I gulp. “Well, clearly they were wrong, sir.”
Gunn gives me that smile of his, the cagey one that starts at his eyes and gently touches his lips, but never quite comes together. “But as impressive as the troupe is, Joan, as seamless as the seven of you work together—there’s no denying there’s a star.” Gunn studies me with those white-blue eyes, and his look, his words, they stun and silence. He’s clearly talking about me.
“We’re not so different, you and me,” he adds slowly. “In fact, I think that’s why we work well together. I’ve watched you out at the warehouse clearing, and here, night after night. You push yourself, hard. You run until you win, or until you fall. You do what it takes. I respect that.”
I don’t think I’ve breathed for the past minute. Somehow I manage, “Thank you, sir.”
Gunn leans forward, rests his forearms on his thighs, talks to my bureau in the corner. “When I was a boy, Joan, I thought my life was going to turn out very differently. But then tragedy struck, and the keys to the kingdom that I thought were in my pocket, turns out they belonged to someone else.” He throws a glance at me. “I learned to be resourceful, patient, learned to work for what I wanted until it was mine. In fact, I’ve been planning this Red Den transformation for a very long time.”
He fishes in his pocket for cigarettes, lights two, and hands one to me. He waves his match until the small flame surrenders to milky smoke.
“I saw where you come from. I can put two and two together,” he says slowly. “Clearly, your life didn’t turn out the way you thought it would either. You want to do right by your family, I understand that, just like I want to do right by mine.”
Gunn’s never mentioned his family, or his past, or really anything about himself, ever. It feels like we’ve crossed into strange, unsettling territory. You don’t get personal, or even comfortable, with Gunn—but that provides its own sort of comfort. “Your troupe, these performances, the power of seven—this is your shot, Joan, to transform yourself into something truly extraordinary. Just like it’s mine.” He stares at me, as smoke curls in between us. “And I know it, I feel it. There’s more we need to do—in fact, I don’t even think we’ve scratched the surface of the magic under this roof.”
I’m not sure where this conversation’s headed, but I know it’s somewhere I don’t want to go. I know Gunn well enough by now to understand that he’s somehow asking for more from me. But I spend nearly every waking hour at the Den already, still have this unshakable habit of practicing on my own after the show and once the stagehands sweep the place clean, if I don’t think I nailed my piece of that night’s finale. I’d never deny that Gunn kept his promise, he pays us well—sixty dollars per week, with a five-dollar bonus if we pack the house for that week’s run, which we’ve managed every week since we opened—I’m sending home twice as much money as Mama and Jed ever managed to pull in during the best of times. But I earn it, every cent. Long days, wild nights, nonstop magic. There’s nothing I’ve got left to give.
“This arrived by post this morning,” Gunn interrupts my thoughts, and pulls a ratty envelope from his pocket. He hands it to me, and then I forget everything else and hungrily reach for it with trembling fingers. I know the doily ridge of the stationery, the faded taupe color, the dash of a red seal pressed into the back. But still, I gasp out loud when I flip it over. My cousin Ben’s crappy penmanship is scrawled across the front:
Joan Kendrick c/o Mr. Harrison Gunn
The Red Den . . .
It’s been so long since I talked to Ben that my eyes start watering, blurring the ink.
“I took the liberty of wiring an extra week of salary directly to Drummond Savings and Loan, about a week after you arrived here at the Den. From what I gathered from you and your cousin back in September, time was of the essence in settling your uncle’s debts.” As I sit there dumbfounded, Gunn tears open the envelope for me, pulls out the folded note inside. “I suppose Ben got the news.”
I finally recover. “Thank you, Mr. Gunn. That was far too kind of you, saved us weeks of delay. I won’t expect my pay next week—”
But Gunn waves my response away with his hand. “Considering how you go above and beyond, let’s think of it as a special bonus.”
Special bonus. But I don’t want to parse that out, not yet. I just want to fall headfirst into Ben’s letter:
Joan,