Loe raamatut: «When the Lights Go Down»

Chapter One

“Uh-oh.”

Maxie’s stomach twisted and her vision dimmed. Nine hundred ticket-holding audience members, two flawless dress rehearsals, twelve weeks of preparation, two hundred and seven precisely planned light and sound cues had all led to this.

Opening night.

The oldest joke in the business was also the truest: What are the last words a stage manager wants to hear on opening night?

Uh-oh.

“Don’t do this to me, people. What’s wrong?” she hissed into her headset mike. As if the typical opening-night stress wasn’t bad enough, she’d managed to get an interview next week with the producers of a big Broadway show, who had decided that Chicago was the perfect city in which to begin a second run. To stage-manage such a big production would propel her into the top tier of show business in Chicago, a longtime goal of hers, and she’d invited the producers to attend the opening night of this show.

She had the sinking feeling that she might have made an error there.

“The dog is gone.” Ruben’s voice floated back to her through the earpiece she’d wedged in six hours ago. “I repeat, we have no Toto.”

She cursed under her breath. “Get the can opener,” she called to her assistant and sprinted down metal steps, heading for the tiny kitchen hidden in the building’s subbasement. When she reached the door, she grabbed the combination padlock and quickly opened it. The combination was easy enough to remember, even in times of extreme stress like now: one, two, three. Everyone from the producer down to the after-hours janitor knew it.

But then again, the lock wasn’t needed to keep out people. Just canines.

They’d yet to figure out how a schnauzer whose nose only reached knee-high even when it was standing on its hind legs managed to work the doorknob. But he’d broken into the kitchen a dozen times before they’d installed the lock, one time even leaving behind an incriminating trail of powdered sugar paw prints after stealing a box of donut holes.

“Damn genius dog.” Maxie shoved aside assorted bags of snacks until her fingers snagged on one last can of dog food. She had made it a policy never to run out of them.

“Ruben!” Her voice echoed in the bare hall.

“Got it!” Her assistant’s portly form shuffled down the last of the stairs, the puffing of his breath no doubt exaggerated for effect.

Melodramatization. A symptom exhibited by even the non-actors of a theatrical production.

Plucking the hand-operated can opener out of Ruben’s hand, she tossed a “Thanks!” over her shoulder and took the stairs two at a time to the top. Muttered curses followed her.

Maxie cranked open the can as she climbed, then hit the ground floor at a sprint. She took the corner at top speed, and slammed into what felt like a brick wall.

No way had someone on her crew abandoned a piece of the sliding set scenery in such a ridiculous location. They wouldn’t dare contradict her prop book, which assigned a precise backstage location for everything from hair ribbons to the enormous Emerald City set. Then her brain registered the texture, scent and sound—summer-weight wool fabric, a clean, sharp lemony spice, the sudden woof of breath being slammed out of a person. She looked up to memorize the face of the person she was going to kill as soon as she tracked down the damn dog.

“Blue.” She blurted out the word.

Lake-blue eyes froze her in place. They were narrowed at the moment, with fine lines at the corners that looked like they came from frowning, not laughing. Her stomach, already mid-butterfly stampede with nerves, did a slow dip and roll that made her dizzy. She blushed.

That indignity wrenched her back into the present. That and the realization that this stranger, this arrestingly good-looking man with those stop-you-in-your-tracks blue eyes and the thick shock of black hair, was an unauthorized intruder in her backstage empire.

“Get out.” She pushed past the man, her elbow out. If he complained, she’d claim the jab to his midsection was an accident.

She wrenched the lid off of the can, ignoring the sharp pain when the jagged metal sliced across her right index finger. Crossing to the breakfront that would decorate Auntie Em’s living room during a scene in Act One, she tossed the lid behind her, spattering some of the slimy contents of the can. God, how can even dogs eat this stuff?

When a deep voice registered a protest, she didn’t even turn to look. That meat and grease would be hard to get out of good wool, no doubt. Tough. He shouldn’t be trespassing on her set. She grabbed a cheap china plate off the breakfront and found a spoon in the top drawer, just where you’d expect to find silverware in real life. Verisimilitude, baby.

“I said get off my stage. Now.” She lowered her voice just enough to keep it from traveling past the heavy drop curtain while she warned off the intruder she could still feel hovering behind her. The light at the edges of the curtain was dim because the house lights had dropped. The audience would be settling down and listening for the first sounds of the play.

It was a thick curtain. She didn’t lower her voice much.

She let the plate clatter to the concrete floor and began whistling, long and low, as she slopped the contents of the can onto it.

Still out of sight behind her, Ruben took up the whistle, and from beyond him, she could hear other crew members whistling, too. Yeah, they knew the drill. Maxie paused for a breath and rattled the spoon around the empty can.

In moments, the magical, musical sound of Butch’s too-long, unclipped nails hitting the floor at top speed soared to her ears like “Ode to Joy” as the miscreant came out of hiding in search of the one thing that motivated him: food.

With the perfection of hindsight, it occurred to her that she could probably have dug an empty potato-chip bag out of the trash and rustled it loudly to much the same effect.

As Butch did his happy food dance in front of the plate she still guarded, she couldn’t help but grin. The damn dog was too clever by half, but in his own way he was more reliable than several members of her cast.

“You—” she scolded, tossing the can opener behind her and shaking her finger at the dog, who had the nerve to roll over, expose his belly and whine pitifully. Some sort of ruckus was developing behind her. “—better be ready to hit your mark in sixty. Stop being such a ham and eat up.”

Time to call off the panic. She thumbed on her mike. “Toto’s in the house.”

“So is a visiting producer,” Ruben shot back at her.

“I know. Front and center. I pulled a couple of press tickets for them, which means I owe drinks to the two critics standing in back.”

“No, not those guys—”

“Okay, well, the more producers in the house, the merrier. Now, let’s make it look like silk for ‘em.”

“But Maxie—”

“Not now, Ruben. Sound, one.” She called the first sound cue and classical music rolled out over the audience, settling them down.

Sixty seconds came and went. She waved Dorothy over, dumped Toto into her basket, called the first lighting cue, the curtain cue, and settled into her high chair with her hieroglyphically marked-up script. It was time to run the show with the ruthless precision that had gotten her the job in the first place.

Every battalion in her army was dialed up and ready to go and she was Command Central, poised to give the order to begin the battle.

She took one last look around and caught the eye of the sharply dressed man who was still there, standing well to the back now. He frowned at her and for a moment she wondered who he was. But she trusted her ASM to know which visitors were welcome backstage. Not her problem. Then Ruben, the Assistant Stage Manager in question, flashed her a thumbs up and she forgot Mr. Foxy without a moment’s hesitation. Her eyes left him and she prepared to enter the fray.

“Lights, one. Sound, two. Let’s knock ’em dead, kids.”

* * *

Nick’s shoulders locked up and the tendons in his neck tightened.

A civilized breakfast business meeting would have killed her?

He’d wanted his nine o’clock meeting to take place somewhere he could drink espresso and eat eggs benedict. Though she hadn’t thrown out the breakfast idea, she’d refused his suggestion of Chicago Cut—the swanky steakhouse did an amazing businessman’s breakfast, in Nick’s opinion—saying she’d take him somewhere after he met her at her office. Tracking down the office’s address on a street in Chicago’s warehouse district had been annoying enough, particularly since he could be sitting comfortably at Chicago Cut instead. Now he was stuck in the entrance to an alley. A ten-foot carving of a banana hung off the building in a manner most precarious above his car and two mental giants in front of him were arguing about a pile of two-by-fours in the back of a van that was blocking his way.

One of the guys could have stepped out of a Gap ad in his khakis and a plain white T-shirt. The other, who looked like he expected to audition for ZZ Top later that day, crossed his arms under his chest-length beard and glared at his buddy from beneath a black fedora. The lumber sticking out of the back of the van was several feet too long for the vehicle. The argument about how to solve this sphinx’s riddle had clearly been going on for some time.

An enormous metal door burst open just in front of his car, crashing into the brick wall, and a figure exploded out of the doorway, boots pounding down the potholed pavement of the alley.

He grabbed for the gearshift and prepared to hit reverse. The warehouse district wasn’t the worst neighborhood in Chicago, but he’d made it through his life so far without getting mugged and keeping the trend going was his preferred plan.

But those boots...

Somehow knee-high shiny white boots with fuzzy balls dangling from the laces didn’t strike much fear in his heart. Especially when they were paired with a thigh-skimming turquoise vinyl mini-dress, a chin-length swing of platinum hair and enormous sunglasses.

In fact, he’d rather pull up next to her and offer her a ride than back away. He lifted an appreciative brow and leaned forward, resting an arm on the steering wheel. He was far more interested in watching this intriguing woman than the two yahoos arguing in front of him. Which was when a high-pitched whine intruded on his senses.

His eyes locked on the saw.

At which point it became clear that his knowledge of shop and/or hand tools was severely lacking. Because even as he considered shouting a warning to the two brain-drains, he realized that he wouldn’t know what to say.

Look out! She’s got a...saw?

Buzz saw?

Circular saw?

A thing in her hand that’s smaller than your head but will undoubtedly be able to take it off at the neck?

By now, the guys had grasped the danger of the situation and shifted to either side of his car, backing up with their hands raised in the air.

Good job, boys. Two targets are better than one.

But as they inched down the length of his car, the saw-wielding Andy Warhol model stalked toward them, her tool-cum-weapon lining up precisely with his Mercedes’ trisected ornament at the front of the hood. The relationship he’d developed with his mechanic over the two years it had taken to restore this car to its youthful glory had been long and intimate and much like a marriage.

Returning the car to the garage with a large hole chopped in its hood would result in a messy divorce, particularly after he tried to explain about the blonde, the boots and the saw.

But the icy blonde had stopped, thank god, at the foot of his car. She shook the buzzing saw at the two men who were standing like captured criminals on either side of his car. Then she whirled around, stomped to the back of the van and ran the saw neatly through the stack of lumber. Wood blocks thunked to the pavement as the saw bit through each two-by-four. At the bottom of the pile, she slowed her progress, the muscles of her arms straining as she controlled the descent of the saw through the wood with delicate skill, until the last piece was neatly trimmed.

When she shut off the saw, the sudden silence was deafening. She slammed the rear doors of the van shut, crossed one pompom-ed boot in front of the other and took a bow.

Then she turned, popped the saw on her shoulder like it was an idle baseball bat, and walked back the way she’d come.

Applause erupted from the lunatics beside his car—hoots and hollers and a “Way to remember safety first, boss!” upon which the go-go girl turned and tapped her enormous, white-framed sunglasses. She grinned at them.

“Next time it’s your heads, boys.”

The voice that emerged from that compact little body was surprisingly low and throaty. It vibrated against his skin, a ticklish buzz that put him in mind of something far less appropriate than the business meeting for which he was prepared.

At least he now knew who the blonde serial killer was. His gaze followed her as she stomped back through the metal doors.

There was no mistaking that voice. It didn’t matter that today she was all 60s glam and last night she’d been a dark-haired grease monkey in mechanic’s overalls with a bandana tied around her head, shouting orders and curses and elbowing him out of the way as she ruled over the chaos of a backstage on opening night.

All he would ever need to recognize Maxie Tyler was one of two things: a glimpse of those midnight-dark eyes, glittering with intensity, or one word in that husky growl of a voice.

He sighed, wondering why he always got stuck coming to his mother’s rescue after the damage had been done. The money she’d sunk into backing a hot new playwright’s work had already been spent, of course, by the time he heard about it. She never called him before she made her next disastrous decision. Just sent out a press release—literally, she had the Tribune, Sun-Times, Chicago Reader and all the rest on speed dial—and then cried for help when her latest project escaped her control. At least this was one loose end he could handle himself, which was the only reason he was here, waiting for a breakfast meeting with a lunatic.

The budget of the play was already spiraling out of control, and the director had insisted that the next crucial step was to hire a brilliant stage manager. The only name on his list was Maxie Tyler.

Nick’s self-assigned duty, with his mother’s grudging approval, was to check her out. If she wasn’t up to the job, he’d make it clear that the golden goose wasn’t laying any more eggs until someone wrestled this train wreck back onto the tracks.

Before he’d arrived backstage last night, he hadn’t even been sure Maxie Tyler was a woman. His introduction to the theater world had been quick and intense, but the first thing he’d learned about the industry was that it teemed with unusual characters. Maxie could just as easily have been the nickname for a three-hundred-pound grizzled old man as this pixie who probably didn’t top a buck-five soaking wet. But at the very least, he’d expected someone a little, well, older.

And a little less dramatic.

And a lot less sex-on-wheels hot.

The van finally drove off down the alley. Nick maneuvered his baby into a nearly empty parking lot behind the building, bumping over cobblestones and chunks of lumber along the way. He made sure to park as far as possible from the giant pickup truck that screamed I’m compensating for my tiny penis.

He shook his head as he walked back to the door into which the go-go girl had disappeared. This entire venture, not just this meeting, was a frustrating waste of his time. If his mother had any sense of restraint at all...

Who was he kidding? He’d spent his entire life wishing his mother possessed some of the self-control and propriety of all the other Gold Coast society matrons. When friends had lamented their cold and demanding parents, Nick’s only thought had been if only. In these past months, ever since she’d met that playwright, the wheels had really come off. His mother had lost her mind. To the tune of several hundred thousand dollars.

He yanked the alley door open, heading down a barren hallway past dimly lit doorways sporting handwritten signs that read like a list of doomed-to-fail enterprises: Abel’s Anytime Carpet-Laying, Darning by Deborah, SnowGlobe: The Magazine.

At the end of the hall, under another roughly sculpted wooden banana that was a miniature of the one outside, he stopped and eyed the words painted on the frosted glass pane.

Carving Bananas, Inc.

He sighed—here was yet another reminder of the eccentricity of theater people—and started to push open the door, freezing in place as a voice he didn’t recognize leaked out through the crack. He nudged the door open a couple more inches and waited.

“—just saying. You couldn’t have played the role of straitlaced businesswoman today? Three-hole punch?”

“I am a straitlaced businesswoman, child. Cabinet, middle shelf, right-hand side.”

“Sure,” the female voice doing the scolding snorted, as metal squeaked on metal.

“See, right where I told you, doubting Thomasina.”

“I wasn’t questioning your bizarrely accurate knowledge of where every little damn thing in your life is placed, you weirdo. I was questioning your claim to straitlaced businessdom.”

Nick grinned in agreement with the scolder. Though if one of his employees spoke to him that way, he’d have them shipped off for drug testing.

Maybe they were both high.

“It’s what I am. That doesn’t have any relation to how I dress.”

“Clearly.”

“That’s it. I’m docking your pay for insolence. Brat.”

“You don’t pay me, remember? I’m an intern.”

“And why do you work here?”

“I think I’ve forgotten.”

“Well, make yourself useful and keep an eye out for Mr. Sharp-Dressed Man, will you? I’m trying to make a good impression here.”

Nick entered the claustrophobic office just in time to glimpse a flash of turquoise and platinum disappearing through an interior door to his right. A floating echo that sounded like “Gotta pee” slipped past the door as it swung shut.

The young woman behind the wood-laminate desk wore a shell-pink twinset, a short strand of pearls, and a velvet hair ribbon. She was still rolling her eyes when she turned back to see who’d entered.

Her recovery when she saw him, the “Mr. Sharp-Dressed Man” for whom she was waiting, was remarkable. She should be paid more...or at all.

“Mr. Drake, I presume?” At his nod, she waved her hand grandly to the one unoccupied flat surface in the room: a metal folding chair huddled between two enormous steel cabinets pasted over with advertisements for dozens of shows. He was sure she guarded the chair with the ferocity of a mother lion. Every other open space in the room was piled high with everything from crumbling bricks to ladies’ satin underwear. “Ms. Tyler will be with you momentarily.”

He twisted his mouth and raised an eyebrow. “As long as she unplugs the saw first, I can wait.”

The girl didn’t drop her smile for a moment. “Ah. So it’s too late for the good impression.” She shrugged philosophically. “Coffee?”

“Who makes it?”

“I do. Fresh ground Columbian.”

“I’m in.”

By the time the click of high-heeled boots approached, he’d discovered that the unpaid intern’s name was Clarissa, that she’d been working full-time for Maxie for six weeks, on top of a full course load in theater management at Columbia College, and that Maxie was the best stage manager she’d ever met. Apparently, the same woman who’d pegged him with the lid from a can of dog food was “surreally talented, kind of spooky and not a little bit of a tyrant.”

Not exactly what he’d been hoping to hear. He was on the lookout for someone solid, understandable and amenable to taking orders.

But when Maxie strode into the crowded office, he turned from the girl, who was now perched on the corner of the desk, to watch as an earpiece of her big white sunglasses slid into the turquoise V of her dress, drawing his eyes down from where they ought to be.

He looked back up to find big, dark-chocolate eyes waiting for him under equally dark brows that somehow worked with the icy white-blonde hair. Her cheekbones were high and sharp and her wide, full mouth was frosted pink.

He held his breath, every muscle in his body tensing at the first drift of her scent—leather and vanilla. Even the smell of her was fascinating.

She held out her small hand.

Enveloping it in his own, he was caught off guard by the strength in her fingers. An electric shock jumped through him at the gentle bite of her white fingernails into the back of his hand. He had a momentary vision of those same fingernails stair-stepping lightly down his spine and his dick stiffened at the thought.

Get a grip, Drake.

“Ms. Tyler.”

“Nicholas Drake.” The look she raked over him was scornful or borderline sexual, maybe both. She held his hand longer than necessary before letting go. “You were trespassing backstage last night.”

“I wanted to see you in action.” He’d certainly done that. She was a martinet, but everything she touched had fallen into place like clockwork.

“I don’t normally take meetings with people who won’t tell me who they’re representing, but I’m always ready to eat. Let’s go.”

She whipped a white trench coat off of an old-fashioned coat rack behind the door, shrugged it on, belted it and left the door open behind her as she plunged into the dim hallway.

Clarissa groaned from behind him.

“I heard that,” Maxie said from down the hall, laughing. “You said it was too late to make a good impression, girl, and I’m starving.”

* * *

Ten minutes later, Maxie was up to her eyebrows in Jamaican jerk chicken with dirty rice and beans and as happy as a kid with a new toy. She watched her “I’d prefer a breakfast meeting, if you don’t mind” nine-o’clock appointment stare with drawn brows at the photographs on the side of the boxy white truck parked at the curb. She’d bet twenty bucks he’d never bought food out of a van before.

Poor, deprived soul.

“Best plantains in the city,” she said and opened her foam container. The lid flip-flopped in the cool morning breeze.

He pushed back the straight, dark hair falling over his brow with an automatic gesture and didn’t seem to notice when it dropped right back into place.

“It’s nine o’clock in the morning.”

“Hey, opening night wrapped up at four and I came straight to work. Haven’t slept yet. Breakfast was hours ago.” He ordered coffee. She shook her head. His loss. She’d brought the man to the best Jamaican outside of Montego Bay. You could lead a horse to water...

“Yes, I’m sure you’ve been hard at work in your—” he flicked a hand at her “—what? Costume?”

“You don’t gotta wear construction boots to wheel a dolly of two-by-fours to the checkout line.” She grinned and winked at him. Like Clarissa said, the good impression window was closed. She might as well have fun. There was no need for him to know she’d worn the sixties sex-kitten outfit because it made her feel like a sexual powerhouse. She’d been restless in the hours before dawn this morning, still feeling his chest under her palms from their split second of physical contact the night before. A little boost had seemed in order. “Who do you think brought those two lunkheads who work for me the lumber? There’s a twenty-four-hour Home Depot just off North Avenue.”

“How did you get it to fit in the van?”

She was pretty sure the curiosity in his voice was unwilling. He looked like the type of man who’d just as soon file her neatly in a box and forget about her.

“I didn’t.” She shoveled a forkful of rice and beans in her mouth and let him wait for a minute while she chewed. She didn’t play around with Jahman’s food. “I picked it up in my truck. It has a longer flatbed, but those two are forbidden to drive it.”

She jerked her head at a bus-stop bench down the sidewalk. He followed and stood looming over her as she sat with her container on her lap and ate. Ignoring him as she dug into her second breakfast for the day, she ploughed through the meal and then sat back happily, having mopped up spicy jerk sauce with the last piece of fried plantain. A perfect bite.

She stretched her arms along the back of the aluminum bench and tilted her face back to catch the weak warmth of the sun on a Chicago spring day.

Cracking one eye open, she glanced up at the man who was watching her, one hand in his pocket, the other lifting the paper cup of coffee to his mouth with mechanical regularity. Just watching. The fine hairs on her arms stood up as she shivered under that gaze.

She crossed her legs and sat a bit straighter, unaccountably irritated.

“Look, Drake, you asked for this meeting, not me. Now would be a good time to start talking, before I fall into a food coma.”

“I represent some people who want to hire you.”

She waited. Nothing. She rolled her eyes and then glared at him. And?

“And I’m not at all convinced it’s a good idea.”

Ouch.

She might joke about not caring about good impressions, but it still stung when someone told you they didn’t think you were good enough. She knew better than to indulge in hurt feelings and was annoyed that she couldn’t find her normal self-control. “What a surprise,” she said. “Like your underlings a little bit more conventional, do you?” The drawled words scratched him back with a not very well-hidden swipe of her claws. Burning a professional contact wasn’t her normal style, but she would already have heard of this guy if he were a name in theater, so she felt free to play a little. Especially since next week’s interview was looking like more of a lock with every day that passed, according to the gossip in her network. She swung her legs up on the bench, just missing kicking him in the knife-sharp crease of his slacks.

To her surprise, he smiled at her. Pulled out his sunglasses and slid them on.

She didn’t like not being able to see where his eyes were directed. Not knowing what he was looking at made her feel as if his gaze was touching her everywhere.

Instead of responding to her taunt, he came back with a question.

“Why Carving Bananas?”

She laughed and stared up at his dark shades, wondering how he’d take her explanation.

Some men took it personally.

“Eisenhower was speaking of Montgomery when he said, ‘I could carve a better man out of a banana.’” She paused for a moment, remembering the old embarrassment. “Or, at least, I thought he did. Turns out the historian who wrote the book I read made that up. Live and learn. Once a two hundred pound carving of a banana has been delivered to your door, you suck it up.”

After a silent moment, he pulled the sunglasses off. The shock of meeting his eyes again, the blue of Lake Michigan in July framed by dark lashes, made her wobbly. He studied her, eyes narrowing. She couldn’t read minds, but she’d swear that he was finally ignoring her outfit and how she talked to him, and looking at her.