I clutch my robe harder, triggering a throbbing in my palm, a gouge of which Charles isn’t aware. If he was, he would inquire about it, hands in our profession being as vital as those to a concert pianist. Fortunately the wound required only iodine and a small bandage, giving me no cause to divulge the depth of my foolishness as he rattles on.

“Tell me you at least got a load of those dogfaces. Even the big beefy ones came charging for the stage. When I busted out of the cabinet, saw it myself, them dopes were scared outta their wits.”

“I agree. They were dopes to ever worry.”

The barb soars right on by. Charles is too busy savoring the coup against his favorite targets. To him, with flat feet barring him from the draft, all enlisted men have become macho buffoons hoodwinked into fighting someone else’s war. Battling Japan, I can see, he’d say—in light of Pearl Harbor, obviously—but why Germany and Italy and all those others? Admittedly skeptical of printed propaganda since my childhood, I had no answer.

“Oh hey, did ya hear the news flash?” he goes on. “House manager says the critic definitely caught the show. His ticket was picked up at the window. Just think of the write-up we’re bound to get. In the New York Herald Tribune of all things.”

“I can imagine.” Easily so. Featured will be the lone achievements of Monsieur Charles Bouchard, an exotic title based less on his ancestry and basic French speaking skills than my foresight to gain us prestige. But that’s not the issue. “And if you ask me? None of it matters a whit.”

His eyes go wide. “None of—? How can you say that? I thought this was about ticket sales. About building our reputation, top bookings…”

I swivel to face him. “What matters is you should have warned me.”

He shakes his head, flabbergasted, as if dealing with an obstinate child. “Fenna, for Pete’s sake. Me not letting on, that’s the reason it worked. Your honest-to-goodness fear is what got ’em believing. All those surprises you didn’t count on—”

“You should have warned me,” I start again, “so I’d have known when to shout for help.” My failure to calculate the clues, to anticipate his plot, is a point I’ll begrudge myself for some time; it’s my main cause now for not exploding. “What if those people had made it to the cabinet seconds earlier? They could have pushed it over while you were in the milk can. Or even in the midst of climbing your way out.”

He ponders this, then exhales and shows his palms. “Okay, fine. I did cut it a li’l close.”

A little? I abandon refuting this, diverted by the drop and drag of his syllables, even heavier than usual. And I remember.

“Alternately, I suppose, we could just blame the gin.”