Glassworks by Olivia Wolfgang-Smith

Author:Olivia Wolfgang-Smith
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Standing ovation. Felix was transported, but that was business as usual. Novak was the only one here without her sea legs.

The ensemble jogged out and bowed in groups of four. There was no sign of the act one Clara.

Novak grabbed for Felix’s playbill, tearing the cover. “Ooh, you bitch,” he said, still clapping.

Novak fanned the pages.

The stage-manager friend appeared and took his bow; the chorus-line girlfriend. There were little swells of applause, cheers and whoops.

She found the picture, sandwiched in the last row of ensemble headshots. “Cecily Wonder,” she almost shouted, so Felix jerked and bumped into the man to his right. “Cecily Wonder, did you—” and there she was onstage, Novak’s kid, jogging up to bow. The applause held at a steady patter. Novak spun to glare at the audience. The bastards were saving it for the spaceman. They had already moved on fifteen seconds into the future, when they’d get to pretend they knew a movie star. They were just going to let this kid think she wasn’t incredible.

Novak slotted her thumb and middle finger deep into her mouth and whistled as loud and shrill as she could, tasting callus and steel and lemon soap. It cut the air in the room into discrete atoms.

Cecily Wonder followed the sound into the orchestra and looked straight at her.

“Jesus, are you ill?” Felix shrieked, covering an ear. “Were you raised on a raft?”

Cecily Wonder took her bow, eyes locked with Novak’s. She smiled.

Good. Now she knew. Now Novak could go.

Then Cecily stepped to the side and extended one long arm, presenting—Kent Casper. The ceiling shattered with cheering. He waved, his hair bobbing in thanks.

Felix was trying to clap and gather their things at the same time. He shoved at Novak’s shoulder, pushing her down their row to the aisle. “Stage door, stage door,” he chanted. “Come on, we gotta beat these sharks.”

But they had to piss again—a handicap of middle age—and then shuffle through the maze to the exit and by the time they got around the block, the crowd at the back door would have been called enormous anywhere but midtown Manhattan. Police-style barricades cordoned off an aisle of sidewalk from the stage door to the street. A scrum of people threw elbows along the barriers, brandishing playbills and glossy publicity photos of Commander Reginald and in some cases what looked like homemade gifts. The door swung open and the crowd surged, then fell back as a couple of disappointing non-Kents hurried down the sidewalk aisle.

Felix’s face fell. He looked at Novak, gauging how far to push his luck.

“Knock yourself out, chump,” she said, and fell back against the building where she could keep an eye on him.

She tilted her head back, felt the heat and scratch of the brickwork on her scalp. Sighted up along the edge of the wall to the sky. Even with the crowd babbling, the open air and straight lines reset something in her that had come uncoiled. She felt herself firm back up.

It was an old building.

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