Radiance

I expect I shall see it again. Some small sacrifices must be made in the pursuit of one’s ambitions. I’ve seen a few rainstorms in my time. And how is your sister, Miss Mortimer? I do so miss Emily at Christmastime.

[MADAME MORTIMER’S face flushes angrily; her hand tightens on her pistol.]

MADAME MORTIMER

You know perfectly well how she is. And if you were a decent man, you’d tell me where you buried her!

The Ingénue’s Handbook

13 January, 1930, Half Past Three in the Afternoon

The Savoy, Grasshopper City, Luna

I’ve been prancing about in front of a camera for—Heavens!—twenty-two years now, so kindly invest the following statement with grave and dignified Authority.

I love wrap parties more than just about anything else in the world.

Oh, it’s lovely to plan, and lovely to work, but having worked is ever so much better. And dancing yourself silly in pearls knowing you don’t have a thing to do tomorrow is best of all! The fine and the fatigued positively sparkle with the frantic fizz of having pulled it off despite the odds—you can’t help being light on your feet with all that weight off your shoulders. It’s the party at the end of the world—the quick, fantastic world you’ve all made together, a world that now exists only on a heap of black tape in a tin can. Oh, well! On to the next one! And the funny, impish magic of a wrap party is that everyone still has scraps of their characters hanging off them like Salome’s veils, fluttering, fading, but not quite finished tangling the tongue and tripping the feet. You’re not in Wonderland anymore, but you positively reek of rabbit. It’s a secret, rollicking room where everything is still half make-believe. That scamp can’t stop walking like Robin Hood; that other fellow isn’t done trying to seduce you like Heathcliff; those two prizefighters might come to blows tonight because they haven’t quite scrubbed off Cain or Abel; and oh, gracious, the mischief you’ll get up to while your heart’s half Maid Marian, a squidge Cathy, a wee bit Madame Mortimer—but then, I never completely shed MM. I’ve been her almost as long as I’ve lived on the Moon, which is to say almost as long as I’ve been alive. Before the Moon, it hardly counts as living. Madame Maxine Mortimer has thoroughly rubbed off all over me. Why, just the other day, Betty Raleigh’s black pearls went missing from her dressing room and I’d locked all the doors and started interrogating suspects before I came to my senses.

Poor Betts. Her insides are nothing but sunshine and bunny tails, but she’s had a devil of a time lately. It’s intensely trying. Hartford Crane gave her those pearls right before he ran off with Yolanda Brun. The gossip rags are just full of their sopping laundry, and while Yolanda loads up her supper plate with the attention, sweet innocent Betty can hardly squeak for shame. Cheat first and cheat often, Betts, that way you’re never stuck cleaning up after your husband’s midnight snacks.

Thus we circle the point, miss it, put our car in reverse, and come round to it again, and the point is this: The Miranda Affair is in the can, along with the last, rather wobbly, decade. It’ll be Thad’s last talkie—the tide’s against us. Receipts go up the moment I shut my mouth. I’ve always liked my voice. It’s a pity MM will have to save the day with wild gesticulations, but what the people want, the people will have!

Well, never mind! The wrap party is TONIGHT. And no smoky speakeasy for our rarefied carousing, no sir! Banish silence! Tear up the title cards! My darling maestro Thaddeus has thrown us all such a treat: it’s to take place aboard his yacht on the Sea of Tranquillity! The Achelois is a grand, wasteful, brilliant beast of a thing—it’s got its own ballroom, a ninepins alley, a wine cellar fit for a bevy of Roman emperors, and Thad makes sure there’s fresh violets and a dash of snuff in everyone’s staterooms.

Or so my darling Regina tells me. This will be my maiden voyage. The yacht used to belong to Jefferson Dufresne, back when he was the King of the Historicals at Plantagenet Pictures and everyone licked his boots for the chance to fart on Bosworth Field. So Regina, my old flatmate (gosh, it feels like a thousand years ago that I had to split the rent!), got to go after she played Empress Josephine in his great big Frenchie flop. Quelle injustice! That I should have to wait until I am nearly forty, when she got to go at nineteen!