A/N: Finally got around to glancing at this last chapter to see that it was waaaaay too long to publish. Sorry! Breaking it into two for readability. not sorry
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Through the tinted window, the city crawled by as the fifty five bus struggled through midday traffic. She rarely took the bus, preferred the expediency of the subway most of the time, but after that morning, she needed to be above ground, needed to see the sun.
There had only been a few people on the subway platform when she'd emerged from the staircase, all of them men. Christine wasn't sure when she'd begun to notice the men around her with such alarm, but it seemed that every time she stepped out her door there was one there leering.
Quickly taking stock of her companions on the platform, she'd assessed their threat level, instantly spotting the one who would be trouble.
The young man paced around in agitation, the overly long wallet chain at his hip swinging haphazardly against his JNCOs. The face beneath the sideways hat was pockmarked and yellowed, with a dusting of straw-colored hair bristling around his mouth and chin. Rheumy eyes swept over her, and Christine had frozen.
She'd known that she should have marched up to the platform confidently, should have stood her ground. That's what Meg would have done. She would have kept her head high and her courage in place, catching the train without a second thought. For that matter, that's what Angel would have done, what Amber and Bambi and Simone would have done, but she wasn't any of those alter egos, anymore than she was her confident friend.
She was Christine, and Christine was a mouse.
You need to stop disregarding your instincts, sweetheart. If it feels wrong, it is wrong
Erik's voice curled in her mind like a caressing finger of smoke and she wondered if it would haunt her forever, his dark voice and all of the unfulfilled promises therin.
The man's eyes wandered over her once more, slower this time, more appraising, and she shivered. One, two, three steps back and she was jogging quickly back up the concrete steps, fare be damned.
Her instincts told her to get away, and after the situation with Joseph Buquet she had vowed to start listening to them.
She'd been walking home from the bistro, two days after the detectives had visited her apartment, when the connection her mind had been fishing for since she'd first seen the man's face on the news was finally made. The cat call that morning had come as she dodged a puddle of mystery liquid on the sidewalk, and she had turned to scowl at the man. The face leering down from the scaffolding on the side of the building was not the one she realized she'd been anticipating, and she'd gasped in realization.
The truck that had been working on the phone lines near her apartment, the men that had whistled and jeered nearly every time she'd walked past when they'd been there, and the face she glared at every day...was the man on the television.
It had been a startling revelation. That's why you couldn't place why he was familiar, you never actually talked to him. The knowledge that he had been there on her block for weeks, shouting lewd remarks as she passed, made her sick.
Don't be so worried about being nice, that's how you wind up in someone's trunk
Erik's words were wise, and she knew she'd do well to start following those instincts she so often laughed off, not wanting to cause offense.
As she'd hurried up the steps that morning, away from the subway platform and the young man, listening to her instincts which told her to run!, she'd been accosted by yet another stranger.
"Slow down there, baby."
The man had stepped around the corner just as she cleared the final step, and they'd collided. His fingers had locked around her upper arms, preventing her from toppling backwards down the staircase, for which she should have been grateful, but when she took a staggering step away from the staircase and his grip had not relaxed, Christine had tightened in fear.
She'd jerked away roughly, throwing off his arms and beelining for the open city beyond.
The shout of "Crazy fuckin' bitch!" had followed her down the sidewalk as she fled, jamming her hands into the pockets of her jacket. She'd managed to catch the bus after several blocks, finding a seat next to an elderly woman near the front as it lurched across midtown. Christine stared with unseeing eyes and attempted to control her spiraling emotions.
The security of the last several months, which she'd clung to so desperately, was gone.
Panic, Christine learned, had a taste. Sharp and metallic, bitter at the back of her mouth, accompanied by a tightness in her chest. She didn't know how to breathe, how to calm herself, and without a deep voiced specter in her ear telling her exactly how to think and feel, and wasn't sure if she'd be able to do either ever again.
And I miss you
Like the deserts miss the rain
The song had been playing when she'd stepped into the payroll center's office several days ago, had still been playing when she'd fled with her heart thrumming in her throat, it's pulse so thunderous that her vision was blurred by its vibration, the syncopated chorus of the music seeming to have been tailored specifically for her presence. It had been running on a continuous loop in her head since.
And I miss you
Like the deserts miss the rain
It had been almost two months since he'd vanished from her life.
Two months without his smooth voice in her ear and his strong arms around her at night, two months of crushing emptiness and solitude. Two months since her entire world was upended, two months that had seemed like both an eternity and no time at all. Christine felt as though she was bobbing on a rising tide, struggling to keep her head up, knowing it would only be a matter of time before the dark, churning water swallowed her down.
She had never dreamed vividly prior to those two months. Before, she would occasionally wake with the memory of something tugging at her mind, fading shadows she could never quite discern. Now she twisted all night long, her tangled thoughts a jumble, would wake gasping with the images of her nightmares permanently seared behind her eyes.
She would see the face of the man who had been killed in the alley, see him leering down at her as she passed. In her dreams, the cat calls were the same as she'd remembered from earlier that summer, but the man's face would be black, his eyes popped and bulging, a piano wire cutting into the bruised flesh of his neck. She would hear the voice of Raoul's friend, the enthusiastic man who would call her line, would hear the sound of his noisy climaxes intermingled with the horrible things that Friday Night Guy would hurl over the phone line into her ear.
Twisted around all of the things that frightened her, that left her whimpering and afraid, were dreams of him. Dreamed of his arms, of his dark voice curling at her ear, of the weight of his body on top of her own. I love you, Christine. Words she'd only heard uttered in her dreams, but they repeated over and over again, so real she was practically able to touch them, able to taste them on his lips.
And I miss you
Like the deserts miss the rain
This hollowness inside her, it was the same crushing emptiness she'd felt when her father died, she'd realized, once again completely alone in the world. Her safety net was gone and she was flying unprotected, soaring into a dive. Christine wondered if she would have had time to adjust—if it had been a gradual pulling away, missed calls turning to skipped lessons, I have a lot on my plate right nows and we're better as friends, rather than the ground beneath her being ripped away abruptly, leaving her in this freefall with no end—if she'd be handling his absence better than she was.
And I miss you
Like the deserts miss the rain
I love you, Christine.
She suspected that it was unlikely.
.
.
He had lied to her once already.
Christine reminded herself of that, after she'd hung up with Meg, disconnecting from the call that had completely upended her world. The room had darkened around her, and the white noise of the city beyond her window provided a discordant hum to her swirling thoughts as she sat staring into the empty space of her apartment.
She reminded herself once more, as she burrowed into the cushions of her sofa, gnawing on the edge of one of her fancy new nails, once she'd logged back into the service for the night, that he'd lied to her once already.
Two nights ago, the night she'd explored his music room, the night they'd sung the duet from Don Giovanni together, after she'd lost herself to the blinding euphoria of his passion, and listened around her thudding heartbeat to the sound of his heavy breath in her ear, gradually slowing as they each came down from their high...
"Is there anything I missed?" she'd whispered, pushing her fingers through his heavy hair as he slumped against her. With her eyes closed, she'd been able to feel the weight of him pressed to her, could imagine the sheen of sweat on his skin, the taste of salt when she kissed his neck.
Mentally retracing her steps as she breathed in the smell of him, Christine had realized there was only spot in the room she'd left unexplored.
"What about the wall where we came in, by the door? Do you have anything there?"
A beat of silence, then a few seconds more before he'd finally answered in a smooth, even voice, the Erik of old, her maestro's voice.
"There's no more instruments, you ferreted them all out. Did I tell you about the dulcimer, princess?"
He had. The dulcimer was on a shelf next to his violin case, and had been salvaged from an abandoned farm building in Appalachia, as he'd already told her. It was broken and battered, and he hadn't yet gotten around to restoring it, although he planned to.
The story had been relayed to her in short, unwilling bursts, when she'd first asked after the contents of the shelf. For him to pivot back to it, away from the entry wall, had made her skin prickle in curiosity.
"What's next to the door?"
Another long, weighted pause followed, along with a tightness in her lungs, and it had taken a moment for Christine to realize she'd been holding her breath.
"A half bath and a utility closet."
Her mind conjured the short wall where she'd mentally entered the room. No more instruments, but two more doors...a bathroom and a closet.
He was lying.
She didn't know why her brain had immediately supplied her with the thought, but as soon as it entered her mind, she was certain it was true. Don't be so stupid! He hasn't liked telling you about anything all night, why would he lie now? She hadn't had an answer for herself, knowing the voice in her head wasn't wrong.
And yet...he was lying, or at the very least, omitting.
"I have to work early in the morning, " she'd murmured that night, suddenly feeling dead on her feet, and not wanting to question why she was so certain he was lying to her, or why. "What are we doing tomorrow? You've practically seen my whole apartment at this point."
She'd settled into her bed as she spoke, kicking off the clothes she wore in a heap, too tired to put them in the hamper. Her eyelids had been heavy, the weight of his aggravation and what they'd shared and all she'd learned leaving her feeling thick and sleepy, as though she'd been drugged by the uncomfortable glimpse of him she'd received through the room.
"We'll see...but sometime this week I want to hear your entire run through." His voice had been soft and comforting, her Erik once more, pulling her into his arms to keep her safe. "Everything straight through, the way it'll be in your audition."
Her audition was the following week, a signal that the oddest summer of her life was nearing its close. After that, it would be a matter of weeks before the new semester began, when she was meant to put all of this behind her.
It was then, as she curled into his side, that she'd asked after his voice, when she'd challenged his assumptions that she would care if he wasn't handsome.
You understand, Christine?
She hadn't obviously, she still didn't understand anything, she thought to herself miserably from the corner of her sofa.
Erik called her every night, the same way he'd always had, it didn't make sense for Meg to say he was gone. She didn't understand why he thought she was so superficial, why he'd involved her clients in his little scheme, and why the thought of him being a criminal bothered her so little.
He would be calling her soon, what was she supposed to do, what was she supposed to say?!
As she pressed herself into the striped upholstery, Christine attempted to center her breath, to think of something calm and soothing...an endless summer sky, filled with winking stars, she thought, their conversation from the previous night came back to her: the plush cocoon of his voice wrapped around her snugly, as he told her about the stars as she stretched in her bed.
"How did you find the old barn?" she'd whispered.
The summer was in the thick of its balmy period, everything seemingly stuck under a layer of sweaty condensation, sickly warm to the touch. She was afraid to sleep with her windows open, since his little demonstration of how the sounds around her so clearly gave clue to her surroundings, and her airless bedroom had been stifling at night, her little fan doing little more than push around the stagnant heat.
Christine couldn't bare not having something over her when she slept, regardless of the temperature. The thought of hands—both the clawed hands of nightmare creatures and the meaty, sweaty hands of strangers touching her as she swayed to a pulsing, circular rhythm—wandering over her if she slept uncovered was too terrifying to abide.
Her sheet had been pulling double duty as her blanket for the past few weeks, but Erik's skin, she was certain, would be cool...firm and cool and comfortable as she rested against him at night, despite the fact that she often searched for his heat in her bed during their conversations.
Last night had been one such night, the cool press of his skin and his heady, masculine scent keeping her comfortable as she traced the line of his long jaw with an errant fingertip. After the tense exploration of his music room the night before, she'd made a point to keep their call easy and light, telling him about the classes she would need to take this semester, and where and when her audition would be. It wasn't until she'd settled into her bed, pressing against the cool length of him that she'd asked about the barn.
"The barn with the dulcimer, Erik? How did you find it? I'm not even sure I know where Appalachia is."
His laugh had been a low rumble against her, a distant summer storm approaching to sweep her up in its deluge.
Christine closed her eyes to the rhythmic cadence of his voice as he outlined the width and breadth of the mountains: the Catskills to the Poconos; from the Allegheny Plateau to the peaks of the Blue Ridge, scenery and states she had only read about in books.
In her mind's eye, she could see the crumbling old barn he described, half hidden in the hills of Tennessee, caving in, surrounded by tall grass.
"There's so much sky, Christine. You can actually see the stars," he murmured, telling her about he'd traveled up from the south eastern coast into the heart of Appalachia.
The story fell from his lips without needing to be pried, as everything had been the night before in his music room, and she wondered now, looking back with the advantage of hindsight from her sofa, if he'd felt the clock running out and had chosen not to spend what might have been their final conversation being cross with her.
Christine wondered, even as she sat there in her dark apartment, if the police or the FBI or whoever it was that investigated credit card fraud were closing in on him, wherever he was.
"You can see the stars here," she'd argued with a smile, arching against that low rumble of his laugh once more, the storm growing ever closer.
"You think that, but...you have no idea."
The picture he painted for her: one of a wide open field, pitch black beneath an endless, unencumbered sky alight with the pinpricks of a million stars, had held her spellbound. She'd never seen the sky from any view that wasn't partially obstructed by skyscrapers and city smog, she'd never been anywhere outside of the city, not really, and the realization that she'd never actually experienced the night sky left her dumbstruck with disappointment.
"It's a big world, baby," he'd whispered when she'd given voice to her thoughts. "You'll see more of it someday, I know you will."
She didn't care if he was a criminal. She didn't care if she'd lied to her friend, would lie again, if needed; didn't care if he'd stolen money, didn't care about anything else he might have done.
She only cared about him, for he was the only one who cared about her.
She realized eventually that the room had darkened fully as she pressed into the corner of her sofa after Meg's call, and that she'd let the majority of the night slide by. She'd missed a full night of calls, had almost certainly missed Bud's weekly Friday call.
Why should you care?
"I don't," she answered aloud to herself. The calls were prepaid now, and she didn't need to work half as hard. You'll be 'putting this all behind you soon', so why does it matter?
Logging back into the system, she took several calls in a row as she stared blankly at the issue of Cosmo she'd picked up with her groceries, barely putting forth any effort with the men on the other end of the line, inspired by Erik's deceitful mastery of the system. When the fifth caller had prepaid for thirty minutes, like Raoul's friend, and she took advantage of the time to paint her toenails.
Friday Night Guy never called.
She'd spent months dreading the man's calls, yet now Christine found herself holding her breath, hoping against hope that his hateful voice would be the one to sound in her ears, every time the phone had rung. She'd kept her cordless on the bathroom sink, just outside the shower, so that she'd be able to reach out and answer it if any calls came through, but after that last longer call, the phone had remained silent.
It was too great a coincidence for the man to whom Meg had referred to not be Joseph Buquet, the man who'd been strangled to death just beyond her window. Two weeks since the murder, two weeks since Friday Night Guy stopped calling...the ramifications of that made her sick, the thought that Friday Night Guy had been there. There! Right outside her door!
You've made it too easy, sweetheart
This alter noyef in the dumpster...The man had been a customer of the service, called regularly enough that the police felt it was an avenue worth exploring...good people? Don't wind up in murdered in alleys. The man had been killed, had been strangled to death just outside her apartment, and it twisted her stomach that she still was unable to place why he'd looked so familiar to her...It's a coincidence. It has to be a coincidence...and if it wasn't?
She wasn't sure if she cared about that either.
She was tired, Christine thought as she methodically double checked her windows and doors, unable to tolerate the looming shadows of her living room for another hour. She was tired of being afraid, tired of feeling dirty, tired of going to bed alone.
Like a magical summons, as soon as the thought crossed her mind, the phone rang.
"Hi, sweetheart."
His voice was soft and warm, familiar and comforting and she didn't care!
A bubble of emotion threatened to push its way to the surface at the sound of his voice, and it was all she could not to break down into noisy sobs right then and there. She wanted to tell him about Meg's call that evening, about what she'd said that he'd done, that he needed to be aware, be ready for the inevitable knock on his door, be ready to run! Wanted to let him know she didn't care about what he'd done, his racket with the service and the stolen credit cards, didn't care about any of it!
I don't care, Erik. All I want is you.
She'd meant the words she told him. She didn't care about what he looked like, didn't care about any of the things he'd done. She only wanted him.
"What do you want to do tonight?" she murmured instead into his neck, curling against the shape of him in her bed. His voice in her ear was the only thing she had to cling to in this world, the only thing that made her feel safe since her father had died, the only person in the entire miserable city who thought about her, was concerned for her. He could ask her to do anything, could ask the most vile, degrading things of her, and she'd comply without hesitation.
She didn't care.
"I just want to hold you tonight."
The emptiness of her apartment didn't exist with his breath in her ear, the knowledge that he was there, holding her close. "Christine…" Her name, softly whispered into the air between them, a curl of smoke wrapping around her.
When she began to cry softly against the heavy, velvet press of him, he didn't stop her, didn't murmur any false platitudes or empty promises. A goodbye was imminent, she could feel it hanging over them: a heavy, suffocating weight.
We're not going to think about that tonight, she berated herself, trying to force her tears into submission. She didn't want to think about saying goodbye to him, didn't want to think about what Meg had told her or about the real possibility of the police knocking on her door, didn't want to think about the shape of her world without his presence in it.
Tonight she didn't want to do anything but lie in his arms: the only place where she felt safe, where she felt unafraid; the only place where she knew everything would turn out fine and nothing would ever happen to her.
Safe and secure.
.
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"You need to release your jaw," he instructed sharply, a moment after the piano had abruptly stopped playing on the other end of the line. "You're clenching."
Christine exhaled through her nose, feeling like a petulant child for the offense she took at his words. He was right, she was clenching her jaw, but her tension was a direct result of the last twenty-four hours.
He had been morose from the moment she picked up the phone, which had quickly translated into an aggravated demand for perfection from her, which was not helping her stress level.
"Erik, I thought you wanted to hear the run through from beginning to end?" she questioned tightly.
He'd called late that morning to work through her entire audition repertoire, as he'd requested the previous night before disconnecting. He'd wanted to hear each piece they'd selected from beginning to end, as she would perform them in her actual audition; wanted her to be calm and confident, and hadn't wanted to wait until she returned from her afternoon shift at the bistro.
Christine had been able to shove his melancholy mood away as she prepared herself to sing, but this was the second time he'd stopped her.
"I do want to hear it straight through, but I expect to hear it done properly."
The terseness of his voice made her jump, and Christine closed her eyes, breathing in slowly. He pushes because he knows you can do it, because he believes in you, stop being such a baby. She didn't want to spend their time together sniping at each other. Exhaling, she centered her breath and adjusted her posture. Opening her eyes, she signaled that she was ready to begin again. This time she was ready: her jaw was loose, her shoulders lowered, her breath supported.
Christine focused on pouring herself into the pieces they'd selected together, willing him to hear her, to understand.
Leise flehen meine Lieder
Durch die Nacht zu Dir;
With her voice she painted for him the picture of the silvery, moonlit grove, where she waited for him, calling to him with her song.
Liebchen, komm' zu mir!
The German lied was followed by her French art song, a debussy piece...two arias in Italian that she could perform in her sleep, and then the English piece. Erik had chosen a discordant aria from a brand new opera, and although it had sat poorly in her ear for the first several weeks they'd rehearsed it, the wistfulness of the refrain brought tears to her eyes now.
Once there was a golden bird,
A bird who lived in a silver cage.
She could not simply walk away from this, from them. He had to know that, had to understand the way she felt. She didn't care about anything he'd done.
You taught me that acceptance
is the only road to freedom,
and forgiveness sets our spirit free to fly.
He had been quiet when the last notes of Marie Antoinette's act two aria faded away, and her stomach had clenched in fear that she'd somehow disappointed him again.
"W-was it too...d-did I-"
"You're a marvel, Christine," he interrupted her stammering in a low voice, heavy with an emotion she was unable to name, that made her chest heave and tighten with longing all the same. "Your voice is the most beautiful sound I'll ever hear, as long as I live...thank you, my dear, for giving me the gift of experiencing you these last few months."
Tears flooded her eyes at his words, at the softness of his voice. The tension of the previous evening and all that she'd been told still hung heavily over her, and she was unprepared for his tender sentiment.
Erik praised her often, but it was always couched in effective, needed criticisms and corrections. Christine couldn't help but think once more that his words had the flavor of a farewell, the knife he'd slipped between her ribs with his soon you'll be putting this all behind you comment twisting a bit deeper every day at the thought of the time spent singing for him, being with him coming to an end.
Moments like this, when she wasn't able to shove her awareness of their situation behind an optimistic wall of naiveté, bled her dry.
He'd wanted to take her back to her bedroom afterwards, describing how slight her weight was in his arms as he scooped her up, the soft press of her blonde curls against his lips as he gently laid her on top of the mussed sheets.
"Christine, Christine," whispered over and over against her lips, her throat, the curve of her breasts. With her eyes closed, she was able to feel the silky glide of his heavy, dark hair against her fingertips as she pressed through to his scalp, felt his solid weight settle over her, pushing between her knees. In her mind it was his narrow hips she wrapped her legs around, his back that she clung to, and not the pillow from her bed.
His deep baritone was a steady, rhythmic press against her; an enveloping, resinous cloud and she was suspended in its center as he paid reverence to her body with lips and teeth and tongue, the black velvet crush of him smothering her until she cried out on a sob, the ecstasy of being with him and the agony of knowing she was losing him turning her pleasure into something painful that left her hollow with longing. She wanted to push him away and run from this as much as she wanted to score her nails down his long back until he bled, until she was covered in him, until she knew he was real, more real than the slickness now coating her fingers.
"You'll still call me tonight?" she asked, wincing at the frantic neediness in her voice, just before they said goodbye for the afternoon. She felt desperate for his reassurance, for the guarantee that his arms would be there when she went to bed, every moment suddenly feeling too precious to waste. "Erik? You'll call me later?"
"Of course I will, sweetheart. I have some work to catch up on this evening, but I'll call you before you go to bed, okay? All you need to do next week is sound as perfect as you did today, Christine. I don't want you to stress over it anymore, you're more than ready...I'm sorry for snapping at you. I...have a good day, angel. I'll call you before bed."
She hated the pervasive feeling of dark clouds above them, the certainty that a goodbye seemed imminent, just when their relationship had seemed to ascend to a new level of intimacy. Why did Meg have to tell you anything? As soon as the thought appeared, she shook it away, as she returned the phone to its cradle.
Everything is going to be fine, she told herself sternly, rising from where she'd perched on the edge of her sofa, wiping away the tears that had dripped down her face as he spoke. People steal all the time, the police probably don't want to be bothered if none of the clients are coming forward, you know Meg is a drama queen. You're going to nail your audition, and you'll actually get together with him to celebrate.
Christine focused on the words of her confident inner voice as she moved to her kitchen. A peanut butter Kudos bar and a bottle of cherry Clearly Canadian were probably the unhealthiest lunch ever, and she knew that Erik would have pitched a fit over the sugary drink, but she wanted something comforting before she left for her mid-shift at the bistro.
Everything is fine, you're overreacting. He'll call you tonight, and it'll be fine.
.
.
"Miss Daaé, where were you the night of Tuesday, July-"
The sharp creaking of a door being opened across the hall made her look up sharply as the detective before her cut off. Mrs. Blumenthal's wide eyes met hers, and Christine forced a smile onto her face.
"Hi, Mrs. Blumenthal," she chirped falsely, attempting to not let the panic she was feeling seep into her voice.
The officers had knocked on her door only minutes after she returned home from her shift at the bistro. The temperature outside was hovering in the high eighties that day, making the interior of her small apartment feel like an oven, despite it already being late afternoon.
She had just changed into a pair of her small soccer shorts and a strappy cami, was about to settle at her table to dial into the service when the sharp rapping on the thin wood of her door made her jump. Every terrifying thought she'd had in the past several months coalesced into mind-numbing panic, and Christine had flattened herself against the wall of her kitchen for several endless moments before she was able to steel herself to approach the door warily. Struggling to see through the peephole without standing in front of the door, she'd made a conscious effort to prevent whomever was on the other side from seeing the shadow of her feet.
The sight of the two men, badges around their necks, had made her heart leap up into her throat, and she'd watched, frozen, as the taller one raised his hand to knock again. The sound against her door was lost to the blood rushing in her ears, the swirling panic that gripped her.
They're here to question you about Erik, about your client's credit cards They know you fed him information, know you're involved.
Stop! she'd told herself sternly. They don't know anything. You called his extension because that's what Meg told you to do. A deep breath to steady herself, and then she was reaching for the door...
...But the detectives hadn't asked about Erik, hadn't asked anything about whether she knew him or if she knew anything about his scheme with the stolen credit cards. When the nature of their visit was made clear to her, Christine hadn't known whether she'd wanted to laugh in relief or cry in terror.
"Christine, meydl, is everything alright?" Mrs. Blumenthal asked in a hushed voice, eyes sweeping over the officers in the doorway.
"There was a disturbance up the block recently, ma'am," the older of the two men answered before Christine could take a breath. "We're doing some follow-up questions with some people who live in the area who might aid in our investigation."
"A disturbance, is that what you're calling it these days?" the older woman harrumphed. "You ought to talk to Ida Griegs, you know, she lives in that building."
The name was duly recorded as the officer thanked Mrs. Blumenthal for her assistance, and Christine held open her apartment door. The nature of the conversation she was about to undertake, she decided, was not one to which her neighbors needed to be privy.
"I was out with a friend the whole day," she answered once the door had closed and she'd perched on the arm of her sofa as the detectives loomed over her. "My friend Meg Giry. She came to the restaurant where I work, waited until my shift was done and we had lunch. Then we went back to get our nails done and went shopping. We ate dinner at her apartment, and went to a club in the financial district, The Bois. I didn't get home until late."
"Your friend is also from the phone line service?"
She swallowed hard, nodding her agreement. "Yes, her mother is the owner."
"How long have you been in this line of work, Ms. Daae?"
"Um, since April," she murmured, feeling her neck flame. As she spoke, she pulled on a cardigan, wrapping it around her protectively. The older detective was barely lifting his head from his notes, but Christine couldn't help feel that the younger of the two men watched her derisively, and she didn't like feeling so exposed.
"As a phone sex operator."
The younger man's words were sharp and his eyes flashed in judgement, and the heat spread to her cheeks.
It's just a job, Christine. You're surviving, that's all it is. Erik's words replayed in her mind, and she felt her hackles raise at this man's tone.
"A phone actress," she gritted out.
"And how long have you been working for this particular company?"
The younger one gave an almost imperceptible snort, and Christine saw red. "Yes, a company. A company where I pay taxes, taxes that go towards city services like police and fire, so you're welcome. This city killed my father, but not before it made him so sick that it drained our savings dry. This may shock you officer, but my restaurant job doesn't exactly pay the bills."
The words were out before she could bite them back, before she could think better. She was Christine and Christine was a mouse; she had no idea where the sharp anger had come from, wasn't sure if it was Angel's false bravado or the residual effect of having been unwittingly involved with a criminal for the last several months, but she found that, like so many other things she'd discovered in the past seventy two hours, she didn't care.
The older man stepped around the younger to resume, and she swallowed hard, willing herself to calm down as she answered his questions. Yes, she had a regular caller who'd been calling her like clockwork on Friday nights since the beginning of the summer; yes, she could recognize the man's voice if they played a recording for her. When the nature of the calls were questioned, she'd been unable to prevent the tears that fell or the sob that seemed to rip from her throat like a wild animal, furiously fleeing captivity.
"He was h-horrible," she wheezed, wrapping her arms around the pillow from her sofa, the same pillow that had been Erik in her mind so many times. "The things he said he was g-going to d-do to me…he said he was going to hurt me."
The younger man's cockiness had fled in the face of her tears. Christine noticed, as she peered up, the way he uncomfortably paced the length of her small living room as she accepted a tissue from the older detective. "He said horrible things, every week. I tried reporting him, but the switchboard operators said he was a paying customer, so...so I tried not to let it get to me."
The detective pursed his lips at that, making a note with a disgusted head shake. No, she had no way of knowing who the man was, he'd never given her any personal information; No, the man hadn't called in the last two weeks; No, she didn't know anything about the disturbance up the block, other than what she was told by the yentas downstairs at the Sokoloff's counter.
No, she had no reason to believe that the man had come to his demise, garroted and left in a dumpster, because of her.
"It-it's connected?" she asked, sniffling pathetically. "But how? How could he have been right there? Was he someone that lived in the neighborhood?" It seemed too great a coincidence, even as she uttered the words, had seemed too great all along. "He-he got into the system, didn't he. He knew who I was."
She didn't phrase it as a question, and from the look the men exchanged, she didn't need to.
She'd thought she'd been numb the previous night when Meg had called her, when she'd learned about Erik and his scheme, but the hour following the detective's departure gave new meaning to the empty, hollow emotion that left her frozen on her sofa once more.
"We'll be in touch if there's anything else we need from you, Ms. Daae...you were very lucky. Unfortunately for him, Mr. Buquet was not."
"I guess I have a guardian angel out there," she choked out in the doorway, suddenly feeling nauseous.
A guardian angel...an angel of music. Christine wondered if they were one and the same.
I don't care.
She wasn't entirely certain if the detectives had believed her, wasn't sure if the investigation into the stolen credit cards would eventually collide with the investigation into the murdered man in the dumpster...it doesn't matter if it does, she reminded herself. You're in the clear, you only called him because Meg gave you his extension. You haven't dialed that number since…
Christine blinked.
She'd been telling herself since her call with Meg that she hadn't dialed Erik's extension in many weeks, not since Erik had taken it upon himself to start calling her himself...but that wasn't accurate, she realized, dread washing over her in an icy wave.
You called him the night you were drunk, the night you went to the club with Meg.
The night a man was murdered in the alley outside of her apartment.
.
.
She needed to tell him everything.
Christine paced the length of her small apartment repeating the words to herself over and over. She needed to tell Erik everything she knew, everything she'd been told, everything she'd said...or else she needed to call the number on the card the detective had given her, and tell him all that she knew.
She'd picked up the receiver after the detectives had left, had dialed the switchboard number from memory, her fingers tapping out his extension on their own volition. When the call was immediately routed back to the switchboard and answered by one of the operators, she'd hung up, thrusting the phone away as if she'd been burned.
She didn't understand.
She didn't understand how he'd been calling her, didn't understand how he could have left the service almost two weeks ago, yet had still been calling her every night, staying on the phone with her for hours. You'll just have to wait for him to call tonight. You need to tell him everything...and he needs to be honest with you.
She'd been dialed into the service for about thirty minutes, was putting away the silverware that had been accumulating in her drainer when the phone rang.
"Is this Honey?" a sharp voice asked after she'd purred her hello, and Christine froze. She'd chosen the name for her bio once she'd retired Angel, not wanting to callers to greet her with the same name by which Erik had first know her. The woman's voice was familiar, and Christine realized after a moment that it was the same person who'd fielded her complaint about Friday Night Guy, the same woman she'd met in the office with Meg, before they'd gone to have their nails done. Robin, the front office manager.
"This is she." Her voice was little more than a reedy whisper, and she cleared her throat, pushing her panic down. "Yes, this is Honey."
Much like in her conversation with the detectives, the questions she anticipated being asked never came. She was never questioned about her calls to Erik, was not questioned about his scheme or her clients or the payroll mistakes that had been made in her favor.
"Miss, do you recall the code of conduct agreement you signed at the time of your employment?" Christine stammered out a confused yes as the woman on the other end of the line began to rattle off the contents of said agreement. "According to our records, you prematurely terminated a customer call on the evening of May 20th, do you recall this?"
Chrisitne blinked. Is she fucking serious? "I-I do, but—"
"Then you know this is expressly against our service's policy. In accordance, your position with the Étoile Agency has been terminated, effective immediately. Your final pay will be issued on the standard paycycle. I wish you luck in your future endeavors."
She'd barely had time to draw breath before the dial tone buzzed in her ear. Christine sat in stunned silence, mouth hanging open. The phone still pressed to her ear, the dial tone a muffled white noise providing a backdrop to her shock until discordant jar of the off-the-hook noise startled her back to lucidity.
She'd just been fired. Fired! The laughter that burbled out of her was high and manic and uncontrolled. You were just fired for hanging up on a dead man! Her fingers curled around the sofa arm, gripping the upholstery for support as she doubled over. Of all the things she could have been fired for! Her switchboard calls to Erik, her involvement, however oblivious, in his fraudulent scheme, not reporting the payroll discrepancies...hanging up on Joseph fucking Buquet, weeks and weeks ago, had somehow been her undoing.
Christine laughed until her sides ached, the shadows of her apartment somehow seeming less ominous now that her sex work days were abruptly at an end. He's going to get a kick out of this, he's going to be thrilled when you tell him toni—
The levity that had gripped her dissipated in a great woosh, along with the air in her lungs. The arms she wrapped around herself were no longer there to hold her sides in laughter, but to prod herself into drawing a breath before she blacked out.
How was he to call her now?
Christine sat in the corner of her sofa, knees drawn up to her chin and her arms wrapped around her as night fell around her. She'd begun to cry somewhere around one a.m. and wasn't able to stop. She'd never sleep again, she vowed, as her shoulders shook with the force of her sobs. She wouldn't budge from this spot, lest she miss him, lest she was forced to confront her empty bed, this empty room, her empty life.
Beside her, the phone remained silent.