Christine
Meg dragged me back to the chorus girls' communal dressing room as soon as the curtain closed. The ballet girls twittered and flitted around me in a blur of tulle and ribbon. Their praise made me uncomfortable, but I bore it with a smile; to them, I was a Cinderella of sorts—a common singer raised to glorious heights in one magical night.
At the first opportunity, when the girls' attention was diverted elsewhere, I snuck the book I had brought with me from the modern world from its hiding place behind the dresser and tucked it into a pocket of my dress. I excused myself soon after with the excuse that I needed rest.
Back in my dressing room, I hid the book under a corner of the palate in the side room. Just in time: a knock came at the door, and who should enter but Raoul, without waiting for a response.
"Hello again, Little Lotte," he said. "I was concerned for you yesterday. Where did you disappear to?"
"Hello, Raoul. I was in the chapel."
"All night?" he asked, taking a step forward.
"Yes, I hit my head you see..." I started, then decided I was too tired to relate the whole lie another time. "Thank you for your concern, but I am fine."
"You look as splendid as ever. Your hair is done beautifully." It had taken an hour of elaborate pinning to transform my barely-wavy hair into a voluminous crown.
"Thank you." I smiled sweetly. "So is yours."
He laughed off the jab. "Perhaps we could go to dinner tonight since we missed the opportunity yesterday?"
He looked so eager and charming that it was almost hard to refuse. Almost. "I'm sorry," I answered, "but I'm tired after the performance, and would prefer to stay in tonight."
He looked confused and wasn't taking a hint, so I walked him to the door and opened it.
"Good night, Raoul," I told him.
With a gallant bow and a hurt expression, he left.
Once I was alone again, I strode up to the mirror and knocked on it like a door. "I know you are there," I said. "I wanted to apologize."
No response.
"Hello?" I asked, aware that I might just be talking to my reflection. "Well, I'm very sorry for how I treated you. I would like to keep up our lessons. If you'll have me."
After another minute with still no reply, I sighed and gave up hope. Had I ruined my chances with Erik already?
I got ready for bed as best I could. I stripped to my shift and washed myself with a rag and water from a basin. I'd noticed that none of the chorus girls had bathed and was loath to ask how often they did. My hair was starting to take on the coarse texture of string, and I couldn't tell how badly I smelled because of the abundance of flowers in the room. Huh. Maybe that was what they were for.
Opera life was beginning to seem less glamorous.
Shivering now, I crawled into the bed and pulled the blanket around me. It wasn't as warm as I would have liked, and I tossed and turned for nearly an hour before deciding that holding still and curling up was the warmest I would get.
My eyes were closed, but I thought I heard the sound of muffled footfalls drawing nearer. I opened my eyes a fraction but couldn't make anything out in the darkness. I thought I felt a blanket being draped over me. The intruder, if there had been one and my tired mind wasn't playing tricks on me, left as quickly as he came.
I sat up. Sure enough, a thick, woolen blanket that hadn't been there before now covered me.
I pulled both blankets tight around my shoulders and, perfectly warm now, drifted off to sleep. In the morning I found a rose resting on my vanity: red, stripped of its thorns, and tied with a black ribbon.
...
Erik
After listening to Christine from behind her mirror, then draping a blanket over her to stop her shivering, I left the opera house by a back door. It was late, and only drunks and troublemakers occupied the shadowy streets. I wore a coat turned up at the collar and a hat pulled low over my face to conceal my mask. The darkness augmented the illusion that I was a typical human—with nothing more to hide than the other denizens of the back-alleys. My destination was the house of a Persian, the closest thing I had to a friend—also a nuisance.
I strode into his tiny inn without bothering to knock. "Daroga!" I announced by way of greeting.
As I'd suspected, Nadir was lounging in the main dining room, reading the evening's paper. He didn't look surprised to see me. But perhaps nothing I did astonished him anymore. "Ah, Erik," he said, folding his paper and setting it down. "Be a little quieter, will you? I have guests trying to sleep. Would you care for some tea?"
"I am here on a visit of utmost importance and require your full and undivided attention," I said.
"So, tea then," he decided.
I followed him into the inn's kitchen. A serving girl polished utensils at a table. When she saw me, her face paled, and she left the room, mumbling excuses on the way out. The rag, the polish, and the basket of kitchenware sat abandoned.
Nadir assembled cups while the water boiled. "What would you like with it?" he asked.
"Same as every time you ask me, old man," I said. "Nothing." I sat in the servant girl's place and picked up the fork and rag she'd abandoned. Feeling guilty that her work would go unfinished that evening on my account, I dabbed the rag in the jar of pungent silver polish and rubbed it into the fork's handle.
The kettle whistled; Nadir poured the water into two cups, added tea leaves, and brought them over to the table. He popped a sugar cube into his mouth then blew on his cup. The sugar cube would sweeten the tea as he drank. He didn't speak; it seemed it was up to me to breach the silence.
"I've talked to her," I said under my breath.
"You've been talking to her for a year," he countered. "Isn't that what the singing lessons were about?"
Struggling to control my voice, I placed the fork in the pile of finished silverware and picked up another. "No, I meant that I talked to her in person. I took her to my home."
"Well, this is quite the development," Nadir said calmly, sipping his tea, clearly not understanding the gravity of the situation.
"And she saw my arm," I said.
"What, not your face?"
I glared at him. It was pointless talking to the imbecile. Not able to control myself any longer, I stood abruptly and began rifling through his cabinets. "Do you have any morphine?" I asked. "You must—I know you still treat people sometimes." I practically tore apart his kitchen in my frantic search for the drugs that would relieve my anguish.
"I do," he said, "but you won't find it."
I froze.
"First, you will tell me the whole story, and then I will decide if it is necessary."
Hatred crept red into my blood. I should have known Nadir wouldn't help me; his pretensions of friendship were as far-fetched as my hopes of Christine loving me. But I trusted that if he said I wouldn't find the morphine, I wouldn't. At least not quickly. I stalked around the room for a turn before settling back in my seat.
"You asked me to keep you informed," I muttered, a bitter edge creeping into my voice. "So here I am—informing you. Christine's opera debut was a glorious triumph, and afterward, I brought her through the tunnels to my house. We talked. I instructed her. I thought things were going well, but I suppose I was delusional. She was tired, of course, and stayed the night. Don't look at me like that." (His eyebrow was raised.) "I barely touched her."
"Barely?"
I slammed my cup on the table and put my head in my hands. "Now she'll never want to see me again."
"Because you touched her?"
How stupid was he? "No, Daroga! She saw my arm! She pulled back my sleeve and..." I choked. "Of course, now that she knows what I've done, it won't even matter that she hasn't seen my face. She'll want nothing more to do with me."
"And did she tell you this?" he said in a frustratingly rational voice.
"No," I admitted, "but I took her back. It was for the best."
"So she didn't ask to leave," he said.
"I already told you: I took her back! I know what she must think—even though she tried to apologize, she did nothing wrong. I'm the monster."
Nadir set down his tea, templed his fingers, and leaned forward on the table, looking me in the eye. "Erik," he said, "if she apologized, then perhaps she doesn't mind after all. Perhaps you simply frightened her. Has she expressed any interest in seeing you again?"
I shifted in my seat. "Well, yes, but..."
Nadir raised his eyes to the heavens. "Allah help me," he muttered. To me, he spoke patiently and firmly, as if to a small child. "Go talk to the girl; ask her if she would like to continue your lessons. Then believe her if she tells you she does. Who knows? She might be kind-hearted enough to look beyond your past and your face."
I stared at the swirling brown patterns in my lukewarm tea, lost in thought. Could it be possible? Could she really love me knowing what I was?
Nadir took his leave, after extracting a promise from me not to jump to any more conclusions about Christine's feelings without first consulting her.
I drank my tea. I finished polishing the silverware and put it away.
When I returned to the opera house in the early hours, I took Nadir's advice, leaving a freshly cut rose in Christine's dressing room as a small gesture of acceptance. Unable to sleep, I sat at my organ and composed into the morning.
...
Christine
Meg joined me in my rooms the next morning. She helped me pick out a dress from the few that remained in the closet. I'd been surprised to see the others disappear, and Meg explained that most of them had been Carlotta's, now taken away to wherever she was staying. The clothes that now resided in the closet were mine, which Meg had carried over from my previous housing in the ballet dormitories. They were plainer than Carlotta's, which made sense; I doubted the chorus girls earned much.
"Thank you for bringing my things," I said to Meg as she laced my corset up my back.
"It was no trouble. And I was glad to get out of the dormitories. The other girls can be a bit much sometimes."
From novels, I expected the corset to be a constricting symbol of the patriarchy. But appraising my reflection in the mirror, all I could think was, Damn, I look good. The corset shaped my minimal figure into an hourglass of curves. I wasn't used to looking in mirrors and being pleased with what I saw there.
Before we left for breakfast, I scribbled a note to Erik telling him that I'd like to continue our lessons and, in case I didn't see him again, would talk to him again after the night's performance. I set it under his rose where he would find it if he came looking for me.
Meg pulled me through the corridors to a dining hall. Cast and crew in all shapes and sizes filled the room with chatter. Meg and I picked our way through the tables to join the other ballet girls. They took up two tables and passed trays of food amongst themselves. Madame Giry lorded over all.
"Where have you been, Meg?" Giry asked as her daughter took a seat and yanked me down next to her.
"We were getting dressed," she apologized. "We still have plenty of time to eat." She grabbed a roll from a bowl in the center of the table and spread jam on it. I followed her example.
The girls chatted about everything and nothing. I chose to listen: two of the girls were being courted by men they hoped would propose soon, one was recovering from a late night and too much to drink, one of the male dancers had a bad cough and was resting in the hopes that he would be able to perform that night, and the Phantom of the Opera had been spotted again in the scaffolding. That piqued my interest. I spoke up for the first time.
"The Phantom of the Opera?" I asked skeptically. "Isn't that just a story to scare the younger girls?"
They looked at me with wide eyes. "Oh, no," one girl told me in a conspiratorial manner. "Joseph Buquet has seen him and told me everything: the Phantom moves in the shadows and has a face that looks like a skull—black eyes, sunken skin, and no nose."
"Really?" interrupted another. "I heard that his eyes were red as coals, and a mask that looks like a skull covers his face. Who saw him last night?"
"Two nights ago," the first girl testified, displeased at being contradicted, "I saw a black figure moving among all the ropes and pulleys in the upper levels." She paused for dramatic effect. "Then he disappeared, right into thin air!"
"So you didn't actually see his face," said the second girl.
Meg discreetly rolled her eyes at me.
The two continued arguing until Madame Giry announced the end of breakfast. As the other girls filed out, she called for me to stay behind. "I would like to have a word with you," she said.
I lingered back, and as soon as the others had disappeared, she got straight to the point.
"Now that you are Prima Donna of this opera house, at least for the time being, you do not have to attend the ballet rehearsals. But you are still expected to be at the stage rehearsals in the afternoons."
"Yes, Mme Giry," I said.
"And," she continued, "you have your own dressing room to stay in, which you know, and an increased salary. If you have somewhere else to stay, of course, you may do so, as long as you attend rehearsals."
I nodded my understanding.
Now that the formalities were taken care of, she took me by the arm. "Are you sure you are all right?" she asked. "Your head is fine?"
"I think so, Madame," I said.
She released my arm and patted me on the shoulder. "This change is difficult and unexpected, but you are handling it well." High praise from the stern ballet instructor.
She let me go then, and I headed back to my dressing room. I had little choice. For now, I could sleep in the small bedroom attached to the dressing room, but what would happen if I didn't get the lead in the next opera? As far as I knew, I had no family here and no place else to stay. I assumed I would go back to living with the other ballet girls, but the thought was distasteful. My first impressions of them weren't all that favorable.
Meg and her mother were kind, but I wasn't the girl they thought they knew; Raoul might have been smitten with me, but I felt no attraction toward him; and I wasn't sure if Erik had forgiven me for exposing his arm. I was alone.