Chapter 20

Celebrations conventionally involve the consumption of champagne, but we agreed that seemed ostentatious at this time of day. Her hotel's brunch, however, came with a service of mimosas—an odd-seeming but tasty combination of champagne and orange juice—and we each polished off three of them.

Between visits to a truly sumptuous buffet, of which we each also made three, she filled me in on what had happened this morning. "Gerry," it seemed, was far more than a mere accompanist; indeed, she was surprised I hadn't met him before in my peripatetic comprimario career.

"He's Gerald Oliver, dear," she said. My jaw dropped; I didn't know the man, but of course I knew the name, when she'd introduced me I simply hadn't heard her in my general fog at the time. Gerald Oliver was one of the top conductors in the world, not only opera but symphonic, you name it. The absolute pinnacle of the contemporary classical music scene.

And that was who'd been playing piano for me? No wonder I'd been the only one laughing at my faux pas. Retrospectively I felt like an idiot.

"He told me he agreed to do Tosca only because of me and Mario," she went on. When I again looked blank she provided a last name. "Mario Minaghieri, Nick. Our tenor."

My eyes got really big. Camilla St. John and Mario Minaghieri and Gerald Oliver? This wasn't just a star-studded production, this had all the earmarks of the Tosca of the century. And I was going to sing Scarpia in the middle of all those stars? Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ in a basket. I was way out of my depth.

I expect my feelings were pretty obvious; you didn't have to be Asmedogh to read my face. "Don't get intimidated, Nick," she said quickly. "You belong, too. Didn't you hear Gerry telling you so, saying you were his Scarpia?" Unexpectedly she giggled. "Just as well we did our final Turandot last night, though. Marko is going to be so pissed!"

Just like everything else seemed to be doing today, that one, too, caught me flatfooted. "OK, Camilla, I'm kind of lost here," I said. "Why the hell would Marko be pissed?"

She laughed again. "He was our backup, the baritone I told you they had lined up." My mouth fell open again, the thought had never entered my mind. "He was expecting a contract tomorrow," she went on. "He knew we had one last audition, but that it was an unknown. We didn't tell him who, he had no idea. He's a mean little bastard, and he'd have found a way to take it out on you."

Now I knew what the business in last night's curtain call had been about. When they'd booked the house for today's thingy he must have got wind.

"You don't seem to like him much," I observed.

"I detest him," she said with a real bite. "When I made my Met debut in Boheme he was my stage lover. He kept giving me all manner of unwanted advice and trying to get in my pants, and when I brushed him off he spent half the production trying to upstage me. The idea of him as my Scarpia gave me the creeps."

"Well," I pointed out reasonably, "at least the second part of that would have been in character."

She picked right up on my reference. "True. But as attractive as the idea is I couldn't actually knife him, the law frowns on things like that." Rather than submit to Scarpia's blackmail Tosca stabs him to death at the end of Act II, which is why he's missing from Act III.

"You sound like you disapprove," I teased. "Of the law, that is."

"But there are so many laws these days," she mock pouted. "They take all the fun out of life, don't you think?"

We went back and forth in this light-hearted vein for a while, just playing but with something, I thought, behind. One of the ways people get to know each other is to just chat idly, make jokes—not pre-thought-out ones, which tend to fall flat, but just flowing out of the conversation—and kind of probe about to test for compatibility. I found that I liked this sort of interaction with Camilla very much.