between my heart and my head.”
She pointed at her throat with the cigarette.
“My voice. My voice is locked up.”
“You sound fine to me,” Scarlett said.
“My
inner
voice! Are you always this literal? It makes me wonder what they teach you.”
“They’re usually wasting our time with Geometry, French, and American Government,” Scarlett said, looking out the window and yawning until her eyes watered. “We don’t get to our inner voices until next year.”
She could feel Mrs. Amberson staring at her neck.
“Don’t be snide, child,” she said mildly. “It’s bad for your chi. In any case, performers often go through this. When they get blocked, their voice literally locks up. They can’t sing. I saw it all the time in the theater. The throat is one of the body’s great gateways. It carries blood to the head. It carries nerve impulses from the brain
to the rest of the body. When you think about it, we are all about our throats.”
Scarlett ignored this and went back to sleep with her head against the cab window. She was jolted awake when the cab pulled to a jerky halt. They had stopped in front of one of the Broadway theaters, terrifying a tourist with a large coffee and an even larger camera. Mrs. Amberson tossed a bill through the opening and sprang out. She led Scarlett down to a door marked
CAST AND CREW ONLY
.
It was amazingly dark inside that doorway. They were in a little hallway with a warren of rooms, stuffed with racks of clothes labeled with masking tape. Mrs. Amberson picked her way through, finally getting to a staircase leading up into a massive, partially lit stage.
“Over here,” a very deep, very crisp voice called. “And be careful or you’ll kill yourself on those wires.”
A man emerged from the darkness on the other side of the stage.
“Billy!” Mrs. Amberson exclaimed.
Billy was exceptionally tall, with immaculately groomed white hair. He wore a white shirt, light khaki pants, and white shoes. He looked like a librarian, or someone who might run an art museum. He greeted Mrs. Amberson by exchanging cheek-to-cheek kisses. Then, much to Scarlett’s surprise, he gently sniffed her head, like she was a flower.
“You’ve been smoking,” he said.
She looked down guiltily. This Billy appeared to have genuine power over her, and that meant he was interesting to Scarlett. He turned to her now and smiled kindly.
“Amy’s dragged you out at this hour?” he said. “There’s coffee over by the piano, if you need it.”
“O’Hara,” she said, “this is Billy Whitehouse. He can unblock the best, and if anyone needs an unblocking, it’s you. No offense.”
Scarlett said hello and made her way to the pot. She took a seat off to the side, looking around at the endless depths of the ceiling, the miles of cords and cables, the taped
X
s all over the floor, the cherry picker in front of the stage. Broadway kind of looked like a construction site during the day.
She had no idea what unblocking was, but it was pretty enjoyable watching Mrs. Amberson getting ordered around for a change. For the first few minutes, Billy had her run in a circle, barefoot, in the middle of the stage. He started to command her to say single words, like “home,” “feel,” “kill,” “love,” all at different volumes. He made her cling to the wall, crawl across the floor, run laps from side to side on the stage. All the while, he stalked around her like a lion tamer.
Scarlett watched this for a while, until the cool darkness of the theater lulled her back to sleep. She woke with a crick in her neck, her head hanging heavily off the back of the seat, to see Mrs. Amberson rolling from side to side on the floor, yelling the word “endless.”
“I needed that,” she said, getting up and dusting herself off.
“Why do I feel that you didn’t just come down here at the crack of dawn to do a tune-up?” he asked.
“You have an uncanny ability to read me, Billy. As it happens, I have acquired a show.”
“What do you mean you
acquired
a show?” he asked. “Wait. Never mind. Don’t answer that. I genuinely don’t want to know.”
“These are good actors,” she said. “Very good. But they need molding, solid vocal training. And you are the best…”
“Amy…”
“I would never ask this from you on a whim,” she said. “Not you.”
A grave moment passed between them. Billy walked over to the piano and picked up a datebook and flipped through some pages.
“How many?” he asked.
“Fifteen.”
“Doing what?”
“
Hamlet.
”
“And I take it you need me immediately?”
“Today.”
More flipping.
“Okay,” he finally said. “You’ve run into a little luck. I wouldn’t be doing this for anyone but you, but…I can do two evenings this week. Tonight and Friday. Four hours on Saturday during the day. That’s all I’ve got. Then I have to spend some quality time with my long-neglected family at the beach. I haven’t had any time off in months.”
“Billy!”
She embraced him aggressively.
“You’re out of practice,” Billy replied, shaking his head. “The smoking makes it worse.”
“I know, I know. No lectures, please.”
“It’s my job,” he said.
“No,” she said. “You are just a nosy bitch.”
“Also my job. I’ll expect to see you and your new company at my studio at seven.”
After the early morning session, Scarlett was released at nine-thirty in the morning with one order—contact every single actor and crew member and make sure they got to Billy’s studio on time. That meant waiting for Spencer to get home from work, which really meant going back to sleep for an hour or so.
The lingering smell of overly strong coffee and burned toast wafted through the lobby as Scarlett entered it. Their father was on his knees in the far corner of the lobby, by the elevator, hammer in hand.
“Some of the boards are coming up again,” he said. “I can’t hammer them down. Oh, well. I’ll do what we always do.”
He pushed one of the canary-yellow chairs across the room to the spot. It didn’t quite fit there, but he seemed content.
“If you have time,” he said, “I could use a hand cleaning up and resetting the Sterling Suite. We have someone coming tonight.”
“Sure,” Scarlett said sleepily. “I’ll do it in a few.”
“Oh, and Lola’s upstairs. I don’t think she’s feeling well.”
Sure enough, Lola was in bed, but she didn’t look sick. She was
sitting with her knees tucked up, and she looked more pale than usual.
“I have a problem, Scarlett,” she said.
Scarlett sat down on the edge of her bed and waited. It took Lola a moment to bring herself to speak.
“They told me not to come in today,” she said. “They fired me.”
Scarlett wasn’t about to say “I told you so.” Lola had obviously been chastising herself all morning. She shook her head over and over.
“I’m such an idiot,” she said. “I honestly didn’t think they would. I have one of the best sales records on the floor. I really thought I was fine. I would never have taken the days off otherwise, I swear.”
Scarlett reached over for her hand.
“You don’t need to convince me,” she said. “I know you wouldn’t have.”
“Mom and Dad are already so worried. About the bills, Marlene, Spencer’s career…I can’t
believe
I let this happen. Especially with Spencer doing this stupid show now. This is such a bad time.”
It didn’t seem necessary to slam Spencer in this, but Scarlett let it go. Lola had truly loved her job. She was good at it.
“You can get another one in a second,” Scarlett said, trying to sound cheerful. “You can tell Mom and Dad you got a better offer.”
Lola took a long, slow breath and wiped at her face.
“You’re right,” she said. “I was thinking it might be better if I worked in a spa. This could be a good opportunity.”
She changed the head move to a nod, to affirm herself.
“I have another favor to ask,” she said. “And I know I already owe you. I’ve decided to go to Boston with Chip this weekend.”
Scarlett contained a groan.
“I know,” Lola said. “This is what caused the problem in the first place. But I have no job now. Let me just do this, and then I promise…”
“You can go wherever you want,” Scarlett said.
“I know, but…there’s a big Powerkids event on Saturday night. A dinner at the Hard Rock Café.”
“Let me guess,” Scarlett said. “You want me to take her.”
“I think that it’s good that you and Marlene…bond more. I mean, I won’t be living at home forever. Neither will Spen…well, Spencer may.”
Scarlett was much more tempted this time to reply to the Spencer-bash, but Lola really did look contrite.
“What are you going to tell Mom and Dad?” she asked.
“That I’m going to Boston to do a weekend intensive on skin care for one of the product lines. You don’t have to worry about a cover story. You don’t have to lie.”
“Fine,” Scarlett said. “But just this time.”
Scarlett tried to sleep, but Lola was still sitting there, palpably fretting and talking to Chip on the phone. She went down the hall to Spencer’s room to sleep on his bed, but he returned soon after.
“You’re going to see someone named Billy Whitehouse,” she mumbled. “Can you call everyone and tell them?”
“Don’t mess with my head,” he said, dropping his bag on the floor. “I’m still nervous after last night.”
“I’m not messing with you,” she said. “You’re going to see some guy named Billy Whitehouse.”
“
The
Billy Whitehouse?”
“Well, it was
a
Billy Whitehouse,” she said. “He was in a theater on Broadway.”
Spencer got very agitated and started pacing in the three empty feet of floor space.
“You’re not messing with me?” he asked seriously.
“Why would I make this up? Do you know him?”
“Billy Whitehouse, founder of the Whitehouse Method?” he said. “The guy who almost single-handedly changed the way live theater was performed in America? Former director of The Simply Shakespeare Company, pretty much the most famous Shakespeare group of the eighties? Former Juilliard professor? The person the best celebrity actors go to for guidance when they can’t nail a part? This guy?”
He whipped a book from one of his lopsided bookshelves called
You Are the Voice
and flipped to the back, revealing a picture of the same man she had met a few hours before. He was looking coolly at an actor writhing on the floor.
“So…that’s a yes?” Scarlett said.
Billy’s studio was in a large and nondescript building, the kind that grow all over the middle of the city, like dandelions, and can be used for seemingly any purpose. They passed a nonresponsive guard on their way to the elevator, which creaked and groaned its way up to the eleventh floor. The hall they emerged on was fairly bleak, with a series of blue industrial-strength doors. Mrs. Amberson strode along to the very end of the hall with great purpose. Billy opened it in greeting before she could even knock.
“You have a distinctive walk,” he said. “Hello, O’Hara! Come inside.”
The room was massive, with a hardwood floor and a mirrored wall. There was a piano in the corner, blanketed by a quilted cover. Over by the mirrors were dozens of thick blue tumble mats, along with exercise balls, hoops, straps, beach balls, and jump ropes.
“Let’s get rid of this,” Billy said, switching off the overhead light. “Nothing kills the soul quite like fluorescent light.”
He walked around and switched on a number of standing lamps around the room, giving it a cozy glow.
All the actors looked as dazed as Spencer as they arrived. Billy was known to them all. They obeyed his every word, though he was extremely soft-spoken. He had everyone sit on the floor in a tight circle.
“Tonight,” he said, circling the group and distributing long strips of cloth from a box. “We are just going to speak the play to each other. Blindfolded. Please tie the cloths around your eyes, then join hands with the people seated next to you.”
Scarlett was mentally preparing herself for a night of intense boredom when Billy gestured in her direction.
“Amy,” he said, “please step in and join the group. You, too, O’Hara. Let’s get all of our energy down here, together.”
It seemed way too obvious to insert herself next to Eric, so she dropped down one spot over, between Spencer and Stephanie, the girl playing Ophelia. Billy passed her a blindfold, which she dutifully tied around her eyes. Spencer gripped her hand. She expected him to do something to make her laugh, like tickle her palm or try to make those farting noises from the suction, but he was all business. The grip was firm and serious. Ophelia had a cool, tiny hand.
“I will read the stage directions,” Billy said. “If you get confused at any point about when to speak, just give yourself a moment and
feel it out. Try to work with the energy of the room, your fellow performers, instead of the visual cues you may have been relying on.”
The reading of the play took three hours. A three-hour reading of Shakespeare, blindfolded, on the floor, should have been deadly. Instead, it was one of the most electrifying things Scarlett had ever experienced. Sitting together so close, everyone connected…she hated terms like
energy
…but that’s what it was. The longer she sat there in the dark, holding hands with Spencer and Stephanie and by extension, everyone—her world physically seemed to expand.
Billy’s normal speaking voice was pleasant and smooth, but his performance voice was massive—not loud, just able to take over all the empty parts of Scarlett’s brain that she didn’t even know were listening. The events unfolded in her head. She could see the ghost of the dead king approaching the guards on the tower. There was Hamlet, arriving in the cold castle hall to find that his uncle had taken his dead father’s place, both as king and husband to his mother. Hamlet was young—not much older than Spencer or Eric—a university student with a lot of problems and a bunch of actor friends. He was in pain, confused, angry…and everyone around him was playing him.
Scarlett could hear Billy walking around the group as the play went on. She felt him brush her shoulder as he adjusted Spencer’s posture somehow. His voice came out clearer, more confident. And from across the darkness, she heard Eric reply. He spoke without a Southern accent now, dropping it with ease. Actors had other people living inside of them…lots of other people, other voices. There was something wonderful about this, this unfolding possibility.
When it was over, Scarlett reluctantly peeled off the blindfold. Billy had the lights way down, but still, it was a shock to see again. Everyone stirred like they were waking from a long sleep, one in which they had all dreamed the same dream.
Like several of the other actors, Spencer clustered around Billy when they were done, pelting him with questions. Eric, however, had slipped out with a few of the others, without so much as a good-bye.
“I can’t believe that just happened,” Spencer said, as they rode the bus home. “I’ve told you that you’re the best sister in the world, right?”
“You can repeat yourself. I will allow it.”
“I just spent the night working with Billy Whitehouse. Billy Whitehouse. Do you have any idea what this means?”
Scarlett smiled. It was good to see Spencer feeling like he was on top of his game again. But why had Eric left so quickly? Obviously, there was nothing going on between them. He barely knew her. Still…
“It means,” Spencer went on, “that something is going right. When I get rich and famous, I’m going to get you anything you want. Name it. Helicopter. Airplane. One of those hairless cats.”
He had no idea how close he was to what she actually wanted. He could probably even help. All she had to do was open her mouth and ask.
“An indoor pool,” she said instead. “With a shark in it.”
“You,” Spencer replied, throwing an arm over her shoulder, “are clearly my sister. We share the same practical streak.”