King of Hearts Read online

  She took a careful breath.

  “That would be very kind of you,” she said. “Open the Dumpster, please?”

  “How about you open it,” he said, blowing on her ear. “I’ll dump the bags in.” Heat radiated off him onto her back.

  Her poise cracked. She turned. He was standing between the garbage bags on each side of her, not two inches away. His tee-shirt was streaked with stage soot and his brand new jeans had acquired that pattern of creases at the hip that you didn’t see on yuppy jeans. He’d worked hard today.

  He smelled good.

  She licked her lips. “Done with work?”

  “Uh-huh.” He stared intensely at her mouth.

  She felt funny, as if she’d discovered a power in her mouth that she didn’t know she had, and now she was afraid to move it, for fear of rocking the world. She held still.

  He inched closer. “You’re between me and the Dumpster.”

  She swallowed. Stretching a hand out behind her, she found the edge of the Dumpster. “Oh,” she said, trying not to move her dangerous lips.

  He tilted his head and leaned closer. His breath smelled of coffee. “Here it comes,” he whispered.

  And then, absolutely fearless of the consequences, he kissed her mouth. Nadine panicked. Her hand tightened on the edge of the Dumpster. He’s kissing me by the garbage can, she thought, while choirs of angels tweeted overhead like a crown of stars and redhot lava went blurp somewhere down below her tummy. When she dared, she let herself feel how warm and soft and dry his lips were. Her lips sizzled. It was only a gentle kiss.

  The world rocked anyway.

  “Don’t I owe you a tour of the Opera House?” he said, breathing on her lips. He smiled at her, friendly and cocky.

  “Uh, that’s right.” She had a lot to say to him. Where had it all flown?

  “Then we’ll call it a date.” He bumped his lips against hers, very gently. Weird silent zinging noises rushed up the back of her head. “Tomorrow afternoon.” He did it again. The zinging rushed higher. She couldn’t breathe. “After I’m done at the Auditorium and you get off shift, what, around four-thirty?”

  His blue eyes were like X-rays, laughing at her. She turned her head away in self-defense. “Okay,” she squeaked.

  He laughed out loud then, and stepped around her to the Dumpster. With one hand he threw the lid back. With the other he gathered up both those huge, heavy garbage bags and swung them up and over and into the Dumpster.

  She ought to run back into the restaurant.

  Casually he patted her on the behind. “It’s a date, your highness.” Then he was gone.

  Nadine trembled, staring after him. Where was all the stuff she should tell him for the good of his soul? While she waited for her limbs to move again, she heard the roar of his Camaro. It passed the mouth of the alley, up Michigan Avenue, with that blue-eyed devil at the wheel.

  “You should go see your little boy more often!” she yelled down the empty alley.

  My Lord. She had a date with King Dave Flaherty.

  Chapter Nine

  King Dave picked her up at Liz Otter’s next afternoon. As they walked up Wacker Drive and neared the Opera House, hordes of unhappy-looking office workers streamed out of the skyscrapers, and Nadine felt doubly glad to be a Liz Otter’s waitress.

  She enjoyed her job. And she got to work around guys like King Dave, who looked so good in his rocker tee-shirt that even the office bunnies raised their dull eyes to check him out.

  He put her hand in the crook of his elbow. Nadine puffed up with happiness.

  The Opera House loomed. They walked under a row of towering pillars and big gold-framed pictures set into the walls showing who-all was singing in each opera. King Dave opened a door.

  She looked up at a discreet sign sticking out. STAGE DOOR. She was going in at the stage door with an actual stagehand!

  They stopped by a huge fat man who sat at a window in the wall.

  “Tour, Burg,” King Dave said. Burg buzzed them in.

  “Okay,” she whispered, “why’s he called Burg?”

  “Short for Cheeseburg,” King Dave said. He nodded at a tall guy in a checked shirt. “Afternoon, Bill. Bobbyjay working the show tonight?”

  Bill looked curiously at Nadine. She in turn looked at King Dave, who kept moving.

  “Who was that?” she hissed to him.

  “Just a bum,” King Dave said. “He gets fresh. Okay, here’s the stage, or deck.” He opened a battered door. Nadine marveled that he should want to protect her from some guy getting fresh. She went out on the deck and looked up—and up.

  The cavern was limitless—enormous—deeper than the sky, and blacker too. “It’s so dark.”

  “It’s painted black. In a stage house, you don’t want nothing gleaming or reflecting light unintentionally.”

  Way up there, a few bare bulbs shone. She made out big dark shapes between her and the faraway ceiling. “How high is it?”

  “Hundred and forty feet. Da—darn near the highest loft in the country.”

  She wandered toward the center of the stage, staring up into the darkness, meandering around huge lumps of furniture or parts of houses and things. Long lines vanished toward the distant ceiling, attached to the house parts.

  “This is the set for tonight’s first act of Pinocchio. So you got your village, your fountain, your Eye-talian pines in these rolling pots—” He stuck his foot out and gave a huge pine tree in a big stone pot a casual shove and it slid soundlessly. She gasped. Carefully he shoved it back, looking at the floor as he moved it. “Spike marks on the deck. See?”

  She looked. Someone had stuck an L of bright blue tape to the floor. King Dave aligned the corner of the stone pot along the L. She noticed that there was another bit of blue tape on that corner of the pot.

  “I get it,” she said. She looked up again. “But why’s everything attached to wires? To hold it up?”

  “So they can fly the whole shebang outta here for the second act. Look up,” he said, moving next to her and pointing.

  She looked up. It was cold onstage and he was warm. She sighted along his arm, pretending she couldn’t see perfectly well without touching her cheek to his warm shoulder.

  He snuggled closer to her.

  “Up there you got your second act forest, which is scrim legs—that’s side curtains to you—painted up like trees, and a couple of real expensive big Styrofoam rocks for the singers to hide behind.”

  “Rocks? Styrofoam rocks are expensive?”

  “Betcher a—you bet. We ding ’em up now and then and the production manager throws a fit. He’s gotta get a scene painter in to touch ’em up. They make forty bucks an hour, the robbers,” King Dave said admiringly.

  “But—styrofoam rocks? Why don’t they get real rocks?”

  King Dave smiled patiently. “Because they’re hard to move around? Because they’d fall out of the sky and kill somebody?”

  “Oh.” She felt dumb.

  He kissed her on the end of her nose. It was hard to see his expression in the dimness onstage. His eyes locked with hers.

  She looked at his shadowed face a moment, wondering what he was thinking, and then stepped away. No sense getting this date off to a false start.

  “Anyway, all this is junk,” he said, rapping hollowly on the front of a stucco house. “The cool stuff is in the mechanics of the building. You afraid of heights?”

  “Uh, I don’t think so.” She’d been to the top of the Sears Tower when she first arrived in Chicago, but all she’d felt up there was a long way from Goreville. She craned her neck. “Are we going up there?”

  “Yup.”

  “Uh, how?” About a thousand steps, she imagined. Her after-work feet were already tired in her Stride-Rites. “Stairs?”

  “Only if you want to.” He grinned. “C’mon, I’ll show you.”

  He led her back toward the rear wall of the stage and pressed a button. A narrow panel slid back. Bright, ordinary light leape
d out.

  “An elevator!”

  “It’s pretty small,” he said, herding her into it with a hand barely not-touching her behind. The door slid shut. He pressed a button and the tiny elevator lurched.

  It was a one-person elevator. She tried standing next to him but that squashed them shoulder-to-shoulder. She shifted in front of him, but that put him up against her behind, making her too aware of how small a space they stood in. Her bottom tingled from being so near his hands. The door didn’t open.

  Pivoting in place a step at a time, she faced him.

  He stood still and smiled at her.

  The elevator crawled up. And up. And up. Her ears popped. What if they breathed up all the air in here?

  What if she combusted, standing too close to him too long?

  She smelled sweat. She felt the heat between them, a thin layer of sizzle that scorched the front of her body. When she thought she might grab him just to get it over with, he brushed her lips with his. All the blood in her body rushed up into her head with a thump, then fell back down, leaving her light-headed.

  “Door’s open, your highness,” he said softly.

  She staggered backward. Quickly he reached for her hand and yanked her to her feet before she could fall.

  “You sure you’re okay with heights?” he said. “Because if you’re not, we should go back down now.”

  She looked into that teeny tiny elevator. “I’m fine,” she squeaked.

  But she found herself reaching for his hand as he led her across a grid of steel beams laid close together. It looked like an unfinished floor. If she were to drop a penny now, it wouldn’t stop until it stuck in the stage floor, over a hundred feet below.

  “Duck, your highness,” he said. “Step down.” His hand felt warm and firm under her elbow.

  She ducked under a beam and climbed down a short waffle-plated steel stairway. Then they were on a narrow bridge suspended over darkness. To steady her nerves she pointed at the grid of steel beams. “What do you call that grid?”

  “We call it the grid.” He threw one leg over the railing and stepped carelessly out onto it. Her heart bumped at the sight of him strolling along over nothing. “If you look over the catwalk railing you can see the third act scenery hanging down there below the electrics.”

  She grabbed the safety rail and looked as directed.

  He danced across the grid and swung out over the void, holding onto a flimsy metal pole, pointing.

  “How can you—King Dave, come off of that! It’s scary!”

  He laughed. “Nuts.” Without warning he threw himself down and she shrieked, only to see him standing on his hands, grinning at her upside down.

  “Please!”

  “Hey, I can see up your dress from here.” He bounced back to his feet.

  He didn’t seem bothered by the altitude at all. In his black rocker muscle tee and working man’s jeans, he looked completely at home, swinging like a monkey among the ropes—uh, lines—and grinning. He pointed out a grand curving stairway dangling in midair down there, and a fireplace, and a thing he assured her was a fancy bed, though it looked like a blob to her.

  Now was not a good time to be thinking about a bed.

  “So, uh, where’s your counterweights?” she said breathlessly.

  He returned to the catwalk and led her to a steel ladder stuck to the brick wall. “Can you climb down ten feet?”

  “Sure.”

  With more confidence than she felt she slung her purse across her chest, reached for the ladder, and stepped down. It wasn’t so hard. She kept her eyes on the bricks in front of her and soon her feet touched another walkway. King Dave was down in two ticks, and then they were crowded together on the catwalk.

  He’s doing this on purpose. He brought me here so he could rub up against me all evening.

  But it was interesting. And she couldn’t think of any stagehand she’d rather see it with than King Dave.

  “Okay, this,” he said in a voice of authority, “is an arbor.” He put his hand on a steel rod frame running down the wall. It swayed. She shrieked. “It’s attached, see?”

  He reached into the frame and picked up an oblong block, then set it back down with a clank. She realized the frame was stacked with blocks, far down the wall into darkness.

  “Here.” He bent and handed her something off the floor. It was a block of steel.

  She nearly dropped it. “Lordy, how heavy is that?”

  “That’s thirty pounds of steel.” He took the weight out of her hands with ease and laid it neatly back on the stack at their feet. “The smaller ones,” he said, picking up something else and handing it to her, “are forty pounds. They’re lead,” he added.

  She held tight, lest she drop it off the walkway. “No kidding!” He took it back and put it on the walkway with the others. Her hands were gritty. “Grubby work.”

  When she went to rub her hands on her uniform, he grabbed both her hands in his. “Rub it off on my shirt,” he ordered her. “You’ll never get it out of that white uniform.”

  She swallowed. His shirt was black. There was a picture of an animal in a spiked collar on the chest, over the words “The Pugs.” The sleeve read, in little white letters, “Deck Dog.”

  That lead weight had sure been dirty. Her palms were black.

  She licked her lips.

  He lifted her hands to his chest. “Go ahead,” he said. She couldn’t see his eyes in the shadow, but there was a laugh in his voice. “I promise not to take it wrong.”

  Looking away awkwardly at the brick wall, anywhere but at him, she rubbed her hands on that hot cotton until she felt her palms getting wet with sweat—his or hers?

  “All clean?” he said, still with that smile in his voice.

  “I think so,” she said unsteadily. Devil! She stepped away, only to bump into something hanging beside her. It swayed, and way down in the open space of the fly loft something clattered. She whooped and clutched his arm. “Everything’s so heavy!”

  “That’s the beauty of a counterweight system. Once you’ve got your pipe loaded with scenery and the counterweight arbors are at the correct weight, one guy can move a thousand pounds of scenery by himself.”

  “Don’t things fall sometimes?”

  “Sometimes. Big piece fell outta the sky one night during a performance and Norsky, who’d of had more sense if he’d been sober, ran out on stage and deflected it so’s it wouldn’t squash the fat lady. Got a medal for that, Norsky did. Of course the riggers got their asses handed to them, ’scuse me, they got yelled at pretty good when the show was over. Wouldn’t have happened on my shift,” he added.

  “Are you a rigger?” she said curiously. He hadn’t seemed to have a job title. “King Dave” was enough.

  “I’d like to be.”

  She glanced up at that. Never before had she heard him express a want that wasn’t instantly satisfied. “Why aren’t you?”

  He looked up and down the arbors lining the wall and then out at the dark fly loft full of hanging lines, pipes, lights, curtains, and scenery. “Too busy,” he said finally. “Department head gets nice money, sure, but you can’t pick up as much extra work. Cuts into your income. C’mon.” He swung away toward the end of the walkway. “Feel like climbing another ladder?”

  Cuts into your income, huh. She knew he didn’t give a darn about money. He didn’t eat fancy, he didn’t wear nice clothes, and he didn’t even seem to drink.

  When she got to the end of the walkway and saw the ladder set into the wall, she balked. It seemed her courage had run out.

  “It’s only thirty feet,” he said. “I do it every day.”

  She didn’t want to look chicken. She peered a long way down the ladder into darkness. “Are we going the whole way like this?”

  The elevator was starting to look good again.

  But she would have to climb up to get to the elevator.

  “Naw, there’s stairs into the building at the next loading gallery. That way�
��s quicker.”

  He started down the ladder. She put her Stride-Rites square on each rung and let the rubber sole cushion her, taking comfort in the solidity of the steel, her hands gripping the cold rungs.

  They came to a walkway much like the last, with, halleluiah, a door in the wall.

  Gratefully she followed him out of the dark, claustrophobic cavern of the fly loft and into a clean, well-lighted corridor.

  “Yo, King Dave,” said a fat man carrying lights—instruments—in each hand. “Thought you was using the elevator.”

  “Uh,” King Dave said, “left it at the grid.”

  “That’s okay. I’ll call it from here,” said the fat man. He pushed a button in the wall.

  She turned to King Dave. “The elevator comes down here?”

  “It goes to all the galleries,” the fat man said.

  King Dave hustled her down the corridor.

  “It goes to all the galleries?” she hissed. “We didn’t have to climb down all those ladders after all?”

  “Sure we did,” he said, pulling her hand through the crook of his elbow. “I couldn’t look up your dress in the elevator.”

  “Oooh, you!” She smacked him on the shoulder.

  He grinned. “I take it you want to use the elevator to get to the basement.”

  He was great for looking in the eye. The right height, the right amount of insolent nerve, and a solid, happy grin. She was so relieved to be standing on a decent floor that she knew she wouldn’t be able to keep a straight face, so she grinned back.

  “Aw, you didn’t hate it all that much,” he said.

  She snorted. Looking into his eyes, she couldn’t say she had. Her own courage had surprised her, running up and down ladders in the dark, way up in the fly loft. “No. I didn’t.”

  “It’s time for you to meet Fuckdaluck Eddie,” he said.

  They took another elevator to the basement, and he led her through a maze of narrow corridors to another cavern—this one low-ceilinged, with stuff hanging in the way everywhere.

  “Yo, Eddie!” King Dave bellowed as they entered. “It’s me, King Dave!”