Chet Williamson - Reign

The duel began. Dex Colangelo pounced on the Steinway's keys, crashed out the opening minor chords of the scored battle, then darted into interweaving staccato runs intended to mimic the rattle of sabers onstage.

But the action between the two men could not hope to equal the dexterity of the musical accompaniment. Though Wallace Drummond tried his best to bring buoyant life to the carefully choreographed lunges, cuts, and parries, he had to carry Dennis Hamilton to do it. The piano played on, but the movement on stage slowed, as if the men were dueling in a thick swamp of dream, slowed, and then stopped, with Drummond's saber still en garde in arrested action, but with the point of Dennis's drooping to the wooden floor like an exhausted and storm-bent reed.

"Dex…" Quentin said softly. "Dex," he said louder, to be heard over the music that now accompanied only a tableau. Dex looked up, stopped playing, and sat back, his shoulders slumping. "What's wrong?" asked Quentin. "Did you forget the moves?"

Dennis shook his head.

"Do you not like the moves?"

"They're fine," Dennis said softly.

"Then," Quentin said, his voice rising, "why the fuck don't you do the goddamned moves!"

Dennis jerked his head toward the director, as if awakening from a long dream. "Is this the best we can expect?" Quentin's voice was tight, fighting for control. Dennis looked at him, then at Ann's face, filled with pity, and Steinberg's, frowning with concern.

"Can you do better?"

He turned, saw Terri Deems standing in the wings holding a costume, saw the cast watching, the dancers' taut bodies coiled with apprehension.

"Can you?" Quentin pressed. "Because if you can't, there is no way that this show can ever go on in eleven days. Eleven fucking days! "

"Quentin," Steinberg said quietly, "let's call a break -"

"It's not time for a break, John! Are you directing this show or am I?" He swung back to Dennis. "So what's it going to be, your majesty? Are you going to give me something or are you going to be a zombie up there? I want to know, and I want to know now!"

Dennis looked into Quentin's red face, looked at John, at Ann, at Drummond and Marks, at all of them waiting for him to speak.

"Don't you shout at me…"

Dennis's words were soft, but filled with angry intensity, and now they increased in volume and in furor. "Don't you ever, ever raise your voice to me again… you… scheiskopf! ” He saw Quentin's lips quiver, and something very much like joy surged through him. The saber tingled in his hand, and he raised it, swung it so that it sliced the air with a satisfying hiss. It finally felt at home in his hand, light, agile, ready.

"Let's do the scene," he said. "From the same place." He grinned at Marks and Drummond, a grin so wide it felt wolfish. "And we'll do it this time. Full out."

It was as though the years had rolled back. The performance, for performance it was, had the energy and the fury of youth, the anger of a lover bereft by death, a monarch usurped of his throne. Dennis shot out the lines like bullets, his voice and body full of command. The sabers danced as the music played, and those who watched felt that Wallace Drummond too had never acted better, in large part because of his all too real fear of Dennis's whistling blade.

Still, the movements came precisely as Quentin had staged them, except for Dennis's final thrust, when Drummond, in expectation, threw his upstage arm so far away from his body that, as Dan Marks laughingly said later, a small car could have been parked in the space, let alone a saber. Dennis's blade arrived at the planned and safe six inches from Drummond's torso, and Drummond clutched his chest and fell. The watching cast, Ann, Steinberg, Quentin, Dex, and even the unexcitable Curt Wynn, burst into a spontaneous ovation that lasted minutes, while Dennis stood trembling before them, his gaze fixed on the ground, his eyes slowly filling with long-sought tears.

That night, after a celebratory dinner with friends in the Kirkland Hotel's dining room, Ann and Dennis made love for the first time in many days, and lay afterward in each other's arms.

"You know you can do it now, don't you?" Ann said.

"Yes. It took a long time to get there, but I know I can now." He thought for a moment. "I think I can. Of course I don't know what might happen. I don't know how I'll feel when… if I have to face him."

"Maybe you already have. Maybe today was enough."

"Maybe." He kissed her cheek, and said, after a while, "They planned it, didn't they?"

"Who? Planned what?"

"Quentin and John. I suspect Dex was in on it too."

"Dennis…”

"Why else would John have been there right at the time of Quentin's blowup? And why did he drag you along?"

"He just said he wanted to go down and watch some of the rehearsal, and asked if I wanted to go along."

"Asked?"

"Well, he was pretty insistent."

Dennis chuckled. "It worked. It was shock treatment, all right, damned humiliating, but it did work. I was good, wasn't I?"

"You were wonderful. It was even better than in the film. There was a maturity about it, something born of experience."

"It felt good. I'd forgotten how good it could feel when everything was right, when I was really on. It is like I become the character. Only this time I poured my own emotions into it. It was different." He settled his head down further onto the pillow. "Maybe Sybil Creed's been right all along. Maybe you do have to pull things up from your gut… from your soul."

"Evan was proud of you," Ann said.

"I wish he could've seen it."

"Terri told him all about it." She nestled closer against him. "They've become quite the couple, haven't they?"

"Are they sleeping together?"

He felt her nod. "I'm sure."

"Like father like son."

"Like mother like daughter. We must find you Hamiltons irresistible." She sighed. "I just hope they don't hurt each other. There's so much more to love than just sex." Dennis was silent. "Isn't there?" Still silent. "Dennis?"

He turned in the bed, cupped her breast, and spoke in a comic French dialect. "Actually, madame, not at ze moment."

They laughed together, then kissed, Ann forgetting her daughter, Dennis forgetting his son, forgetting also his true and only son, forgetting the Emperor.

From that day until the day of performance, no one had time to be afraid or be concerned over anything but the show. They rehearsed as long and hard as Actors' Equity would allow. The set began to go up on Wednesday, and all the pieces were in place by Friday, when Evan Hamilton finally decided to return to the theatre.

If, he reasoned, his father could overcome the phobia that had been haunting him, then perhaps he could as well. He would, after all, not be alone. Terri, who had been instrumental in bringing him back to the building, told him that she would not leave his side, nor did she want him to leave hers. Though she had not told him specifically what Dennis's double had done to her, he knew that it was because of their previous confrontation that she too disliked being in less than a crowd in the building.

When he entered the theatre with Terri, they did so from the stage door that opened onto a short stairway. Down the stairs was a small green room. Several doors led to dressing rooms, and a corridor led backstage.

"Are you okay?" Terri asked him, touching his cheek.

"Yeah." He nodded. "I feel fine." He took her hand and led her down the corridor to the stage. The set was erected, hiding the auditorium from view. The crew was practicing scene changes, some on the pin rail, others hauling wagons and turntables. In an effort to keep the budget within limits and also save time, Mack Redcay had made the set pieces work manually.