The phone was a sharp clang at her ear, jolting her awake.
Christine wasn't sure when she'd nodded off, but the light coming through her window was dim, indicating that it was late evening already.
You fell asleep after the guy who wanted you to be his sister-in-law, she reminded herself, having acted out an illicit family barbecue, where she was taken roughly against a picnic table, with the caller's "brother" just a few feet away.
The man had spent more time bossily directing her on his sister-in-law's voice and mannerisms than he had in achieving his climax, and Christine had felt as though she'd spent the thirty minute call in a drama club boot camp.
Straightening up from the arm of the sofa she quickly cleared her throat and answered in her practiced, purring hello.
"Christine?"
Meg was always a purveyor of over the top dramatics, was always full of harrowing tales about rude directors and overbooked nail appointments, but just then her voice held an unusual note of hysteria, and Christine sat up sharply, her brow furrowing.
"Meg? What's wrong?"
Through the line, she was able to hear a door click shut and a sudden whirring noise. The bathroom at the office, with the automatic fan, she thought immediately. Erik would have been proud of her deduction skills, for listening to the aural clues across extensions, she thought with a small, satisfied smile. When Meg spoke again, her voice was high and tight, but Christine could tell she was making an effort to speak quietly.
"Oh my God, Christine, things are such a fucking mess here! I can seriously not take one more person wigging out on me! My mom is going crazy and the cops keep coming around...things are so messed up! Chris...this is super serious, I need you to be honest with me...how do you know Erik Sloane?"
.
.
"This is sounding very goth industrial. I didn't peg you as such a minimalist," she laughed into the phone, feeling her cheeks heat as Erik's dark chuckle joined her.
He'd just described his bedroom for her, as promised, and the picture he painted was stark and empty. Exposed grey cinder block walls, black bedclothes on a platform bed. A single high dresser, also black. Nothing on the walls, no clutter on the dresser, nothing that gave her any idea of who he was and the life he lived.
"You're the one who wanted to hear about the bedroom, angel. I don't spend much time here."
Christine felt her stomach swoop at his words. She already knew he slept very little, but the implication that he wasn't entertaining other women in his bed caused a thrill of happiness to move through her.
"This isn't fair," she whined with another small laugh. "You got to hear about my stuffed animals and my dirty laundry and all I get is a bed?"
"Why do we need more than a bed, Christine?"
His voice was a slick purr; a sensuous slide of black silk caressing her back and legs, drawing her nearer.
This time, the low swooping sensation in her stomach was joined by a tingle between her thighs, a heady rush of anticipation and desire flushing through her. Erik's voice curled and undulated around her neck, wrapping her in his cocoon of silken seduction.
The intimacy of this—telling him about her room, her things, having him do the same—was a leap beyond the games they'd been playing for months, and it made her head spin to think how dramatically their relationship had progressed in such a short space of time. Several months of talking, of telling him about her days, of singing for him, of sexual fantasies mutually explored, yet he had never seemed more real to her than he had in the past twenty four hours.
"Oh no, you don't!" she countered when he began to start them off, tugging her to the bed. The way he'd enjoyed having her take care of him was still fresh in her mind, his small groans and heaving breaths, and Christine wasn't willing to relinquish control to him that easily. "You got to be in charge last night, I'm in charge tonight. I'm the guest."
"Is that so? And just who said you get to make the rules, princess?"
Amusement colored his voice, and if she closed her eyes, Christine could practically see the smile on his face. Long jaw, high cheekbones. A wide mouth, thin lips. A pointed chin. Dark hair falling into hazel eyes.
He wasn't what one would consider classically handsome, she decided, didn't have Raoul's model good looks...but he was interesting. His eyes were intelligent and serious, and he had a devilish smile that made her breath catch in her throat and her heart beat in triple time.
He didn't stand out in a crowd, but then again, neither did she.
Christine felt her heart hammering in her chest at just the thought, creating a picture of him in her mind. She'd felt like an imposter that night when she'd slipped out of Raoul's fancy apartment, had known that a relationship with him would have meant pretending all the time, lying about herself and always feeling on the clock...but she could imagine herself in this man's arms, where he would take care of her, where she was allowed to just be Christine.
Safe and secure.
"I get to make the rules because I'm the lady, and you like it that way."
When he laughed, amber gold melting over her, her skin prickled at how different it was from the low laugh she'd grown accustomed to-still deep and rich, but absent of the deliberate seduction, the calculated purr. Erik's laugh, she realized. Real.
She let him lead her to the bed, described for him the Roxette concert tank that she wore, a show she had attended with Meg two years earlier, before he tugged it over her head. Cool lips moved over her collarbone, sucking lightly at the tender skin of her neck, trailing downwards as she gently gripped a handful of his soft, dark hair.
When his mouth met the edge of her bra—pink trimmed in mint green lace, she confirmed for him—his thumbs hooked under the elastic waistband of her soccer shorts and panties, sliding them down her hips.
It was an unfamiliar sensation, describing her own wardrobe for him, and not Angel's fantasy lingerie.
When his hands reached around her, fingertips dragging over her skin to unclasp the bra, she stopped him.
"Not so fast, mister! I'm in charge, remember?"
Erik's deep chuckle buzzed at her ear once more as she shifted to straddle his waist.
He confirmed a plain black t-shirt that she pushed up his body slowly, her mouth following the line of the jagged white scar up to his collarbone. Her fingers undid the silver grommeted belt he described, and unzipped the black jeans—"Oh no, you really are goth industrial!" she'd giggled—until he was nearly bare beneath her. Her head spun, intoxicated from the sound of his rough laughter scraping against hers.
We're real together, Christine reminded herself. The distance between them meant nothing when they were together. When he made a move to change their position, describing shifting above her, she prevented him, keeping him pinned to the mattress.
"I said not so fast! I just want to give you a little kiss first...okay?"
Moving her palm over the front of the boxer briefs, she described her hand, cupping and squeezing the growing bulge there as she'd done the afternoon before. When a low groan sounded in her ear, Christine cooed in satisfaction, before sliding the thin cotton down his long legs.
Christine considered—as she described taking his hardened length into her mouth, in between telling him about the dress she'd purchased at the beginning of the summer, with the box pleats and belled sleeves; described her tongue sliding over and around the underside of his shiny, pink head, the dress' french blue shade that brought out her eyes and the pink in her cheeks, how it might be good enough for her audition after all, right before her lips puckered and she sucked him slowly—that in all the times she'd narrated this act, she'd never felt such a persistent ache between her thighs.
Erik didn't like dirty talk, but he liked hearing about her.
Tipping her head back to rest against the headboard, her hand found its way to that place where she ached for him, that screamed for attention, and pressed into her own warmth.
Her lips tightened, her head bobbed, and her fingers moved rhythmically against herself as she listened to Erik pant through the phone. When her mouth released him with a gasp, the room spun.
Power
Christine was unsure of why she'd not tried to be in control during any of the previous months of play, as he clearly didn't mind and they both obviously liked it.
"On my knees?" she asked, thinking of the scene he'd create in that fantasy dressing room, the one with the big mirror. She would lean forward on the little dressing table, braced on her elbows as he took her from behind, holding her performance dress or costume up as he gripped her hips and bade her to sing for him.
"No..no, just like this, on top of me."
His voice was a deep rasp, ragged from the illusion of oral attention she'd created, warming her core as he gripped her hips.
"Hmm...if I'm in charge then I get to pick," she asserted, smiling when he laughed again, that real laugh, Erik's laugh.
"You're right sweetheart...whatever you want, you make the rules."
The idea of being on top of him, she realized belatedly, was all too appealing. They'd never played in that position, and the intimacy of it—straddling his narrow hips while she rolled against him, his hands caressing her as she moved, finding ecstasy together—was too great to pass up.
Sitting on his thighs, Christine led his hands to her breasts, allowed him to unclasp her bra at last, arching against his touch as he described their weight in his palms, the pebbled nipples he rolled between thumbs and forefingers.
The firm arm of her reading pillow provided enough friction between her legs when she straddled it, and when she leaned forward on its back, she was able to pretend it was his chest.
Christine rocked herself rhythmically against him, her voice gradually giving way from describing her movements as she rode him, to breathy moans as she moved closer to her peak, fueled on by the deep groans on the other end of the phone line. Her name on his lips, mouthed repeatedly as they moved against each other, made her back arch in delight.
She reached her climax first, gasping out his name as his hands moved over her breasts, across her thighs, fisting in her hair. She was able to feel him, to smell him, so very real, still moving against her as she shuddered; was able to feel his heartbeat throbbing against her lips as she kissed his throat, her body pulsing in pleasure.
For the first time, he let her hear him, really let her hear him as he finished: his voice a deep, guttural sound, moaning her name, Christine's name as he climaxed. Over and over, her name from his lips: Christine, Christine.
It was everything she wanted.
His arms were a secure weight around her when she tucked into his side afterwards, resting her head against his chest. He was warm, he was real, and he was right there, drawing the black comforter over her as she drifted to sleep in his bed, strong arms settling around her.
Safe and secure.
I love you, Christine.
She wasn't sure where the words had come from, why they surfaced in her mind, but her face heated at her dream of him ever saying such a thing to her.
"Tomorrow I want to see your kitchen."
His voice was a low, hypnotic purr in her ear, making her eyelashes flutter open. The low drone of a siren and the honking of horns suddenly over took the hazy dreaminess in which she'd been so contentedly cocooned, pulling her lips into a frown. The pale blue and white of her bedroom was almost a shock, immersed in the fantasy as she was.
Christine tried not to notice that the pillow she hugged didn't have the sharp planes and angles of a long, slender body, or that the smell of fried onions from Sokoloff's was drifting upstairs to her dark, empty apartment.
"My kitchen," she agreed. "Then we're back at your place."
His answering chuckle was low, rumbling against her hair. "That's right. But you know what that means, princess...tomorrow, I'm in charge."
.
.
A weight, heavy and cold, descended on her stomach, and Christine gripped the edge of her sofa with a convulsive hand. She didn't know what had happened, or why her name was suddenly being connected with Erik's, but whatever it was, she could tell from Meg's voice that it wasn't good. She couldn't give voice to the how or why, but she felt with absolute, gut-wrenching certainty that allowing anyone from the service to find out about her relationship with him would be calamitous.
Play dumb, don't give her anything.
"Christine!?"
"I'm here, I'm trying to think!" she chirped with a forced laugh. "Are you talking about that Eric guy from the drama department? The one Maddie dated?" Don't freak out, you're an actress. You sell lies every day.
"What? No! No...Christine, the guy from the service. How exactly do you know him?"
Let them lead you to what the fantasy needs to be.
Erik's words from their very first phone call, the night she'd dialed his extension from her tub, advice she'd repeated to herself over and over in the beginning came back to her then. She would treat this like any other call, would wait until the person on the other end of the phone led her to what she needed to say.
"Meg, you're the only person from the service I know. What are you talking about?"
"Well, that's not what the phone records show," Meg gritted out in a tight voice. "The records show over a dozen calls to his extension from the switchboard line, which was dialed from your number. So maybe try again...how do you know him, Chrissy?"
Christine carefully twisted the mouthpiece away from her face, as she'd done dozens of times before, so that Meg would not hear her slow exhalation. It was true, she had called Erik's extension in the beginning. It wasn't until she'd told him about Friday Night Guy that he'd begun calling her, and that had been their routine for nearly the entire summer. She hadn't dialed him through the switchboard line in months, and she'd only ever been able to call him in the first place because she'd been provided with his extension. Plausible deniability, Christine. It's good enough.
"I called the extensions," she began slowly, "that you gave me, Meggie. I have no idea who those people are. Yes, I talked to a man a few times, but I don't know who he is. You're the one who gave me his extension. Remember? You gave me the switchboard line and told me to call some top earners for pointers."
The whir of the bathroom's fan sounded in her ear, punctuated by Meg's uneven breaths, and Christine felt a pang of guilt. She didn't want to lie to her friend. She didn't want to lie, but somewhere along the course of the summer, she'd learned a little bit of self-preservation.
"Oh, fuck me." Meg's voice was a hoarse whisper of dawning realization, and Christine slumped back into the sofa in relief. "I totally forgot about that. Oh my God, Chris!"
A noisy exhalation through the line gave way to high, relieved laughter. "You're right! I forgot that I'd given you those extensions...Oh my God, you're right! I knew you couldn't be involved in this!"
Christine was able to hear Meg's manic laughter echoing off the walls in the small office bathroom, and felt her stomach clench at her friend's words.
"In-Involved in what, Meg? What did you think-"
"It's nothing, it's fine. You're right, I gave you those numbers!" She laughed again as Christine felt her skin crawl. "It's fine, Chris-you're in the clear!"
"No, it's not fine! You call and scare me half to death and now you're not going to tell me why? You gave me someone's full name, Meg, our names are supposed to be confidential! Did you give this guy my name?!"
The thought thrilled her. If they'd already called to grill him the same way, if Erik had been given her full name then he'd be able to find her. He'd be able to find her apartment, find her! He'd be able to come upstairs with her, slip beneath her sheets and pin her beneath the weight of his body, be able to hold her in his strong arms through the night.
Her hopes were dashed by Meg's next words.
"No, of course not! He's so terrible...no, I'd never...he's gone anyways. Oh my God, Christine, you can't even imagine what a fucking shitshow everything is right now!"
"Well," she choked in a shaking voice, sitting up from where she'd been slumped on her sofa, "you'd better start talking. What the fuck is going on, and what is it that you thought I was involved in?"
.
.
The contents of her refrigerator had fascinated him.
Why do you have three different kinds of cottage cheese? Who even likes cottage cheese? What the hell is a Dunkaroo, Christine? Wait, how much sugar is in a Snapple?
"Can we make dinner together?" she'd asked, blushing as soon as the words were out of her mouth. So stupid, Christine. He wants to get off and then go back to work…
The embarrassed flush heated to besotted warmth when he'd enthusiastically agreed.
He'd wanted to pick what she cooked, based on the meager contents of her fridge and freezer, wanted to hear painstaking details of each step of the preparation. She had laughed that he was acting like she was some sort of fancy gourmet, had beamed when he'd responded that he didn't cook at all, so comparatively, she was.
You'll cook for him all the time once you're together, you can teach him to make easy things, the way daddy taught you.
The image she instantly conjured—standing side by side in her small kitchen, working in in tandem—was cozy and domestic and normal. They'd move around each other in a well-practiced choreography of idyllic togetherness, stealing kisses while their home-cooked masterpieces went into the oven. Afterwards, they'd do the dishes together—she'd wash and he'd dry, before retiring together to the sofa, or to sing, or whatever it was that they did in that perfect world where seedy things like phone sex lines and murdered bodies in dumpsters didn't exist.
That's the kind of friend you marry
After he'd listened to her make dinner, her kitchen table—small and scuffed and utterly ordinary—had been described in detail for him, before he'd set her upon it, dropping to his knees before her. Her purple bikinis had been discarded earlier, at his request, and now he kissed his way up her thighs, describing each stroke of his tongue as he worked her slick core, making her head drop back with a soft moan.
It hadn't occurred to her until hours later that Friday Night Guy hadn't called, or else, she'd already been on the phone with Erik when he'd tried to do so.
Good, she'd thought, turning into the softness of her pillow. It had been a wonderful night, she reminded herself, drifting to sleep with that domestic little tableau playing out behind her eyes.
.
.
The next morning, she raced out the door to the subway, anxious to attend the meeting where she'd learn the status of the city's lawsuit. The platform was crowded, and Christine found herself wedged between a harried-looking woman attempting to wrangle a squalling baby in a stroller, and a smartly dressed young man who gave her a wide smile.
Although he wore jeans, the suit jacket and wide tie the young man wore reminded her too much of Raoul. His highlighted hair was a touch to stripey, the shiny brass fixtures on his bag announcing his importance to passersby, and Christine edged backwards until she was closer to a much more appealing shape in the crowd.
This man was tall and lanky, his bottle-black hair falling into his face. There were a number of superfluous seeming straps on his pants, and the band tee he wore wasn't one that she recognized, but Christine gazed up besottedly.
This could be him. He could be anyone in the crowd, she considered, feeling a blush climbing up her neck...until the man spoke, and the spell was broken.
Erik's voice was singular, and she would know it anywhere.
She pushed back through the crowd as the train arrived, jostled along in the sea of people until the door closed and she was whisked away.
That night, Erik's empty, sterile kitchen had yielded her nothing but an unapologetic laugh for her poor choice in exploration and a deep pounding against the countertop, her recently purchased Eager Beaver vibrator standing in for the absence of his body moving within her, and she'd sighed into his embrace after a enormously satisfying climax.
"What did you do today, princess?"
His voice was a soft breath at her hair, and Christine cuddled against it, the yearning to press her nose to his neck twisting her into knots.
"They're still haggling over the amount," she murmured sadly, after she'd explained the nature of her trip uptown that afternoon. "They said it should all be over soon, but...they've said that before."
She didn't like talking about the lawsuit, didn't like the way acknowledging it meant remembering the nature of her father's death, the bloodied pillowcases as he coughed his life away; the endless rounds of radiation and chemotherapy, how sick it had made him. In the end, it hadn't mattered anyway: twenty years of inhaling an invisible killer at the library where he'd worked as a music archivist had already taken its toll.
"Tell me about him, sweetheart."
Erik's voice was incredibly soft, and she could feel the ghost of his hand stroking her hair as she sniffled.
Christine felt her face crumpled as she talked, telling Erik about the music her father played, his violin, about the Sundays he spent playing at the pub, about how everyone knew they simply needed to go see "Mr. Gus" to find a piece of obscure music they were searching for.
"He loved what he did," she hiccuped through her tears. "Even though he wasn't playing with a big symphony somewhere, he loved what he did every day. He loved helping other people discover music, wanted everyone to love it as much as he did."
Christine couldn't remember the last time she'd talked about her father with someone. After his death, her small handful of friends hadn't wanted to upset her, and she'd never been especially close enough with anyone for them to ask. It hurt to remember, but speaking his memory into existence felt good, felt healthy. It's what he deserves.
"He'd be heartbroken that I'm doing this."
It was the first time she'd truly given voice to the thought, the first time she'd acknowledged that it would have wounded her father deeply to know that she was doing sex work, that his illness and resulting bills had forced her to sink so low.
"It's just a job, Christine," Erik murmured softly, and she pressed herself into his voice, desperate to feel him shift and move beneath her; pushed until the cordless was a painful pressure against her ear. "It's just a job. How is this anymore demeaning that serving food or cleaning toilets? You get to work from the comfort of your home, you don't have anyone looking over your shoulder, you don't have to punch a clock. You're surviving, sweetheart. That's all it is."
Christine thought about telling him about the man on the subway platform that morning, or about the one on her train as she'd come home—his dark brown hair had been neatly combed over a high forehead, his nose slightly too big for his face. He'd stood a full foot over her, and she'd bit her lip coquettishly, smiling up at him with doe eyes.
She wondered if it would make him jealous, or if he'd not care, as he'd not cared about Raoul. You can't go around making cow eyes at every tall guy with dark hair in the city, stupid.
When she fell asleep to the soothing rock of his lilting voice, the persistent ache she'd had behind her eyes since that morning's meeting was gone. She marveled, with the tiny corner of her brain where rational thought still existed, before she was pulled under entirely, over the way fate had dropped a man who a physical embodiment of music and comfort to her into her life, the same way her father had been.
Her angel of music, in the flesh, wherever he was.
.
.
He'd wanted to hear about her bathroom next: wanted to know what kind of shampoo she used, the brand of her satsuma body wash, had hummed in appreciation over her treasured vanilla lotion and body spray. The bullet vibe that had been purchased from a novelty shop several years earlier had turned out to be waterproof, something she was thankful for when he'd decided he wanted to have her in the tub, after hearing about the rose petal-scented bath flakes she only used on special occasions.
"Christine, you're always a special occasion," he'd purred, fingertips ghosting down her sides as she filled the tub.
The exploration of his bathroom, the following night, was the first room in his mystery apartment that provided her a glimpse of anything remotely personal, although once she'd hung up the phone, she'd stared at her ceiling in the dark, plagued by questions that seemingly had no answers.
A stainless steel straight razor, an herbaceous soap and shampoo, mouthwash, and a bottle of Sauvage, a cologne she'd never heard of, but couldn't wait to discover during her next shopping trip with Meg. His shower had a glass door, and there was no tub.
The dark blue robe on the back of the bathroom door had made her chest tighten and twist with that familiar yearning, and a quickly assembled Sunday morning fantasy of them making breakfast together, never changing out of their robes and pajamas, snuggling on the sofa throughout the afternoon had made it hard to breathe.
There was no mirror.
A white pedestal sink, no countertop, his toothbrush resting along the sink's edge, but no mirror. There had been no mirror in the bedroom either, she'd realized belatedly, staring up at her ceiling sleeplessly. The non-stop thrum of the city just outside her window seemed to be just as unable to sleep that night as she was. A car was idling at the street somewhere close by, and the music it blasted was occasionally broken up by punches of high-pitched laughter.
Dream lover come rescue me
How could there not be a mirror anywhere in the apartment? Perhaps the robe had covered one on the door, and he just hadn't mentioned it?
Won't you please come around
'Cause I wanna share forever with you baby
Christine had never heard of a bathroom with no mirror; no mirrored vanity, no mirrored medicine cabinet. She couldn't comprehend how he shaved with something as terrifying as a straight razor with no mirror, earning a light laugh in response when she voiced the thought and a nonchalant "lots of practice, princess."
She'd drifted to sleep that night with questions swirling in her mind, frustrated with herself for having already wasted several nights learning absolutely nothing new about him, other than the fact that it would be impossible for her to put him behind her, despite what he said or thought.
.
.
By the fourth night spent "at" her apartment, Christine had caught on to what she was doing wrong.
Erik had never talked to her from his bedroom, or from his kitchen, she'd mused,
After he'd asked to hear about her small living room, with its blue striped sofa and gingham curtains above the Sokoloff's sign, she considered the previous several months of conversations.
He'd been on his sofa a handful of times, it was true, mostly after she'd sent him there, scolding him for working so many hours. Typically though, he would be seated at his piano, playing through a piece of music softly as she told him about her days.
The night after she'd told him about her sofa and small television, the coffee table that matched the rocking chair and the torchiere lamp behind her, rather than follow suit and ask after his own living room, she'd asked to see the room where his piano was.
Silence reigned for several moments before he'd chuckled at her request. The sound was low and slightly sinister, supremely different from his normal low chuckle; stealing around her shoulders and licking at her neck, raising gooseflesh on her arms.
"Well, well...my little kitten is learning at last."
A shiver of nervous excitement had rippled through her, proud that she'd finally cracked the code on learning more about him, and uncertain of his reaction.
The room had been a revelation.
A drum kit in the corner, tiers of electronic keyboards, a full organ on the far wall. An acoustic guitar on a stand with an electric model on the wall right behind, a cello, a violin! She'd asked excitedly about each instrument, had squealed in wonder to learn that he did, in fact, play them all; asked where he'd learned each one, how long he'd played, on and on.
When he'd haltingly confessed to having spent the bulk of the previous decade and a half traveling the world, accumulating his collection of instruments, she'd been struck with wonder.
People always acted as though New York was some magical land where everyone was glamorous and chic and interesting, she often opined privately, but those people rarely noticed that it was also cramped and dirty, noisy and expensive, and very easy for one to become invisible, especially if one was a mouse, like her. Trips to the Jersey shore didn't count as traveling, she thought, and the one time she'd gone apple picking with a school friend's family in Connecticut didn't seem terribly impressive in the wake of Erik's globetrotting.
Every answer he gritted out for her opened the door to another question, and Christine could not stop herself from pressing on. Where had he learned to play the violin, what exactly had he been doing in Amsterdam where he'd acquired the cello, who had he been with, how long he'd stayed.
Did he have family overseas? Was he from the city, as she was? Hadn't there been a wife or a girlfriend or a sister or a mother to worry about him, as he'd traveled far and wide?
She tried not to let the fact that he'd grown more agitated sounding with each breathlessly asked question damper her triumph in learning about him.
His tension rolled through the phone line, and when she closed her eyes, Christine could clearly see the rigid set of his shoulders, heard the sharpness in his tone. It mattered not. Like a glutton at a feast, she gorged herself on information, each detail she learned about him fascinating her more and more.
He'd learned to play a strange stringed instrument that was near the drums when he lived in the Middle East, she learned, a tidbit she'd jumped on with the zeal of a pastor on Sunday.
"When?! When did you live there? In what country? Why were you there?"
"I learned to play the kamancheh from an old woman in my building when I was in Iran," he'd answered her carefully, in a spiky voice that dripped with aggravation. "Your other questions don't actually pertain to the instrument, do they sweetheart?"
Phrased as a question, but his answer had been clear-he wasn't going to give her more than that. A tiny bubble of annoyance had formed in her chest, and Christine bade herself to breathe it away. Still, she'd thought...hadn't she been telling him everything he wanted to know for months? If he cared for her as he pretended, wasn't she entitled to know something—anything!—about him?
On the other side of the room was his small recording booth—more of a closet, he'd laughed tightly—where he executed the freelance voiceover work he'd previously told her about.
The concert grand stood in the center of the room, and in her mind's eyes, this was where she was drawn. Drifting over to the magnificent piano, Christine had stood in its bend, jumping at his voice curling around her ear, the hairs on her neck raising when his fingertips seemed to alight on her shoulders.
"Well, princess? What do you think? Have you figured out all of my secrets now?"
Something in his tone had made her shiver, and she remembered the very first night she'd called him, when his voice had seemed to magically press her back in her bathwater, how he could make it move, take weight and shape and dimension. It was right at her neck now, nipping at her earlobe, and she'd taken a moment to steady herself, considering his words.
He clearly didn't like talking about himself, didn't like her peeling back the layers of mystery he'd cloaked himself in so successfully. He doesn't like it, but he's doing it for you. The voice in her head was right, she'd reasoned, even if his disclosures throughout the night had been somewhat unwilling.
"I think...I could live a hundred years and not learn all of your secrets."
That pitch-black laugh again, tightening her core and making her stomach flip. What's wrong with you? Do you want him, the real him? Or just the fantasy? Silence ticked by for a full minute, then another, as she attempted to steady her breath again.
"What are we doing, Christine?" he'd whispered in her ear, sending a shiver through her. Her name, from his lips. They were real, together. Him, of course she wanted him. "You're in charge, sweetheart. Remember?"
She laughed, light and nervous, swallowing hard, knowing he could hear it.
"I want...I want to sing. Will you sing something with me, Erik?"
He'd never sung anything for her before then, not a single note...but Christine knew, as certain as she knew her own name, that he could sing. He instructed her with confident authority in her lessons, and her voice had never felt stronger. There was an inherent musicality to his speaking voice, and she knew it would be just as dark and seductive raised in song.
"And what should we sing, princess?"
Still an edge there, something in his tone that was sharp and gleaming like the tip of a knife, that rose the tiny hairs at the back of her neck, and she knew if it had been anyone else on the phone, she'd be hurrying through the call, eager to disconnect.
You need to stop disregarding your instincts, sweetheart.
"O soave fanciulla? Perhaps the Liebesnacht from Tristan? I'm not certain I have the range for that, but you're in charge. Macbeth? Tosca? The Pearl Fishers? Maybe something from Giovanni? I am a bit of a Don Juan, you know, with women calling all day. It's your decision, Christine."
His voice, his gentle, comforting, beautiful voice had grown spikier, sharper with every word, and Christine couldn't understand what she'd done to raise his ire, had only asked the same sorts of questions he'd asked her and didn't understand his black mood shift...but found that she was unable to back down from the challenge in his voice.
"Well...Giovanni is p-perfect then. Là ci darem?"
Christine winced at the stammer in her voice, a vocal tic that had progressively dropped away through the course of the summer. She hoped the lighter musical fare would ease his agitation with her. Wagnerian passion could not be in the cards that night, and she would do well to steer clear of engaging his anger through singing Scarpia...the light Mozart would do well in defusing the situation.
Erik must have seated himself at the piano, for the next thing she heard was the short introduction from the recitative, and then his voice, starting off the duet.
Là ci darem la mano,
Là mi dirai di sì.
Vedi, non è lontano;
Partiam, ben mio, da qui
Christine staggered, unprepared.
She gripped the edge of her countertop with the hand that did not hold the phone, in an effort to hold herself up, as her senses were assaulted.
His voice was rich and resonant, as she'd known it would be, but she hadn't counted on the pure tone, the effortless control, and the way her body reacted to the sound of him, for the way her stomach dropped and her spine straightened, her heartbeat finding a twin pulse between her thighs. As her back arched and her toes curled, Christine wondered if he experienced the same reaction when hearing her voice, thinking of all his silent climaxes as he made her sing for him.
There our hands shall join together, and you will say yes to me...
It was a lighthearted duet that they sang, yet Christine felt as though the lyrics were speaking directly to that hidden part of her, to all of her secret fantasies of them together: a happy, normal couple...singing to her fantasies and mocking them bitterly.
His voice was perfect for Don Giovanni, she realized—deep and sonorous, saccharine with false sweetness, a veneer of charm twisted over a corrupted core. She joined him on the next line, giving voice to Zerlina's waffling wish to run off with a man whom she knew nothing about, leaving her boring, pedestrian life behind. The song was chosen as a safe choice, a light, easy choice...she wasn't meant to feel that she was being purposefully led by the hand, away from all she knew, despite the lyrics beguiling Zerlina into doing exactly that.
Andiam, andiam, mio bene,
a ristorar le pene
d'un innocente amor
Christine wondered, for a brief instant, as their voices tripped over the final lines together, if she, like Zerlina, was playing into deceitful hands, before she banished the thought from her head.
I am a bit of a Don Juan, you know...
When the last notes died away, she was placed on top of the piano's hastily dropped fallboard.
For the first time since their very first call, his desire outran hers, the sounds of his heaving breaths and need for her bleeding through the phone line until she was swept away by the current of his hunger, by the sound of her name echoed repeatedly in her ear once more, forgetting his prickly mood, his sharp agitation with her, for the way he'd confused her heart so thoroughly with that song.
She could forgive him anything, as long as she got to hear her name from his lips.
There'd been a note of penitence in his voice, and the desperate way he'd murmured her name had made her heart twist, made her arms reach to cling to him tightly.
Afterwards, when her pulse had begun to slow, the thudding euphoria she'd felt throbbing through her receding like the tide, Christine was certain that if she kept her eyes closed, she could feel his lips gently press to her throat.
You're being stupid, you've been stupid all night. Everything is fine, you just pushed him a little too much. He's letting you in. Shoving all of her tangled feelings over the way the night had gone away, Christine focused on the sound of his breath as his heartbeat slowed.
.
.
The sky outside her window was dark long before she'd logged back into the service for the night.
After hanging up with Meg, Christine felt numb, unable to think or move or process anything, let alone the confusing disclosures form her friend.
Erik was a criminal.
Did that bother her?
She wished that she was a good enough person to be horrified, to feel disgusted with his actions, with his theft, and maybe the old Christine—the Christine who had felt guilty for a week after being overpaid by the family she babysat for in high school, who always pointed out if a cashier made a mistake in her favor and never tried to use double coupons at the grocery store—would have felt that way, but the past year had done its damnedest to grind that Christine under the heel of an uncaring world, where she was still waiting to see a penny of the settlement that was meant to compensate her for her father's absence, as though his life had a pricetag that the city was still haggling over, leaving her destitute, completely alone and uncared for, until she'd met Erik.
It didn't bother her a bit.
As it was, she'd had to fight to keep from laughing when Meg outlined the depth of Erik's scheme.
Credit card numbers stolen from the system that he'd repeatedly told her was easy to hack. A reversible autodialer that could apparently be purchased from any one of the shady little electronic stores that dotted lower Manhattan.
He was free to work on his freelance composition and voiceover gigs at his leisure, while the autodialer called his extension, calls paid for using the pilfered credit cards. The customers whose cards had been stolen were regular callers who'd never noticed the additional charges amidst their own; callers who didn't want to be exposed as regularly calling a sex line and refused to come forward.
All good things must come to an end, I suppose. We had a good run…
A bubble of laughter had formed in her chest as Meg ranted, thinking of Erik's cryptic words, and she had struggled to keep it contained.
"Wait—Meg, was he not taking any real calls at all?!"
"No, he was," Meg admitted begrudgingly. "He was still earning a hefty chunk off legitimate calls...he only ran up like, twenty thousand a quarter on average, over a bunch of different cards, on the phony calls. Enough to be lucrative, but not enough to raise suspicion," Meg had said.
She had huffed out an aggrieved breath before continuing, and Christine could imagine her there: perfect dark hair falling in a glossy curtain, looking like she stepped out of the pages of a fashion magazine.
She loved Meg, but it was easy to feel more than a twinge of bitterness knowing that the hours she spent listening to strangers masturbate had partially paid for her friend's designer shoes. Twenty thousand dollars might not be much to Meg, but Christine was fairly certain her financial woes would have been considerably less with that kind of money.
The block format had been, as she'd feared, a disaster.
The entire first week of the new format's launch had been a miserable struggle, and Christine had wondered if the other phone actors were having the same trouble adapting. Her callers would prepay for fifteen minute blocks of time, with the option to extend if necessary. Her job was to ensure the necessity was taken care of well before the fifteen minutes were up, freeing her line for the next call, and netting the profit of the overlap.
So far, her regulars, for the most part, hadn't dropped away.
It had been a small triumph when she'd been able to make Billy climax within his fifteen minutes by gasping loudly, acting as though she were about to leave the train car where he masturbated in front of her; had ensured her squeezy juice bottle was filled to the brim when her caller who enjoyed watersports called.
Bud had called like clockwork on Wednesday for his regular fantasy of violent fellatio. Christine had tried on the small mountain of clothes she'd borrowed from Meg, turning in her mirror to inspect the back of a dress while regularly choking and gasping, wheezing the occasional "Give it to me, daddy!" as Bud masturbated furiously on the other end of the line. When he'd bought an extension, of which she'd been able to recoup half, she considered it a job well done for the first week.
Her only saving grace during that week had been her nightly phone calls with Erik, as they continued to explore each other's homes.
Good for him for gaming the system.
No, it wasn't his elaborate scheme to scam the callers and the sex line that bothered her at all...it was everything else that Meg had disclosed.
"Meg, you've seen my apartment. Why would you think I'd be involved in something like that when I can't even pay tuition?"
Meg had been silent for several moments, and Christine's short lived levity withered as quickly as it had bloomed. Why did they think she was involved?
"Because almost all of the credit card numbers he's used for the last three months have been from your callers, Christine. That and the fact that you called this guy from the switchboard all those times. But don't worry, I'm going to explain that I'm the one who gave you his extension and told you to call! The tech guy said that the credit cards might have been retrieved in clusters, so I'm sure there's a way to explain that too! Like, of course you're not involved!"
The stone that had settled in her stomach turned over. He was using her clients—Bud and Billy and Raoul's friend!—to steal from. The ramifications of that made her head spin. Why?
"What did he say about it?"she asked in a hushed voice, and gripping the arm of her sofa with whitened knuckles. "What did he say when your mom confronted him?"
"She can't! He's gone, Christine. He called the office last week and just up and quit, poof. The address he had on file, the phone number...it was all just random bullshit. If he wasn't someone my mom had known from before, we probably wouldn't even know his name!"
The air in her apartment had suddenly become very thin, her lungs unable to fully gasp in enough to inflate. That was impossible. Christine had realized it was a good thing that she wasn't able to breathe, for if she'd had the ability, she surely would have blurted out that Meg was wrong, had to be wrong. Erik, her Erik, called her every night!
"F-for real? That's...that's crazy. Wh-when did he quit?"
"Last week. I called off that day, it was the day after we went to The Bois. I had the worst fucking hangover. Robin said he called late in the afternoon and just said he was done, that was it. Didn't leave forwarding info for his paycheck or anything."
The day she'd woken with a hangover that wasn't as bad as her friend's, thanks to the guardian angel on the phone who'd made sure she'd staved off the headache with water and painkillers. The afternoon she'd tried to take care of him when he'd sounded so tired….The day she'd told him that the service was auditing all of their records after the security breach.
Christine had realized, with hitching breaths, that she'd unwittingly fed Erik the information he'd needed to know it was time to disappear. The security breach. She'd told him about the upgrade as well, and what was it that Meg had said? The breach had been so perfectly timed, it was almost as if the perpetrator had known about it? Known that their window of opportunity would be closing?
She had been his accomplice all along.
"...and if he hadn't made such a huge fucking deal about the personnel security, like, this upgrade never would have happened. How stupid can you be?!"
He'd made a stink about the security of the phone actors because of her. Christine swallowed hard, allowing her thoughts to turn Meg's voice into a droning background buzz. He'd compromised his whole little illegal enterprise for her.
I'd do anything for you, Christine
"So," Meg continued, heedlessly, "we've been dealing with that bullshit since then, and then on top of it, the police have come by like, three times asking for information on some skeezeball that got offed a few weeks ago or something. They said they'd pulled his luds and he was one of our repeat callers, so they want his information to see if there's any connection. How does calling a sexline get you murdered in a dumpster?"
A tremendous shudder moved through, rippling her spine, and Christine was thankful she'd been sitting as Meg spoke. The shadows through her apartment suddenly seemed to lengthen and shift, her nightmares coalescing into a confusing reality that pressed her into the sofa cushions.
"Whatever, Robin was able to stonewall them, but they came back this morning with a warrant. I'm telling you, Chris. Everything is a fucking mess right now."
"W-what do you mean, murdered in a dumpster, Meg? Who was murdered?"
The creak of the stall door could be heard through the phone, and Christine knew her time was dwindling. She needed Meg to answer before she disconnected.
"Some creepy guy, Robin said she saw it on the news, he was like, a serial rapist or something. Guess it's not surprising that he was calling a service, right? Look, I gotta go, I need to tell mom about this right now...I'm sorry, Chris. Thank fucking God you're not wrapped up in this! I'll call you tomorrow, 'kay?"
.
.
"You have such a beautiful voice, Erik."
Her hand searched for the shape of him in her bed as she murmured softly, seeking the hard plane of him in the sheets. After the odd tension of the evening, after he'd told her about all of instruments in the room, after they'd sung together and had sought release together, she'd been exhausted. When she'd mumbled about having an early shift at the bistro in the morning, he'd insisted on tucking her off to bed, the sharp edge his voice had held all night vanished, leaving behind the buffeting softness she was accustomed to.
"Why aren't you singing somewhere instead of...you know."
As soon the ill-thought words had left her mouth, she'd regretted it. Erik's voice was unlike anything she'd ever heard, she could tell that from the single duet they'd shared. She'd seen Don Giovanni during one of her last semesters at school, performed by a well regarded regional opera company, and Erik's voice was far superior to the baritone that had sung the lead during that run. But still, he'd never disclosed to her why he was working for the service, and for some reason, she'd always felt it was too personal to ask.
Erik sighed heavily in her ear, and Christine shifted in the bed, still vainly seeking his warmth.
"I've always had freelance gigs," he'd murmured quietly. "A lack of work was never an issue...I met Renee through one of them, she contacted me about the service a few months later. It was never something I really needed, but it seemed like an...interesting opportunity."
The pillow muffled her laughter at his words as she turned her head. "That's an understatement."
His dark chuckle tickled up her back, and her eyes had slipped shut as she'd snuggled into his side.
"It's not always about sex," he reminded her lightly. "It's about—"
"I know," she laughed softly, "it's about making a connection...still, that doesn't explain why you're not—"
"I don't have a face for the stage," he'd interrupted her, a note of tension re-entering his voice, bunching her stomach.
"But Erik, your voice is—"
"Perfect for sound work. A good voice for work in a private studio...you understand, Christine?"
She'd swallowed hard around a lump that had suddenly taken up residence in her throat. Did she understand?
"You said that wouldn't matter for my audition, that once they heard me sing, nothing else would matter."
"Christine," he'd murmured, and the sadness in his voice twisted her, made her shoulders hunch and her arms instinctively reach out for him, "you are beautiful. It doesn't matter because anyone can see that."
"I'm not. I'm a plain little mouse. I'm not stylish, I'm not sexy, I'm not-"
"You are enchanting," he'd interrupted her again with a note of finality wavering in that amber tone.
She'd rolled her eyes at his stubbornness, unable to bring herself to continue the conversation. She had pushed him enough for one night.
He'd be disappointed if he actually saw you.
The image of him that she'd created in her mind shuffled and rearranged, sliding his eyes closer together and lengthening his nose, attempting to make him less attractive. It still hadn't mattered.
"And you think I care about that," she'd murmured into the crook of his neck. "You think that matters to me, but it doesn't. I don't care, Erik. All I want is you."
Silence settled between them in the wake of her statement, and Christine breathed her frustration slowly out. It had been a strange night, but she'd gotten her first good, long look behind the curtain, and had been loathe to end the evening on a sour note with him.
"Thank you for telling me about your things," she'd whispered against his skin, nuzzling his warmth. "I know you didn't want to, but I'm glad you did."
His breath, warm against her, sounded in her ear, his hand pressed to her hip.
Safe and secure.
"I'd do anything for you, Christine."