She could feel Mrs. Amberson staring at her neck.
“Don’t be snide, child,” she said mildly. “It’s bad for your chi. In any case, performers often go through this. When they get blocked, their voice literally locks up. They can’t sing. I saw it all the time in the theater. The throat is one of the body’s great gateways. It carries blood to the head. It carries nerve impulses from the brain to the rest of the body. When you think about it, we are all about our throats.”
Scarlett ignored this and went back to sleep with her head against the cab window. She was jolted awake when the cab pulled to a jerky halt. They had stopped in front of one of the Broadway theaters, terrifying a tourist with a large coffee and an even larger camera. Mrs. Amberson tossed a bill through the opening and sprang out. She led Scarlett down to a door marked CAST AND CREW ONLY.
It was amazingly dark inside that doorway. They were in a little hallway with a warren of rooms, stuffed with racks of clothes labeled with masking tape. Mrs. Amberson picked her way through, finally getting to a staircase leading up into a massive, partially lit stage.
“Over here,” a very deep, very crisp voice called. “And be careful or you’ll kill yourself on those wires.”
A man emerged from the darkness on the other side of the stage.
“Billy!” Mrs. Amberson exclaimed.
Billy was exceptionally tall, with immaculately groomed white hair. He wore a white shirt, light khaki pants, and white shoes. He looked like a librarian, or someone who might run an art museum. He greeted Mrs. Amberson by exchanging cheek-to-cheek kisses. Then, much to Scarlett’s surprise, he gently sniffed her head, like she was a flower.
“You’ve been smoking,” he said.
She looked down guiltily. This Billy appeared to have genuine power over her, and that meant he was interesting to Scarlett. He turned to her now and smiled kindly.
“Amy’s dragged you out at this hour?” he said. “There’s coffee over by the piano, if you need it.”
“O’Hara,” she said, “this is Billy Whitehouse. He can unblock the best, and if anyone needs an unblocking, it’s you. No offense.”
Scarlett said hello and made her way to the pot. She took a seat off to the side, looking around at the endless depths of the ceiling, the miles of cords and cables, the taped Xs all over the floor, the cherry picker in front of the stage. Broadway kind of looked like a construction site during the day.
She had no idea what unblocking was, but it was pretty enjoyable watching Mrs. Amberson getting ordered around for a change. For the first few minutes, Billy had her run in a circle, barefoot, in the middle of the stage. He started to command her to say single words, like “home,” “feel,” “kill,” “love,” all at different volumes. He made her cling to the wall, crawl across the floor, run laps from side to side on the stage. All the while, he stalked around her like a lion tamer.
Scarlett watched this for a while, until the cool darkness of the theater lulled her back to sleep. She woke with a crick in her neck, her head hanging heavily off the back of the seat, to see Mrs. Amberson rolling from side to side on the floor, yelling the word “endless.”
“I needed that,” she said, getting up and dusting herself off.
“Why do I feel that you didn’t just come down here at the crack of dawn to do a tune-up?” he asked.
“You have an uncanny ability to read me, Billy. As it happens, I have acquired a show.”
“What do you mean you acquired a show?” he asked. “Wait. Never mind. Don’t answer that. I genuinely don’t want to know.”
“These are good actors,” she said. “Very good. But they need molding, solid vocal training. And you are the best…”
“Amy…”
“I would never ask this from you on a whim,” she said. “Not you.”
A grave moment passed between them. Billy walked over to the piano and picked up a datebook and flipped through some pages.
“How many?” he asked.
“Fifteen.”
“Doing what?”
“Hamlet.”
“And I take it you need me immediately?”
“Today.”
More flipping.
“Okay,” he finally said. “You’ve run into a little luck. I wouldn’t be doing this for anyone but you, but…I can do two evenings this week. Tonight and Friday. Four hours on Saturday during the day. That’s all I’ve got. Then I have to spend some quality time with my long-neglected family at the beach. I haven’t had any time off in months.”
“Billy!”
She embraced him aggressively.
“You’re out of practice,” Billy replied, shaking his head. “The smoking makes it worse.”
“I know, I know. No lectures, please.”
“It’s my job,” he said.
“No,” she said. “You are just a nosy bitch.”
“Also my job. I’ll expect to see you and your new company at my studio at seven.”
THE OTHER FAMOUS WHITEHOUSE