City of Ash Read Online Free PDF Page B

and bigger sets that rose or descended through the traps in the stage floor; to the left was the greenroom. The door was open; I heard voices and stepped inside.
    The greenroom was furnished with several cushioned seats and chairs, all in various colors and various stages of disrepair. A three-foot-long wavery mirror hung on one wall, and good—and bad—notices were pinned and fluttering here and there. The call box was to one side of the door—just now it held only Lucius’s orders to appear at first call this morning and a formal good wishes proclamation for Arabella. Along with the familiar smell of gas lingering in an unwindowed room, the greenroom had a constantly moldy smell from the carpets. Aloysius claimed they’d once been abandoned in a swamp and Lucius had got them for almost nothing, and though I didn’t know if that was true, the smell was right.
    William Galloway, the company’s “first old man,” was there, finishing off a pastry while Aloysius read the newspaper, and Brody lay back on one of the settees, picking at his nails with a penknife. He was singing some tuneless song, and Aloys threw him an irritated glance before he rose and put aside the paper to give me a kiss. His dark mustache and Vandyke beard were soft against my cheek. “Darling, thank God you’re here. Now perhaps the boy will mind his manners.”
    Brody grinned and sat up, shoving the knife into his pocket. “Bea, thank God you’re here,” he said in perfect mockery of Aloys. “You’ve saved me once again from the old man’s pontificating.”
    “Perhaps he wouldn’t pontificate if you didn’t provoke him so,” I said with a smile, forgetting my headache.
    “Exactly as I’ve told him again and again.” Aloys reseated himself. “But look at you, darling, why, you’re blooming as a rose. Dare I take it to mean you have some foreknowledge of today’s events?”
    “I couldn’t say,” I said. “You know I’m not privy to Lucius’s secrets.”
    Brody guffawed. Aloys only smiled.
    Our “first old woman,” Mrs. Maryann Chace, sauntered in, huffing and puffing, and Mr. Galloway licked the last of the pastry’s glaze from his fingers and said, “At least Lucius isn’t bringing in some new girl. No need to get used to Bea.”
    “Good God, I
hope
so!” Mrs. Chace said. “It’s so
jarring
to adjust to something new. Change is so enervating. Why, I vow, each time a new day begins, it requires all my stamina to accommodate it.”
    “Where’s Jack?” Aloys asked, taking his watch from his pocket. “It’s half past already.”
    “ ‘Too swift arrives as tardy as too slow.’ ” Jackson, handsome as ever, his blond hair oiled and smooth, curling at his pockmarked jaw, stepped through the door tapping his cane, a new affectation, against the doorjamb. Jack glanced about the room until his dark eyes fell on me. He made a little bow, flourishing his cape like a melodrama villain. “Ah, there she is! ‘A daughter of the gods, divinely tall and most divinely fair.’ Shall we prostrate ourselves before our new queen Bea?”
    Now I laughed. “What assumptions you all make! I’m certain Lucius will have something to say about it.”
    “What can he say, except to anoint you in Arabella’s place?”
    “It’ll be good for you, Wheeler,” Brody put in. “You’re always bitching about kissing Arabella. Now you shall have Bea to kiss instead.”
    Jack rubbed his chin and gave me a lecherous wink. “Softer lips than that wrinkled old hag’s, I’ll warrant.”
    “That’s not what you said two days ago,” Brody teased. “Bella was ‘radiant’—isn’t that what you said? I remember now: ‘I shall miss you as the sun misses the moon.’ ”
    Jackson sighed heavily and sat down, crossing his legs, resting his cane against the chair’s arm. “Come, come, you know I am the basest hypocrite. Like any drone I have no choice but to pursue the new queen.”
    “And I thought you loved me for myself,” I