The Six Messiahs - Mark Frost [16]
"Your Majesty, my work here is finished, I can accept no praise. I am only too happy to have served you in the only way an Englishman knows how: with all my heart and soul," said Rymer finally, before rising and turning across the footlights to the audience. "Sacrifice in the service of so noble a cause is no hardship."
That brawny declaration begged for applause from the men, brought out the ladies' hankies, and once again the good citizens of—where were they, Butte, Montana?—were only too happy to hold up their end; Rymer basked in the snug glow of their uncritical affections.
Eileen snorted in disgust. Even for an actor, a breed not celebrated for their sense of restraint, the man was completely incapable of shame.
"But there is still one way in which I can be of use to Your Majesty...." Bendigo made a dashing beeline north, upstaging the witless nincompoop playing King Alexander before he could counter the move; six months on tour and the moron still hadn't learned how to hold center stage. "I shall return to you the love of your fiancee, Princess Flavia, who has stood by through the darkest hour of your uncertain fate, praying for your return."
Ha! If I was Flavia waiting to marry this bad haircut, | thought Eileen, by now I'd've slept my way through a squadron of Royal Mounted Dragoons.
Rymer gestured toward the wing; Eileen gave her bosom a shove to encourage a plump decolletage—getting a little long in the tooth for this ingenue crap, aren't we, dearie?—and pranced ethereally onstage.
"My lord, you're alive! My fondest hope! Heaven bless you!"
She draped herself over King Chucklehead and sniffed experimentally. Good, at least he hadn't been munching green onions while offstage in the tower of Zenda. Then the big kiss—the kid hadn't thrust his tongue down her throat again since she gave him a knee in Cleveland—and Bendigo's ever so touching turn downstage, shielding his eyes from the indelicate spectacle of watching the woman he loved returning to the king whose life he had saved, as the final curtain fell and predictably brought down the house.
American audiences were pathetically easy to please.
"Eileen, darling, in our final scene together when I declare my, uh, undying love for you, do you suppose you could come back with your line about my ring always being on your finger just a bit, uh, faster?"
Bendigo Rymer was staring at himself in the mirror, at the midpoint of stripping off his shiny greasepaint. Mesmerized as a charmed snake.
What in the world does he think he's looking at? wondered Eileen. Sharing a stage with the man was punishment enough; inhabiting the same dressing room, as necessity required in some of these rural outposts, felt like a prison sentence.
"Bendigo, darling, the point of Flavia hesitating has to do with being torn between her obligation to Kingy-poo and the incredible passion she feels for dear Rudolfo. If she replies too quickly, I'm afraid it suggests you don't hold nearly the same dangerous command of her affections."
She waited for the gears of his mind to engage the idea and could nearly hear them grinding. "That's always been my interpretation anyway," she added modestly.
"If it's played that way ..." he said, stroking his chin; as with every pose he struck having to do with thought, it seemed effortful. "It's rather useful to us, that pause then, isn't it?"
"If Flavia is desperately in love with you, it's probably best to let the customers in on the secret."
"How right you are!" he bellowed, jumping to his feet.
"Bless you, my dear! I have always maintained you are a genuine asset to my company!"
Bendigo tilted his head back and showered his mouth with a deluge of the McGarrigle's Throat Comforter he kept in the atomizer on his table.
Oh God, that means he's going to kiss me.
Rymer's breath generally gave the impression that he'd recently devoured an embalmed cat; the McGarrigle's only succeeded in making it seem as if the cat had been marinated in