The New World, 6/8

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(See intro for disclaimers)

[THE NEW WORLD, part 6 of 8]
(Second story in "The Disciple" arc)


"It's about one moment
 That moment you think you know where you stand
 And in that one moment
 The things that you're sure of slip from your hand."
             Jason Robert Brown, "The New World"


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Seacouver Opera House
Backstage
Tuesday evening
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


The dismal grey eyes looking back from the mirror were familiar,
but they weren't right yet.  Rachel frowned critically at her image
and picked up the eyeliner pencil again.  Leaning forward, she
propped her elbow on the makeup table, braced her little finger
against her chin, and began darkening the thick, dark brown
smudge that already rimmed her eyelids.

The long makeup mirror ran the length of the wall, with bare
white bulbs mounted above the mirror at every 12 inch mark.
The chorus makeup room was unisex, and the members of the
Seacouver Opera Chorus were lined up along the long shelf of the
table, perching on stools or on folding chairs, in a noisy, cheerfully
chaotic hodgepodge that would eventually coalesce onstage into a
single disciplined entity.

Rachel sat near the middle of the long table.  Her place was
marked by her name    "HUDSON"    written in black Magic
Marker on a piece of green duct tape.  The tape covered the
name of another soprano, who, so Rachel had been told, had left
Seacouver to take a teaching position.  The soprano's name, in
turn, had covered the name of a tenor who had developed vocal
nodes.  Rachel was just the newest in a long line of itinerant
singers who came and went, some of them salaried professionals,
some of them talented volunteers.

If *she* went, there wasn't anyone who would care.  There was
barely anyone who'd notice.  Another piece of tape would go up
with someone else's name on it, and in a few days everyone
would forget Rachel Hudson had ever sat there, painting herself
with Ben Nye "Warm Tan" pancake all the way from her hairline
to her fingertips.

On Rachel's right, Leslie Shakarian was humming the "Habanera"
and carefully painting on a line of liquid eyeliner with the round
end of a bobby pin.  She always used liquid liner, and she would
stick any old thing in it to use for a brush.  With halfhearted
interest, Rachel watched Leslie's reflection in the mirror as the
mezzo tugged at the outer corner of her eye, drawing on an
extended, sweeping black line.  She looked to Rachel more like an
Egyptian from "Aida" or "Cleopatra" than a gypsy from "Carmen",
but none of the assistant directors or stage managers had given
Leslie any notes telling her to tone her makeup down, so from the
house it must look okay.

Rachel began neatly recapping and tidying her own makeup
supplies, and her eyes returned to the mirror and to the image
reflected there    someone familiar to Rachel, and at the same
time, a stranger.  The woman who blinked back at her from the
mirror had dusky skin, and wild, curly black hair, impossibly long
and absolutely gorgeous.  The woman in the mirror was Rachel's
alter ego for the evening: Frasquita, Gypsy Sidekick, who didn't
take any crap off of anyone.  She was wearing one of Mari
Dauro's most outrageous creations: scraps of leather, satin, and
velvet, all somehow sewn together into a single garment; twenty
different colours, not a one of which occurred in nature.  The
woman in the mirror was fun, she was fearless, she was someone
who loved to show off.  *She* looked like she could hold a sword
and fight someone.  She wasn't anything like Rachel Hudson at
all.  She probably wouldn't even have liked Rachel.

And Rachel loved being that woman in the mirror.

But the wig and the makeup and the costume would all come off
after the final curtain, and the woman in the mirror would be
gone.  The only thing that would be left was Rachel.  Just plain
Rachel Hudson, who wasn't particularly fun, or particularly brave.

In the makeup room, the lights blinked briefly and the stage
manager's soft voice came over the loudspeakers.  "Ladies and
gentlemen, two minutes to curtain.  Onstage, please, and have a
wonderful show."  Forty chairs and stools pushed back from the
table as the chorusmembers finished their last minute adjustments
and swarmed towards the stairs that led up to the stage floor.
Over the PA system, Alis' voice was deceptively sweet and
warm.  Any chorus or crew member who had the misfortune of
being late for call, knew that the sweetness and warmth ended
whenever Alis clicked off her headset.  She never, ever told
anyone to "break a leg".  Alis was the stage manager.  When she
gave orders, things happened.

Rachel hurried up the stairs along with the rest of the chorus and
made her way to her position behind the stage right flat that
represented the cigarette factory.  Madame Dobrinsky, the
evening's Carmen, was there already, surrounded by a two foot
radius of the "personal space" that she insisted upon, onstage and
off, in all but the love scenes.  On the far side of the crimson
velvet front curtain, the audience began to applaud as Maestro
Sandoval made his entrance in the pit.  The oboe sounded a pitch
and the orchestra began to tune, and the pieces of Rachel's
fragmented life began to fall back into place.  As Frasquita, she
would be onstage for a lot of the evening.  She was at home
there.  She was safe.  She knew the rules, and she was good,
really good, at what she did.

The orchestra began to play, and for the first time in two days,
everything was right with Rachel's world again.

** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** **

The first act was just absolutely flawless, and the second started
out the same way.  As Frasquita, Rachel flounced and vamped
her way around the stage, flirting indiscriminately with the soldiers
and the peasants.  "Carmen" was a popular show, and this
production was full of action and motion.  Sylvie Dobrinski wasn't
the most accurate singer Rachel had ever heard, but she was one
of the sultriest.  The seduction scenes in Act I were eminently
believable, and Rachel watched the older woman closely every
chance she got, hiding in the wings and studying the diva's
physical technique, storing away the motions and body language
until she could pull them out later, practicing them on her own.

In the second act, as Frasquita and Mercedes, Rachel and Leslie
danced for the soldiers; their Escamillo made his showy entrance
and sang the "Toreador" aria to huge applause; and then he led
the chorus offstage.  Rachel, Leslie, and Madame were left
onstage with a few extras, and the Quintet was next    Rachel's
favourite scene, even though she had more solo lines later on, in
the Act III fortune telling duet.

The smugglers Remandado and Dancairo entered    young
singers on contract to the Company, like Rachel and Leslie    and
the quintet in praise of women's wits began: "Nous avons en tete
une affaire..."  The introductory dialogue was brief, and when
Maestro Sandoval set the orchestra off, the insanely fast tempo
drew a glance of unprofessional ire from Madame Dobrinsky.
Rachel's eyes sparked with delight.  The quintet was rapid fire,
lickety split French patter, and the faster they could take it, the
better the audience would like it.  In the arias, the orchestra had to
follow Madame, letting her take her time over the seductive
melodies and the high notes; but in the ensembles, the Maestro
and his baton reigned supreme.

The staging was every bit as quick as the tempo; Rachel flew
gleefully from the baritone's arms to the tenor's and back, dancing
around the table and stools, bright skirts and black curls swirling.
As Frasquita, she was the only soprano onstage, and her voice
sailed high over the lower tones of the other four singers.
Carmen announced that she was in love, Frasquita and Mercedes
begged to know who the lucky man was, and Dancairo and
Remandado made the usual guy jokes.  Then the breakneck
tempo started again, maybe even a hair faster than before.
Rachel offered the men her hands and stiffened her arms; they
boosted her to the tabletop, where she flung her arms wide --

        and didn't hit the high note.

Rachel stopped cold, right in the middle of her solo line, and gaped
at the audience.

It was...  it was *huge*.  There were three thousand people out
there in the dark.  Three thousand strangers.  She couldn't see
their faces, but they were there, and Rachel was up on a table,
under a hundred bright lights, on display where everyone could
see her.

What if one of them could feel her Buzz, but she couldn't feel him?

Mr. MacLeod had one of the private boxes on subscription.  Was
he there now?  If he were, could she tell?  Had he been there
before, without her knowing it?

Someone was tugging at her skirt.  Rachel looked down into
Harry Feldman's horrified eyes.  He yanked at her skirt again,
hard, and Rachel realized with a jolt where she was.  Aghast, she
reached for the baritone's shoulders; he grabbed her by the waist
and swung her down from the table and back into the frenetic
staging.  Once in place, Rachel picked up her lines and continued
in the quintet, moving through the complicated choreography
without error or hesitation.  But her peace was gone.

And the moment she was offstage, without the music to propel
her into action and keep her moving, the shakes hit.  Except for a
short mob scene at the end, the rest of the scene belonged to
Carmen and Don Jose'.  The chorus were all downstairs, but the
story of Rachel's embarrassing freakout would already be
spreading.  Leslie loved a good piece of gossip.

Rachel hugged herself tightly and stumbled to a far corner of the
wings; she leaned against the fly rail, her stomach clenched as
tightly as her fists, nearly doubled over.  Here in the dark, out of
sight of the audience of strangers, surrounded by half a dozen of
the crew, familiar and friendly faces all, she felt... not safer, but
less naked.  Oh God, oh God, oh God, oh God!

A hand lightly touched her shoulder; as gentle as it was, Rachel
still shrieked and jerked away.  She bit off the shrill yelp as she
whirled around sharply and shrank back into the corner, staring up
with wild, frightened eyes.

It was Rick, the tenor in the quintet.  The quintet Rachel had
royally screwed.

"Jesus, Rache," Rick hissed, snatching his hand back.  "Keep it
down!  I bet they heard that onstage!"

Rachel stared at Rick, her mouth half open, not knowing what she
could say, or if she could trust her voice not to tremble.  He didn't
Buzz.  Nobody here Buzzed.  Knowing it didn't help the shaking.
"Sorry," she said to Rick in a whisper.  Her voice sounded fine.
How strange that seemed.  "Rick, I'm so sorry, I don't know what
got into me    going up like that.  I don't know what happened."
Well, what was she supposed to say?  Sorry, Rick, I was
wondering if there's anyone in the house who might want to kill
me and it shook me up a little?  "Thank God Harry got me down
off that table.  I couldn't move."

"You went white," Rick said, half angry, half concerned.  "Like,
clown white.  Kabuki white.  Are you OK?"

"Just got    um    dizzy," Rachel lied, making her answer vague as
possible.  "Skipped dinner, I guess."

"Whatever it was, you better get over it," Rick warned her.  "And
keep out of Madame's way for a while," he added, wincing as
their Carmen hit a note out onstage that could have cut metal.
"She's singing like crap tonight, and after that quintet, she'll bite
your head off as soon as look at you."

At Rick's turn of phrase, Rachel's hands flew to her mouth, not
quite in time to stifle a high pitched, hysterical, rattling little giggle
from erupting; Alis looked over again with a storm warning frown,
and Rick held up a hand to her in acknowledgment.

"Shhh," he hissed sharply to Rachel.  "They can *hear* you,
damnit."

At the sharp look from Alis, Rachel forced her hands down to her
side.  Causing a scene    drawing attention to herself    yeah,
wasn't *that* a good idea.

Everything was OK, though.  Nobody here was dangerous.  She
was safe.

For now.

Rachel crossed her arms tightly and pressed her back against the
black painted back wall to still her shivering.  "Thanks, Rick," she
said in a whisper, calmer and a little more under control.  "I think I
just need to eat.  Low blood sugar or something."  She smiled at
him, trying for reassuring, and apparently getting close enough to it
for a tenor.  Rick nodded, shrugging a shoulder, and sidled behind
one of the far backdrops, heading towards the stairs to the
chorusroom.

Rachel watched him go.  It was the truth, as far as it went.  She
hadn't eaten in more than twenty four hours.  Food had barely
crossed her mind.  Why would it?  That ominous, anonymous
Buzz had torn apart the pretense that she was going to have a
normal life, full of normal things like meals and concerts and
apartment hunting.

She needed to think.  Rachel stared miserably into the dark,
fingers fretting at the ribbons decorating the front of her costume.
She needed to think, and to eat.  She needed to know more than
she did now.

But that would mean talking to Mr. MacLeod and asking him for
help.

It was a step Rachel was still afraid to take.  He had been kind to
her; kind, and generous, and helpful.  But she didn't know him, not
well enough to trust him with her life.  He and Richie had both
said they didn't mean her any harm, but did she dare trust them?

Mr. MacLeod and Richie Ryan knew about Rachel, and Adam
Pierson had been there at the dojo, too, that first awful night.  And
maybe a fourth person knew, too: that anonymous Buzz that had
so terrified her on Monday.  Four people who knew about her,
and they were all Immortals themselves, and all of them had
reason to want kill her.

There was a fifth person, a normal human, who didn't.  And Mr.
MacLeod had talked about a bar where Rachel would be
welcome.


[End of Part 6]

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