City of Ash Read online

  Lucius Greene had turned the theater into the best melodrama house in the city. The Regal was a favorite with the “gallery gods,” the newsboys and miners and lumbermen who paid their ten cents for the worst seats in the balcony and thought it entitled them to an opinion on everything. They hooted and whistled and clapped their way through the crashing spectacles Lucius thought up, learning the songs by the second night a play was performed, shouting tunelessly along with whoever was onstage and sometimes so loud you couldn’t hear yourself, and society loved it too. There was no one who didn’t love a spectacle, and Lucius was a genius when it came to knowing what would please a crowd.

  He was a fair enough manager too, though like all of them he was always looking for a way to make a profit and didn’t necessarily care who he had to step on to do it. And he wasn’t one of those who expected favors from his actresses either, which already made him better than three-quarters of the managers I’d worked for. He liked to think of his company as a family, and so, because Stella was a stranger to Seattle, he made me responsible for her.

  Another favor he owed me, and I added it to his tally. Stella clung to me like a barnacle. I got her a room on the floor below, and Stella got into the habit of coming upstairs to my room after the performances, when we were both giddy and flushed and it was hard to be alone after the noise of the audiences and the crowded halls backstage full of admirers. I had a fondness for candy, and she for absinthe, and that was how we spent whatever extra money we had, which was never much. I’d buy a little packet of hard candy, and as we never had sugar, we’d melt a cherry or orange lozenge in water to add to the absinthe, and sometimes we were still drinking near dawn.

  Stupid, I know. But I thought she couldn’t harm me. I’d been the first soubrette of the company for two years now, the next to move up to the leading line when Arabella moved on—and I was working on that too, believe me. For months, I’d been feeding Arabella’s vanity, taking every opportunity to hint that she was better than the leading lady of a small Seattle stock company, and that her future might best be played upon other stages. I suppose the mistake I made was in thinking that Stella was green and believing I had enough currency banked with Lucius to protect myself. Too cocky, my pa would have said, and he would have been right.

  Even Brody didn’t know anything about where I was from or what I thought, but Stella got my life story out of me before I knew it, how I’d grown up in the theater and loved everything about it, how my father had been a set painter, and my mother a seamstress, and how I’d left my New York City home at fifteen to go onstage and traveled around so much since that when my parents moved they couldn’t find me to tell, so I had no idea where they were or whether they were even alive. She told me her parents were farmers in Ohio who’d stopped speaking to her when she took up the stage, and that she’d bedded more managers than she could remember, even though she was only twenty-two.

  That should have told me. If I’d been listening, it would have. But Stella’s eyes sparkled, and she had this way of leaning close, as if she were about to entrust you with something she’d never told another living soul. We laughed about the company’s heavy, Aloysius Metairie, and the boys who waited for him after the show, and our “first old lady,” Mrs. Chace, who waddled about the stage gasping her lines; and for a while Stella was in love with Jackson Wheeler, who was our leading man and who never had a lack of admirers, and it fell to me to talk her out of him, because Jack was nearly as bad as Brody when it came to women.

  “You want to fall in love, fall in love with one of those rich men who send you flowers,” I told her as we sprawled on the frayed settee in my room, red velvet so worn there was no nap left. “At least then when it’s over, you’ll have something more than a broken heart.”

  It was good advice, though I’d never taken it myself. But Stella didn’t love acting the way I did, and she didn’t have a deep talent. So when she began an affair with Richard Welling, who owned a portion of one of Seattle’s sawmills, I was glad, even though I didn’t see her as often, because she was busy with him after the performances. It was the best step for her.

  It wasn’t until Stella had been with us for six months that Arabella began to believe the things I told her. She drew in the crowds, who loved her for her sparkling wit and flashing eyes, even though the wit was written by other people and when she was offstage her eyes were dull and stupid as a cow’s. Arabella began not showing up for rehearsals, which Lucius could not abide, and insisting on special treatment. She was hinting around that she was ready to begin a turn as a star.

  I was twenty-eight; I’d been an actress for thirteen years. In the three years I’d been at the Regal, I’d worked hard to make myself as steady as any manager could have wanted. I’d collected a trunkful of costumes. I knew more than two hundred parts, half of them leads. When Arabella left, I would be ready to step into her shoes. The truth was that I was desperate to step into them. I was getting old; there wouldn’t be many other chances for me, and I knew it, unless I managed somehow to get enough money to start a company of my own—and I could count on one hand the actresses I knew who had, and I wasn’t likely to be one of them. If I meant to be a leading lady, if I meant to be a star, it must be soon, or I would be destined to playing seconds, and then old ladies and heavies, for the rest of my career.

  I’d dreamed of acting since I was six years old, watching rehearsals while my father painted sets in the background. I’d studied actors and actresses as if I could inhale their tricks, as if my own muscles could hold their memories. To act was all I’d ever wanted, and I knew I was good enough for the juicy lead parts, the star turns. I knew I was not meant to linger in obscurity. I loved it too much for that—surely God wouldn’t have given me this passion if he meant not to honor it. But my climb had taken longer than I’d anticipated; too many missteps and compromises, too often fucking managers who never had any intention of moving me up, or actors who had less power than I’d thought.

  I’d grown up around the theater, so it wasn’t as if I didn’t know the methods everyone used to get ahead. The first time I’d used one myself was when I was a member of the corps de ballet at Niblo’s, when I waxed the soles of Marie Denbroeder’s slippers so she couldn’t keep her feet onstage. It wasn’t as bad as it sounds, and she’d tried to get me out of the way first by putting an emetic in my coffee so I’d been unable to move more than a couple steps from a chamber pot. So I waxed her slippers, and she fell down four times that night and burst into tears, and she was gone the next day and I was kept on. I didn’t feel the least bit guilty for it either, as she would have thrown me to the wolves if she’d got the chance.

  It was just the way things were. It was expected, you know, that an actress would fuck the manager or the lead actor to get a better part, and damn if the managers and actors didn’t use that to their advantage. The worst of them played actresses off each other, so you not only had to fuck them, you had to be better at it than the next girl. And as much as I hated to admit it, talent didn’t count for much; you could quote every line from School for Scandal or cry waterworks on cue, and it mattered less than how pretty you were, or what you were willing to do, or how many costumes you had. There were times when I’d almost given up, but I couldn’t do it. I just couldn’t walk away. It was too much a part of me for that.

  What you learned quickly enough was not to trust anyone, that you had to make your own success, that you were a fool if you counted on anyone to help. I knew that in my bones. But when Stella Bernardi came along and acted as if she could hardly cross the street without me … well, I thought I knew all the tricks. I thought I was an expert at playing the game. But Stella had a trick I didn’t know, and she understood how to play me. I fancied myself a kind of mentor to her, as pathetic as that sounds. She asked my advice, and I thought what a fool she was for trusting me, and I meant to protect her from herself—and prove I was worthy of her trust too and that’s even more pathetic, I know—and so I was honest with
her. I thought I was building up a cache of goodwill, but all I was doing was putting blinders on.

  One night we were both staring out my window at the moon rising high in the sky, half obscured by the smoke from the mills and the steamers that always hazed the harbor beyond. We shoved up beside each other and rested our elbows on the narrow sill, and leaned out to smell the city—the tang of tar and the rotting sulfur scent of the tideflats at low tide, smoke and the odor of garbage and manure in the streets, and always, always, the stink of wet sawdust.

  “Do you really think Arabella will leave?” she asked me, swirling the pale green cloud of absinthe in the glass we shared.

  “I’d say it’s certain she will,” I told her. “She’s blinded by the limelight.”

  “And then you will take her place.”

  “I hope so. I think so. Yes.”

  “Lucius will move you up. You’ve been around so long. The rest of the company can’t help but take your side.”

  I laughed. “Maybe. Brody will. Jack will never commit to anything unless it advances him, and Aloys is pragmatic. He won’t take sides until he’s certain.”

  “Mrs. Chace then. Mr. Galloway surely.”

  “They’ll follow wherever Aloys leads. And they’re lazy. They like things to be easy.”

  “Then me,” she said, lifting the glass, taking a sip. “I’ll take your side.”

  “You’re sweet.” I stared out at the night sky, the wisps of smoke drifting across the moon. Below, a carriage made its slow and thudding way through the mud, the horses’ heads dropped low, as if their day had been a long one. “I hardly dare to think it’s going to happen. Every year that passes and I … I’m starting to feel old, Stella. These other girls I see coming along … they’re so young and pretty. I don’t know. I think this might be my last chance.”

  She tilted her head to look at me. “You can’t truly believe that. You’re still so pretty yourself. And you don’t look old at all.”

  “But I am. Twenty-eight. It’s old to be a lead.”

  “No, it isn’t. Look at Mary Anderson. Or Clara Morris. They’ll be playing leads until they’re dead.”

  “But they got the leading line younger than I did. Maybe I don’t have the talent.”

  “Don’t be silly. You’re the best in the company, and we all know it.” Her hand came down to cover mine. “You’ll be the lead, and I’ll step into your shoes. Hopefully I won’t slip right out of them.”

  I laughed then, and she said, “I mean it, Bea. You’ll see I’m right. When Arabella leaves, Lucius will choose you. He has to.”

  I had smiled and thought maybe it was good that I had a friend, that maybe trusting someone for a change wasn’t going to turn out badly.

  It was only a month later, when we were rehearsing Lucius’s “new” play—which had been stolen outright from Augustin Daly, though Lucius added some new songs—that Arabella stepped to center stage and announced, “In two weeks, I shall perform my last with this company. I have been asked to go on tour, and I have decided to accept the challenge.”

  We clapped and hooted and kissed her, tendering our congratulations, even as we were all secretly glad she was going, myself more than anyone. That night Stella and I drank a toast in the dressing room we shared. “To the leading lady!” she’d said, and I laughed and gulped down the wine, and after the performance we went to Arabella’s farewell supper at the restaurant on the corner and then to a saloon after, and we all got very drunk.

  But though my head was pounding the next morning, I woke and went to first call. I would be damned if I would miss Lucius calling my name for the lead. I wanted to savor the moment, no matter the pain. I wanted to hear everyone’s congratulations; I had worked so hard for them. And too, there would be Stella’s rise to celebrate as well. My handing off to her the first soubrette.

  I went downstairs and knocked on Stella’s door, but there was no answer; she must have gone already. That was odd, but I told myself she’d probably had some errand to run before she went to the theater. I went outside, where the morning was so bright it felt as if the sun were burning right through my eyes. It was midmorning, and the boardwalks were busy, wagons and drays splashing mud as they barreled down streets whose planked surfaces sank and rotted in the wet. It was a morning I wanted to fix into my head, the morning my dreams came true.

  The Regal was only a few blocks from my hotel, so in no time at all I was there, hurrying through the back door into the dead, burnt-out air of the theater, my eyes adjusting to the dim gaslight, so I nearly tripped down the dark and narrow stairs leading to the below-stage warren of dressing rooms and storage and Lucius’s office. At the bottom of the stairs, to the right, was the darkness under the stage where loomed the prop carriage and bigger sets that rose or descended through the traps in the stage floor; to the left was the greenroom. The door was open; I heard voices and stepped inside.

  The greenroom was furnished with several cushioned seats and chairs, all in various colors and various stages of disrepair. A three-foot-long wavery mirror hung on one wall, and good—and bad—notices were pinned and fluttering here and there. The call box was to one side of the door—just now it held only Lucius’s orders to appear at first call this morning and a formal good wishes proclamation for Arabella. Along with the familiar smell of gas lingering in an unwindowed room, the greenroom had a constantly moldy smell from the carpets. Aloysius claimed they’d once been abandoned in a swamp and Lucius had got them for almost nothing, and though I didn’t know if that was true, the smell was right.

  William Galloway, the company’s “first old man,” was there, finishing off a pastry while Aloysius read the newspaper, and Brody lay back on one of the settees, picking at his nails with a penknife. He was singing some tuneless song, and Aloys threw him an irritated glance before he rose and put aside the paper to give me a kiss. His dark mustache and Vandyke beard were soft against my cheek. “Darling, thank God you’re here. Now perhaps the boy will mind his manners.”

  Brody grinned and sat up, shoving the knife into his pocket. “Bea, thank God you’re here,” he said in perfect mockery of Aloys. “You’ve saved me once again from the old man’s pontificating.”

  “Perhaps he wouldn’t pontificate if you didn’t provoke him so,” I said with a smile, forgetting my headache.

  “Exactly as I’ve told him again and again.” Aloys reseated himself. “But look at you, darling, why, you’re blooming as a rose. Dare I take it to mean you have some foreknowledge of today’s events?”

  “I couldn’t say,” I said. “You know I’m not privy to Lucius’s secrets.”

  Brody guffawed. Aloys only smiled.

  Our “first old woman,” Mrs. Maryann Chace, sauntered in, huffing and puffing, and Mr. Galloway licked the last of the pastry’s glaze from his fingers and said, “At least Lucius isn’t bringing in some new girl. No need to get used to Bea.”

  “Good God, I hope so!” Mrs. Chace said. “It’s so jarring to adjust to something new. Change is so enervating. Why, I vow, each time a new day begins, it requires all my stamina to accommodate it.”

  “Where’s Jack?” Aloys asked, taking his watch from his pocket. “It’s half past already.”

  “ ‘Too swift arrives as tardy as too slow.’ ” Jackson, handsome as ever, his blond hair oiled and smooth, curling at his pockmarked jaw, stepped through the door tapping his cane, a new affectation, against the doorjamb. Jack glanced about the room until his dark eyes fell on me. He made a little bow, flourishing his cape like a melodrama villain. “Ah, there she is! ‘A daughter of the gods, divinely tall and most divinely fair.’ Shall we prostrate ourselves before our new queen Bea?”

  Now I laughed. “What assumptions you all make! I’m certain Lucius will have something to say about it.”

  “What can he say, except to anoint you in Arabella’s place?”

  “It’ll be good for you, Wheeler,” Brody put in. “You’re always bitching about kissing Arabella. Now you shall
have Bea to kiss instead.”

  Jack rubbed his chin and gave me a lecherous wink. “Softer lips than that wrinkled old hag’s, I’ll warrant.”

  “That’s not what you said two days ago,” Brody teased. “Bella was ‘radiant’—isn’t that what you said? I remember now: ‘I shall miss you as the sun misses the moon.’ ”

  Jackson sighed heavily and sat down, crossing his legs, resting his cane against the chair’s arm. “Come, come, you know I am the basest hypocrite. Like any drone I have no choice but to pursue the new queen.”

  “And I thought you loved me for myself,” I teased.

  “I do, my dear, I do. But you must admit you’ve grown more attractive with your new crown.” Jack inclined his hand toward me. “Come now, Queen Bea, and give us a kiss for joy.”

  I stepped over to him, and he unfolded his legs, gesturing for me to sit upon his lap, which I did, and then I leaned forward and quite mischievously gave him a long and lingering kiss. When I pulled away, Jack wrapped his arm about my waist and jerked me into his chest, saying, “My queen! Ah, take me now that I might die happy!”

  The room filled with laughter.

  “What’s this! Roman orgies in the greenroom? Please, children, I shall be collecting forfeits if you break rule number five!”

  It was Lucius’s voice. I looked over my shoulder to see him sweep in, clad in a dark blue coat I’d never seen before, and a bronze-checked vest that glimmered in the gaslight. His face was ruddy, as if he’d come from a distance, though his office was just down the hall. Behind him came Marcus Geary, our prompter, a man who resembled nothing so much as a little monkey, and behind him, Stella.

  There was something strange about that, you know, but I only thought it fleetingly, because she was beaming as she came in; of course she was—she was to be promoted as well. I took myself off Jack’s lap and smiled at her, and she ducked her gaze shyly.