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Chapter 42
Alison studied herself in the dressing room mirror as she applied her final coat of lip gloss. She fluffed her hair, smoothed down her gown.
Everything was perfect. She was all set for her final performance of the three-night run. It was all going smoothly.
Still. There was a wrongness in her belly that she just couldn’t shake. And she knew exactly what it was about: Troy.
He hadn’t returned her phone call. Instead, he’d sent her a text saying, “Sounds good. Talk when you get home.”
She’d analyzed those seven words for every possible shade of meaning so many times it made her head spin. It was so difficult to analyze tone and intention in a text message. Was it literal—he actually thought it sounded good? Or was it sarcastic—he actually thought it sounded terrible?
Well, she reasoned, at least he’d still called it, “home.” That was a good sign.
A light knock sounded at the door. “Five minutes, Ms. Bartholomew.”
“Thanks, Five,” she responded automatically.
She took one last look at herself in the mirror and then stood and walked through the dark, rope-strewn hallways that led to the stage.
God, she couldn’t help the tingle of excitement that flowed through her as she did. She loved the hard thrill she felt when the stage manager called five. She loved the way the backstage area of every theater she’d ever been in was dark and filled with shadows and pulleys and cords and lights and all of the other things that made the machine run smoothly behind the scenes.
She loved the sound her heels made on the boards when she stepped out onstage. She loved the hush that came over the audience when the lights came down. She loved the gasp of anticipation when the curtain rose, and the ripple of pleasure that went through the audience when the first actor said a line, or when she opened her mouth to sing.
There were so many things in the theater world she needed a break from, but the stage was certainly not one of them. It never would be.
She needed this. And she needed Valentine Bay. They were both her home, in a way.
She thought she knew how she could have both. She had a plan, and she was pretty sure she could make it work.
She’d just have to convince Troy that it would.
She walked out onstage, and the confident, bold sound of her heels on the hollow boards underneath her feet thrilled her just as hard as it had last night and the night before, and every night she’d ever heard it before, or ever would again.
The house lights came down, the curtain went up, the music began. She opened her mouth to sing…and then time simultaneously sped up and stood still until the moment she was thanking the audience and walking offstage, waving with both of her hands above her head.
That was such a strange phenomenon, and one she’d never been able to adequately explain to anyone who didn’t have greasepaint in their veins. When you performed, it seemed like the performance was the whole world, and you existed in it without the bounds of time.
But, simultaneously, it also felt like it was over in the mere snap of fingers. A split second, then done. Even though those two concepts seemed completely at odds with each other, in reality, they weren’t. They coexisted quite comfortably. And if you’d experienced that inexplicable mental state even once, you never stopped chasing it.
That was what it meant to be in the theater. She understood now in a way she never had before that it would never leave her.
But, much in the same way, Valentine Bay was now in her soul forever—and she’d taken a big step to prove that permanence.
She didn’t blame Troy for being wary of her reliability. After all, he had Mila to think about. She just hoped that what she’d done was enough to prove to him that she was in it for the long haul.
She returned to her dressing room and waited for the parade of well-wishers to come through. Opening night and closing night were always the busiest when it came to local luminaries stopping by backstage to congratulate her, and take photos, et cetera.
Just because she was finished singing didn’t mean the performance was over.
The first person to knock on the door was the mayor of San Francisco, with a huge flower arrangement and five people in his entourage. She chatted with him and then took photos with everyone in his group, and then it was on to the next group.
The following hour and a half passed by in a blur with similar interactions repeating over and over again. 49ers, Raiders, and Warriors. DJs from KOIT and KFOG. Anchors from KQED.
By the time the stream of people had abated and she was finally free to sit among the virtual sea of flower arrangements they’d left in their wake and start the arduous process of taking off her makeup and stage jewelry, she was exhausted. It was already past midnight.
Her flight took off at seven a.m., and she’d pretty much decided to forgo sleeping at all that night. She’d stop by the hotel and pack up her things, Uber to the airport and see if she could get on an earlier flight back home.
Home.
