***
After an infinite amount of time, when I could hear again, I toddled like a child to the street. Someone in a dark blue uniform with a high collar asked me where I lived. I whispered the name of my hotel.
When next I thought about it, I was there. I lay sprawled across the bed on my back, still wearing the soot-smudged dress, surrounded by smears of ash on the white coverlet. I closed my eyes, and when later I opened them, I saw I was no longer alone: Clyde had arrived.
He leaned in and cradled my face and whispered, “Oh, thank the good Lord. Beloved, come join the world.”
“No,” I said. “I can’t.” It felt too soon.
“You have to.”
“No.”
“Are you hurt?” he asked and pointed toward the front of my dress. I looked down at a great dark streak of blood all the way across my bodice, and all of a sudden, I stank of death. Was it Ray’s blood? My own? Another victim’s? Was it the blood of a living person, or a dead one? I leapt out of the bed and attempted to tear the dress off my body, my shivering fingers fumbling with the buttons.
He said, “Let me help you,” and reached out for the buttons, and I slapped his hands away, even though I was shaking too hard to manage them. One at a time, struggling every moment, I tore at them, breaking the button or tearing the fabric more often than not. When I finally got the dress off, I threw it on the floor and stepped away from it. I backed away and backed away until my body bumped into the wall and there was nowhere else to go. I huddled against the wall, half naked, shivering in my undergarments and not just from cold. Clyde wrapped his arms around me, and I sagged against him, crying.
“Here,” he said. “Here.”
I sobbed in his arms. It already would have been the worst day of my life, the horror of that disaster, all those dead mothers and children, and then Ray had found me. And I had done what I had done. I could still feel the folded straight razor inside my corset, cold against my skin. It was too much. All of it.
“Here, get back in bed,” he said, and he helped me lie down and pull the covers up over myself. He sat on the edge of the mattress, looking down into my face and brushing my tangled, stinking hair away.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “This is so awful. I’m so sorry. What can I do?”
The answer sprang to mind immediately. “Cancel the next month of shows. Take me off the road.”
It was plain my answer had shocked him. He had probably been thinking I wanted tea. But I’d almost died because he’d sent me there, all unknowing. I could feel a faint burning still in my throat and lungs, and only because of my gift did I have a voice at all. If I hadn’t been there, the fire would have been only a headline, not a memory. It would have been someone else’s tragedy. Now everything was different. My life was horror, and I was a murderess. I couldn’t tell him what I’d done; I never could. We were well beyond tea.
Quickly, he was all business. “We can’t cancel. You know how much that costs?”
“No,” I said honestly.
“I suppose that’s why you have me,” he said. “The answer is too much. It’s not even the money. No one will trust us again if we cancel so many shows on such short notice. Word spreads like wildfire when you go back on a booking. We have to protect your reputation.”
“Less, then. What about three weeks?”
I could see him calculating. “No.”
“Two weeks, then? I can’t. I’ll panic.” Even just thinking of the hardwood boards of a stage, I could smell the smoke. My knees ached, and I felt the hard landing from my leap over the orchestra pit all over again. Then I saw Ray’s face looming above me, and blood, a fountain of blood. I backed farther into the bed, clutched the pillow across my chest like a shield.
“No.”
“You can’t force me,” I said a little hysterically. “Let someone else do it.”
“No one can take your place. You’re the one people come to see.”
“Dress someone else up like me. Tell them it’s me. How will they know?”
He said, “They’ll know, Arden. Maybe we should wait and talk about this later, when you’ve had some more time.”
“No, now,” I said firmly. “I won’t change my mind.”
He thought about it. Nervous, still trembling, I watched him think.
“Ten days,” said Clyde at last. “We can cancel the next show, the one in Moberly. It’s a small venue and they don’t talk to anyone. And of course the show here is canceled.”
“They won’t shift it?”
“The mayor closed all the theaters in Chicago. For six weeks. I don’t think you realize how bad it was.”
“I know how bad it was!” I yelled, angry at myself and him and the world. “I was there! I watched people die! I could have died, because you sent me there! Don’t tell me I don’t know!”
“Do you know how many people are dead?” he yelled back. “Six hundred! The world didn’t stop for them, and it’s not going to stop for you.”
On any other day, I would have found it a stunning number. Today, it didn’t even make a dent.
But I could hear the anger in his voice, and if both of us flew off the handle, things would come to a bad end. I couldn’t take that on top of everything else. I was sad and furious, but I knew what I needed to do next, and shouting wasn’t going to accomplish it. I could only tell him the truth.
“I don’t know if I can do this anymore. I need to go back to New York,” I said. “To rest. To think.”
He sighed and said, “Okay. I’ll change my plans. Canada can wait.”
“No.”
“But you can’t be alone.”
“I have to.” With effort, I set the pillow aside. I reached for his hands and held them. His fingers were cool and dry. “I would love to go to Canada with you, but I can’t. And I can’t stay here. I can’t be on the road right now. I need to be alone with my thoughts. New York is the best place for that. I need to go, and I need to do it today.”
“Tomorrow?” he said, ever the negotiator.
I relented in the one small way I could. “Tomorrow.”
He brushed his lips against my forehead with such a gentle, feathery touch that it made my whole poor body dissolve.
We slept in each other’s arms without making love, the first time we’d ever done so, and in the morning, I left.