Thirty-eight

“MR. AMES, MISS PERKINS would like you to come to her dressing room. Would you come with me, please?” I looked at Wendy, Melody, Lissa, and Bree. They flicked their fingers at me, so I went with the house manager. The show was supposed to start in ten minutes. There were flowers all over Allie’s dressing room. More flowers, I thought, than there were people in the audience. Allison threw herself into my arms as soon as she saw me.

“Tony! I’m so scared!”

“Allie, honey. You’ll be fine. This is what you live for.”

“What if they don’t like me?”

“They’ll love you.”

“What if they do like me? Am I ready for this, Tony?”

“Hey! Allison. I fell in love with you the same morning Jonathan did. You are my Diva. You’ve been in Seattle for a year now. People love you. But that’s not all. You’ve played racquetball in the fucking World Championships. You’ve won the fucking Intercollegiates. You’ve won the fucking Opens. You’ve even kept forty tweens occupied for a week at a time. Everyone here is in awe of you—including me.”

“Tony, you’re so ... You’re such a bullshitter. Kiss me like you mean it and be in the center seat of the front row. This is for you as much as for me.”

I kissed her. In fact, I kissed her until there was a knock on the door. “Two minutes, Miss Perkins,” the voice said.

“Thank you, two,” Allie called back. She kissed me hard and pushed me away. “Go to your seat. I have to repair my lipstick. It’s showtime!”

And what a show. Allie sang, danced, and did stand-up improv.

“He was standing right there between me and the finals of the women’s open championships with my favorite racquetball player on the court. I yelled, ‘Move yer bloomin’ arse!’ He didn’t get it. That was our last date.” The audience cracked up. Jonathan and David were sitting beside us, but at intermission I noticed that Jonathan was pacing the lobby like an expectant father.

“You okay, Jonathan?” I asked.

“This is it, Tony. We risked it all on this second act. She’s spectacular. I just hope everyone is ready.”

“I’m sure looking forward to it, and it doesn’t look like anyone left.”

“Let’s hope.”

I understood about thirty seconds into the second act. The piece wasn’t from a script. It was the last four thousand plus words of Ulysses.

Rio and I had read Joyce’s Ulysses for Literary Criticism and Critical Reading classes, looking at all the critical analyses of the piece from 1904 to the present. The last episode of Ulysses is a soliloquy by Molly Bloom, Leopold’s long-suffering wife. There’s no punctuation and no capitalization. Unless someone had a copy of the book reading along, they’d never know if Allison’s soliloquy cut any of the original. It rambles on and on, and takes you all through her life. Allison handled it masterfully. Over half an hour lying in bed talking. It was so beautiful that we didn’t even think twice when Allie pulled the covers down and started examining her breast as she talked about Leopold wanting to know if she’d squirt a little breast milk in his tea. The end was beautiful, when she said,

... I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.

There was an instant’s pause as the lights slowly dimmed. Before it was fully black, the applause had begun. With only a hundred people in the room, ‘thunderous’ might not be an apt description, but when the lights came up on the stage again and Allie was still lying in the bed, the entire room was standing and still applauding. She just looked at us. There was a slight smile on her lips as she acknowledged our presence and the applause gradually died. People sat as they realized there would be an encore. When they were completely quiet, Allie’s eyes came to rest on me. I saw her take three deep breaths and then flip the covers away from her perfectly nude form lying on the bed—an exact duplicate of my painting as she stretched her hand out to me.

Sono andati? Fingevo di dormire
perché volli con te sola restare.
Ho tante cose che ti voglio dire,
o una sola, ma grande come il mare,
come il mare profonda ed infinita...
Sei il mio amore e tutta la mia vita!

The song from La Bohème by Puccini she had sung to me in the hotel in Chicago two years ago. The audience was captivated as her clear beautiful tones rang out a cappella in the little theater. We were spellbound, either by the music, or by the daring pose as Allie sang the number completely nude in front of us.

Molly Bloom had left the audience with watery eyes. Mimi, her hand raised with a pink muff held in it as she lay her head down, left us all weeping. The lights faded and it was a few moments before the first tentative applause started. It built in wave after wave as the lights came up on an empty stage. Allie entered in a simple dressing gown and curtsied. The applause continued several minutes.

“That was it! That was the scene in the painting. I’ve always loved the painting, but now I understand it,” Lissa said as she hugged me. We were escorted to the lobby where we met Allie. I gave her a hug and a deep, passionate kiss. There was applause from around us and a line started almost immediately. We signed twenty-seven posters. By my estimate, that grossed more than the ticket office. Jonathan was beaming and as soon as we were free and Allie dressed, we were ushered out to a limousine and taken to the W Hotel where Jonathan had prepared a fabulous reception. I was stunned by Allie’s dress, such as it was, when I helped her out of her coat. It was slit to her waist on the sides and plunged nearly to her navel in front.

“Allie,” I said softly, “tell me to butt out if it’s none of my business, but you aren’t being used or exploited, are you?”

“Thank you, Tony. I know you’d come to my defense if I needed. I might appear nude on stage, but I’m not a stripper and I’m not a door prize. It’s okay. And besides, I’m coming home with you tonight.”

That was a relief and the way Lissa, Melody, Wendy, Whitney, and Bree hovered near Allie all evening, I could tell I wasn’t the only one feeling protective. Jonathan and David were never far from her either and managed a crowd that I’m sure was at least twice the size of the attendance at the theater.

The next two nights the house was packed, and the review that came out in Saturday’s paper was about as positive as you could get. Allie would be going on tour.