"Up Where We Belong"
Chapter One: As the fog lifts…
"The End."
Christian lifted
he gaze to stare out the cracked window of his apartment. Past the decrepit Moulin Rouge, the sun was
setting in a violet summer sky as the typewriter bit into paper for those last
few precious letters. It truly was the
end. For Christian, the closing of that
day signaled for him another ending in his life. It wasn't enough to just mourn Satine and wish she were with him
still. It was too hard to face the
demons of both the past and the present, so he decided to give one up. Satine would always be with him as his first
and true love, but her memory had turned him into a monster, and that was
something he could not afford to be. He
had just written perhaps his most meaningful piece of work. He couldn't allow it to waste away to
nothing. So he put his sorrow behind
him, sealed Satine forever into the depths of his heart, and went out to get
his appearance altered.
Down the
street there stood a barbershop where there once was an absinthe bar. It was strange to see Monmartre changed
so. The Paris officials had decided at
some point, probably when Christian was too drunk to care, that the Village of
Sin needed some morals put into it.
Bars and brothels still occupied the streets, but not in the force they
once were. The Bohemian revolution was drawing
to a close. Fortunately for Christian,
there was still a call for modern writers and artists, but the inspiration just
wasn't quite there.
As the
barber hacked months of abuse and neglect from Christian face and hair, he
watched himself be transformed. When
the bushy beard had fallen away, he barely recognized himself. He looked younger without the hair, but
still much older than he had been on the day Satine died. There were lines and shadows around his eyes
and mouth that proclaimed much more age than his five and twenty years. He supposed some of his youth would return
with his sobriety, but until then he could have passed for forty.
He paid the
man out of his payment from Spectacular, Spectacular, although that supply was
running low after his binge on the bottle.
He needed another income, and fast.
The story might help him a little, but only if he could get a publisher
to like it without having to change it beyond recognition. As he looked around his trashed apartment,
the doorbell rang with the answer to his prayers.
"Robert?" Christian said, more shocked than he had
been in months. "How in bloody hell did
you track me down?"
"Nice to
see you as well, big brother," the younger man said. It was easy to tell he and Christian were related. They looked exactly the same, except for
Robert's sandy blonde hair, which he had gotten from their mother. "I asked around Monmartre for a young poet
from England. Everyone seemed to know
who you were, and they all seemed sorry for you for some reason. What have you been up to, Christian?"
"It's a
long story, Robert, and I really don't feel like getting into it right
now. What brings you to Paris after all
this time? Did you finally decide to
give up on law school?"
"Stop
joking around, Christian. I'm here on
serious business."
"Well, what
is it?"
"It's
father. He passed away two weeks
ago."
