Like a Wisp of Steam, Thomas Roche [list of e readers txt] 📗

He heard the door open and stopped. She was still beautiful, her sculpted bare arms, her proud walk, her shoulders set to emphasize her musculature. You couldn't imagine anything hurting her, even though Ricar knew different.

When she saw him, the Virago's feral grimace collapsed into confusion, then scorn. "What are you doing here?" She must have taken voice lessons, as hers had lost that nasal quality.

He took a step closer to her. This close, he could see the almost masculine angularity of her face, which the makeup didn't quite hide. "I see you have your name on the bill now.

Congratulations."

"I don't care to catch up on old times, Ricar." She pulled his assignation card out of her pocket and tore it in half, likely a knowing mockery of how he had taught her the Virago trick of ripping a thick book apart with her bare hands. "If you take this to the box office, your fee will be refunded."

"Please, Corr, I just wanted to talk with you for a moment."

She cocked her head to one side and crossed her magnificent arms across her broad chest. "What about?"

He had no script, no lines, so he just said, "What did I do wrong?"

Corr sighed. "I'm engaged, Ricar. After this season, I'm retiring. Charl and I are going to run an inn on the coast. He doesn't even go to the Commedia."

"Retiring? But ... you're in your prime. You have years of potential, and the Virago will come back in fashion one day."

He could almost see her changing before his eyes, losing her definition, getting pregnant, serving tea and scones to holidaymakers in some ridiculous apron.

"I'm not going to wait for that."

"You were the best I've ever seen, before or since. And you were that good because you loved the role."

"You're right. I did love it. I want to retire while I still do."

He said what he hadn't, two years ago. "I'm sorry it ended the way it did."

She stopped, drummed her fingers on the door frame. "So am I. Goodnight, Ricar."

* * * *

Ricar didn't go home that night. Instead, he slept on one of the mattresses in the prop room in the Razor Lotus's basement, smelling accumulated years of makeup, sweat, and desire.

He awoke at the traditional hour for his profession, shortly before noon. In the men's privy, he shaved himself and put his wrinkled suit in some semblance of order. His valet would give him dirty looks for a week.

Roughly shaved, without pomade, and in a rumpled suit, the man that looked back at him in the mirror uncomfortably resembled his father. He thought of the mining town where he was born, where men and women spent days deep underground, chipping away at hard rock, dust seeping into every pore, in search of those rare, tiny glints of precious metals. His father had died down there, along with six other people, trapped by a tunnel collapse, suffocating on their own exhaled breath. When he saw those bodies being carried out of the mine shaft, he swore he would leave and go to the bright lights of the city that shone on the other side of the mountains, and he'd never looked back.

While Chel and her players prepared for the matinée show, he had a quick meal in the saloon, then went to his office and put pen to paper.

Later that afternoon, Miss Alwyx walked into his office and placed a letter on his desk. "My resignation, sir," she said flatly. She stood there, arms crossed and chin tucked to her chest, waiting for him to say something.

Ricar was not the slightest bit surprised as he read the brief formal letter, but he suddenly felt trapped in his own office, like the air had turned thick and foul, or had been that way all along and he hadn't noticed.

He got up from his desk, feeling like iron straps were wrapped around his chest, shakily walked to the window and struggled to open it in vain. He retrieved an inkwell from his desk and hurled it through the pane.

He stood at the broken window for a moment, listening to the bustle of passersby outside the theatre. The faint breeze and the warm sunlight on his face helped. His eyes closed, he wondered how long it had been since he had felt that.

He turned back to his desk. Miss Alwyx stood just barely in the doorframe, warily watching him.

"Please excuse me," he said. "It was jammed."

She took a cautious step back into the office.

He picked the sealed letter from his desk and offered it to her. "This is for you."

Her hand started to reach for it, but stopped. "What is it?"

"It's a letter of recommendation. It says you are a talented and dedicated player who would be an asset in any company in the world, and that you left because of creative differences."

"I don't need that."

"It's all I can give you." It was what he hadn't given Corr.

She hesitantly took the letter, held it in both hands by the edges. "I don't know if I can do this at all, anymore." There were no tears, but her voice nearly cracked.

What could he tell her? Quit, don't quit? Stay true to yourself, learn to adapt? Follow your dream, be realistic? All he could say was, "Things change, Miss Alwyx."

"You mean I'll change or the Commedia will change?"

"Either. Both, maybe."

"Thank you," she said, almost a whisper, and turned away.

At the door, she stopped and looked over her broad shoulder.

"What about you?"

He smiled the brave, pained, hoping-against-hope smile of the Innocent. "The show must go on."

* * * *

Ricar took his seat in the third row of the tiny theatre just as the curtain rose, showing a cozy front room in a bourgeois home. He didn't care much for the theatre, finding it dull compared to the energy and glamour of the Commedia, but this play he had to see.

Miss Alwyx entered. As the wife, Naro, she bustled about her home, decorating