Thank you for your reviews. I am reading them and seriously appreciate every kind word, I just suck at replying to them. Hope you like this chapter.
Christine didn't hear from Leroux once his driver dropped her off at her apartment, and the only contact she received came from a check-up text from Meg, who she quickly replied to with a promise to tell her everything once she had time. It did cross her mind that Leroux potentially didn't want many other people, if any, to know about their new partnership of sorts, given his reclusive reputation. She would be a fool if she ran around screaming to anyone who listened that the Erik Leroux was her new tutor, so she made a pact with herself to only tell Meg, someone she wholeheartedly trusted. She probably knew the man in some capacity if her mother's relationship with him signified anything.
The next morning, she still hadn't heard any further developments from Leroux or his people (she imagined he had a whole team of arse licking goons desperate to obey his every command – every reclusive genius should have them). While she had tried to put thoughts of him and their new deal to the back of her mind, her preoccupation had quickly turned into a full blown obsession. The magnitude of the offer she had accepted weighed heavily on her, so as she ate her breakfast and indulged in a lazy morning – classes didn't begin until after lunch – she pulled out her laptop and googled Erik Leroux.
The usual articles came up – a long yet surprisingly substance-free Wikipedia page that covered the basic milestones of Leroux's life, various YouTube clips and archived reviews of his work, and a limitless supply of think-pieces analysing his evasion of public attention, even as his work grew in stature. Christine knew most of the details of Leroux's rise to fame, or at least as much as anyone knew. There was whisperings of a prodigious child creating symphonies that poured from his mind like a spring river. Leroux's talent caught the eye of numerous agents and scouts who begged him to perform to braying crowds at the most exclusive venues across the globe, and yet he turned down every offer. The cash offers increased and yet he still said no. Instead, substitutes performed in his place. The greatest orchestras scrambled for the honour to premiere his masterpieces. No pictures of the man existed online or anywhere else.
The rumours swirled around the mysterious Leroux as his work increased in volume and skill. Some said he didn't exist and was a pseudonym for a number of composers collaborating on major pieces. Others theorised that he couldn't handle the pressure put upon him from a young age and ran off to live in some hut in the mountains, free from civilisation and electricity. Every few years or so, more conspiracies arose and the music world would dedicate a few days to trying to analyse them. To many, Eric Leroux would be the great mystery of modern music, forever unsolved.
So it turns out he may have been walking freely around the streets of Edinburgh this whole time, or at least as freely as a masked man could walk around a heavily populated city without being noticed.
After a morning of investigation, Christine packed up her things and headed to her one class for the day: music theory. While her heart lay with the more practical aspects of music, she found the drier, more analytical side of her studies as fascinating as any other part of the course. Breaking down something so rooted in emotion to its very foundations offered an entirely new way to look at a familiar piece, and knowing its history, influences and context created a whole new listening experience. She excelled as a student of the written word. It required a lot less nerve.
She studiously took notes – with her minuscule looped handwriting that required the most skilled analysts to decode it – as Ms Giry talked at length on compositional theory, wildly gesturing and employing the kind of dramatics more suited to a one-man play than a tutorial. It always made for a stirring class, although Christine couldn't help but notice how Giry, usually so eager to engage with her students and ask questions of them as she talked, seemed focused on ignoring the 12 3rd year students around the table. Often, Christine would ask a question which would tangent off into its own separate discussion. Indeed, those deviations were one of the reasons she so appreciated Ms Giry as a teacher. Now, that lack of interaction seemed glaring, and a quick note shoved in her direction by the student sitting next to her indicated she wasn't the only one to notice it.
As the lecture wrapped up, Christine packed away her things and quickly glanced at her phone. No new messages or missed calls so Leroux still hadn't been in contact. Not that he had her number in the first place but she doubted that would be a problem for him. He seemed like the kind of guy who could get such information easily, legally or otherwise.
"Ms Daae," Ms Giry piped up. "May I have a word with you?"
The formal greeting didn't bode well. She nodded and shared a look of surprise with her classmates as they left the room. Ms Giry's earlier bravado had disappeared, making way for hunched shoulders and downward eyes that seemed almost guilty.
"Ms Daae…" she repeated. "I… I understand things are… Well, you…"
"Ms Giry, what's going on?" She asked, already impatient with this line of conversation. "How do you know Erik Leroux? What went on in the audition room?"
Giry's shoulder's slumped, free of the tension that had been building in them for what felt like aeons. The ice had been broken, at least.
"Erik tells me you've agreed to be privately tutored by him. I must admit, I'm surprised he took that step."
"Yeah, something tells me he doesn't make offers like that very often."
"That would be the understatement of the century. Erik is brilliant, make no mistakes there, he's one of the greats of our time. But he is…"
"Tempestuous?" Christine offered. "Difficult?"
"He's an absolute bastard."
His candidness made Christine guffaw. Finally, she had her teacher and friend back to her warm self.
"So I've signed up for classes with a maniacal musical recluse?"
"He won't hurt you," she said firmly. "He's a good man. A great man. But please, remember you don't owe him anything. You're free to leave him if you so wish."
"No offence, Ms Giry, but you're not doing much to alleviate any concerns I might have," she said, trying to sound jovial but unable to hide her growing unnerved state. Ms Giry's expression didn't help matters.
"What is it you think he wants from me?" Christine asked.
"I think the more pertinent question is, what do you want from him?"
She shrugged.
"Pretty hard to say no to the Erik Leroux offering private tutorials."
"His appeal is understandable, but I've known you for several years now Christine, and I know you're not the kind of person to be taken in by something as superfluous as celebrity. Erik may loathe that term and may have spent most of his life rejecting the concept but he is for all intents and purposes a celebrity."
"He's also one of the greatest living musical talents. Even you said that. Why wouldn't I want lessons from the greatest?"
"Do you want to be the greatest?"
"Don't we all?"
She didn't respond to her loaded question, although Christine doubted Ms Giry, or anyone else, would ever honestly answer that. Wanting greatness was still considered to be a standard marker of arrogance, a bigger crime than failing in some circles. Even in the ego driven world of professional musicians, admitting you wanted to be the best would result in scoffs of amusement and occasional anger. Not even men could get away from this attitude, although they were far more likely to do so than women. Men were geniuses; women were divas.
Ms Giry opened his desk and pulled out a small cardboard box.
"Erik likes to be in control of his lines of communication," she explained as Christine opened the box to reveal an iPhone. "He'll contact you through this device and this device alone. He'll pay the bill and would prefer it if you didn't use it to phone anyone else."
"I do have my own mobile," Christine sighed. There was no need for this arrangement to be as dramatic as Erik was making it. Perhaps he'd always wanted a secret agent style double life and this was his chance to try it.
"I'm here if you need me, Christine, and so is Meg. You'll be great one day, I know it."
She nodded, not sure how else to respond to that, although her burning cheeks gave away her discomfort. She pocketed the phone and left the empty box on the nearest table before slinging her bag over her shoulder and turning to the door.
"One more thing," she said. "If Erik Leroux is such a super secretive recluse who answers to nobody then why was he judging auditions for a mid-level student orchestra?"
Ms Giry laughed heartily.
"Even the great Mr Leroux owes a few favours now and then."
No sooner had Christine received a curt text message on her new phone from Leroux informing her of their first tutorial when his driver honked the horn outside her flat. She cancelled the snarky reply she was halfway through writing and quickly grabbed her things. With two mobile phones clattering against one another in her satchel, she felt as if she were part of some secret conspiracy. In a manner of speaking, she thought, this sort of is one.
The driver – the same man from the previous evening – did not speak to her as they headed to their destination, something that suited Christine just fine. She put on her headphones and listened to Beyoncé, the volume just high enough for the driver to hear it and give slight disapproving looks in the mirror. She rolled her eyes and went back to ignoring him, having no time for such musical snobbery.
She hadn't expected two nights in a row at the New Usher – that place occasionally had public performances to open for, after all – but she still found herself surprised when the car stopped by the row of 3 bay town-houses on Regent Terrace. The driver silently pointed her to number 22.
As she exited the car, she wondered why she'd expected something different for Leroux's residence. The New Town had always attracted the rich and elite – indeed, it had been built for that explicit purpose – and not even Leroux could argue that he fit that description to a tee. This street exuded subtle opulence, with its large rectangular windows and cast iron balconies. To live here was an explicit statement of success. Recluses and notoriously private individuals didn't tend to brag about such things.
Then again, the guy had seemingly free use of the city's biggest performance space and enough disposable income to pay out on iPhones for people he barely knew. Maybe he not so secretly loved to splash out his cash.
That idea quickly left her head as she entered the building, but what she saw fit her previous ideas about Leroux. The décor remained simple, utilitarian, and almost clinical. Some paintings adorned the walls, the kind of abstract shapeless blobs of grey most commonly described as modern art, but there were no photographs. The cream carpet remained free of the stains, there were no shoes lined up by the wall, the metal stand by the door held no jackets. Neutral tones from top to bottom, with the only spot of colour coming from the glowing red dot of the large flat-screen television in the immense living room. This barely touched presentation of a half-lived life felt like a cross between a showroom and a mausoleum.
"Hello?" She called out. "Mr Leroux?"
She slowly wandered through the living room to the kitchen; a modern design with top of the range equipment that seemed to have never been used. She felt uneasy about touching anything and wondered if she'd wiped her feet properly upon entering. Apart from the muffled noise of a car outside driving back onto the main road, the sound of her breaths remained her only companion.
She headed back to the hallway and up the stairs, recounting her self-defence training in her mind as she moved. The trepidation of being potentially alone in an abandoned house overrode her irritation over being the chew-toy of an infamously reclusive rich boy who seemed to find the idea of a simple phone call impossible. The entire scenario was a stormy night away from being a gothic novel and she had no time for that.
"Hello?" She called out again, pushing against the ajar door at the top of the stairs. Leroux stood in view, hands behind his back, wearing another suit that practically screamed money. Behind him sat a grand piano with a disorganised pile of sheet music on top. It seemed to be the only thing in this soulless shell of a building with any semblance of personality.
"Good evening, Christine," he said with a nod.
"Did you not hear me yelling downstairs for you?"
"I did, but I find it uncouth to scream in my own property."
"Sorry to lower the tone," she said, sounding as far from apologetic as she could manage.
"Take out your instrument and we'll begin."
She complied, dumping her rucksack by the door and taking out her trumpet. She stood in front of Leroux, as still as she could manage, with her instrument in her left hand, and let him stare her down, scrutinising every minute detail of her person. Christine dared to call herself attractive – with her rich brown hair, sculpted eyebrows and pale skin thankfully unscarred after many years of acne, she knew she turned more than a few heads. Her clothing choices were based more on comfort than style, favouring floaty skirts, thick tights and blazers found on overstuffed racks in charity shops. When the occasion called for it, she scrubbed up well, but tonight was not such a night.
"Stand straight," Leroux ordered. "Chin up, chest out, feet apart at shoulder width."
Standing in her ordered pose, she felt like a model posing for a sculptor. Maybe a soldier under drill training was a more accurate description, she thought.
"Pick a point in front of you and focus on it. Do not let any other sight distract you."
She shuffled slightly to the left and focused on the top corner of the room, mostly because there were almost no other distinguishing features to keep her gaze on. Leroux stood close by, closer than what would be considered a professional distance. His dark eyes were just in her sight. If he came any closer, she imagined she'd see the crow's feet by his eyes or the tiny streaks of grey in the temples of his thick black hair.
"Bring your instrument to your lips," he said, softly but no less commanding. "Think of it as a natural extension of your body."
Once again, she did as she was told and pressed the mouthpiece to her lips, as she had done many times before, more time than she could count. The stance came so naturally she barely thought about it as she kept her elbows parallel and chin up, remaining sturdy under Leroux's scrutinising gaze.
"This is all too stiff," he said dismissively. "You stand like you've been turned to stone. No wonder your audition was sub-par."
Christine desperately wanted to reply but decided the smartest response would be to remain still and await further instruction. She jolted as his hands wrapped around her forearms and gently forced her to lower them, just an inch or so. His body seemed to envelope hers while he shifted her into position, the warmth of his well-built frame radiating against her willowy form. It was almost enough to take her breath away.
"Try that," he said, voice void of warmth, as he stepped back and watched her, arms folded tightly against his chest.
With another deep breath, she readied herself and played the first few notes of La Vie En Rose. It had worked reasonably well last time so hopefully her luck would continue, she thought. However, she barely made it to the 3rd note before Leroux rose his hand and signalled for her to stop.
"Again," he said.
What was wrong with that, she wondered. It sounded perfectly fine to her. How could she improve if he offered no further direction? Suppressing her enquiries, she started again. This time, she made it to the 6th note before he stopped her.
"This is flat." He was beginning to sound irritated. Good, Christine thought. That makes two of us.
"There is no excuse for you droning your way through the simplest of songs. Each note should be distinct from the preceding note while flowing naturally as intended. This…" He motioned his hand towards her as if she were something to be dismissed, to be condemned.
"What?" She asked, unable to remain silent for much longer.
"This is lifeless. There is nothing to this whining that even hints of potential."
"How would you know that when you won't even let me play the full piece?"
"It's not necessary. It is the job of a musician to grab the listener from the first note."
"I'd argue otherwise."
"Again."
"What?"
"I was under the impression that you possessed perfect hearing. Start again."
She bit back another reply of 'what' and played again, focusing on the notes, seeing the procession of beat after beat in her mind. The sheet music filled her thoughts to the point where she could even envision the dog-eared corners of the pages, the result of too many days spent crammed in her satchel. Each note came, clear and almost forceful, and she had to regain control of her hands, which seemed to be possessed by a rueful force. This was not a song to be played in the fits of rage.
This time, she managed to play 4 whole bars before Leroux interrupted with a clearing of his throat.
"An improvement. You're forcing the notes down too hard. Your instrument is not to be brutalised. Tap each valve, do not slam them down. Again."
"No."
"No?"
She shook her head.
"This is ridiculous. What am I supposed to be learning here?"
"You are learning how to play."
"I know how to play. I've been playing for most of my life."
"If you want to call it playing."
"Okay, this is bloody pointless. I didnae come here to be insulted, so if you're just gonna keep this shite up, I'm leavin'."
Leroux smirked, or did so as much as his mask would allow.
"Did you know you sound so much more Scottish when you're angry?" He asked. Christine didn't find it charming. She stepped back towards her case and picked it up.
"We're not done here yet," Leroux said.
"Yes we are, Mr Leroux. This was not a lesson; this was an interrogation." She emphasised each syllable clearly, partly to make her point and partly to soften her accent, which did indeed become more Scottish when her emotions ran high. Not that she was ashamed of it, she reminded herself. It just made things a tad more difficult when she wished to be serious with non-Scots. To the outside world, her accent remained a source of comedy more than anything else.
"I told you I would be a tough tutor," he said, remaining eerily still as he watched Christine grab her things.
"Tough I can deal with. This is just impossible. What am I supposed to learn from this?"
"What is the purpose of La Vie En Rose?" He asked.
"What, do you want an essay on theory?"
"It's one of the most overplayed songs in modern music. It's a cheap stand-in for all things French in every Hollywood production of the past few decades and it's been butchered by all manner of amateurs."
"Tell me what you really think," Christine said drolly.
"Tell me what you think of it, Ms Daae. You are French, after all."
"My dad was French."
"But you were born there, yes?"
"Yeah but so were you. Wait, how do you know where I was born?"
"Why did you pick this song when you performed for me last night?"
She noted his avoidance of her question and made a mental memo to further interrogate him on the issue later.
"It's…" She shrugged. "I don't know. It's a beautiful song. Yeah, it's overplayed but it still packs that emotional punch. It's about being so enamoured with someone that the world stops around you and nothing can spoil that."
"Is that something you believe?"
She snorted. This entire discussion had quickly veered into armchair psychology and she had no interest in that.
"It doesn't matter what I believe; countless others believe it. There's power in that."
"Is there?"
"Some things are popular for a reason."
Silence fell between the two of them, and Christine didn't desire to spoil it. She preferred him when he remained quiet. For an infamous recluse in a melodramatic mask, he sure did like to talk. His sneering and cynicism reminded her of a music critic she had encountered in her youth: An embittered old man of fading stature who seemed to take more joy in destroying people's passion for music than the music itself. If her playing was indeed so mediocre then why had he decided to focus so much of his attention on her? Christine wondered if he got to have these kinds of conversations often. Did he have friends he invited around on the weekend to share musical opinions with? Were there fellow composers or performers he accompanied to public performances, followed by warm company and that truly satisfying sensation of being?
Her eyes flickered across his face, from his scalpel-sharp cheekbones to his lacquered down hair, from the cold and pristine porcelain of his mask to the impenetrable darkness of his eyes. She didn't know anyone's eyes could be so black.
"Play again," he said, quietly but firmly. For some reason she couldn't explain, she took out her trumpet again and played.
With each note, she thought of the old Louis Armstrong record she had, in storage somewhere in her home town along with a lifetime of ghosts and nostalgia. She thought of Armstrong's voice, so gritty and full of character, and the way the muted trumpet so perfectly accompanied it. It wasn't a song that held any special memories for her, nor did she consider it a particular favourite, but she couldn't deny the swell in her heart it elicited every time she heard it.
This time, each note came distinctly, a little more sharply than her previous attempts, with less focus on a smooth transition from note to note. It felt more of the moment, looser and almost improvised. With her eyes closed and spine straight, she kept her focus solely on the music and not the mask man who had proven so impossible to please. It didn't even dawn on her until she finished that he had yet to interrupt her.
The silence returned once she ended the piece, and she opened her eyes. His gaze and expression her inscrutable. Perhaps that was why he wore the mask: It provided the perfect shield from his own emotions.
"Yes," he said. "That's it."
"That's what?"
The visible side of his mouth twitched into something Christine supposed could be defined as a smile.
"I think we shall leave it there for tonight, Ms Daae," he added.
How could he just leave her hanging like that, she thought. She finally cracked the damn code with this infuriating man and he wouldn't even tell her what she had done right. How could this qualify as a lesson if she had no idea what she was learning?
"The next time we see each other, I want you to bring with you a piece of music you have or have had difficulty learning."
"Okay."
"My driver will return you to your home. Enjoy your evening."
Without another word, Leroux left the room. Christine rolled her eyes at the dramatics – it was a bit hard to make an exit when you lived in the building – and quickly packed up, filled with a sense of something that resembled satisfaction but permeated with frustration. She skipped down the stairs, bags in hand, and left Leroux's house. She didn't think it could be called a home.
