“Let’s go out,” I said. “I don’t want to keep Anne waiting.”
Outside in the open air, two long tables had been set for dinner, all spectacularly lit up with candles and even tiny lights that hung in the trees above. The cabins and the main lodge surrounding the space were all lit from within, and the whole scene looked like something from a storybook.
The seating arrangements were such that our group was seated at one end of the table, while the rest of the guests were seated at the other end. My seat was smack in the middle, opposite Anne andRaymond, with Ruthie and my fellow performers on my right and the rest of the guests on my left. When Archie took the empty seat next to mine, I raised my eyebrow.
“I suppose you had a hand in this too?”
“Guilty as charged,” he said, flashing a bashful smile.
I hadn’t decided what to make of his news yet, so I was as gracious as I needed to be as a guest at the table, but I didn’t indulge him—instead I paid particular attention to our hosts.
Over the main course of sweetbreads, mushrooms and green lima beans, I asked Anne who else had visited the camp, fascinated by this whole world, hidden away in the mountains, that I’d known nothing about until just a few weeks ago.
“Oh, we’ve had all kinds—actors, lieutenant colonels, writers—hundreds. I can’t think of them all.”
“Who was the most interesting?” Ruthie leaned in and asked.
“Oh, it has to be the wife of the imperial emperor of China.”
“She traveled with twenty-five personal maids,” Raymond added. “Can you believe that? I thought Anne required a lot of help!”
Anne laughed. “It’s true, they just kept coming out of the carriages. I had to worry about having enough beds.”
“While we had dinner,” Raymond jumped in, “our staff had to rearrange the cabins to sleep six or seven maids where there’d usually be no more than two.”
“Three of her girls were assigned simply to watch her bedsheets, even when she was out of the room. If a breeze so much as ruffled her sheets, they had to be washed and changed immediately,” Anne continued. “We found her delightful, but the staff needed a few days’ break after she left with her entourage.”
I thought I’d experienced luxury—having my own apartment with Ruthie, receiving mink coats and jewelry backstage from admirers and perfect strangers—but all this extravagance was unlike anything I’d ever known, and here in the wilderness was the last place I’d expected to find it.
The next morning, I woke to a racket and a rotten champagne headache. Someone, somewhere in camp, was singing their lungs out. I put my head under my pillow to drown it out, but it didn’t help, and then I realized that it wasn’t just any old fool, it was a man’s voice, and a beautiful one at that.
Why on earth would anyone be crooning so early? Surely I wasn’t the only one who didn’t appreciate being roused when the sun was barely up. I peeked into Ruthie’s room—she was sleeping soundly and snoring like an old man, so I left her to it and checked the clock in the kitchenette: a quarter to six. Absurd! If I’d really put my mind to it, perhaps I could have gone back to sleep; I could sleep anywhere through just about any noise, usually. But I was annoyed and intrigued, my head was splitting, and I had to know who would do such a thing at this god-awful hour. And the fact was, the more I listened, the more I had to know who that voice belonged to.
I threw my fur coat over my silk pajamas and robe, pulled the woolen socks that my mother had knitted for me up my calves as high as they would go and stepped into my rubber galoshes. I followed the voice all the way to the lakeshore, where it became apparent that it was coming not from our camp but from the other side of the lake or farther down the shore. I walked along the water’s edgea little, but there was no way I was getting any closer unless I took to water.
The boathouse was a green two-story structure with a sloped shingled roof directly downhill from my cabin. Canoes were stacked inside and mounted from wall racks. A small metal rowboat sat calmly in the water, tied with a simple looped rope next to the deck, its oars already fixed in place. I climbed in, wobbling as I set foot inside, then I eased the rope off the dock and quickly took a seat on the thin wooden bench, hoping to calm the rocking motion. After pushing myself away from the dock with my oar, I began to glide into the thick grey fog engulfing Osgood Pond. I couldn’t see where I was going in the early morning haze, so I closed my eyes and followed the sound.
It might’ve been August, but at that time in the morning it was colder than Greenland itself out there. I looked down at my outfit and had a giggle, quite sure that when my mother had sat by the fireplace in our family home, tiny needles clicking away, she hadn’t envisioned me wearing these socks on occasions such as this. The mink coat, a gift from some stage-door johnny during my first week on the job, hadn’t been on such an adventure either and would probably be ruined if it got sopping wet. But if I flipped this boat over, I’d have bigger problems than replacing my fur in the summer, in our remote corner of the Adirondacks. I’d probably damn near freeze to death.
As I drove the oars through the water, I realized that steering was much harder than I’d imagined. I tried to turn into the direction of the voice—deep and emotive, becoming clearer and more powerful the closer I got—but the rowboat, which had looked so inviting andromantic sitting under the eave of the boathouse, almost calling for me to get in, suddenly felt too big and cumbersome for me to manage. I had a moment of panic. I could no longer see my way back to shore, nor could I see where I was going.
I kept on rowing, scared to look down into the deep black water, realizing how impulsive I had been and wishing I could be more like Ruthie—she might seem like a free spirit at times, but she had a good head on her shoulders. I focused on the voice—Italian and familiar—and wondered if I could have made a mistake. Maybe it wasn’t someone singing after all, maybe it was someone playing a Victrola as loud as could be, because the closer I seemed to get, the more it sounded like the operatic tenor Alberto Ricci.
“Hello,” I called out. I was close now and began to make out the shape of someone through the fog. “Hello, who’s there?”
The singing stopped, and when I was about eight feet away, I could see him clearly—Alberto Ricci, sitting in a green canoe in his white long johns. I couldn’t believe it was actually him. Quickly plunging my oars in the water and paddling backwards to slow my arrival, I narrowly avoided a collision.
“Buongiorno,”he said, smiling right at me as if he’d been expecting company.
“Hello,” I said, attempting to sound stern. I had to keep my composure. “I must say that your singing, your beautiful singing, out here in the middle of the lake, is waking up the whole of our camp and probably half of the Adirondacks. May I suggest that you save your practice for later in the day?”
“Che bella,”he said. “It’s very nice to make your acquaintance. What is your name?”
“Olive,” I said. “Olive Shine, I’m staying at the Pines Camp. We’re the entertainment for a few days, theZiegfeld Follies.”
“Olive, the Lady of the Lake,” he said. “Ciao, bella.So lovely for you to join me. Alberto.” He rolled his Rs and I couldn’t help smiling. I was meeting Alberto Ricci in person in the middle of a lake!
“I know who you are. Actually, I saw you perform at the Fairmont Opera House when I was just a kid; my mother is a big fan. Your voice is stunning, absolutely magnificent. But the hour… it’s so early.”
