Chapter 5: "I'll Quit If She Can Sing"
Tuesday arrived the way Tuesdays do: with a shift to work and a clock that seemed, to Miriam, to be moving both too fast and too slowly. She cleaned the stage that morning as usual, and the strangeness of it struck her more than once: she was polishing the very floor she would walk out onto at four o'clock, in front of cameras, with her name on a list.
Denise texted at noon: "You are going to be wonderful. Wear the blue scarf." Miriam smiled at her phone. The blue scarf was the one nice thing she owned that went with her work uniform, and Denise had bought it for her birthday last year. She put it in her bag.
At half past three, Earl found her in the corridor by the stage door, folding her cloth with great attention, as if the cloth were the important thing.
"You ready?" he asked.
"No," Miriam said honestly. "But I'm going anyway. I believe that's what ready means, most of the time."
Earl grinned. "That's exactly what it means. Now go on. Number forty-seven. And Miriam—" He paused, and his voice went quiet. "Sing it the way you sing it at night. That's the version that matters."
Miriam nodded, and then, before she could change her mind, she walked through the stage door and into the bright, loud world on the other side.
The audition room was not the big stage, but a smaller studio with cameras and lights and a row of chairs where the judges sat. Marcus Webb stood near the entrance with a clipboard, and when he saw Miriam, he smiled the way he smiled at everyone, warm and unhurried.
"Number forty-seven," he said. "Miriam Cole. Welcome. Whenever you're ready, come and stand on the mark."
Miriam walked to the mark. The lights were hot. The cameras were small black eyes. She could see the judges' table, and behind it, the faces of the other judges, and in the middle, silver-haired and sharp-suited, Howard Brenner, looking at his notes, not yet looking at her.
Marcus turned to the judges. "Our next audition is Miriam Cole, forty-four, from St. Louis. Miriam, what will you be singing for us today?"
Miriam took a breath, the way Ruth had taught her, in slowly, out slowly. "An original song, sir," she said. "It's called 'The Room After Dark.' I wrote it myself."
That was when Brenner looked up.
He looked at her work uniform, grey and neat, with the studio's logo on the pocket. He looked at the blue scarf. He looked at the mop cart she had left by the stage door, visible through the doorway behind her. And he laughed. Not a kind laugh. The laugh of a man who has decided, in one second, that he already knows the whole story.
"Well," he said, leaning into his microphone, "this is a first. The janitor is auditioning. Ladies and gentlemen, the woman who mops the stage would like to sing on it."
The studio audience, a small one for auditions, laughed, uncertain, the way crowds laugh when they are waiting to be told whether something is funny. Marcus's smile did not move, but his eyes went careful.
"Miriam works here," Marcus said evenly. "And she's here to sing, like everyone else. Miriam, take your time."
Brenner waved a hand, the wave the audience knew from television. "Oh, I'm sure she'll take her time. I'm sure she'll take all the time in the world. But let's be honest, shall we?" He turned to the cameras, playing to them now, enjoying himself. "If she can really sing—if this janitor can really sing—I'll quit. I'll quit this show, right here, on the spot. That's how sure I am."
The room went very quiet. Not the quiet of an empty stage at night, but the sharp quiet of people holding their breath. Marcus looked at Brenner, then at Miriam, and his voice, when it came, was steady and kind.
"Howard," he said, "that's quite a thing to say."
"It's quite a thing to mean," Brenner said, and shrugged, still smiling. "Go on, then. Let's hear it. Surprise me. I dare you."
Miriam stood on the mark, in her grey uniform and her blue scarf, with the hot lights on her face and the cameras watching, and she felt something settle in her chest. It was not anger, though anger would have been fair. It was something quieter and older: the feeling she got at night, alone on the stage, when the room was dark and the song was hers. She had sung this song a thousand times to empty seats. She could sing it once to full ones.
She looked at Marcus, who nodded, just once, the way a friend nods. She looked at the piano player, who waited with his hands over the keys. And she took the breath she had practised for years, in kitchens and churches and empty rooms. The studio waited. Brenner waited, still smiling, certain he had nothing to fear.