Another long chapter. Hope it´s not too long!
Blessings on all those who have read and reviewed!
I do not own POTO, or its characters.
Smoke filled Christine´s lungs, searing them, as she searched for a way out. Where was she? Whatever building this was, it was burning now, and the heat was unbearable. She was in a long hallway, and flames seemed to be consuming the floor beneath her. She ran, quickly, but the floor gave in under her, and she fell, amid a shower of rubble, to the inferno raging on the floor beneath. There was a whoosh of air, and flames towered and danced on either side of her.
"Papa!" she called, from on her knees in the rubble, knowing that he could not respond, ever. She searched her mind.
"Raoul!"
He came, and he had brought a glass of water. She watched, hope beating in her heart, as Raoul tried to douse a thirty-foot tower of flame with half a pint of water. There was the barest hint of steam, and then nothing. He stared at her unhappily from the other side of the flames, sometimes obscured, sometimes visible, as the fire danced and roared.
Christine closed her eyes. "Erik!"
The smoke in front of her dissipated somewhat, and Erik was revealed; he stood at the top of a tall stairway, surveying the disaster before him with regal disapproval. Christine was possessed by an irrational urge to apologize to Erik, to tell him that she really hadn´t meant for this to happen, that she would never do it again – and would he please…? Before she could speak, however, he addressed the flames as a symphony conductor would address an orchestra – with a sweeping gesture of his arms, he silenced their tongues. For a second his arms hovered, waiting, and his raptor gaze swept the landscape, daring the elements to rebel against his will.
There was a sudden whiteness – no trace of flames, nor of smoke, nor of Raoul. Erik stood before her, offering her a glass of water.
As she emerged steadily into wakefulness, Christine could hear Joyce clearly: "The person you´ve described is superhuman…"
Perhaps I am crazy.
She stretched, and found that she had fallen asleep in her clothes. She was comfortable, nonetheless, as she lay beneath a blanket which she had evidently pulled over herself sometime during the night. The alarm rang, and as she silenced it, her wedding ring clicked against its plastic surface. She looked at her hand, surprised, and removed the ring quickly, secreting it into its customary drawer.
As she stepped out onto her wooden porch, ready to leave for work, she clutched the medal of the Virgin at her neck, closed her eyes, and mouthed a quick prayer.
"Yeah, traffic´s real scary at this time of day," came a cheerful voice, and she saw her neighbour, Sarah, as she headed out to her car with a steaming coffee mug.
Christine beamed. Three years with Erik had left her with such a great appreciation for human contact of any kind that her overly enthusiastic responses often confused her interlocutors.
"Hey, Sarah! Headed for work?" Stupid question. Anything for the simple pleasure of conversing with someone at this hour of the morning.
"Gotta pay the bills," said Sarah, and she stopped and looked at Christine curiously as she put her mug on the roof of her Focus. "Were you really praying there?"
"It´s just a ritual of mine. Every time I leave the house in the morning, I stop outside the door to say a prayer for those I love – and for myself, of course!"
"What – you don´t love yourself?" Sarah asked, then smiled ruefully. "Well, remember me in your prayers. End of the month´s looking kind of bad right now."
De Chagny and Lunden hummed with its staff´s collective anticipation of the coming weekend. In addition to Julie´s wedding on Saturday, there was to be a charity event on Sunday at the convention center, and firm employees who were not volunteering for it were relentlessly encouraged to volunteer for it.
Angela was so satisfied with her upcoming role as a soloist that she was, for the first time in her career, easy to deal with. People who normally cringed in her presence were now treated to a sunny side of her disposition which she had formerly reserved exclusively for Raoul. "She´s frightening me," Julie commented under her breath to Christine.
Although she appreciated the lighter workload which was a side-effect of Angela´s happiness, guilt nearly consumed Christine every time she came near Julie. Poor Julie! Her wedding! The temptation to defy Angela was strong. She was convinced that Nadir had given up and moved on in his search for her by now – but Angela has his card and his phone number.
She had met with the organist once, and they had read through "Pie Jesu" together. He had been so impressed by her performance that he had peppered her with shocked questions; who are you? had been first and foremost among them, and it had alarmed her.
She approached Angela on Friday, actually approached her, for the first time ever, in her office.
"Angela? About that solo…"
"Oh, hello, Christine, how´s it hanging?" responded Angela with startling cheerfulness. She was busy sorting through something in a large bag.
"Um…fine, really. Look, about that solo tomorrow? I have the sheet music for you here."
Angela extended her left hand and accepted the music absently, while her right hand and her entire attention continued focused on the contents of the bag.
"As you can see, the organist will give you a five-bar introduction. You´ll be coming in on the sixth bar at the –"
"Tell me something I don´t already know, Christine," she murmured, and let the sheet music fall onto the sloppy pile of papers on her desk.
"The organist says—"
"Look, Christine, I´m kinda busy now, okay? Look, you might as well see the kee-yute costume I´ve got for Raoul!"
Angela fished through the bag and pulled out some red leotards, a blue cape, and a blue spandex shirt with "ML" emblazoned across the chest in phosphorescent yellow. She held the shirt out proudly for Christine to see. "Whaddaya think, girlfriend?"
Christine tried not to wince at the attempt at false intimacy, and she managed to look composed as she looked at the shirt.
"What…what is that for?" she finally ventured, looking cautiously at Angela.
"For Raoul´s volunteer work on Sunday at the big MD benefit, you twit! He´ll be working the Kiddy Korner, you know, so he has to go in costume. And I didn´t want him to be a clown, like half the people who are working here are gonna be."
"Okay, but what´s the 'ML' stand for?"
"That´s the best part of all! He´s going to be a new action hero – 'Major Liberty'!"
"Major Liberty? Who d'you want to kill him, the kids or their parents?"
"Look, Christine…" started Angela, truly irritated now, but they were interrupted by Raoul. He rapped his knuckles on the doorway and leaned in, smiling.
"Hey, ladies! Look, Angela, can I borrow you for a minute? I need to know about the number of favors we´re going to hand out to the kids…"
Angela smiled warmly and glided out the door with him, leaving Christine staring at the sheet music and shaking her head.
Saturday morning. Brightly dawns the wedding day, thought Christine as she sat in her bathrobe, a warm cup of herbal tea in her hands. She eschewed caffeine now, for the baby´s sake. She placed an unconscious hand on her abdomen, feeling the slight curve there. It could not be said that she was actually "showing" yet, but she had noticed the gradual change in her body. No nausea anymore, and none of the chronic tiredness of her first trimester – her body was no longer at war with a stranger, but in perfect symbiosis with her child.
She sighed. Julie´s wedding would take place at noon, and she planned to stay home. Forgive me, Julie!
Julie´s wedding was beautiful in all the conventional ways. Her bridesmaids wore rigorous pastel-pink taffeta, which suited each one of them badly, and they realized it, so that in their less guarded moments, they were often caught scowling sullenly. This had the effect of making the bride look radiant by comparison, if she failed to look radiant on her own. Julie´s wedding gown revealed her stylishly-tanned shoulders and a titillating amount of cleavage. Her makeup had been professionally applied to artful excess, and her hair had been shellacked into soft-looking waves.
As she prepared for the procession, Julie smiled broadly, but her mind was elsewhere. $2000 dollars for flowers and they couldn´t get the kind I wanted…I said PINK, not YELLOW!...$2500 for the photographer, so he´d BETTER be good…at least the singer´s cheap…and WHY are my bridesmaids SCOWLING…?
The wedding march began.
Nadir sat near the back, completely uncomfortable in these circumstances and in this setting. A shadow slipped in beside him, unnoticed by anyone.
"She is not here," the beautiful voice said, devoid of emotion, and Nadir finally dared to look at Erik.
YOU will know where she is! You have only been her shadow for the past two days! Yet Nadir controlled himself, and did not speak his thoughts.
The bride and the groom exchanged rings, and the organist began the introduction to "Pie Jesu." Nadir shifted uncomfortably in the pew, glancing nervously at Erik from the corner of his eye.
"Pi-ay Yay-su…!" Angela, hidden behind a screen near the altar, had come in early and was now proceeding to caterwaul.
Erik´s yellow eyes narrowed, and he stared at his wife´s name on the program. A slight ripple went through the congregation. Julie´s smile was frozen on her face, though her eyes told a different story.
Angela continued her novel interpretation of the music. She knew one dynamic: fortissimo, and she had added several grace notes to give the piece a soul treatment. The organist was sweating visibly as he tried to adapt to her odd tempos, and the congregation was now beginning to giggle.
"This is the usual…?" Nadir whispered, finally, turning to Erik. Erik was gone.
"Pi-ay…" Angela continued, but her voice stopped abruptly. The organist, nonplussed, continued. The silence behind the screen went on for several seconds more, and then the singer´s voice was heard once more: "…JESUS!"
Complete silence reigned in the church now. All eyes were on the screen, as if by staring at it one could tell what might be going on behind it, and then the minister cleared his throat and continued with the service.
"What happened to you?"
Raoul´s voice. Christine held the telephone away from her ear slightly and turned the volume down.
"I´m sorry, Raoul…I wasn´t feeling very well, so I didn´t go, and Angela offered…Angela offered—"
"There´s more to it than that, isn´t there, Christine?" asked Raoul.
There was a pause, during which Christine blushed her shame. Finally, she dared to speak. "What happened, Raoul?"
"She…well, you could say she sang at the wedding, but you know about her singing by now. Then she stopped before the end of the song. The wedding ended, and she'd just vanished! I looked for her all over the place, then I looked for her at the reception. There was no sign of her. Then, just as things were winding down, my cell rings and it´s Angela. She was in the municipal jail!"
"Jail? She was in jail?"
"Nobody knows how she got there. She didn´t remember a thing – she only remembered starting to sing at the wedding. She woke up in a jail cell with no memory of how she got there!"
"Well, she must have been arrested somehow!" Christine took the phone with her to the sofa – she felt a sudden need to lie down.
"There was no record of any arrest, so they let her go. Nobody could figure out how she got there. I picked her up and took her home, but on the way home…" He hesitated.
"What, Raoul? What happened?"
"She told me that you consented to let her sing at the wedding because she had blackmailed you."
"She told you…?"
"Is it the truth, Christine?"
Christine hesitated. What kind of a trap was this? Finally, her faith in Raoul won out.
"Yes, Raoul. But, why? Why did she tell you? Wait…has she called Nadir?" She suddenly felt very cold, and she began to tremble.
"No, no…I´m sure she hasn´t. She told me about that. She told me about a lot of other things, too. You could say she´s not exactly herself right now."
"Other things? What´s she been telling you?"
"The truth. About everything and anything."
The next morning, Christine met Raoul at the office. She ventured a peek inside one of the boxes of favors the firm had prepared for distribution at the charity event.
Half of the boxes were filled with sugar-free chocolate bars, and the other half with packs of playing cards. They were packaged in royal blue cardboard, with "Help Us Beat the Odds!" emblazoned in yellow, along with a logo and information on the local MD Association.
"Thanks for helping me out with these," said Raoul, and he grunted as he picked up a stack of three boxes, leaving only one box for Christine to carry.
"Well, it looks like I´m not much help," she replied, "and you´re going to put your back out, Major Liberty!"
Raoul grimaced and looked down at his red-booted feet. "Please don´t remind me of what I´m being forced to wear right now! I just want to get through this day."
"I´m surprised that Angela isn´t here," murmured Christine, daring to approach the subject for the first time that morning.
He snorted. "I´d rather not talk about her."
They went down to his car and loaded the boxes in pensive silence.
It took them a long time to find a parking space in the convention center´s underground parking garage, and they found themselves far from the nearest elevator.
"I think we´d better make two trips, okay?" said Christine, lifting a box.
Raoul grudgingly consented, and they went to the elevator and waited, each bearing a box.
"Why´s it stuck on the second floor?" Christine wondered, and put her box on the floor. Raoul did the same. They waited.
"I knew she was pretending to be nice, you know," said Raoul, finally.
Christine looked at him in silent sympathy.
"Yesterday, for some reason, she opened up and told me everything. She never loved me, you know. She doesn´t even really like me!"
"I´m sorry, Raoul. I really am," said Christine, and she was. He had not changed in years, and she felt a surge of tender affection for him – for his clear-eyed integrity, for his constant kindness, and for his unfailing friendship. "Why is it that great guys like you end up with women they don´t deserve?" she added as an afterthought.
"Why is it a great lady like you ended up with a man she didn´t deserve?" countered Raoul, and he gave her a look which had a speculative quality to it that made Christine nervous.
A current of chilly air entered from the stairwell and whooshed about their ankles.
The elevator finally descended; its doors opened to disgorge a large group of children in boisterous spirits. They paused to roll their eyes at Raoul´s costume, then clambered up the stairwell, where their laughter and derision bounced and echoed off the walls.
They rode the elevator in silence, then delivered their load to the crowded floor above, which was roaring with activity. They descended the stairs to the garage to collect the remaining two boxes. As they approached Raoul´s car, his steps slowed, and he exclaimed his outrage.
"Well, look at the way that asshole´s parked!"
Christine looked. A large SUV was parked behind Raoul´s Mercedes, perpendicular to it, effectively hemming it in. There were also cars parked on either side of Raoul´s, and as Christine surveyed them, the hairs at the nape of her neck stood on end. Something´s wrong. She was silent, however, and managed to calm herself – it was ridiculous to be paranoid, she reasoned.
Raoul groused under his breath as he retrieved the boxes. He dropped them on the pavement and approached the SUV, circling it and peering inside for any evidence of who its owner might be.
"He´s probably just running a quick errand and planning to leave quickly," argued Christine. "We´re going to be here for hours, so it really doesn´t matter."
"Yeah, I guess you´re right. It´s annoying, though," he said, offering Christine his charmingly crooked smile. She smiled back, nearly laughing, and he approached her and wiped a smudge off her cheek with the edge of his cape.
"She didn´t like you, either, you know," he said. His eyes were a startling blue, even in the dimly-lit parking garage.
"Oh, she hated me!" concurred Christine, smiling.
Raoul did not smile back. "She said that she thought I had feelings for you. I mean, that I still have feelings for you. She felt threatened by you."
"Well, that´s stupid!" said Christine, trying to laugh. A feeling of cold, clammy alarm was creeping upwards through her body. "Of course, she didn´t know of my…condition. And maybe she thinks I´ll be divorced soon…"
"None of that matters," interrupted Raoul gently. "You´re still the same Christine as ever. Angela was right."
"Raoul…" she started, and a sudden vision emerged in her mind´s eye, unbidden. Raoul as her husband, as the adoptive father of her child, within a long, peaceful panorama of happy years. "…in two months I´ll look like a whale!" she finished, fighting the tears which were now stinging her eyes.
"It doesn´t matter. I´ll give you time, if you want. All the time you need! Tell me, Christine, don´t you have anything in your heart for me now? Because if you don´t, I´ll understand…"
"Of course I care for you. I do love you, Raoul, but things are more complicated than you think," Christine said, wincing at her own words.
He closed the space between them to hold her, but they both froze as shadows swirled and eddied, and every light in the garage went out, save the light directly above them.
"What the hell´s going on here…?" began Raoul, but he suddenly clutched at his throat, and his voice seemed to fail him.
"That is exactly what I´ve been meaning to ask you, Mr. De Chagny," hissed Erik. His eyes were visible now...now his mask…and, gradually, his dark form entered the light. He was gaunt, thinner than Christine remembered, and his eyes burned with an unpleasant cold fire.
Raoul continued to clutch at his throat, his fingers working desperately at something he seemed to feel there.
"Erik, let him go!" Christine said, finding her voice. She forced her mind to calm itself.
Erik turned his eyes to her, and there was now heat in his gaze, and something dark and frightening.
"Come, Christine," he beckoned, and the pull of his voice would have been irresistible to her, had she had less experience with it. Nonetheless, she found it difficult to look away from him.
She forced her gaze back to Raoul and nearly panicked. He had started to turn blue, and his knees were shaking.
"Oh! Cool!" interrupted a juvenile voice. "There´s a bad guy, too!" A group of about five children had approached, but they stopped, uncertain, as they perceived Erik more clearly and a cautionary instinct began to set in. A parent – someone´s father – approached from behind the group. He stretched his arms towards the group, his eyes never leaving Erik´s sinister figure.
Raoul – Major Liberty – sank to his knees, defeated but able to breathe now. He coughed and gulped air, his hands still at his neck.
"I´m sorry…I´m really sorry," Christine said, leaning towards him. Erik issued a frustrated snarl, and enveloped her in one fluid movement. He dropped something to the floor, and a curtain of smoke quickly separated the superhero tableau from its confused audience.
The smoke cleared, and the lights in the garage came on, revealing Raoul sitting despondently on the floor, completely alone.
There was a silence. Then one of the children applauded timidly, and the rest of them joined in more enthusiastically.
The father came forward and helped Raoul up, smiling in approval. "That was just fantastic! Was that a rehearsal?" He looked around for any sign of the other two actors in the drama. "So, where are you hiding them?"
