Chapter Twenty-Three
1901–1903
The Iroquois Fire
In the days and weeks following, Clyde and I fell quickly into a pattern, as if we’d always been together. It was difficult at first to focus on anything but each other. I did learn to take precautions, because the two of us was enough and neither of us wanted to make it three. I wasn’t about to risk my career. I still remembered the example of the nameless girl who had preceded me as the Dancing Odalisque. In a way, I had her to thank for all of this, for her foolishness had made my entire career, and now my love, possible. If she’d had a Mr. Vanderbilt to counsel her, to encourage self-control, who knows where that would have left me?
When I was in New York, Clyde and I spent all day each day in the office on Broadway and returned at night to his rented rooms on Jane Street. Even then, even as we were rushing to discard our clothes, we would still talk business, reminding each other of appointments or obligations in between each kiss. Figures and illusions and ticket prices and billing were all the food for love. One night when Clyde knelt at my feet, introducing me to a new form of pleasure, I had a new understanding of Woman on Fire. Instead of a woman destroyed by fire, I would create an illusion of a woman bursting into flame but withstanding it, letting the flames caress and surround her. It was a delicious inspiration. We were each the person the other needed, at the right time, in the right place, at last.
“I wish you could come on the road with me,” I said to him afterward as we lay in bed together, an idle wish in a quiet moment.
“You know I can’t. It’s a cutthroat business, Arden. We can’t just do it halfway.”
“I know.” Of course my career was the important thing, and if the choice was between staying in New York and being no one, or traveling alone as Arden to perform in front of crowds night after night, my choice was never in doubt.
“Not that I wouldn’t love that. To be with you. It’s all I’ve wanted since the moment I saw you again.”
He trailed his fingertips over my body, knees to shoulders, and cupped my face in his palm. I savored the lovely feeling that there was nothing more important in the world than how his fingers felt against my skin. Our world could be just the two of us, small and wonderful.
“I’ve been so in love with you,” he murmured. “I couldn’t believe you couldn’t tell. I counted the days until you’d be back, and every time you were, I sat there every moment fighting the need to touch you. Like this.”
He let his hand roam, and I gasped.
“But you said you’d kill me if I touched you. And so I didn’t.”
“You didn’t,” I said. “You kept your word.”
“This is better,” he said, lowering his face to mine for another kiss and stroking me until I could barely breathe.
When my mouth was free to speak again, some time later, I said, “I don’t want to leave you.”
“You’re not leaving me,” he said. “I’m yours, wherever I am. We’ll keep you in a tighter orbit as soon as you’re established. Medium time, the next step up. There’s no reason to go west—the Orpheum circuit is already lousy with illusionists, and that does us no good. We need to build your profile in the East.”
He went on, “I’ve got a real talent for this.”
“If you do say so yourself.”
He grinned, never one for false modesty. “It’s a stepping stone for me to meet the people I need to help me build my theater in New York. Once you’re known and your act commands the highest prices, we’ll install you as the main attraction at the Carolina Rose. I’ll be a real impresario, and you’ll be a flat-out star. And we’ll be together, here. We just need to be patient and smart about it. I believe we’ll get what we want.”
I looked at him. He was right. It was what we both wanted. That didn’t make it easier, being apart.
“You’re so beautiful when you’re sad, with those eyes of yours. They break my heart,” he said.
“Mine too,” I said and curled my body into the curve of his, until I could feel his breath as if it were my own.
***
I was riding high, thrilled and amazed at my own luck, feeling more powerful than Houdini himself. I wasn’t just a female illusionist; I was a woman in full, a woman with a man who couldn’t get enough of her. It made me even more confident and seductive onstage.
We debuted the new version of the Woman on Fire, which I reveled in. My costume was crafted of white layers of chiffon with red, orange, and yellow ones underneath, and as I spun, the brighter colors looked like flame. With carefully placed lamps and wisps of smoke, the illusion that I was on fire was complete. I loved it because I could be my true self onstage for once. For the purposes of the Woman on Fire, I didn’t need to pretend myself fearful or foreign or shrouded in mystery. I only needed to be happy. And I was.
The crowds grew larger, my billing more pronounced. I found myself in a familiar cycle. In the earlier days with the Great Madame Herrmann’s company, we’d played smaller theaters, and as she built her fame over the years, we’d visit larger venues in the same cities. And so it was with the Amazing Arden’s company. We went from the Howard Athenaeum to the Hollis Street Theatre in Boston, no small leap, and from the Locust Point Theater to the Ford’s Grand Opera House in Baltimore. As he had many times before, Clyde displayed his worth as my business manager and suggested it was time I begin to play on a percentage basis at certain theaters. My upfront salary would be smaller, but every ticket sold would yield a bit more silver for our coffers. Enjoying the gamble, I agreed. At three out of every four shows, it paid off, and it would be hard to say which of us was more pleased.
Clyde was both my inspiration and my reward. I delighted in the stage and the road, collecting anecdotes and tales to tell him, and when we were together in New York, I disappeared into bed with him for hours and then days, and when he insisted we go and eat something, I mumbled and dragged my feet until he swept me up in his arms to carry me out, blinking, into the light. We could have griddle cakes at a lunch counter or shrimp bisque and spring lamb at Delmonico’s, and I’d hardly notice, so thrilled to be sitting across from him, looking at him, knowing he was close enough to touch.
And when I was with him, I learned the compromises of intimacy, the way the pillow you fall asleep on disappears in the night sometimes, the way the other person’s smell becomes more familiar to you than your own, the way you learn the phrases they repeat and the foods they avoid and in which direction their hair grows. In the years before we found each other again, I couldn’t imagine what it would be like to be loved and needed; now it had become such a part of my life I couldn’t imagine what it would be like not to.
And so things continued in the same way, for a full year and then some, until Christmastime of 1903.