“I heard you like to read. You are like the intellectual of the group. You’ll have to recommend some books to me.”
“On me dit que vous chantez merveilleusement. Everyone says I have to hear you sing.”
“What a fantastic dress. You have natural style. You have to be born with that, you know. I personally am just lucky if I don’t put my clothes on inside out.”
They weren’t sure at first whether Rose was really pretty at all. But as soon as she was done going around the table, they all were sure she was beautiful.
? ? ?
ROSE TOLD EVERYONE that she would like to be excused to go to the bathroom. She hurried to the back of the club and into the washroom. She gave the attendant a nickel and sat down on the toilet lid. She put her knees together, her feet out to the sides. She put her elbows on her knees and her face in her hands and started to weep. What a horrific job it was to be a mistress. You didn’t get to be yourself ever, and you had to perform unrelentingly. You had no security. You could be discarded like trash at any moment. She missed Pierrot violently. He had loved her for who she was. Hadn’t he? She remembered a time when they were in the field working on the garden. He passed by her. He had a daisy tucked behind his ear. He winked at her. She was sure he was telling her that he loved her. Perhaps she was being naive. She had to admit that everyone sings for their supper.
? ? ?
WHEN ROSE WAS COMING BACK from the bathroom, she stopped on the dance floor, watching as the band set up. The drummer, seeing her, began to warm up by beating a tune on his drum. Rose started hopping to the rhythm. She looked down at her feet as though they were acting of their own accord. As though they wanted her to dance.
The drummer stopped playing and Rose stopped dancing. She smiled and started walking back to her seat. The drummer saw her and started back up. And in response, Rose’s feet started getting all wild again. They started doing an out-of-control quickstep, kicking up in the air and dancing her about the dance floor. She was waving her hands all over the place. Her feet were making no sense at all, and her body was twisting in all sorts of directions. She kicked her legs up to the side, so high they seemed to almost hit her ears. She was so flexible and lithe. She had a body capable of expressing joy.
The band quickly caught on. They joined in. They all played wildly, whipping the girl into a frenzy, and then stopped abruptly, allowing her to walk to the edge of the dance floor before starting again.
The whole of the club wanted to join in. Patrons rushed to the dance floor. They danced like they were possessed by the devil, and then froze like funny statues once the music stopped.
? ? ?
MCMAHON WATCHED HER CAREFULLY. He had been cautious about getting involved with a girl who had such a lowly background and a loathsome pedigree. But she had the whole room transfixed. He was proud of her for being so wild and lovely. None of the other mistresses could compete. He was going to take her everywhere and show her off. She was the type of treat a man like him could afford. And at that moment, McMahon let himself fall deeply in love with her. Rose saw McMahon looking at her and returned his gaze. She felt a wave of affection for him. It was the serenity of being possessed.
? ? ?
WHEN SHE SAT DOWN, one of the mistresses asked if she’d ever been onstage.
“I always wanted to be a clown when I grew up.”
“Really? But why?”
“Well, some of the children must want to be clowns. Otherwise, how would clowns exist?”
“I guess I always thought people were just born clowns. Or maybe their parents were clowns and they had no other choice.”
“So when they were very little, their mother put face paint on them? They went to school with their faces painted white, and with shoes that were too big for them?”
“Oh! That’s so sad!”
“Rose, don’t make everybody cry, please,” McMahon said, and everyone laughed.
Later Rose asked the waiter to bring her six eggs.
“Please, please, please. Don’t cook them or scramble them or anything! And I swear I’ll give them right back.”
“It’s fine,” McMahon said to the waiter. “Tell them they’re for Mr. McMahon.”
The waiter came back with a carton with six eggs in it. He placed the carton in front of her on the table as though he were sending the eggs off to a tragic death. Rose put her hand on the waiter’s to reassure him.
She took three eggs and began to juggle, then took out a fourth and set it in motion, then a fifth and a sixth. She was as confident as Jupiter that those eggs would orbit around her. She did it so daintily that it was as if, each time she touched an egg, she was putting a magic spell on it. For a moment everyone around the table understood that magic absolutely existed. Every day the average person will witness six miracles. But it isn’t that we don’t believe in miracles—we just don’t believe that miracles are miracles. There are so many miracles all around us.