Free The Remedy by Michelle Lovric

she plays, though—Massimo Tosi lowers his voice—she is of course a trifle older than the part she performs. She shuns the other actors as if they offend her delicate sensibilities. After each performance she quickly resumes her own simple clothes and returns—in an irreproachable sedan chair—to her rooms.
    She has been in London but a few days and already she is a cult. Men are asking for her likeness to be painted on snuffboxes. Some are willing to pay monstrous sums to be seated where her glancefalls meltingly at certain stages of the play. There are grand polemics about her special allure; some say it is her skill in performance, for she excels in comical attitudes but is also well capable of pathos. Others say it is her offstage virtue that heats their blood and has them waiting like dogs under the windows of her apartments, which she is not seen to leave except on guiltless errands. It is, all in all, an extraordinary departure from normal behavior and the entire company is mystified by it.
    Massimo Tosi has shaken all possible insinuations out of his sack. Ducking his head, and turning saintly eyes to Valentine, the theater manager mourns the hopelessness of the situation, as a brother. After all, if an actress is cooperative with well-to-do admirers, Massimo too stands to gain, as his dear friend must see.
    Valentine remains silent when this performance is over. He seems to be waiting for more satisfactory news. The features of the manager tighten in rictus. Massimo has omitted mention of one thing: the troubling existence of the wordless Venetian man who has accompanied the actress to London, who haunts the theater at all times, and, while he is never seen to come into actual contact with her, is never far from her side and who is rumored to have taken rooms in a street that overlooks her own.
    Watching Valentine’s face, Massimo is already scribbling the address on a piece of paper and holding it out to him.
    Valentine lets the hand stay suspended in the air. In five seconds the pleasant gesture of offer has become one of abject imprecation. They both look at Massimo’s outstretched hand. The manager’s face crumples. “Graving your condescension and saving your grace, Valentine, there is nothing else I can do.”
    “You are her employer. You’ll be having a small word with her on my behalf. She would not be at this work if she did not need the money. Or something else you’re offering her. No, I don’t want to know the details. I shall be joining her at home for a twosome kind of supper tomorrow evening after the play.”
    Valentine turns on his heel. He does not take the address: not for him a pathetic vigil in the cold street outside her rooms. For Valentine Greatrakes, Massimo Tosi can do better than that.
    Massimo falls back in his chair, his face in his hands.
    Striding through the shadowy corridors of the theater, Valentine fails to see a small woman veiled in gray. She watches him from an alcove next to the door of the manager’s office. Then she slips in through the open door and says a few words to her employer, who thinks to express his grateful surprise in an embrace but is repulsed with a surprisingly robust slap.
    The echo of that slap reaches the ear of Valentine Greatrakes as he approaches the outer door of the theater and he pauses a moment. He wonders briefly if a duel has erupted among the actors, but he’s not long distracted from a more pressing conflict.
    He is quarrelling with himself.
    The words of the manager gnaw at him. He had resolved to win her slowly, but this coyness on her part has aroused in him an urgent desire to speed the proceedings. He can imagine his competitors now, all equally provoked by her unwillingness, some even skilled in the acquisition of such women, some perhaps as keenly interested as he himself. It is to be expected. She has transformed herself into something else: No longer a mere actress, the currency of the pleasure trade, she has elevated herself