T. Bunn - Winner Take All

“I am a star,” she quietly declared. And she knew it was so.

The backstage area was a rat’s warren, ill designed and windowless. All the Lincoln Center nonpublic areas were a horror. Water seeped down cracked walls and puddled around live wires. Wallpaper draped like last year’s marquees. The buildings showed their crumbling flaws nowhere so well as backstage.

Where the dressing rooms joined with the main hall leading to the guard and the stage exit, Erin faltered. What if Dale was still waiting for her outside the main stage door? There in front of the fans waiting to beg for a moment of the diva’s time, with the photographers and the tourists and the reporters, all eager to see the disastrous second act-she couldn’t face him. Not like that.

Eyes were on her now, she could feel them like snakes coiling to strike. Thankfully, she had taken time to charm the young guard manning the stage-door booth. Erin flipped the silk shawl higher upon her frame like a countess arranging her cloak. The guard watched her with the careful gaze of one who knew Erin Brandt had her moods, and that he should speak only when she addressed him first. Then he noticed her smile and rose to his feet. It was good to know the magic worked, even in her present wounded state.

“Ms. Brandt, how are you today?”

She recalled his name at the last possible moment. “Greg, you’re looking positively delicious.”

He grinned and hitched the heavy gun belt all the guards wore. Greg’s smile broadened to where he showed every stained tooth. “Thanks, ma’am.”

“And that Southern gallantry, why, I don’t know if I can control my baser instincts.” She leaned over the panel so that he could catch a whiff of her perfume, a concoction made specially for her by an Oriental spice merchant off the Rue St. Honoré. “Would you do me a great kindness?”

“Anything, Ms. Brandt.”

“I don’t feel able to meet the public today.”

He was already raising his walkie-talkie to his lips. “Jimmy, you think you could step inside for a sec?”

Avery Fisher Hall’s stage door opened directly onto 65th Street. For dress rehearsals and major performances, a guard the size of an industrial refrigerator was stationed outside. Jimmy had to bend over to make it through the door. “What you need?”

“Ms. Brandt wants a hand to the side door. You mind taking over here for a second?”

“No problem.” All the guards came to know the quirks and fancies of the major stars. Erin Brandt had a rep for showing little patience to the fans and would-be singers who collected around the back entrance. “You got a car coming today, ma’am?”

She hesitated. This was something Reiner would have seen to. But Reiner was still in Germany. “I’m not sure.”

“No problem. I saw a couple of limos cruising out front, I’ll call one around.”

She could have kissed the man. Really. “Thank you so much.”

Greg shifted his bulk out of the tight guard chamber and walked to the steel side door. He used his guard’s passkey to unlock the door, and held it open. “Right this way, Ms. Brandt.”

Greg scuttled ahead to the end of a drab concrete hallway and opened the second connecting door. This joined to the hall’s side entrance. Greg then held open one of the glass doors connecting to the underground parking lot. The lane made a tight U around the bank of backstage service elevators and exited just before where 65th Street met Columbus Avenue. On this late July afternoon, the hot air held an astringent stench. Erin could not help but glance over to the Met’s main stage entrance. She felt her features draw back in bitter wrath. That was where she should be. It should be her full-length photograph staring loftily down from the long hall leading to the guard’s station. This should be her era.

Her bitter reverie was interrupted by someone calling, “Ms. Brandt?”

The driver was a stranger, not uncommon in a city where the limo listings took over ten pages of the phone book. He was standing alongside a new-style town car, which she particularly detested. “Yes?”

He opened the rear door. “I was sent to collect you.”

The guard took a step forward. “Do I know you, man?”

The driver was an odd-looking character, even for this town of bestial abnormalities. His red hair descended in a gradual slant to almost meet his eyebrows, leaving the impression that his frontal lobe had been compressed into apelike proportions. He raised both hands, bunching his dark coat around shoulders like knotted melons. “I just go where I’m ordered. My call sheet says this car’s been laid on for a Ms. Brandt.”

Suddenly all she wanted was away. “It’s all right, Greg.”

“Jimmy was gonna call somebody around from the front.”

Which would be just another stranger, and one she would have to pay herself. Another item on her much-loathed list. “This man is already here. I may as well go now.” And if she waited Dale might find her and make another scene.

Greg hovered alongside until she was in the wash of air-conditioned air. This was New York. Lincoln Center guards were uniformed, alert, and everywhere. Which was why she was not particularly worried about the redheaded man shifting himself behind the wheel. Even when she caught a whiff of his scent, which was atrocious. “Who sent you?”

“City Services, ma’am.”

“I meant who ordered you to pick me up.”

He halted by the exit onto 65th and checked his clipboard. “All I got here is the place, the name, and the time.”

“Never mind.” She relaxed into the black leather seat, and was instantly enveloped by the smell of cold ashes. Another reason why she hated these American limos. Cigarette smoke clung to them for centuries. And the man’s odor really was too much. He smelled like one of those grease-laden men who populated the waterfront bars back in Wilmington, blind to any turn the world might have taken since rockers all wore white socks. “Take me to the Plaza.”

But the driver continued one block farther toward the park, then halted by an entrance to another parking garage.

“Where …”

Her unformed question was answered by the rear door pulling open. An all too familiar face leaned over and said, “Going my way?”

“Not you. And especially not now.”

“This won’t take long.” He slipped into the seat beside her. “Drive.”

She slid as far from him as she could. “You really are detestable. If you had any idea how difficult a day I’ve had, you wouldn’t dare disturb me.”

“ Your day is difficult?” His laugh had deteriorated more than any other external component. He still managed to hold on to his looks and his power and his rage. She had always found his wrath most appealing, particularly when she could harness and exploit it. But his laugh sounded like something unearthed from a very old grave. “My dear, this is just too rich.”

Instead of turning onto Central Park West, the driver powered through the light and entered the park on the 65th Street transverse. Erin demanded, “Driver, stop this car.”

In reply, he took the turn onto West Park Drive so hard the car rose up like a boat in heavy seas. Turning away from the Plaza and safety.

“Driver!”

“Save it, my dear.” The man beside her propped his briefcase in his lap and flipped the catches. “He cares for you about as much as I do. Which of late is hardly at all.”

The knife he drew out was long as a scimitar. She would have screamed, but all she could feed into her lungs were ashes and fear.

“I don’t suppose you’d care to tell me where you’ve stowed the little darling.”

She could not take her eyes from the blade. “You’re insane.”