a life in which he has no part. She’s evasive: a job interview, a long lunch with a friend, real estate class. He feels entitled to details, but hasn’t found the right moment to ask. She is not entirely oblivious of him—there is half a melon on the kitchen counter, coffee in a thermos—but he’s too impatient to eat breakfast. The Señora awaits.
Lockwood remembers to take a blue blazer to wear over his t-shirt and khakis. He will look presentable for the visitation at the Rossini Fratelli funeral home in San Clemente. Carlo and Frigo Rossini are two strutting crows in their black suits, white-on-white ties, patent-leather hair. They walk with a slight stoop, ready to bend into a bow, all the while rubbing their hands with fluid enthusiasm.
Everything is perfect for la diva divina, Mercè Casals. The open casket, brass overlays on silky black mahogany, the inside tufted in gray satin and lace, and the Señora herself dolled to perfection, hair coiffed to a fluffy red toque, fresh new features painted on her face. Her imposing bosom seems about to release the breathless floating Vieni!— Lady Mac-beth’s time-stopping command holding a packed house captive in deep, anxious silence before the tragedy pushes on.
Carlo and Frigo maintain order in the line that winds around the corner outside the visitation room. Fans from all over the country have gathered to view the Señora. The brothers admit ten visitors at a time along a path of red carpeting past a velvet rope on brass stanchions to the front door. For a respectful moment the mourner gazes into the casket, then moves to the back to sign the book, perhaps to write a pithy goodbye, addio, adeu, adiós, adieu, to God.
The Rossinis relish the attention. Their arched wrought-iron entrance has been on the evening news coast to coast: Rossini Fratelli Mortuary, embalmers and morticians to celebrities. In all cases, from oak to steel, undertakers who understand, the cream of cremators. What they say, they mean: “Every death is premature. Every death diminishes us all.” They went to UCLA and got MBAs in mourning. Grieving is an art. There is much to think about: calming music appropriate for different faiths, the flowers, the guest book, the smelling salts for the faint. There are memorial cards, gilt-edged and engraved, the prayer, the psalm, even the pithy message for the nonreligious. (“Men fear death, as children fear the dark”—Francis Bacon.)
“It’s a madhouse out there,” says Frigo cheerfully. He distributes coffee and cookies from a tray. Mercè Casals used to do this on cold mornings for the fans queuing up outside the Met. She would walk down the line and clasp hands, kiss an occasional youth on the cheek, and personally thank everyone for braving the elements on her account. “Gràcies, molt agraïda, amics meus,” she would say in her native Catalan. “Tonight I will sing principally for you.”
It was fitting that the tradition be continued for her last appearance. To that end she left in her will a generous amount to cover refreshments for those waiting to pay their respects. Notable guests would enjoy a lavish buffet with platters of smoked salmon, roast beef, and pâté, a cheese board with runny Camembert, fragrant Roquefort, and soft chevre, plus a bread basket and a tray of petits fours. There was a choice of good rioja and a sparkling cava from Catalonia.
Lockwood puts a handful of cookies in his pocket and holds the steaming cup by the rim. He pulls one of the Rossinis by the sleeve, discreetly murmurs a request: “Do you have a special entrance for associates and personal friends?”
“Of course,” says Carlo. “My brother has the list. If your name is on the list, then you go in through the side door.” He puts on reading glasses and takes the papers from his brother. “Give me the list, Frigo.” He flips noisily through the pages on a clipboard. “You said your name was?”
“Lockwood.”
Carlo runs his index finger down the names, hopeful at first, then simply shaking his head. Frigo looks over his shoulder. “That’s Lockwood, with an L?”
“How would you spell it?”
“Nothing under the Ls,” Carlo says, attempting to look crestfallen. “Perhaps under Wood-lock? No, nothing. Perhaps under your first name?”
“Mark.”
“Afraid not, sir.” The two brothers gaze at him; their eyes, as they travel from the soles of his running shoes to his tousled graying hair, darken with suspicion.
“I might be listed as Scribbler,” he ventures. “I was her writer, you know.”
“Mr. Scribbler?” Frigo and Carlo exchange looks. “Ah! There is definitely some confusion.” The undertaker cannot stop frowning quizzically at the potential for an error at his carefully orchestrated event. “The truth of the matter is that another writer has already come to pay his respects. A Mr. Furman Taylor is here at this moment. Perhaps you are acquainted with him, a colleague?”
“Never heard of him. You didn’t make him stand in line?”
“Oh, no, the Signora Casals’ personal manager, Mr. Hank Holloway, put his name on the list. See?” Frigo points to the name under the T column.
“Are you sure it’s not Alonzo Baylor? He’s famous.”
“Writers are a mystery to me,” Frigo shrugs.
Hollywood Hank has begun to push him off the project, smuggling in the famous writer under an alias. Lockwood doesn’t know what Holloway has told Alonzo Baylor about giving him access to the Señora’s sources, opening her life up for him. But without the tapes and the memorabilia, Baylor has nothing. Scouring the Internet, pumping her friends and colleagues, a few visits to her husband, Nolan Keefe, will not provide what Lockwood has collected in six months of listening to the Señora.
The fratelli Rossini offer him one last cookie from the tray and move on down the line consoling the mourners, promising that their wait will be rewarded with a private moment of remembrance.
It’s a varied group. There are the obligatory music students, violin cases in hand, music sheets sticking out of their backpacks. Others, loyal old fans, rely on memories still lively with the sounds of their favorite Aida, their most endearing Liu, their most pitiable Mimi.
He sees a few who knew her: Preston, the doorman, considered her the premier resident in the building. Serena, the hairstylist, alone knew how to conjure up her recognizable red hair out of a secret formula of henna, L’Oreal no. 47, and reduced beet broth. Romualda, the Filipina shoe clerk at Neiman Marcus, kept a lookout for the new arrivals from Choo and Manolo and knew the Señora’s arches, toes, and bunions as well as her own.
Mercè Casals had not performed in public in nearly twenty years. By noon, there is an air of celebration, as if the Señora had consented to come out of retirement for one more aria, a parting gift for those who have loved her throughout the years. Some of her fans are oblivious to the world as they wait in line with eyes shut, lips in a dreamy smile, ears wired to their iPods. Everywhere hints of “Casta Diva” intermingle improbably with a crackling “Ridente la calma” and snatches of “Vissi d’arte.”
And then, as if out of some stage production gone curiously awry, appears a six-foot-four Violetta in a white, lacy gown of five concentric flounces, a corsage of fading camellias pinned to an enormous foam bosom. He’s got the details right. It’s an exact replica of the costume for the DiStenza Covent Garden production of 1963. He has pancaked his ruddy face to a deathly pallor heightened by cherry-red lips, inky mascara, and a perfectly placed mole on the chin. A cluster of rhinestones protrudes out of a pinkie ring from a hand that touches his breast as if to still a galloping heart. “Sempre libera . . . ” He lip-synchs the soaring soprano to the boom box at his feet. The crowd applauds happily. Violetta takes a bow at the end of the aria, then marches off under the escort of a nervous Rossini brother.
As the public line shuffles toward the casket, the VIP guests hover by the buffet table behind a purple velvet rope, out of the reach of the not-so-famous. Once Lockwood stands in the Rossinis’ inner sanctum he realizes that not everyone is here to help provide for the Señora’s final send-off. Even as he is being squeezed inside the stuffy parlor, his movements inhibited by the rope that keeps the mourners in line, Lockwood recognizes