Tina Connolly - Copperhead

“Let’s go downstairs,” said Helen. She smoothed out Frye’s dress, which she apparently had slept in—well, she remembered doing so perfectly well, it wasn’t as though she had drunk that much—it was more that it was odd in the morning to discover what had seemed like a good idea the night before. She shoved her feet into her heels and helped Jane down the stairs.

The landing was empty, but clinking sounds emanated from the kitchen, along with a low voice chanting, “Hangover cure, hangover cure…,” until a sharper voice made it stop.

The kitchen was one of those modern compact efficiency stations. It would be rather dreary, except that Frye had knocked out a wall to meet the small dining room, and painted the remaining studs deep plum. The long-legged piano player from the other night was cheerfully mixing drinks for a small clump of less-cheery-looking revelers. Helen did not think anyone had come up to the attic, so she could only assume they had collapsed in a heap on the parlor divans. Through the gap between the purple studs Helen could see the other piano player, the rumpled brownish one, still looking rumpled in loud plaid trousers and frying up slices of bacon.

“Morning,” she said, and there was a muffled chorus of grunts in response.

Alberta looked up from the china cup she was cradling in her hands. Her face was friendly but wary, as if admitting they had had a moment last night, but not particularly sure she was ready to extend that into friendship. “Hangover cure?” she said. “The Professor’s frying up greasy things and Stephen’s making Dead Dwarves.”

Jane raised her eyebrows.

“Tomato juice and vodka,” explained Helen to her sister, glad to see a familiar disapproving look on Jane’s face. “And an egg.” Because the egg made it all right or something. Oh, whatever. Now everyone’s looking at you. Hurry up and move past it. “I’d take tea if you have it,” Helen said.

Alberta nodded at the brown stoneware teapot next to a pile of mismatched cups and mugs. “How’s that bacon coming, Professor?”

“On in five,” said the man frying bacon.

Helen found an empty seat. There was a scarlet blanket draped over one of the chairs and she tugged it off and wrapped it around Jane, who looked as though she might faint or be ill at any moment. She provided her sister with toast, and water, and toast again, and then Jane said, “I’d better lie down right now, ” so Helen helped her to the nearest divan. After that she finally sat down herself, cradling a cup of precious hot tea in her hands.

“I’m pretty sure Frye’s up,” said Alberta, but just then Frye swept in in crimson silk pyjama pants, holding a newspaper, her color high.

Her gaze swept the room, taking in the two sisters. “You found Jane!” she said to Helen. Helen nodded and started to explain, but Frye held up a finger and forestalled her. “Tell me everything in just a minute. This is first.” She brandished the newspaper and proclaimed to the room, “You are all staying here until further notice.”

“I’m not,” said Stephen, “I play rehearsal piano at the Pine Theatre at noon. Dead Dwarf?”

“ You may go,” said Frye, with a dramatic sweep of her arm, simultaneously taking the tumbler he offered, “because you are a man .”

“Excuse me?” said Alberta.

Frye plonked down the newspaper on the table. “Curfew Announced,” it read in big letters, and then below it, a raft of tiny details. “Curfew starts at sundown—which, I might add, is six o’clock this time of year—and it is for all women.”

“What?”

“Let me see.”

“Not just all women with fey faces,” said Frye, indicating herself and Alberta. “All women.”

Stephen vaulted the chair and looked more closely at the paper in front of Frye. “Not just all women,” he said. “All dwarvven, too.”

“And probably anyone even remotely different after that,” Alberta said soberly. She exchanged a look with Stephen. The rumpled man frying eggs had come in to watch, and he stood over Stephen’s shoulder, not noticing as grease dripped onto the table from his spatula.

“This is madness,” said one of the other women, a blonde in wrinkled sea green silk. “How will the shows run? You can’t have The Lady Was Willing without the lady.” She patted her hair.

“I thought you were playing the best friend,” said a trim, plain-faced brunette.

“I never said I wasn’t. And the point is the same.”

“There’s a dozen of us in the Winter Wonderland panto chorus that opens Friday,” said the brunette. “I mean, forget all the leads for a moment. We play the snowflakes and singing skiers and everything else. You take out the chorus and you’d have a pretty sorry-looking show.”

“The stage will be all men again,” rumbled the Professor. “I can finally play Lady MacDeath.”

“If you’re quite done thinking only of yourself,” said Alberta.

“Let me see that,” said Helen, cutting through the chorus of moans. She picked up the newspaper and saw that Frye had not been exaggerating. The notice was couched in a lot of doublespeak about safety and welfare that reminded her uncomfortably of Alistair’s words upon taking her mask, as if he had been a mouthpiece parroting Grimsby. Perhaps even more disturbing was that at the very bottom it said, “By order of Parliament and Copperhead.”

“Things must be bad if they’re getting their name on official legislation,” Stephen said soberly.

“Things as in the fey?” said Frye. “Or things as in the state of the men in this country trying to make us all frightened, using the fey as an excuse so they can run things?”

“Both,” said Stephen.

“Whose side are you on?” put in the Professor. “Don’t tar all men with this, it’s a class problem.…”

The argument rose and the room blurred in her sights as Helen thought: Yes, Stephen is right that things are bad. It is like poor Millicent with the perfect face and the iron mask. It would be a real danger to go out, but that did not mean Grimsby had the right to make her a prisoner in her own house. Who is this Grimsby, that my indolent husband has turned to him? That this country gives him the right to tell half of us when we can leave our house, where we can and can’t work? She spread her fingers on the tablecloth, smoothing linen wrinkles out to her saucer.

“Well, that’s that,” said the brunette. “I’m getting down to the theatre right now to get my cancellation pay before anyone else tries it.”

“Surely there’ll be exceptions for people who are working,” said the blonde.

“No exceptions,” said Alberta, pointing to the notice. “It’s almost like they want us to be stuck at home, unable to earn a living.”

“It’s exactly like that,” said Frye, her face flushed with frustration and anger.

“If Sturm und Drang think they can replace me with a man they have another think coming,” said Alberta.

“ Saucy Solstice Spectacular! won’t need a rehearsal pianist if this news holds true,” Stephen said glumly. “You can’t have the story of three leggy dance-hall girls looking for love on the darkest day of the year without the girls.”

“Men,” said the Professor. “Recast it all with men.”

“Ugh,” said Alberta.

One by one they hurried out into the November air, till all that was left was Frye and Jane and Helen and the leftover scent of blackened bacon.

Frye sank to one of the vacated chairs, her lanky frame collapsing. “From one perspective it hardly matters,” she said. “Ticket sales were down down down on Ahoy! This is just the death knell. Those silly actors aren’t even realizing they’ve lost half their audience as well. And how many men would go see an all-male Saucy Solstice Whatnot ? Just the Professor and his sort of friends, and you can’t live off of that.” Frye rubbed the heels of her hands over tired eyes, smearing the remnants of olive eyeshadow around. Then she rocked her chair back and gently nudged Jane, who was still flat on the divan. “But I guess it’s finally a good time for me to do the facelift,” she said. “I’m so glad you’ve come home safe.”