A.N.D. - Through the Looking Glass

“A Broadway show called Scarlet Pimpernel.”

“But we crossed over Broadway a block ago. It’s back there.”

“Broadway’s more of a state of mind. Most of the Broadway theaters aren’t really on Broadway.”

“Then why do they call them-”

“I don’t know. They just do.”

“This doesn’t look like the other theaters.”

“That’s because the Minskoff used to be a hotel. The stage is upstairs.”

“Oh. Ooooohhhhhhhh!”

Huff puff, no wonder Virginia wanted to go home so badly! This was another palace! New York was full of palaces, and everyone could go into them, not just royalty and servants. It was like the best of stories.

Magic stairs that moved on their own brought them up three flights. There was another wall made entirely of glass, like there had been at the museum. It was fine glass too-big huge sheets of it without a bubble or ripple or distortion. And everywhere burned those non-flickering candles she called “light bulbs.”

Wolf stared at the red curtain, waiting for something to happen. But nothing did and he soon got bored. So he snuggled down into the soft, plush grey seat, while craning his neck to look around.

Virginia said they were going to see a play. He’d seen plays before; every now and then a dusty troupe of wandering players would drift into a town and do a few shows in the village square. A troupe had come through the little hidden village where he was raised. They’d done something funny with puppets, and a really good version of Snow White. It was so good they were allowed to leave with food instead of becoming food. It might have been a wolfie village, but Snow White was due some respect, after all. Sitting in this soft chair was much nicer than standing in the dirt of the square, and the odd tilt to the floor made it much easier to see the stage than just standing on your toes in the crowd did.

The lights above them dimmed, the lights shining on the red curtain brightened, an invisible orchestra started playing, and whispered conversations around them hushed, so Wolf stopped squirming and settled back to watch with interest what happened next.

The red curtain raised on a stage with a bunch of women wearing very silly versions of Early Cinderellen dresses. The woman in the biggest wig started singing, and Wolf jumped. Was this going to be an opera or something? He’d heard about opera. He’d heard it was boring.

Beside him, Virginia jumped too. Didn’t she know what the play was going to be like? Oh, wait, he could hear something... and it wasn’t her voice.

“Let me see, let me see!” the little ring begged, too excited to think of a rhyme. Virginia shushed it as it bounced madly on her hand, but she put her arm around Wolf’s shoulders so the tiny thing could see the stage.

Wolf smiled and leaned back to enjoy her touch. With a soft “Oooohhhhh....” the ring stared intently at the actors.

It was a wonderful play. There was romance and intrigue and danger... kind of like his story with Virginia, only he didn’t have another guy trying to steal his mate. It had... what was this magic?

Wolf gasped and leaned forward, ignoring the protests of the ring as Virginia’s hand slipped off his shoulder. When the travelling players changed a scene, somebody pulled a rope offstage and a new picture unrolled behind them with a rattle and a thump. But this...! The bookshelves of the library rolled away without anyone touching them, and the prow of a big ship rose right out of the stage. And they kept singing, like it was normal! Then they ducked behind the ship for the smallest of seconds and suddenly the ship wasn’t there anymore and they were all in completely different costumes, singing away on a city street. Cripes! The Royal Players couldn’t pull a trick like that!

Wolf let the next several scenes wash over him as he tried to figure out how they’d done it. But then there was a funny, funny song where all the men dressed up in silly costumes and pranced around the stage. Wolf practically howled with laughter-if only Lord Rupert could see this! He’d probably want a copy of every lacy, silly coat.

And then the curtain came down again. NO! They couldn’t leave it there! Wolf whined, turning to Virginia, and even the ring made an unhappy chiming noise. Virginia smiled at them. “It’s only intermission. They’ll finish the show in a little bit.”

“Oh.”

“Well, do you like it?” Virginia asked.

“Oh, yes!” he whispered in awe. “How did they do the part where all the stuff changed? How could they do that and sing all the way through like it was nothing, and change their costumes besides?”

“Stage magic,” she told him, an answer he took quite literally.

“And what about you, what do you think?” Virginia asked the ring.

“I wish this would last the whole day long
I’m enjoying each and every song,” it sang back at her.

“Virginia, what’s going to happen? Will Marguerite betray her mate? Will Percy ever come to her senses and love her again? Nobody gets their head chopped off, do they?” Wolf could hardly ask questions fast enough. “Why is Chauvelin still after Marguerite if she’s Percy’s mate? How long are they going to make us wait to find out?”

Virginia burst out laughing at his anxiousness. “Wolf, you don’t want me to spoil it, do you?”

He scratched his temple, then shrugged. “I’m from the Nine Kingdoms, Virginia. I believe in happy endings.”

“So do I,” she told him with a smile, one hand on his knee and the other over her own belly. “So do I.”

Wolf got his happy ending, but he was still thoughtful over the meat lover’s special at a neighborhood grill. “Percy should have trusted his mate,” he finally announced, as if he was making a royal decree.

“Huh?” Virginia was busy between trying to eat and keeping the ring quiet. The little pearl kept trying to sing its way through the entire Pimpernel soundtrack; every now and then Virginia had to whack it with her fork to keep it from attracting too much attention.

“Percy should have trusted his mate,” Wolf repeated through a mouthful of barbequed ribs. “She couldn’t have been blackmailed by Chauvelin if Percy supported her.”

“But Marguerite didn’t want Percy to know that she and Chauvelin... had a history,” Virginia pointed out cautiously.

“Doesn’t matter if he really loved her and was destined to be with her,” Wolf insisted. “True love conquers all.”

“That’s a cliche, Wolf.”

“Not where I come from.”

The stage-struck ring proved to be a handful over the next few days; it wanted nothing but more Broadway, Broadway, Broadway. Virginia smothered it and Wolf threatened it, but it only pouted and pointed out that singing rings had to sing sometime. So they worked out a deal where it could sing in private but had to stay absolutely silent in public, and Virginia promised it that if it behaved, they’d get tickets for Phantom in another couple of weeks. And it did behave, although Virginia privately made a note to sit it next to a radio and teach it a few new songs. So far, all it knew was what it made up and the score for Scarlet Pimpernel, and songs like “Madame Guillotine” lost a lot when sung in a soprano vibrato. On the other hand, it was kind of fun to have personalized love songs while they were making love.

In the meantime, Virginia showed Wolf around a city that suddenly had a thousand unexpected wonders when seen through his eyes. She would show him routes she’d walked all her life-and he would point out fancy architectural details that she’d never looked up to notice before. To her, street performers were part of the landscape, like squirrels and pigeons. Wolf considered them a public service, sent to entertain the peasantry, and always stopped to listen and throw a few coins. It was the first time Virginia had ever stopped to listen to them herself, and she was surprised to discover how much it cheered her to find someone playing an instrument or reciting poetry in odd corners around town.

He enjoyed the tourist things, of course, but it was the minutia of daily life that he really threw himself into with his usual full-contact enthusiasm. Take today, for instance. Today she’d let Wolf pick the agenda and he announced that they should simply walk through the city and “let Destiny decide.”

Destiny-and Wolf’s nose for cooking mutton-promptly led them to a Greek Orthodox church having a fundraiser festival. She’d tried to dissuade him, tried to tell him he’d be bored stiff. But he wasn’t-and she discovered that she wasn’t either. It was nice to poke through the yard sale and discuss whether their kitchen needed more glassware or not. It was fun to watch him look through the reproductions of Acropolis art-and disconcerting to see how much he’d remembered from the Greek galleries at the Met. She would have sworn he hadn’t paid attention to anything but that Aphrodite, but he remembered it all. And it was surprisingly amusing to watch him flirt, flatter, and charm his way through the crowd. No woman was safe from that lethal smile, and little old ladies appeared to be his specialty. With a few well-placed compliments and the occasional kissed hand, Wolf got a hands-on lesson in twirling worry beads, the largest lamb kebob in the cafeteria line, and a free dish of some dessert that looked like donut holes drowned in honey.

“I’m not touching those!” she told him when he waved them under her nose. “You’re going to get all sticky, you know.”

Wolf shrugged and snapped one down, “mmmmmmmmmm!”ing with relish. “They’re delicious! Oh, you want one. Believe me, you want one.”

“No! I don’t want to get honey all over everything!”

“Then lean forward.”

“What?”

The high-powered smile that conquered the church ladies took on a few more volts. “Lean forward and open your mouth.”

With a sideways glance of distrust Virginia did, and Wolf popped one in her mouth. It was good, whatever it was-not as sweet as backlava, but warm and squishy, covered in honey and cinnamon and was that just a touch of clove? The “mmmmmm!” came out involuntarily and Wolf laughed at her.

“Okay, you win!” Virginia reached for the plate, but Wolf pulled it back. “Hey, aren’t you going to share?”

If he’d flashed that expression at any of the church ladies, they’d’ve melted at his feet. “I’ll share if you’ll lean forward again.”

He hand-fed her most of the rest, occasionally sneaking a kiss between bites. It was silly. It was childish. It made her want to drag him under the table and show her appreciation right there in the cafeteria.

Later, they’d gone for a walk in the park and watched a rowdy bunch of teenagers playing Ultimate Frisbee. Neither one of them could untangle the rules of the game just by watching, but the whole frisbee thing fascinated Wolf. So Virginia bought him one-and discovered that Wolf had his own unique ideas of how to play with it.

“Throw it, throw it,” he begged as he stood beside her.

“Wolf, I throw it to you to catch. You’re supposed to be standing out there somewhere.”

“Where’s the fun in that? I can’t chase it if you throw it right to me, now can I?”

So she threw it. Wolf launched himself after it, running beneath the thing until he was about fifteen yards away from her, when he leaped straight up and smashed it out of the air. “It’s just like hunting birds!” he cried in delight, picking it off the ground.

But when he tried to throw the frisbee back to her, it wouldn’t fly. He poked at it a couple of times as it lay pathetically at his feet, then picked it up, looked it over, and brought it back to her. “Did I break it?”

“You’re not throwing it right,” she told him. It only took a few seconds for him to grasp the basic wrist snap that sent it soaring, but he never did manage to time his release right. Whenever he tried to toss it back to her, he either let go too soon, sending it off to her right, or let go too late and overshot to her left. Once he let go far too late and it boomeranged off a tree branch and almost took off the top of his head. Virginia laughed at him until her sides ached, and yet he still called it the “best day of his life” when they got home.

Wolf flopped on their huge bed, panting in perfect happiness. This had been the most fantastic day of his life!

He didn’t know a heart could break from happiness until his creamy, dreamy Virginia started talking about “their” kitchen and “their” apartment. She was finally starting to think of them as a couple! And then the wonderful, wonderful sound of her laughter. When had she last laughed from simple delight? Had she ever laughed for pleasure before?

Huff puff, things couldn’t get any better!

Then Virginia stepped out of the bathroom wearing that frilly thing he’d found in her dresser drawers that first night.

He was wrong. Things could always get better.