And he thought putting on an NFL game was complicated.
Liv took him to the maze that made up the various rooms of the costume department: areas packed with bolts of fabric, sewing machines, long tables where garments were being cut and hand-stitched, and rows of headless mannequins wearing parts of costumes.
“Madame Shore!” An older woman with cropped, pumpkin-colored hair bustled toward them, a pair of reading glasses jiggling on a long chain at her chest.
“Luella! It’s good to see you.”
Liv performed the introductions, and Luella took over the tour, showing him vast racks where thousands of garments were stored. “We had fourteen hundred costumes for War and Peace alone,” Luella told him.
He met a cobbler resoling a pair of boots and watched a wig being made. The meticulous process of adding only two hairs at a time required a patience he couldn’t imagine.
Everywhere they went, he witnessed the staff’s affection and admiration for Olivia, an affection she returned. She remembered the names of husbands, wives, children, and boyfriends. She asked about ailments and work commutes. She advanced through her world the same way he did through his, paying attention to everyone, from the top administrators to the most junior employee.
A few people recognized him—the guy in charge of pressing the wrinkles out of bolts of fabric, a middle-aged woman doing intricate embroidery work, a couple of millennials, but this was clearly Olivia’s show.
Luella disappeared around the corner and returned with the gown he recognized from YouTube videos of Carmen: a deliberately tatty, low-cut dress with a purposely grimy white bodice, a corseted middle, and a full scarlet skirt. Olivia tensed next to him as Luella spread it out on the table and opened the back.
“L’amour est un oiseau rebelle,” the woman said. “Love is a rebellious bird.”
He knew that one by now; it was the official title of “Habanera.” As he took in the neckline, he remembered the way Liv’s oiled breasts had spilled over the top. The way the skirt had swirled around her bare, splayed legs. Sexier than porn.
Luella opened the back of the gown. “Look at this, Mr. Owens.”
Three white labels had been sewn in, each one printed in black marker with the name of the performer who’d worn the gown, the act number, and the opera in which the costume had been worn.
Elīna Garan?a, Act 1, Carmen
Clémentine Margaine, Act 1, Carmen
Olivia Shore, Act 1, Carmen
Olivia touched the label. “The history of each costume.”
“I hope it won’t be long before you wear it again,” Luella said.
Olivia nodded, even as her lips tightened at the corners.
*
Luella’s comment stayed with Olivia for the rest of the day. What if she never again wore Carmen’s costume? Or, more pressing, Amneris’s elaborate Egyptian headdress and jeweled collar? The last time she’d sung the Judgment scene as Amneris, the audience had come to its feet. Now, she’d be booed.
*
Henri accompanied her as she spoke to high school students at an Upper East Side music conservatory the next morning, while Thad visited a group of student athletes with Paisley. The conservatory teens were a dynamic mixture of scholarship kids and kids from wealthy families. Their enthusiasm for music, honest questions, and uncensored opinions reminded her of the way she’d been in that innocent time years earlier when she could never have imagined she’d let her voice be stolen.
Henri had insisted on a limo, although they could have made the trip faster on the subway. As he spoke on the phone, her thoughts took an unpleasant turn to Adam, the threats she’d been receiving, and her upcoming performance at the Muni. They stopped at a light on Fifth Avenue. She glanced over at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and what had been only the faintest notion grew in urgency. She checked the time on her Cavatina3. It was 9:56 a.m. on the dot. Perfect.
“Henri, the museum is opening in four minutes, and I’m going to make a quick stop. I’ll meet you at the hotel.”
“Non, non! Thad has insisted—”
“It’s the Metropolitan. I’ll be fine.” She jumped out of the car before he could stop her, crossed through a break in traffic to the curb, and waved him on. An impulsive visit to the Metropolitan Museum of Art just as the doors were opening hardly counted as high risk.
“We will wait for you!” Henri shouted, sticking his head out the open window, his brown hair streaming straight back from his face. “Text me when you’re ready.”
She waved in acknowledgment and climbed the front steps.
It didn’t take long to clear security and pay her entrance fee. She knew exactly where she wanted to be—where she needed to be—and she took a quick turn to her right. She moved through the Tomb of Perneb without stopping. He was only a Fifth Dynasty court official, and she needed more power than he offered. She wove past the mummies and funerary equipment of the Ptolemies and the chapel reliefs of Ramses I until she reached the Temple of Dendur.
The hordes of visitors hadn’t yet descended, and the spacious light-filled gallery with its sweep of angled windows was quiet. This might be the Met’s most popular exhibit, but popularity hadn’t brought her here, nor had nostalgia for the times she’d performed in this same spot at cultural events and black-tie galas. She’d come here because the Temple of Dendur was dedicated to Isis, and Isis was one of the Egyptians’ most powerful gods of both healing and magic, two things she sorely needed.
The reflecting pool representing the waters of the Nile glistened in the morning light. She bypassed the temple’s gate and went directly into the temple itself, passing through its twin columns with their papyrus plant capitals. Two other visitors had beaten her here. Maybe they, too, felt the sacredness of this space because neither was speaking.
She’d once visited the temple with an Egyptologist who’d been able to read each of the ancient hieroglyphics covering the sandstone walls, but she’d been more interested in imagining the lives of the Nubian people who’d gathered here.
She touched the wall. Isis, if you have any mojo left, would you fix me? Would you ease my chest, open my throat? Give me back my confidence. Let me—
“Olivia?”
She spun around to see a small woman entering the temple. Her hope for solitude vanished.
“My dear.” The woman took Olivia’s hands. “I was just thinking about you!”
“Kathryn, how are you?”
“So busy! With the Aida gala only three weeks away, my head is spinning with ideas. We’re building a re-creation of Dendur at the front entrance for the guests to pass through.”
“I’m sure that’ll be amazing.”
Eugene Swift’s widow looked like the stereotype of a seventy-year-old art patron. Slim and trim, with a black velvet headband holding her gray bob away from her face, she wore what was surely vintage Chanel, along with the low, square-heeled black pumps—probably Ferragamo—that women of her age and social status favored. As her husband’s replacement on the board of the Chicago Municipal Opera, as well as one of its most generous donors, she was the last person Olivia wanted to know about her voice. “What are you doing in New York?” she asked.