In the morning I make a quick breakfast of eggs and toast, and then we have to get ready because there are only four days left before opening night.
“I brought a change of clothes. I should probably go shower and get ready,” she says.
I look at her as if that’s the craziest idea in the world. “No. I don’t think that will happen.”
She tosses me a curious look. “I’m not allowed to shower here?”
“You’re not allowed to shower without me.”
I take her into the beige tiled bathroom, and there’s room for two. As the steam fills the shower, I rinse the shampoo out of my hair. Then, I feel something absolutely fantastic as Jill’s hands run down my chest, my legs, and then she’s kneeling, taking me in her mouth, her beautiful lips surrounding me. I look down, and groan because there is no hotter sight in the entire world than this. I watch her lips move, and I want to finish this. But I want her too, so I pull her off, grab her h*ps and lift her up and against the shower wall, then bring her down hard on me and move inside her fast, furiously, as she grapples with my hair, my shoulders, my back until she comes apart, and I do the same.
Then, we go to work.
Chapter 24
Davis
“This is awful. It’s all terribly awful. It’s the worst mess I’ve ever seen.”
Alexis stomps her high-heeled foot dramatically down on the floorboards, decked out in Ava’s costume for our final dress rehearsal.
“It’s not,” I assure her. “It’s great. It will all be great,” I tell her, doing everything I can to keep my cool as she throws her patented dress rehearsal fit.
“No, it’ll be a disaster,” she whines, pursing her lips into a pout as if she’s going to force herself to cry. “It’ll close in eight days.”
“Don’t say that. Don’t ever say that,” I say, as if I’m talking to a petulant child, but one I need to encourage because that’s the only way to end this sort of tantrum, since she’s now flung herself dramatically onto the steps that lead up to her dressing room. “It’s going to be fantastic. Now, come on and let’s do the final number.”
Her head hangs between her legs in the most woeful pose. I offer her a hand. “You can do this, Alexis.”
She shakes her head and heaves her shoulders. “I need a minute alone.”
She retreats up the stairs to her private dressing room, slams the door and stalls the rehearsal for a full ten minutes as she’s locked in there, the rest of the cast waiting for her to deign to return. Shannon gives me a wide-eyed look and taps her watch as if to say tick tock.
I sigh heavily, then march up the steps and knock on the door.
“Alexis, we need to finish up. I know you can do this. I have absolute faith in you.”
She opens the door and peeks out, and in a meek voice she says, “You do?”
“Yes, you’re Alexis f**king Carbone, for God’s sake. Everyone loves you. Now let’s finish the rehearsal.” I offer her a hand, but instead she flings her arms around me, clasping me tight.
“Thank you. Thank you for believing in me, Davis.”
She lets go and flashes me a smile, and as she does I can smell whiskey on her breath. I roll my eyes when she looks away. She heads down the steps holding the railing, descending as if she’s some southern belle at a debutante ball, waving to the cast on stage waiting for her. Then the heel of her shoe hooks into the metal on one of the steps, and in an instant her leg is bent, and she’s grabbing at the railing, but missing as she tumbles in a wild mess down the stairs.
The entire theater turns starkly silent for one brief moment, then the quiet is broken with a deafening wail that rings through the house. I rush down the steps and Shannon races to Alexis as the star of the show clutches her knee, shrieking.
An hour later, Shannon calls me from the hospital to tell me Alexis has a torn ACL and will be on crutches for four to six weeks, and out of commission for even longer.
I find Jill in her dressing room, chatting with Shelby and looking at photos on their phones. I don’t smile, I don’t laugh. I’m not glad that Alexis is hurt. But, it feels a bit like payback, and a lot like karma for Alexis.
I rap my knuckles against the doorframe. Jill looks up. “It appears you’ll be opening the show, and starring in it, too, for the foreseeable future.”
Her eyes go as wide as saucers, and she tries to hold back her glee with little success as I tell her what happened.
“Is she going to be okay?” she asks, and I’m proud of Jill for having the common decency to ask.
“She’ll be fine in time. As for now, the show must go on.”
Jill
I can barely eat the next day, I am so aflutter with nerves. But I force myself to finish off a piece of toast, and Kat brews me tea.
“I believe it’s the drink of choice for all the superstar sopranos,” Kat says as she hands me a mug.
I take a deep breath, and it’s probably the fiftieth or the five hundredth I’ve had to stop and take today to quell the butterflies. I always knew it was a possibility that I might go on, but I figured it would be a night here, a night there. Not opening night. I drink the tea then grab my purse and head for the door.
“See you after the show? You’ll come backstage, right?”
“Like I would miss it for anything.” She rolls her eyes. “Get out of here. And I’d tell you to break a leg, but somehow I don’t think that’s the right thing to say at the moment.”
I reach for the door handle, then stop, and turn back. “Kat?”
“Yeah.”
“I love you. I just wanted to say it.”
“I know, silly. I love you too. I’ll be in the third row, and I will be your biggest fan.”
“Bye.”
Then I leave and I take the subway, because I always imagined when I went to work in my first starring role that I’d take the subway, I’d emerge from the New York underground into the neon and lights and noise in Times Square, and I’d walk purposefully to the theater, head backstage, get into costume and do a few quick warm-up vocals.
So that’s what I do. As Shelby and I run through our exercises I am jittery, I am jumpy, but I am also confident. I’ve been ready for this since before we even started rehearsals. I know Ava, I know this show inside and out.
I don’t take over Alexis’ dressing room because that would seem a bit rude. I stay with my chorus girls, because I am still a chorus girl. I’m just the lucky one who gets to swoop in at the last minute.