The Wickedest Showman Read online

  Not that he had problems with his hearing. He literally heard every bit of her line.

  Karina Coleman, the top actress of the theater company Magic Lane Theater, was the perfect actress. She was not just smart, beautiful, and sassy, she had the perfect voice. For stage actors, it was the most important characteristic that could make or break their career. Hers was clear and strong, but it wasn’t noisy or annoying. She had the voice any actor would kill for.

  Except at that moment, Robert couldn’t care less for the beauty of her voice or the perfectly pitched tone. He was completely preoccupied by his own issue.

  “Father, please let me go,” Karina pleaded. “Mother would definitely understand my decision.” With a deep intake of breath, she looked at Robert.

  Robert glanced at the darkened audience area. Sporting deep frown lines between his eyes, his agony looked real—to the point that the audience could feel his inner pain and conflict.

  Then again, his torment wasn’t an act. He couldn’t recall his next line, and he was in absolute, complete agony. Suddenly he felt cold, like he was dipped in a bathtub filled with ice water. But at the same time, his brain felt terribly hot, and a drop of sweat streaked down the side of his face.

  This can’t be happening…. Trying to breathe normally, he desperately attempted to calm down, but he couldn’t.

  It couldn’t be happening. He was in the middle of the climax of the whole play, and he had no idea what he was supposed to say. As he became more and more desperate, his mind racing to recall his line, his head filled with the words and phrases from other scenes.

  As an actor, he’d heard a smorgasbord of horror stories of what could happen on stage, ranging from an invisible shadow pushing an actor off the stage to a cold hand—like the shadow, it was invisible, so how they figured it to be a hand remained a mystery—stroking the back of your neck and making you forget the next line. Like the famous musical Phantom of the Opera, they called those supernatural phenomena the phantoms of the stage.

  Personally, Robert had never encountered the phantom or whatever supernatural existence it was. He prided himself as being a cool-headed realist, and he often chuckled at those ghost stories—if not sarcastically snickering—never taking them seriously. He didn’t believe in ghosts, and he suspected that those shadows and hands were just bad cases of stage fright, also known as idiopathic-amnesia-localized-to-the-lines-you’re-expected-to-deliver, or IALTTLYETD.

  Still, when he was the one suffering from the worst case of IALTTLYETD, he couldn’t shrug it off.

  The program he and Magic Lane Theater were playing was titled The Bright Shadow of the Oak Garden. It was an original play exclusively written for the company and had been cherished and treasured for decades. Three months ago, he was selected out of all his talented, good-looking, and hardworking peers to play the major role of William, the heroine’s father. This particular evening happened to be the first night of the show, and all of a sudden, the lines escaped out of his head as if they were stolen by the phantom.

  No way! Knowledge doesn’t just slip away from your brain! He mentally scolded himself. You should know your lines. You’ve practiced them over and over to the point of reciting them to the cashier at the deli. Yes, you do. You have your lines in your system, all you need to do is recall the first few words….

  His frown lines deepened. Was it “Look into the mirror”? No, that phrase was for the ending of the first act. Please, God, help me! He wasn’t big on religion, and he almost never went to church, but he was making a serious plea to God Almighty from the bottom of his heart. If you help me with the next line, I promise to always join Christmas and Easter masses. I’ll even try to be at every Sunday mass as much as possible. Please help me….

  As he was bargaining with God, Karina’s deep blue gaze pierced him, and her eyes weren’t those of Lilly’s anymore. These were Karina Hall’s eyes.

  The look she gave him screamed, You forgot the lines? Seriously? That can’t happen right here, right now! Don’t even imagine you can get away with screwing my performance like that!

  Robert’s role was an old man in a wheelchair. The prompter would have helped him if only she was near him, but she was at the edge of the stage where the audience couldn’t see, and he was at the center of the stage. The distance between them was as huge as an ocean. If she attempted to help him with the lines, the audience sitting in the front rows would definitely hear her.

  Robert knew his career was dying. He was so over!

  He shut his eyes tightly, bracing for the bitter end of his life as an actor.

  All of a sudden, a small, low voice whispered in his right ear. “Have I ever told you about my dream? I have a dream… on a sunny day, spending the afternoon with the whole family gathering in the comfortable shadow of the oak tree. That’s a very humble dream, but that’s all I’ve ever wanted.”

  The next thing, the lines came back to him. He was once again confident delivering every bit of his part.

  Robert exhaled a deep breath and opened his eyes, repeating the exact lines the voice told him, speaking slowly with clear pronunciation.

  The palpable tension among the cast on the stage dissolved, like snow in spring.

  After that, he recovered his composure in no time. Performing his lines was a piece of cake, and he could even afford to observe Karina’s acting while channeling William.

  “Oak tree… you’ll be standing here, and I’m sure you’ll watch over us on the last day of our lives,” he said quietly, as the only cast member remaining on the stage at the ending.

  The lights dimmed and the drapes started to close, separating him from the audience.

  Listening to the booming applause coming from beyond the curtains, Robert crumpled on the wheelchair. He felt like collapsing on the stage like mud and sleeping for the rest of the night. But such luxury wasn’t offered to a young actor like him.

  “Get up, Robert!” Karina scurried toward him. As always, her voice was full of energy. “You know doing the curtain call is an important part of being on stage.”

  “Yes, of course!” Robert jumped up from the wheelchair like a Jack-in-the-box, and one of the stage hands removed it. Had he really needed it, the scene would have qualified as a miracle.

  All the cast stood in a line, and the curtain opened. As they smiled at the audience, the sound of the happy theater aficionados showered them with praise.

  Bowing once in thank-you, they went backstage, and one by one, each member of the cast went back on stage, showing gratitude to the audience for their support.

  “Hey, Rob. Look at you!” Karina came to his side again.

  “Hey.” Robert offered a small smile. Karina was older than him by more than ten years, but she was the reason he aspired to pursue an acting career in the first place. He practically worshipped her, and even though he went so far as playing her counterpart, his heart pitter-pattered whenever she was near. Thankfully, when he was acting, he didn’t feel his cheeks burning. During those moments, he knew he was destined to become an actor.

  She went on. “You scared the bejeezus out of me. That pause you took just before the finale of the show! I thought you forgot the next line.”

  “Well, Karina… actually—”

  Before he had a chance to clarify his mishap, Karina continued enthusiastically, “Still, Lilly going totally rebel was so sudden and unexpected for William. Maybe that long pause of yours made the scene more dramatic and heart-wrenching. Hey, Rob, you might have just made history for our signature play.”

  “Oh, you think so?” Robert tried to smile, but he was yet to recover from the previous shock.

  “Look, it’s your turn! Go enjoy some attention.” She patted his arm.

  “Oh, yes, of course!” He started to run.

  “Come on, you’re supposed to be an old man. Don’t go running like a former athlete in his late twenties, okay?”

  With her voice playfully following him, Robert headed for the stage. As he took
a bow to the audience, the applause grew louder. At first, he suspected he was just imagining it, but that wasn’t the case. The audience was impressed and apparently loved him.

  After taking another bow toward the auditorium, he went back to the side curtain.

  “Seriously?” Karina said jokingly as he returned. “Come on, you’ve got to let the audience savor you a little bit more.”

  “Oh no, I don’t want to bore them.” He shook his head, prompting Karina to burst out laughing.

  Giving him another pat on the back, she strutted toward the stage. The applause reached its climax.

  Staying behind the side curtain, Robert clapped his hands with more passion than the audience.

  Not just because he admired her and her acting, but because he wanted to celebrate that he managed to deliver all of his lines and came so far as to be welcomed by the crowd at curtain call.

  Oh my God, I did it! With both excitement and exhaustion surging, he didn’t know if he wanted to pump his fists or drop on the floor.

  In an attempt to ease his nerves, he took a deep breath. As he repeated the process several times, he realized something odd had occurred on stage.

  Who was the guy who’d helped him recover from his memory lapse in the first place? Confusion had him knitting his eyebrows. Robert was sure he didn’t imagine the voice. A man had whispered his lines into his ear, and he was real, but Robert had no idea who he was.

  The prompter was behind the curtain, at the far edge of the stage, and she was a woman, not a middle-aged man. Besides that, everyone would have noticed had she walked toward him to offer help, and the play would have been ruined. Several actors playing the parts of villagers were on stage. According to the scene, they came to offer him and his daughter condolences upon hearing about the news of his wife’s death. But all of them were gathered on the side of the stage, and they were far from where he was.

  The only person standing close enough to help him was Karina, but she wasn’t talking. With her piercing blue eyes, she had been intensely staring at him. Her lips were unmoving, and the voice he’d heard belonged to a male. Unless she was a skilled ventriloquist who could talk without even a little twitch of her lips, she couldn’t have been his secret savior.

  If that’s the case, who the heck was he?

  Robert was lost in thought until Karina announced, “Hey, guys, everybody come back on stage and say good night to our amazing audience!”

  * * *

  “Who was that prompter?”

  Karina was already dozing off in postcoital bliss, but at Robert’s words, her long eyelashes fluttered, and her eyes opened. “What? What prompter?”

  “From earlier.” He looked slightly tense.

  “It was Suze, right?” she said, caressing the stray locks of hair off his forehead.

  “Yes, she was.” Robert nodded. “But there was another prompter. Actually, you were right earlier. I had forgotten my lines toward the end of tonight’s show. They just disappeared from my head. I couldn’t recall what to say, and I was literally frozen during that long pause.”

  “Oh really?” Karina’s eyes twinkled with curiosity. “Of course, it was a long pause.”

  The opening night of The Bright Shadow of the Oak Garden was a huge success. After the show, the Magic Lane Theater members gathered backstage, celebrating the success with a drink. Karina thanked the cast and crew for their great work, saluting them with her glass. As soon as everyone knocked back their drink, she told them to have a good rest, as they’d be doing it again and again for the next three weeks.

  As everyone was leaving, she asked Robert to stay behind with her for a chat.

  He braced himself for a serious conversation; she’d realized his snafu earlier.

  As the crew filed out, Suze Collins, a young lady who served as the prompter for the night, approached him. “Robert, you really were amazing tonight!” she said with a big smile.

  “Thanks, Suze.” He smiled back. “I’m sure you’ll land a good role and soon be on stage as well.”

  “Well… I don’t know.” She shrugged a little, still smiling. “Thanks anyway. Good night.” She waved and left.

  “Good night.” He waved back.

  It took a whole twenty minutes for the queen of the company to come out from her dressing room.

  “Can you tag along with me for a while?” she said, but it wasn’t the kind of question to which he could answer no.

  “Sure.”

  Robert left with her, hopping into the passenger seat of her Beemer.

  As a result, he ended up going to the actress’s trendy condo in Tribeca. He also joined her in bed.

  For Robert, Karina Coleman was a goddess, and saying no to her wasn’t an option. Not that he was unwilling to sleep with her, but he wasn’t bold enough to fully enjoy the night with her either. To be honest, he was having a hard time determining if it was actually happening to him, or if he’d gone insane and was just living his delusional dream.

  While drowning in confusion, he dozed off. Upon awaking, the first words that popped out of his mouth were the ones wondering about the identity of the helping prompter.

  “You’re good—no, not just good, but awesome,” Karina whispered, stroking his chest with her long fingers. “Most people who forget their lines never recover them. Forget just one word and you’re done. The rest of your lines are gone, baby, gone.”

  “I know,” he said. “But I didn’t recover the lines myself. Someone whispered the words to me.”

  “Someone? Who?” Karina furrowed her perfectly waxed eyebrows.

  “That’s what I’m wondering.” Robert scratched his head. “It was a man’s voice… and he whispered a few of my lines into my ear. And the next thing, I remembered every word. I’m so sorry, Karina. I almost screwed up the whole play.” Looking into the piercing blue eyes of his goddess, he sincerely apologized.

  “Don’t worry. That happens all the time.” Karina let out a throaty laugh.

  “But… seriously, I thought my acting career was over,” he said, and he wasn’t joking.

  “Everyone has gone through situations like that,” she said. “So, you didn’t see what he looked like, did you?”

  “No. I couldn’t turn back in that scene.” He shook his head. “Also, no one was standing or sitting close to me then, right?”

  “Right.” Karina nodded, looking fully alert. “Are you sure it really happened? Perhaps it was something you imagined, or…?”

  “I don’t think my brain is capable of making up such a convenient scenario.” He chuckled. “Whoever it was, I’m truly thankful for him. He saved me and the whole play.”

  “That’s true.” Karina’s palm grew hotter as she stroked him with more intensity.

  “Well, Karina… I’m sorry,” Robert apologized again.

  “For what?” Karina arched an eyebrow.

  “Well… for ending up in bed with you… naked,” he babbled.

  “Come on, I’m responsible for dragging you to my bed.” She laughed before slipping out of the bed and throwing on a nightgown, covering her fair, silky, and simply flawless skin. “Do you wanna take a shower? You can just sleep here for the night. You’ll be good if you make it to the theater by four o’clock in the afternoon. I’ll wake you up around noon.”

  “Oh no, I can’t do that.” Robert jumped out of the bed. “I’ll go back to my apartment.”

  “Now? It’s past midnight.” She brushed her long hair with her fingers.

  “A newbie, nobody actor like me spending a night at your condo—it sounds wrong on so many levels. Like I’m trying to climb up the theatrical ladder by being a manwhore.”

  “Oh, Robert… you’re so square!” Karina exclaimed, sitting on the edge of the bed. “You don’t need to worry about that. It’s not like I’m trying to eat you alive. And to tell you the truth, I can’t spend opening nights without a man in my bed.”

  “Okay. So, you’re good with any man.”

  “Hmm… you ha
ve a point,” she said thoughtfully.

  “Good,” he muttered, then added, “I mean, I was afraid that I wouldn’t be much use for you.”

  “No way. So far, you’ve been great,” she remarked.

  “Oh… really?” Robert scratched his head, his ears turning pink. “Still, if you don’t mind me leaving, I guess I’d sleep better in my own bed than your cushy one. I know this is fabulous, but I’ve been living in a microapartment, and my body rests better in a small place. Also, I’d hate it if the paparazzi saw me here and started asking, ‘Who the hell is that guy? A stripper? A manwhore?’ When I become an actor everybody recognizes, I’ll be sure to come back here, spend a whole night, and get photographed with you. How does that sound?”

  Karina snorted with laughter as he delivered his grand speech, looking like a puppy dog trying to analyze the whereabouts of the bone he’d previously buried somewhere in the garden. “I like that.” She was laughing so hard her shoulders shook. “Hey, I’ll get you a cab.”

  “That’s not necessary, Karina. My apartment isn’t that far from here. I’ll walk.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. You’ve got to perform later today.” She brushed his comments off. “You need to rest and present yourself at best condition.”

  She stood up, raising her finger in a gesture to say ‘One moment’ as the phone rang from the next room.

  Robert watched her scurry out of the bedroom. He climbed out of the bed and started putting on his clothes as he listened to the phone conversation coming from the next room. Not that he was eavesdropping, but the door was ajar and her voice was resonating.

  “Oh, yes. I’ve got it. Of course,” she was saying.

  It wasn’t long before she came back, and that time, she looked uncharacteristically rueful. “My apologies, but I’ll be having an unexpected guest.”

  “That’s okay. I’m leaving anyway.” He smiled.

  “You know what? I’d really hate to see you go.” She leaned forward and kissed him on the lips.

  When she did that, she didn’t forget to force a few twenty-dollar bills into his hand.