you think you can sing this piece? Who do you think you are anyway?’ I just try to push the old nag as far back in the theater as I can get it. Try to get it out through the exit doors. Although, sometimes, it’s right there on the stage with you, but as long as it still has its shape, and isn’t stepping on your toes or anything, the anxiety isn’t too bad.”
“That’s a new one on me.”
“It was on me, too. Four years ago.”
“Well, then…I really wish you luck, Miranda.”
I yelped, “No, you can’t say that. It’s bad luck to wish me luck.”
“Sorry.”
“In opera we say toi, toi. Or mille fois merde.”
“Toi, toi then. And mille fois merde.”
“Thanks. I’m so excited about being able to do the audition right there in that theater. There’s nothing like standing up on a real stage where the great stars have sung and letting it rip into that huge space. It’s the most incredible feeling. It’s electric. It’s better than sex.”
She opened her eyes wide. “Really? Maybe I should give it a try.”
We both laughed, then I said, “I’ll be back in a few weeks to get my ticket.”
I was tempted to stay and tell her about the other things that were taking me to London. Like my father, the baritone Sebastian Lyme. And Kurt Hancock, the conductor/composer who was suddenly cutting into my practice time.
Kurt hadn’t been part of my strategy, but when he’d strolled into the rehearsal hall two weeks earlier to conduct the Madama Butterfly, all the chorus women were immediately in heat.
To be honest, he wasn’t really my type. I prefer darker, heftier men. Kurt is slim, blond and blue-eyed. But there were women in that chorus ready to poison their families and run away with him, and I guess, in trying to figure out what it was about him that was making them all unhinge, I let myself be carried away by the Kurt Hancock psychosis, too.
After that Butterfly rehearsal, everybody went out to Mimi’s, a Gastown restaurant where opera singers often showcase their talent. The place is decorated in Chocolate Box Gothic with rich dark heavy drapes and tablecloths edged with a fatal amount of flounce. It’s a home away from home for the opera bunch. Sometimes the singing is really fantastic, the performances glow, and sometimes the singers leave you feeling that it might be more fun to be slapped in the face over and over with a fresh cod than to have to listen to their talent. But I guess it’s a question of how everybody’s feeling.
That night was a fresh-cod night at Mimi’s, my fellow chorus singers all trying too hard to impress Kurt.
My defective tights had been slipping down all evening and eventually were clinging to my knees. I wanted to yank them up again without doing a striptease in front of the entire opera company, so I went looking for a private place to sort out the matter. The tiny bathroom was occupied but I opened the door next to it, which was a big broom closet, and stumbled onto Kurt.
He froze like a startled deer caught in headlights. I’m not sure what he was doing in there all by himself before I came onto the scene, but I’d heard a series of rhythmic thuds just beforehand, and now I thought he might have been punching or hitting something or someone. So I said (I was a little drunk), “Don’t mind me, Mr. Hancock. This won’t take long. You can go back to whatever it was you were doing in a second. I just have to take care of something.” And then I hitched up my dress and tugged everything into place.
He stared at me the entire time and I stared back. Then I noticed that the wall near his foot was covered with little black crescent-shaped marks. It wasn’t the first time I’d seen this sort of thing. Music training had taught me early on that pianists never use their hands when they have to punch something.
But then Kurt started to smile. And appreciatively, too. He looked quite sweet, even a little forlorn, and I began to get a glimpse of his charm.
I smiled back. He smiled even more broadly, then sat down on a bucket and started asking me all about myself. I told him the basics, that my name was Miranda, that I was a lyric mezzo-soprano from the illustrious cow town of Cold Shanks, B.C., and that I’d done my voice degree in Vancouver but was going to London in December to do an ENO audition. And then I added that my father also lived in London, and was a well-known baritone.
“Oh, really?” asked Kurt. “What’s his name?”
“Sebastian Lyme.”
Kurt stood up. “Sebastian Lyme? I have a Don Giovanni recording with your father singing the Don. A fine voice. A very fine voice indeed. I’ve seen him perform. He had great charisma on stage.”
“Really?” My heart began to race.
“Yes. He did a stunning Figaro in the Barber. Apart from his technical ability, the man had wonderful presence. Quite exceptional acting. He had the audience in stitches. Not an easy feat.”
I was nodding vehemently. More. I wanted him to tell me more. I wanted to kidnap Kurt Hancock and make him tell me everything he knew about Sebastian Lyme.
Kurt went on, “And he did an impressive Rigoletto for the Royal Opera, but that must have been a good ten years ago. It’s a pity we haven’t crossed paths… Oh, Good Lord! You’re not about to cry, are you?”
I laughed, shook my head and wiped my damp eyes. “It’s just that hearing about my father like that…out of the blue…”
“Heavens. It usually takes me at least a week to make a woman cry.”
We both laughed and then he said softly, “So you’ve followed in his footsteps. Marvelous. May I ask you a question?”
“Shoot.”
“May I kiss Sebastian Lyme’s daughter?”
I didn’t expect it but I let him because he’d really earned it. And it was a nice kiss—not too sloppy or dry, nor too deep or shallow. Maybe Kurt would never have taken notice of me if my father hadn’t exalted me like that. I was no longer a nameless chorus singer but Sebastian Lyme’s daughter. And I began to fall a little in love with Kurt that night because he’d said such nice things about my father. Something my mother rarely did.
We stayed in that broom closet for a very long time. He turned out to be an amazing kisser, and I started to imagine the possibilities, to think that maybe he could be my type after all. I guess he thought so too because every day for the next week there was such a huge delivery of flowers from “Admiring K to Beautiful M” that my roommate, Caroline, said our apartment was starting to remind her of a funeral parlor.
But I didn’t tell any of that to the travel agent. There wasn’t time. And Kurt didn’t want me to broadcast our relationship. If you could call it that. After two weeks, we still hadn’t made it past the intense talks and eager groping in the darker corners of the theater.
After the travel agent’s, I had to get to the supermarket to buy the fruit for the dinner party I was throwing on Tuesday night, and then to work. The unpaid ninety-nine percent of the plane ticket was now hanging over me.
I admit I was very hyper and distracted that Monday after buying my ticket. My mind had also been
