AN: I said we'd do it and here we are! For 'Company' fans, rest assured, a new chapter should be up soon. In the meantime, enjoy this mildly cracky, but hopefully very funny side-story. Chapter One is all me, but BleedingHeartConservative will take over for the next segment. Writing this has made us laugh, we hope you like it too!
Disclaimer: We own nothing, any registered trademarks or intellectual property referenced herein is not ours, nor are we making any profit from it.
Ahmed was awakened by a jostling on the air mattress and the whooping of an excited voice next to his head. "We're in France! We're in France! Wake up, we're in Fra-ance!"
Groaning, he covered his head with a pillow in a vain attempt to smother himself into unconsciousness. The pillow was removed without any pity and Ahmed curled into a ball, pulling the blanket over his head. He didn't know what time it was, they'd stumbled to the hotel long after midnight, jet-lagged and grumpy. He and Erik barely had the energy to remain upright waiting for their air mattress to inflate before they collapsed on it. Apparently, Erik woke with all the pep of the energizer bunny when he was overseas. Ahmed was still trying to catch his required nine hours before he could be called on to do anything remotely productive.
"Come on," Erik whined, pulling the blanket back and bouncing up and down in an attempt to rouse his friend. "I've been up forever. You guys suck, I want to leave for the opera without you, I have GPS, I so could too."
"Whaatimeizzit?" Ahmed asked, face still planted in the pillow.
"Ten," Erik said, matter-of-factly. "Frenchtime. Because we're in fucking Paris. Come on, get your ass out of bed, you'll be much happier once you've had coffee."
Ahmed opened one bloodshot green eye. "You had coffee?"
"Two cups," Erik replied perkily. "And a croissant. The coffee was Starbucks, but the pastry was awesome."
Lured by the promise of hot coffee and French pastry, Ahmed got up and stumbled toward the bathroom, tripping over Raoul who was curled up in his sleeping bag in front of the door. As a blast of lukewarm water hit him in the face, he glared at the glass shower door and tried to remember why he thought going to France would be such a great idea. It seemed too good to pass up a month ago when they found out some mega-rich dude had been so impressed by the students' performance Les Mis that he wanted to send them off to France for a week in the summer, with board and sightseeing included. It seemed like the coolest thing he could possibly do and he'd been completely stoked until they boarded the plane.
The first half wasn't so bad, but the rest of the trip, including the three hours they spent waiting in an airport was not so great. Erik forgot to charge his iPhone before they left, so it died halfway through an intense game of Scrabble. They drank day-old coffee in an attempt to keep themselves awake for the rest of the trip, but all that resulted in was upset stomachs all around. It was a small crew who had been able to make the journey, either because they couldn't scrape together the cash for the plane tickets or they had other things to do with their time. Tim, Ann, Maddy and Chester were chaperoning himself, Erik, Raoul, Freddy, Meg, Christine and Charlotte.
Sorelli and Jamie were both off in Canada for some dance-related thing, so they were at least traveling, though they told them to bring them back all kinds of wacky souvenirs, including a bottle of absinthe if they could sneak it through customs. Ahmed was pretty sure their chances were nil on that, but there was no harm in trying (unless they got detained, but they could always claim to be stupid Americans with no knowledge of international law). It was Armand he felt worst for, poor guy was stuck working at his dad's firm all summer and he wasn't allowed to take a week off because his little sisters wanted to go to Disney World and so he HAD to go with them. Freddy tried to console him, telling him that Epcot!France was probably pretty cool, but Armand still seemed bummed and he wasn't the type to be cheered up by illegal spirits.
The trip had a itinerary laid out for them and fortunately Day One was was fairly slow, they were going on a scheduled tour of the Paris Opera and then watching a performance in the evening. The mystery patron (he/she preferred to remain anonymous) got them a private box which seemed super swanky to Ahmed. There were four boxes at Memorial that were rented out to the highest paying donors, who usually didn't bother showing up, so the handicapped usually got them instead. He figured the Paris Opera would probably be a little less lax with their boxes. They were going to see The Barber of Seville which Erik was all kinds of excited about, but no one else really cared one way or the other. He tried to make them listen to the soundtrack and Christine seemed to humor him, but Ahmed wasn't big into opera.
Ahmed had been practically dozing on the show, but soon Freddy began pounding on the door which zapped him back into wakefulness so he toweled off, dressed and joined Erik for a cup of coffee and a pastry.
It was a sunny day and after breakfast and caffeine, everyone was in better spirits than they had been the night before. The hotel wasn't that far from the Opera so they decided to walk and take in the sights before they had to get in for their tour. Maddy and Ann were talking loudly about ditching and going shopping since they'd be seeing the opera later and they were in Paris and they wanted to spend money, but Tim said he didn't think splitting up in an unfamiliar city was a good idea.
Maddy rolled her eyes, "Honestly, Timmy, we have this crazy new invention called cell phones, if we get lost, you can just give me a call and I'll answer it. Really, it's so convenient, I think you should give them a try."
Charlotte was nodding vigorously. "I don't even have anything nice to wear tonight, I'll look like such a scrub, I need to shop, Tim."
"It'll be embarrassing if we don't," Freddy piped up. "I don't need to see the hundred year old fly system or whatever they want to show us, I want to go shopping."
Meg looked disgusted with all of them. "You can go shopping at home!" she said. "We're in fucking Paris for fuck's sake!"
"Language," her mom said, giving her a light cuff on the back of the neck.
"Child abuse!" Meg declared, dancing out of her mom's reach. She grabbed the back of Erik's vest and tried to hide behind him, but being that he bore an unfavorable resemblance to a beanpole, he didn't provide the best cover.
Tim was resolute, "If this is some kind of private tour, I don't want to insult them by having half our group missing."
Freddy removed his Blackberry from his messenger bag (it was most definitely NOT a man-purse, thank you very much) and consulted their schedule of events. "For anyone who cares, it looks like this is just a regular touristy thing. I don't think they'll be all THAT offended, if, like, five people show up."
That issue settled they did decide, after much bellyaching and deliberating, to split up, half the group blowing money on overpriced French duds, the other half spending their afternoon in an historic temple to music.
"Uh, it is air-conditioned, right?" Raoul asked, glancing over his shoulder at the group who fell prey to the lure of consumerism.
"I have absolutely no idea," Tim said, his voice carrying a faint note of disgust. Chester decided he'd rather shop than sight-see, the traitor. It seemed insanely unfair, they were in the city of love and his partner would rather look at designer suits than spend an afternoon on an historic site tour. Tim felt like he was married to a stereotype. "Even if it isn't, let's not complain too much, shall we?"
"I think it's going to be awesome," Erik declared loftily, throwing an arm around Tim's shoulder. "I googled the place last night, did you know there are dead people in the cellars? How cool is that?"
"Dead people?" Christine asked, eyes wide. "Uh...I thought we were going to look at costumes and, like...architecture and stuff. Why are there dead people in an opera house?"
Dropping his voice and affecting an accent somewhere between Boris Karloff and Vincent Price Erik said, "They're the corpses of all the chorus girls who slept with a crazed manager, Anatole de Grand Bouf. He promised them roles in exchange for sexual favors, a hand job got you into the chorus, or so went the rumors. He was a religious psychopath who would lure them to his office and when they were on the verge of unholy fornication, he'd cut their throats and drop them into the underground lake."
Meg's eyes were the size of dinner plates. "Really?" she squeaked.
Erik laughed. "No, not really, I just made it up. There is a lake though, there's definitely a lake."
"But no corpses, right?" Christine asked, looking for reassurance.
"Oh, no the corpses are real, they're from some...war? Was there a war here in the 1800s?"
Ahmed rolled his eyes, "There's always a war here, the French love to rebel remember?"
"It's like their favorite thing," Raoul nodded, unconsciously quoting Erik. That was one of the hazards of spending too much time around the guy, he had an almost contagious personality.
The rest of the walk to the opera house was one big argument about whether or not the kerfluffle that brought the bodies to the basement was the result of a war, a plague or a revolution. All sides argued their points passionately and loudly, leading other pedestrians to give them dirty looks and mutter angrily behind their backs about, "Les Américains," and their limited knowledge of world history.
The tour did not settle the question for them as the docent only briefly touched on the corpses in the basement, after Erik brought it up four times in the first ten minutes of the tour. It was not, as it turned out, private. They were in a group consisting of fifteen other tourists, mostly British. The docent's English was good and he did a pretty thorough job talking about the history of the building (including the underground lake, which wasn't as lake-like as Erik envisioned), how construction was halted during the Franco-Prussian War in the 1870s (here he talked about the bodies for about two seconds before moving on) and pointing out various points of interest in the architecture - and there was a lot of architecture.
When they initially approached the ridiculously opulence that was the Palais Garnier, Erik declared the building 'sexy,' and this opinion was unabated during the walk through. Objectively, he realized that the over-the-top nature of the place was a reflection of gaudy Victorian tastes rather than thoughtful consideration of how music would sound in these halls, but there was something about the self-conscious stuffiness of it all that appealed to him. It was like a cathedral to music. Not a bad tribute, if he said so himself.
So caught up was he in admiring the sheer grandeur of the place that Erik almost missed it when the docent said something interesting, "...and this is Box Five which, according to rumor, was used exclusively by the Opera Ghost for a period of fifteen years in the 1880s."
"A ghost who liked opera?" one of their fellow tourists asked, apparently finding the idea very amusing. "D'you mean they never sold the box?"
The guide shrugged, "They tried too, but the buyers would hear strange noises and voices, they would become so afraid that they would leave by the next act. Some said he was the ghost of a man who died during the Commune, other people said he was an eccentric builder who made an apartment for himself in the cellars and loved the opera so that he haunted it after his death."
"Do you sell the box now?" Christine asked, eyeing it warily.
The guide smiled. "Yes, and I am pleased to say we have no trouble from the ghost, not in the time I have worked here."
Ahmed nudged Erik and rolled his eyes, "You'd think they'd know whether or not someone built a freaking house in the basement, right?"
Erik nodded. It was a cool story, but come on, someone would probably notice a weird dude living the basement for years on end. "Probably. Still, a sweet opera apartment? I'd take it."
"That's because you're a freak on a leash, dude," Ahmed said with a grin and Erik shoved him and the two of them jostled and banged into each other all the way down the hallway until Tim turned and shot them a death-glare. Then they just stuck their tongues out and made faces at each other as the docent took them backstage where they could observe the sets from a safe distance.
During a LONG monologue about the fly system, Erik raised his hand, "Pardon," he said, taking every chance to use his AP high school French that he could. "Is there a bathroom around here?"
The guide nodded and gave him directions out, but warned him that if he left, he'd have to wait for the group at the entrance to the auditorium for the tail-end of the tour. "Bummer," Erik said lightly, dropping the French and grabbing Ahmed's arm.
"What?" Ahmed asked, trying to pull his arm away.
"You said you needed to go, like five minutes ago. Come on, you don't want to risk a bladder infection."
Ahmed said no such thing and was about to ask Erik why he was so eager to depart when just that morning nothing seemed to please him more than going on this stupid tour when he caught a look in Erik's eye that told him they were about to do something a lot more interesting than take a trip to the bathroom. "Uh, yeah," he said, letting Erik lead him away from the group. "Wouldn't want to risk that. That would suck."
Once they were out of earshot of the group, Erik zipped behind a curtain and Ahmed followed close at his heels and whispered, "So, where are we going? The roof? I hear they've got bees up there."
"Please, we're doing something much more stupid than heading for the roof," Erik said, a note of glee in his voice.
"What?"
"Are you up for a spot of ghost-hunting, Watson?" he asked in an affected English accent.
Ahmed's face cracked into a grin, since obviously Erik was not saying what it sounded like he was saying. "Are you serious? Dude, do you want to get kicked out of here? Tim will kill us."
"Aw, come on, twenty minutes, tops, we look in the basement, see the fake lake and come back up. They'll never notice we were gone. It's going to be more interesting than listening to that guy talk about acoustics for another hour."
Ahmed looked doubtful. "And if we get caught?"
"We play the dumb Americans and say we got lost looking for the bathroom. They just tell us we're not supposed to be down there and don't do it again. It's not like we'll be arrested, come on, dude, what's the worst that could happen?" Erik gave Ahmed another tug and, against his better judgement, he allowed himself to be dragged off by his friend. The building was a lot more empty than it had any right to be in the middle of the afternoon before a show, the backstage area was practically deserted.
"This seems really weird," Ahmed said as they ducked through a darkened doorway. "Like, shouldn't there be more people? Security or something?"
Erik didn't sense the foreboding Ahmed was privy to, he just thought they were having an enormous stroke of good luck. He was almost giddy, Erik just loved doing things he wasn't supposed to do, it was how he got his rocks off. Dressing up statues, being in the park after hours, sneaking around opera houses looking for their creepy basements. This was the kind of thing he lived for. His friends were right, he really was such a creeper.
"Clearly, the gods are smiling down on us," he said, squinting into the darkness. Well, there were stairs that led down, that was a good sign. His phone indicated that there was zero reception from their current location, but they still had a good fifteen minutes to go before anyone noticed they were missing. Piece of cake. They'd go all the way down, take a look around and then go back up. No big deal.