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“I remember,” I said. “Of course, the champagne wasn’t exactly a Krug Vintage Brut.”
“No. But it was the thought that counted. And it was made from grapes and it did have bubbles. I know Richie didn’t have any kids and he wasn’t married. Did he have anyone in his life?”
“I don’t think so. He had a girlfriend for a while. But they broke up a year ago.”
“So, there’s no one he left behind—other than Artie.”
“I guess.”
“Will it be a big funeral?”
“What do you mean by big?”
“Hundreds?”
I contemplated the number of BP employees who would be there. I tried to decide whether Richie was a fixture in Vegas or if he was on the periphery, one of the many with his fingers pressed against the outside glass windows of the properties that mattered. “Maybe a hundred,” I decided. “And that includes you and me. I don’t think he and Artie came from a big family or that he had lots of close friends.”
He seemed to take this in. I couldn’t decide from his face whether the fact that Richie had died alone made his demise more or less sad, but I had the sense that Nigel was relieved there wasn’t a grieving widow or girlfriend.
“Do we go on tonight? Is there a show?” he asked.
“The show always goes on. Unless Artie or Eddie tells us otherwise.”
“Understood. You’ll be okay?”
“Yes.”
“I’m sorry, Crissy. You knew him a lot better than I did.”
“Thank you. But let’s face it: I didn’t know him well.”
There were bottles of sunblock and moisturizer standing like toy soldiers on the table beside my chaise. He adjusted them as if he were a little boy. “In other news,” he said, “your sister called.”
“Checking on me?”
“Right.”
My sister, Betsy, and Nigel had met twice: a postshow drink one night and brunch the next day, when she flew west from Vermont to see the show after Prince Charles had been added. It was when our mother was still alive. I leaned back on the chaise and closed my eyes. “I’m sorry. She called me, too. I should have called her back. I just didn’t get around to it.”
“I told her you’re fine.”
“Well, I was before the news about Richie. I think I still am. Mostly.”
Betsy was my younger sister, but somehow, as adults, we’d swapped roles and she viewed herself as the older sibling who needed to look out for me. I was eighteen months her senior, but our resemblance had always been uncanny. Schoolteachers had often confused us, though I was a grade ahead of her. Strangers, when they saw us, supposed we were twins.
“Ever since your mum died,” he started to say, but I cut him off. A reflex.
“Since she killed our mum,” I corrected him, she being my sister.
Nigel and I had been onstage together barely a month when—wait for it—my sister killed our mother. It was an accident. But she still had blood on her hands, a spot that would never out—though, it seemed, it was my hell that was left murky.
“Our mum didn’t just die,” I went on. “That is a far too passive construction. I detest it when people go passive.”
“You’ll ring her back?” He didn’t mean to shame me, but still I felt shamed.
“Yes. Of course.”
Our mother rarely bought us matching outfits, but other people did. Every Christmas, the two of us were deluged with overalls and jumpers and dresses that made it clear to even the most oblivious onlooker that while we weren’t twins, we were close in age, and the resemblance was eerie. Nevertheless, in elementary school, our lives started to separate. It was just the two of us, and I started kindergarten first, which I suppose felt deeply unfair to her. Still, we never shared a bedroom. We never tried to create a special sisters’ language or fool people into believing one was the other. We had different friends as we grew up, despite the reality that our schools always were small, because other than the remarkable glimpse we gave the world of the numinous—two people who looked as much alike as two acorns—in most ways, we were profoundly different. I could sing. I could dance. I could act. But I could not have kicked a kickball eleven feet if you put a gun to my head. Betsy, on the other hand, was a beast at kickball, gymnastics, and on the ski slopes. She was ferocious, athletic, and the consummate risk-taker. (Arguably, she belonged in Las Vegas, not me.) She could sing too, but performing wasn’t something that interested her: she preferred athletics to the high school stage, and dropped out of dance class when she was in eighth grade and I was in ninth. A part of me had been relieved, because I sensed my kid sister had talent that dwarfed mine, but the decent part of my heart wondered at the waste of aptitude. Still, I was happier knowing that now she had her world and I had mine.
