Eyes of Darkness Read Online Free PDF Page B

was no chance of trouble. She’d had no way of knowing that Jaborski’s seventeenth trip would end in disaster, yet Michael blamed her. She’d thought he had regained his perspective during the last few months, but evidently not.
    She stared at the chalkboard, thought of the two words that had been printed there, and anger swelled in her. Michael was behaving like a spiteful child. Didn’t he realize that her grief was as difficult to bear as his? What was he trying to prove?
    Furious, she went into the kitchen, picked up the telephone, and dialed Michael’s number. After five rings she realized that he was at work, and she hung up.
    In her mind the two words burned, white on black: NOT DEAD.
    This evening she would call Michael, when she got home from the premiere and the party afterward. She was certain to be quite late, but she wasn’t going to worry about waking him.
    She stood indecisively in the center of the small kitchen, trying to find the willpower to go to Danny’s room and box his clothes, as she had planned. But she had lost her nerve. She couldn’t go in there again. Not today. Maybe not for a few days.
    Damn Michael.
    In the refrigerator was a half-empty bottle of white wine. She poured a glassful and carried it into the master bath.
    She was drinking too much. Bourbon last night. Wine now. Until recently, she had rarely used alcohol to calm her nerves—but now it was her cure of first resort. Once she had gotten through the premiere of Magyck! , she’d better start cutting back on the booze. Now she desperately needed it.
    She took a long shower. She let the hot water beat down on her neck for several minutes, until the stiffness in her muscles melted and flowed away.
    After the shower, the chilled wine further relaxed her body, although it did little to calm her mind and allay her anxiety. She kept thinking of the chalkboard.
     
NOT DEAD.

4
    AT 6:50 TINA WAS AGAIN BACKSTAGE IN THE showroom. The place was relatively quiet, except for the muffled oceanic roar of the VIP crowd that waited in the main showroom, beyond the velvet curtains.
    Eighteen hundred guests had been invited—Las Vegas movers and shakers, plus high rollers from out of town. More than fifteen hundred had returned their RSVP cards.
    Already, a platoon of white-coated waiters, waitresses in crisp blue uniforms, and scurrying busboys had begun serving the dinners. The choice was filet mignon with Bernaise sauce or lobster in butter sauce, because Las Vegas was the one place in the United States where people at least temporarily set aside concerns about cholesterol. In the health-obsessed final decade of the century, eating fatty foods was widely regarded as a far more delicious—and more damning—sin than envy, sloth, thievery, and adultery.
    By seven-thirty the backstage area was bustling. Technicians double-checked the motorized sets, the electrical connections, and the hydraulic pumps that raised and lowered portions of the stage. Stagehands counted and arranged props. Wardrobe women mended tears and sewed up unraveled hems that had been discovered at the last minute. Hairdressers and lighting technicians rushed about on urgent tasks. Male dancers, wearing black tuxedos for the opening number, stood tensely, an eye-pleasing collection of lean, handsome types.
    Dozens of beautiful dancers and showgirls were backstage too. Some wore satin and lace. Others wore velvet and rhinestones—or feathers or sequins or furs, and a few were topless. Many were still in the communal dressing rooms, while other girls, already costumed, waited in the halls or at the edge of the big stage, talking about children and husbands and boyfriends and recipes, as if they were secretaries on a coffee break and not some of the most beautiful women in the world.
    Tina wanted to stay in the wings throughout the performance, but she could do nothing more behind the curtains. Magyck! was now in the hands of the performers and technicians.
    Twenty-five minutes