Performance Anxiety

“How very peculiar.”

“He was dressed in Louis XIV period costume, but it was more than a costume, they were his clothes. Beautiful strange music was coming out of his coat.”

“Too much cheese and crackers before bed, Miranda.”

I ignored him. “I think I wanted to yank the coat off him, too. I wanted to wear it myself. It was gorgeous. I’ve got to try to remember the music…” I faced Kurt. “He looked like you, you know. And my father. Alternately.”

“Good Lord. I certainly hope I’m not going to meet the same end as Lully.”

“What end?”

“Well, my love, the foolish chap punctured his foot while banging time with a conducting staff, during a performance of a piece celebrating Louis’ recovery from an illness. Lully wouldn’t have the injured toe cut off and so died of gangrene poisoning. Silly sod.”

“I think we better not analyze this one too deeply,” I said.

“No, let’s analyze something pleasant. Like your body.” Kurt wrapped himself around me and started all over again, hands and tongue working me over until I was reduced to an orgasmic mush. After he’d finished with me and I lay there unable to move, he said, “It’s all going to be just fine. Wait and see. And remember, it’s not going to be forever. Find a nice little gay friend to entertain you when we’re not together. That’s what Olivia always did.”

But from one last untouched cell of me, a shady all-knowing brain cell, a bubble of anger floated up. “I don’t know, Kurt. It’s all wrong,” I admitted.

“It will be fine. You really must learn to be patient, my love,” he soothed, and began to touch me again.

This time it was a competition to see who could make the other experience the most sensations. I did my very best but I think Kurt won. Again, I was paralyzed.

“Okay, okay, I surrender,” I whispered.

My entire body felt like sluggish liquid as I poured myself out of bed and fumbled with my dressing gown. In my head, the words it won’t be forever repeated themselves over and over. I looked back at Kurt. He was propped up on one elbow, admiring me, his face filled with happiness. How could I not believe somebody as gorgeous and talented and famous as that, somebody who adored me with all but one appendage?

At 9:05 the next morning, I was dressed and staring at myself in my full-length bedroom mirror. Pointy blue reptile cowgirl boots, La Perla tights with blue roses printed on a gray background, short jeans skirt and jacket, hair in a ponytail. Behind me, the bed, the IKEA bed I’d rushed out and bought because I couldn’t entertain Kurt on my old student-style foam-rubber floor mattress, was empty. The only trace of Kurt was the snowy battlefield of rumpled sheets.

It was important not to obsess about this new tic of his. Concentrate, I told myself, concentrate on Matilde.

I switched on the electric keyboard and sang a few soft scales, then moved on to some louder ones. When my voice was warmed up, I let loose with the kind of high notes that remind the neighbors in the surrounding square mile that there’s an opera singer in the zone. Just so they didn’t forget.

Sounds of ransacking from the kitchen made me stop singing. I hurried from the bedroom, increased speed down the hallway, skidding to a halt just in time to see it. Caroline had her head in the fridge. Her friend, Dan the Sasquatch, was sitting at the kitchen table. He was the hairiest individual I’d ever seen. He also had the habit of mooching around without a shirt. It was enough to put you off your food.

At my 1950s aluminum-sided raspberry Formica kitchen table, Dan the Sasquatch was smoking his strange little rollies. Caroline knew this was a nonsmoking apartment. I’d been adamant. But for some reason I couldn’t fathom, the Sasquatch was The One, right down to his dreadlocks. He was the man she’d break all the rules for.

He forever rolled those little cigarettes too loose. Tiny curls of tobacco sparked and leaped out of the lit end and landed on his furry chest. I had this fear that one morning, when Caroline wasn’t there, he’d catch fire and I’d have to put him out, throw water on him, stamp on him, or roll him in my favorite rug, ruining my one threadbare but lovely kilim. Or worse, that he’d burn my place down.

Not that it would have been a huge loss. Despite my craving for more luxurious conditions, all my furnishings were misfits given to me by friends on the move, or other singers off to other gigs on the other side of the country. I dreamed of a gorgeous home put together bit by bit with a sense of style and real money. But it was futile. If one of those big-city jobs came through—if I got the call from Toronto, or San Francisco or New York or London, or, the dream of all singers, La Scala in Milan—I could hardly say, “Sorry, I can’t come and do your season. I have antiques now.”

So most of my furnishings were classic. Classic inflatable plastic armchair. Classic stacked cardboard-box bookshelves brightened up with MACtac and ready to be closed and moved across the country at a moment’s notice.

From deep in the fridge came Caroline’s voice, intellectual and teasing. “Strawberries…mangoes…peppered chèvre…Brie…Camembert…stuffed artichokes…smoked salmon…caviar…well, aren’t we quite the little aristocrat.”

“I don’t think that my food choices are quite enough to qualify me for a noble title,” I laughed.

“Miranda. You’re not going to eat all that yourself? Or are you on a campaign to become one of those really fat sopranos? Don’t they say it improves the voice?”

“Nice if it were that easy,” I said. “I could eat my way to success.”

She continued, “Better hurry up and eat it or it’ll go bad.” She and the Sasquatch exchanged amused hungry glances.

“It’s for a party. I’m having some people over for dinner tonight.”

She turned to face me, crossed her arms and frowned. “Well. Thanks a lot for inviting me, Miranda. For telling me even. Very diplomatic.”

“Don’t be a grouch, Caroline. It was a last-minute thing. If you’re around, please join us. I just thought you’d be bored. You don’t really like my opera friends.”

“No, but I love the food they’re always stuffing their faces with.”

“You come, too, Dan,” I said reluctantly. Then I blurted out, “Just do me one small favor.”

“What’s that?”

“Don’t touch anything until dinnertime. At least, let me get it all onto a plate, let my guests see it presented, cooked maybe even.”

Caroline made a face. “What do you think I am? Some kind of barbarian?”

“Yeah. A bolshie, punkophile, grunge-bucket, tree-hugging barbarian.”

Caroline grinned at me and then at the Sasquatch. “I think she’s got me pegged quite nicely, don’t you, Dan?”

The Sasquatch said nothing. He took a drag of his cigarette and blew out a huge plume of smoke. Our disapproval was mutual. He’d never really warmed to me, either.

But I knew they were pleased. They’d scored some free trough time and a party. Caroline and her friends were artists of the low-budget lifestyle. When they weren’t waving no-global placards outside an international summit, they were being “resourceful.” I’d watched her and the Sasquatch work their way through the lineup at the university cafeteria, swallowing food as they moved forward so that by the time they got to the cash register, they had one measly item each to pay for. She’d justified this method by stating that half of that food went into the garbage anyway, that it was all about manipulating market values. If something could be obtained for free or with a minor criminal infraction, she knew all about it.

Caroline wasn’t stupid, and although she gave the impression of ugliness, she wasn’t ugly either. But the way she dressed (lumberjack shirts, frayed jeans and army-surplus boots) was a big part of her personal statement, and the statement said, “Grotty underbelly rules,” which did not exactly enhance her feminine potential.

I still ribbed her about the day she answered my ad, the day she tricked me into thinking she’d be a nice dull dor-mouse of a roommate. It must have been the ugly tortoise-shell thick-lensed glasses (that she’s never worn since), her brown hair in a neat ponytail (now her hair is always wild or full of messy cornrows), the long boring black skirt, flat sensible shoes and heap of political science books. That’s what did it. I’d thought she was going to be a quiet, mature, proper little nerd, a career spinster, someone who had no life and spent all her time in the library preparing to win scholarships, so I’d never see her. I couldn’t have been more mistaken.

Caroline said, “See you later then.”

I grabbed my knapsack. “Later,” I said, and left the apartment.

It was a beautiful sunny day, and as I walked I couldn’t help but take in the gold-leafed trees and deep shimmering October sky.

And then I had a moment of panic. If Kurt and Olivia actually divorced according to plan, maybe next year at this time my autumn would be a London autumn. A Kurt autumn. He was getting under my skin in all ways but one. Except for the first big heart-crusher of my life, I’d always had a high immunity to absent boyfriends, not giving them more than a few seconds of wistful reflection once they were out the door. It was a safety mechanism I’d worked hard at developing and now Kurt had shot it all to hell.

I sank into a daydream, the one where I ask myself, “What would woman X do in my situation? For example, if her man offered her the deluxe hot dog—mustard, ketchup, chili, bacon bits, sauerkraut, mayonnaise, cheese—with everything but the dog itself, would woman X accept those terms?”

Well, that’s what happens when you come from an illustrious cow town. You look around for mentors.

Such as Ellie Watson, the soprano from our production of Madama Butterfly, what would she do in my situation? It was a toughie. Since it was unlikely that Kurt would fall for someone like Ellie Watson, who had a gorgeous voice, and a pretty face really, but needed three airplane seats to be comfortable, but suppose, just suppose he had a thing for really big women and it had been somebody like Ellie and not me he had encountered in that broom closet two weeks ago.

Now, Ellie Watson didn’t take flack from anyone. She knew exactly what she wanted from life and she grabbed it. She was from Liverpool. She’d always had the great voice, the voice with the money notes, the good high Cs. All through her childhood, she’d honed her skills by singing for money in pubs and passing the hat. Then she’d moved on to local talent nights and kept on going until she was accepted into a famous English music school where she ate, drank and breathed opera.

Ellie was greedy, in the best sense of the word. When she took the stage, she really took it, making everybody else seem invisible. Well, almost everybody else. Peter Drake, the tenor who sang Pinkerton, was Ellie’s only obstacle. She didn’t like having to share the stage with another diva.