Chapter 22

My day started off on a bright note. It was barely 8:15 when the phone rang, and Sam was on the other end.

"Well, Nick, congratulations are definitely in order," he started out. "I had a message waiting from"—he named Camilla's southwestern company—"when I got in, saying call ASAP. I did, and sure enough, you're Scarpia."

"I told you so," I said smugly.

"OK terms, too," he said. "They didn't go overboard, but the money's pretty respectable for a top spot." He gave me a number, which was miles higher than anything I'd previously drawn. "You also get the usual travel and per diem, but they're more, too." He gave me figures. "Plus you get residuals from the DVD."

There he caught me flat-footed. "What DVD?" I asked.

"They didn't tell you? The opening's being recorded, they're going to sell it. With St. John and Minaghieri and Oliver it ought to sell pretty damn good, too. My God, Nick, this can make you!"

I'd been grinning bigger and bigger all the while he was talking. "I sure hope so, Sam," I told him. "And on the premise that it may do just that, I want you to put all bookings for me on hold until we find out."

"Well, sure," he said, a bit nonplused. "I'm very, very happy for you, I think. I hope. Say, look. How about you come in tonight and I take you out to dinner? On me."

"Thanks, Sam, but I'll have to take a raincheck. Previous engagement."

"Oh." He seemed genuinely disappointed. "Well, how about tomorrow night, then? Or—"

"Maybe next week, Sam," I cut him off. "I'm working all this week. Camilla's coming out and—"

I heard a gasp of astonishment. "'Camilla?'" he repeated in an awed tone. "Camilla St. John? The lady herself?"

"That's the one," I said. "See, she kind of discovered me, got me the audition Sunday, and she's going to work with me on Tosca, give me a jump-start."

"For a week?"

"That's the plan."

There was a very long pause. "And she's going to be staying where for this week?" he asked.

"Well ... here. But Sam, that's for your ears only, don't bandy it around, OK?"

Another pause, even longer. "You have one of the most beautiful women in the world, and probably the number one lyric soprano, coming to move in with you for a week and—"

"Guest room, Sam," I cut him off. "Don't get carried away." In truth I was feeling a lot the same way, and I was saying the last as much to myself as to him.

"Jesus," he said in an awed tone. "Who the hell are you, and what have you done with my friend Nick Volker?"

"I told you, Sam, my voice has changed."

"Yeah, well, my voice changed too when I hit puberty, but I didn't have sexy sopranos coming around."

I laughed. "It's all in the timing," I told him.

"Right. OK, I'll let you go now, but before I do, can you let me hear that one more time?"

"Due rami enormi crescon sulla mia testa!" I sang into the phone. It's the second line of Ford's aria; he's in disguise to test his wife's fidelity by getting Falstaff to try to seduce her—the opera's based on Shakespeare's Merry Wives of Windsor—and the old rogue's so persuasive that he's already thinking of himself as a cuckold with horns growing on his head. The music runs right up the scale into the baritonal stratosphere. It was a little rough, I hadn't warmed up yet this morning, but it would do.

"Yeah," he said softly. "Some day, Nick, I want to hear the whole story, OK? Anyhow, congratulations again. And get me a ticket for opening night down there, will you? I'm flying in; I wouldn't miss this for all the tea in China."

I did a proper warm-up after that, and then spent the next couple of hours just restlessly tidying up around the cabin, mostly to keep myself occupied. I wasn't sure when Camilla was coming, we hadn't talked time, and she hadn't called, and the more the morning passed the more nervous I felt.

Finally the phone rang about quarter till eleven. "Morning, Nick," she said. "Just wanted to let you know I'm on my way. Well, not quite, I still have to finish packing and check out, but then I will be. Say about twelve-thirty, one o'clock, that range?"

Apparently she was getting a late start. What the hell, I knew not everybody kept to my early-bird schedule. "I'll be looking for you," I promised her. Then a thought occurred to me. "Hey, are you going to want lunch when you get here?" I asked.

"What do you have?" she countered.

"Uh." What did I have? Well, there was still a good bit of paté and brie; tentatively I suggested that.

"Sounds delicious. See you then."

Even more nervous now, I fixed a serving plate with a lot more sliced paté and brie than I figured the two of us could possibly eat. I got out some crackers, cut some bread and stuck it in the toaster ready to depress, opened a bottle of white wine, made some iced tea in case she didn't want wine, and generally fussed like a little old lady.

I wasn't the only nervous one, though. Asmedogh, too, was on edge. He'd asked me to leave a window open so that, if need arose, he could exit quickly and unobtrusively. But that was awkward, since I wasn't at all sure how Camilla felt about fresh air. Some singers demand it, others treat it as though it'll infect them. And it was getting a bit nippy outdoors with fall here, especially at night. We finally settled on cracking the laundry room window (it was on the first floor and Camilla would be unlikely to go there), and he practiced jumping up on the washer and shoving it full open several times before he was satisfied. The laundry room door would remain closed but not latched.

Then we waited, he and I. What else could we do?

We didn't, however, have all that long to wait. By the time we'd actually settled down, both of us on the couch, it was nearly 12:30; and only about ten minutes later I could hear a car coming up the road. It pulled, unsurprisingly, into my driveway—the road went on a few hundred yards, but there was nothing but woodlands beyond—and it was she.

I went out to greet her, expecting a formidable amount of luggage to haul—I only hoped it wouldn't exceed my guest room closet capacity. By the time I got there she was already out of the car and looking around with evident admiration. She was dressed, interestingly, in just jeans and a kind of mannish shirt that bulged here and there, both of them, in womanly places. She looked even more stunning in that kind of casual attire than I'd ever seen her even in her skimpy Liu costume.