Corridors, key codes, a different elevator, and then they emerged out of a tunnel and were walking along a nearly empty subway platform.
"If you wouldn't mind wearing this for the next fifteen minutes," Erik said, withdrawing what looked to be two folded pieces of white paper from the interior pocket of his jacket. She looked up just as they rounded the corner into a main corridor of the subway station, crowded with hundreds of people all wearing black overcoats and white surgical masks like the one she now held in her hands. Realizing that it was another form of disguise, she quickly put it on, doing as best she could to slip it over her ears beneath today's dark wig. The sudden onslaught of humanity after so many days with Erik as the only person in her realm of existence was startling - and she had a fleeting sensation of loss that she didn't entirely understand.
"Isn't it marvelous? Everyone walks around behind a paper mask, for their own health." Erik's murmur sounded as though it came from directly beside her ear, even though he was clearly in front of her. "I wish more of the world's metropolises had Tokyo's emphasis on hygiene and epidemiological prevention." They walked on, completely anonymous in the crowd, for several minutes in silence, before he idly added, "Lovely town. I could spend months here."
His tone was full of disaffection, but beneath the surface of his light spirits was clearly a lifetime of experiences she had never suffered. Christine couldn't imagine taking such pleasure in blending in while standing in a crowd or in having her identity concealed from view as she walked down the street; she could imagine the life that had led him to those feelings, and it filled her with a dull sadness.
Three escalators and they emerged at street level onto a darkened plaza; a bridge over a multi-lane road, the cars headlights glowing bluish white here instead of yellow, and Erik mentioned something about improved LED efficiency before saying they needed to keep moving - as she stood, momentarily mesmerized by the flow of thousands of cars passing under them in the night, like a river of fireflies.
Down the stairs, down a road with businesses mostly closed and then abruptly into an alleyway between six-story tall buildings pressed too close to one another for a car to possibly drive through. Neon signs in Katakana characters flickered in the distance on both sides of the street, their glow amplified by the clouds of steam pouring up from grates in the ground, backlit by the few streetlights at the end of the block.
Erik had been walking so quickly that she was once again struggling to keep up with him, but his pace seemed to slow as they reached the midpoint of the alley, and he gestured with his right hand in a movement that was not entirely clear - one finger straight out, pointing diagonally away from him at the ground, two, three swooping around and up to the left…
The blast of steam from the vent she hadn't even noticed under her feet was suddenly hot and blinding, and she was stumbling forward and trying to get her bearings as she felt an arm around her waist pulling her off her feet entirely and Erik was shouldering open a door and quickly shutting it behind them.
"Obfuscation," he intoned, then pointed ahead of them, down a dimly lit beige corridor, and she followed. He palmed open a worn door with a small eye-level window, and suddenly they were in a hallway with opulent, if rather excessive, decor.
Erik made a dismissive hand gesture at the walls or perhaps their designer, and walked forcefully toward the end. They turned left and were abruptly in a hotel lobby with dozens of guests coming and going, and just as it had been in the subway, she felt a surge of surprise to be suddenly surrounded by humanity once again. Maneuvering out past bellmen and baggage carts to the front of the building, Erik gestured at the short taxi queue, and Christine stepped into the line behind him, as though they were ordinary hotel guests.
XXXXXXXX
The restaurant entrance was only slightly more obscure than the side door to the hotel; Erik ordered the taxi to pull into the loading bay of a large office building and then sent the driver away with a large stack of paper yen. He strode decisively across the shadowy concrete bays and knocked on a metal door, then said something sharply in what must have been Japanese; the door slid open and after a few more words, the stern man behind it bowed and gestured to the stairs inside.
It would have been intimidating, if not for Erik's calm presence indicating that he considered this a logical turn of events, and she followed him up the plain, dark staircase inside, and then through the next door that gave way to a tastefully decorated low-lit restaurant. A man approached them and bowed, before leading them to a table at the end of a row of curtained booths. Christine barely had time to hand her jacket to the man before he lowered the curtains, sealing off the booth where she and Erik were now seated.
She had seen private booths at restaurants before - a few places in New York had them, and Sorelli had always regaled the dancers with tales of the cocaine-fueled escapades that went on behind the velvet curtains, whenever one of her dates had turned particularly salacious. But Christine had never before seen an entire restaurant of them, and said as much to Erik as he perused a menu written in Japanese.
"Ah," he said, seeming a bit embarrassed and quickly attempting to smooth over her impression. "This isn't a refuge for celebrity bad behavior; it's an industry establishment. I first came here when I was working on a brief contract for a particular… I suppose they would call themselves a 'chivalrous organization' - a few years back."
She nodded, but he seemed to sense her relative unease.
"You must know I wouldn't bring you anywhere… unseemly," he said emphatically. "The clientele here are respected businessmen, however atypical the industry - and the security is second to none."
Tea arrived, poured by a deferent server with dark tattoos showing at the wrists and collar of his long-sleeved shirt, and she wondered about exactly what industry Erik had been working in besides architecture.
XXXXXXXX
Six courses, an amuse-bouche, and a palate-cleansing sorbet; sake pairings with each course; dishes swept away in synchronized motion by servers the instant both she and Erik had set down their polished steel chopsticks. It felt like a Michelin-starred speakeasy, but she couldn't shake the feeling that all of the formality of the service and the fineness of the cuisine was just a thin shell of artifice concealing something sinister. Was there a mafia in Japan? Had Erik really worked for them?
She needed to know, somehow, and yet she couldn't find ways to ask these things that didn't make her intention painfully clear - that she was still trying to figure out her feelings about him, and that his past and the things he'd done might sway her one way or another. It was hard to ask him anything about himself - his defenses came up so quickly if the question seemed like anything beyond innocent curiosity on her part. But there were so many things she was truly was curious about...
Erik poured himself another cup of green tea, and he seemed to have actually had more tea than nourishment that night - even with the miniscule servings of intricately prepare food, he'd taken few actual bites of the meal. Christine wondered, idly, if it was difficult to eat with the mask on, and wondered if they would ever be comfortable enough around one another for him to take it off willingly. It was a welcome interruption when he asked if he should ask for another pot of tea.
"No, but thank you," she replied, "I feel like I'm finally getting over the jetlag here, I probably shouldn't tempt fate with caffeine."
"'You are so virtuous," he said, in mild astonishment, "I wonder what life is like to one as untempted by vice as you are. I know full well what the prevailing medical recommendations are to feel 'healthy, wealthy and wise,' and I can't be particularly bothered to abide by any of them."
"...Do you think I'm boring?" She interjected, the feelings of hurt twisting unexpectedly.
"No... not in the least," he tilted his head, regarding her curiously. "I just prefer to be in control of the mechanisms, myself. It's almost like dictates of healthy living are a challenge to be overcome with the proper combination of chemicals. Prescriptions to wake, to sleep, and so on; it's all on my own terms."
"You're lucky to have that luxury," she said, making full eye contact as she ventured to confront him. "Most people can't afford to gamble with their health."
His mismatched eyes met hers, and were steeley for several long seconds, before he relented. "You're probably right. I likely picked up the habit in the years when I was less fond of living than I am now…" He gave her a poignant look, then busied himself with the bill. "Are you ready to leave, then? The most discreet option is for us to take one of the house towncars to a railway station and then return to the saferoom via train."
"'Railway station,'" she said, trying the phrase out with a smile. "It's funny - I always thought you were British, from some of the words you use, and your accent-"
His visible eyebrow raised. "I have an accent?" He said wryly.
"It's a nice accent," she hastened to add. "You sound… distinguished. But a while back you mentioned we might need to pass for being British, with the British passports, and so I imagine you must not actually be from there…"
His amusement seemed to stiffen, and he replied in a clipped tone. "One does need to belong somewhere to be from anywhere. I haven't had the fortune of a homeland."
For some reason, she pressed on."Were you born in England, though?"
"I was born in the Northwest of France, and if I were a legitimate citizen of any nation it would likely be there. I learned English because the tutor they sent to my house to teach the freak who couldn't go to school with the other children - that tutor happened to be a British expat. English is in theory my second language, but in many senses it would be the first, since my mother had hardly spoken to me, in French or any other language." The emotionless, matter-of-fact tone concealed little, but he seemed to gather himself and continue brusquely. "Shall I have the driver pull the car around so we can go? We'll be flying out tomorrow morning, you'll want to get rest."
"Erik… I'm sorry," she said, trying to catch his eye. "I want to know more about you, even if it hasn't all been happy."
"You want to know if I am broken beyond repair." Wounded eyes met her own, defensive, wary.
"...I just want to know you, period," she replied.
XXXXXXXX
Tokyo to Seoul; 763 miles, 2 hours.
Christine stood on tip toes, looking into the mirror of a blush compact she had placed on a shelf, trying to adjust what must have been the 8th wig she'd worn in half as many days. The bathroom in this safehouse was larger - the safehouse itself must have been five times as big, concealed within a drab warehouse in the Guro district, not far from the airport, with a separated sleeping and sitting room, and a design scheme that was just as minimalist as the previous, but in an entirely different direction. Whereas the room in Tokyo had been glossy and white, this space was done in shades of grey and dark brown, stark lines and muted colors. When she had asked about the unexpected design penchant for greige, he had dismissed it by saying, with a shrug "It was the nineties."
She hadn't been old enough to drive in 1999, and he'd been designing buildings by then.
Her thoughts had grown black throughout the afternoon. He was easily fifteen years older than her, possibly more - and he was infinitely more accomplished. For all his professions of adoration, what was it that he truly could see in her? A pretty enough young woman with a good enough voice, who'd been at the right place and the right time when he'd decided to join humanity and fall in love?
This line of thinking was getting her nowhere but miserable, and now, trying to get this wig to stop slipping off, and looking into her own tiny makeup mirror - because the bathroom itself naturally had none - she was frustrated and irritable.
"Any chance you've got scissors hiding somewhere around here?" She called out without looking up from the mirror, almost speaking more to herself out of frustration than actually to him - but even at several times larger than the previous room, there was no place within this dwelling that was actually out of earshot.
Almost absent-mindedly, Erik wandered in, looking down at a paper in his hand, and placed a small pair of scissors on the countertop. "Trimming the wig?" he asked without looking up as he walked out again, apparently engrossed in some sheet music.
"Either the wig, or my own hair," she said exasperatedly. "I kind of want to chop it all off. It would make all the wigs easier"
"No - don't," he spoke swiftly, before some sense of propriety or something else strangled the rest of his response. He turned back to look at her in alarm.
"Why?" She asked, still halfway joking, and not realizing quite how serious he was.
"Just... don't." he said. "I... I don't like the idea of you having to do that, because of all this." He gestured around at the room, at their suitcases in the corner, and looked extraordinarily uncomfortable.
She cocked her head and watched him shift awkwardly, for a moment. "Is that really it?"
He glowered at her, and with a flutter of power in her stomach, she knew the real reason.
"...Do you like my hair long?" she asked.
Erik looked so exposed in that moment, his eyes so vulnerable and embarrassed that she felt ashamed for prying - then the exposed half of his face hardened, and for the first time she could see it plainly; his anger was a shield.
"Yes," he said venomously, "I do. Must you wrench every detail free from my chest? For a woman who feels nothing but revulsion for me, you certainly have a fascination with the specifics of my feelings for you."
She steeled herself, vowed not to crumple again, not to lose her steadiness. "Is it easier to tell yourself that I revile you, than it is to deal with the truth?" she replied, as calmly as she could, "The truth is I don't know how I feel, but I am frightened of your temper. You're a jerk when you feel threatened."
His jaw dropped, and she readied herself for an outburst, but none came, and emboldened, she continued, softening her tone. "I mean it. You might just be acting defensive, but it kills me. I can't go on being afraid of the next explosion."
Their eyes met, and she tried desperately to read the expression in his… and came away with the impression that he was doing the same toward her. He seemed to realize for the first time that he was still holding the stack of sheet music before him, and blinking, set about straightening the various pages. Without looking up, and with some sentiment in his voice that mixed both fondness and bewilderment, he murmured, "No one has ever called me a 'jerk', before."
"I'm sorry… but Erik, it's true."
"It just seems so… trifling. Phrased as such." He seemed to be still looking down at the sheet music without actually seeing it, his mind elsewhere.
"When you get angry," she said shakily, "the tone of your voice has such... oh it's like acid, the contempt. You sound like you hate me; every word seems to imagine the very worst of me. I don't see how you could speak to me that way if you truly loved me."
At that, his head jerked up, and his eyes finally met hers again.
"You say that," he began hesitantly, the gorgeous richness of his voice vibrating in the air, the first time she'd noticed it in days, "...You say that like you're afraid that I don't love you."
She nodded, wary, questioning.
"...Instead of being afraid that I do," he said cautiously, with guarded wonder in his eyes.
XXXXXXXX
Seoul to Istanbul; 4940 miles, 12 hours
The sunlight glinting on the Bosphorus was dazzling, and there seemed to be water, hills, and bridges at every turn as the towncar made its way from the airport to the city center, a uniformed driver at the wheel. Where Tokyo and Seoul had been chilly and still clinging to to the end of winter, Istanbul seemed to be fully flung into spring; clear air, soft breezes, green trees and sunshine. They'd seen precious little daylight in the last week, and the skies had always been overcast; the tiny white clouds dotting the sky here looked almost cartoonishly happy by comparison.
"You look pleased," he ventured, offering nothing with his words and the world with his tone. She wondered if he thought he was speaking with great casualness and disaffect - when it was clear he cared desperately about her answer. As she struggled for an answer, he quickly added, "The privacy window is up, the driver can't hear you."
"It's not that," she said, unsure of what to say. "It's just… I don't think I'd ever seen pictures of what Istanbul looked like. This looks more like Vancouver than Iraq."
Erik looked mildly horrified at her comparison, and she wondered fleetingly just how wrong her geographic assumptions had been - but he seemed to swallow his concern and continue politely.
"Vancouver… So you had left the States before. I couldn't find any record of an existing passport for you, but I considered that you might have traveled before the borders were hardened in 2001."
"Yeah, I was just a kid and I think a birth certificate was enough to get to Canada back then," she replied, nonplussed at this point by his admissions of having researched her. "After mom died, I went wherever my dad went." She paused, remembering, then shook it off, "I think he was taking gigs farther and farther from home, whether or not it was consciously."
Erik frowned lightly, "Touring with a band is no place for a child."
"The Scandanavian folk-music scene wasn't as debauched as you might imagine," she said, teasing gently. "Most of the guys in Dad's band had girlfriends or wives traveling with us; so there was always someone to look after me backstage. I loved running around each new music hall during sound check; sometimes the the bartenders would let me play with the soda gun."
She smiled, at Erik's disapproving glance, and continued, "This was before I had a music teacher telling me the cola would wreck my voice. I remember this one woman setting up the bar in Portland - she gave me a cup full of maraschino cherries, and let me pick out songs on the jukebox. I was maybe eight, and I had this dream that she was my long-lost older sister and would take care of me forever."
"What on earth was your father doing, that you needed barmaids to take care of you?" Erik said, his disdain clear.
"Grieving," she answered, her chin firm. "He'd just lost the love of his life."
Erik winced, and emotion briefly flickered across his face, before he wrenched it back. "His only job on earth was to ensure you were cared for."
"He worked as hard as he could to keep the two of us fed - and that was almost more than he could handle," she replied matter-of-factly.. "Dad was born to be a musician, not to deal with life. Most of the time it was me taking care of him, even before the cancer."
Erik regarded her strangely, as though he were judging her response. "He failed you, and you forgive him."
"We forgive a lot in the people we love," she said, wondering if it was the first time someone had explained human relationships to him. "It''s not black and white... that he either failed me or he didn't. He was the father I had. Maybe some other dad would have been competent and confident and - I don't know - 'financially capable'. But maybe that dad would have been boring and distant and only cared about sports or politics or the stock market. Raoul's dad was like that, honestly. I had a dad who loved me; it was enough."
He visibly stiffened at her mention of Raoul, but seemed sufficiently distracted by processing the rest of what she'd had to say. "...And the touring took him to New York?" he asked, appearing eager to fill the silence.
"No," she said sadly. "Once Dad got sick we needed to be in one place for the chemo, so we wound up in Brooklyn. He hoped he'd still be able to find work as a studio musician there, even if he couldn't tour, but... his health just went downhill so fast."
"I'm sorry - this is obviously causing you pain. I should never have asked."
"It's ok," she said, with a sad smile, blinking back the tears that had welled up. "It's been years.. I think I'll always be sad. But I'd rather be sad than never talk about him again. Really."
A comfortable silence fell over the car as he leaned back into his seat and she resumed looking out the window.
The streets were crowded with cars, bicycles, and pedestrians, and Christine noted the women were wearing everything from tank tops to full-length robes and headscarves. The businesses were just as varied in their mix, and she thought she even recognized a brand or two before suddenly she burst out laughing. "There's a Starbucks," she said, as Erik turned his head to look at her. "Here! I'm sorry... I know it's ridiculous, but it's felt like I've been in some parallel universe this whole time. And then we landed here, and everything seemed so different, still…"
"Yes," Erik said slowly, "The American coffee chains have made quite the expansion into Europe…. which is where we are at the moment. Istanbul is a thriving metropolis in a secular country. Did you have a different impression?"
"I didn't… I guess I didn't know what to expect," she said abashedly. "On the news they always talk about Middle Eastern countries as being so dangerous."
"People do prefer to fear what they don't understand," he said coolly, his tone more sad than hostile. "Dangerous is a broad generalization. There is conflict at Turkey's South-Eastern border but that's nearly a thousand miles away. You lived in New York. Would you have left if there was unrest in Miami?"
"Of course not…" she looked out the window again, at the granite buildings and streetcars and that beautiful blue water in the distance. "It's just… when you've never been anywhere, all you have to go on is what they show you on the news."
"I'd like to take you everywhere," he said in a low voice, catching her gaze and holding it.
XXXXXXXX
Nothing was ever direct with their transportation and true to form, Erik had the driver drop them at an antiques market, then set off in the opposite direction up a steep, tree-lined street once the towncar was out of sight. She followed, suitcase bouncing on the cobblestones, and wordlessly stepped behind him as he gestured to a wooden gate leading to an narrow, unpaved alleyway leading between a row of tall houses and apartment buildings.
"There is a front door," Erik said, gesturing at the rickety building to their left, "but it rather annoyingly faces the street, so I've had it boarded shut. Keeps up appearances."
Her eyes widened as she took in the ramshackle unpainted wooden house towering over them, its architectural style somewhat Victorian and wholly neglected. His comment finally made sense when, after a labyrinthine series of gates, doors, and old-fashioned key-locks, they actually entered the house, and looking back over her shoulder at her suitcase, she noticed the shiny lacquered wood-inlay floors. Letting the door fall shut behind her - somehow, still surprised, even after every time he'd surprised her before - she turned and let her jaw drop as she took in the interior of the building, as stunning and modern as the exterior was antiquated and decayed.
A marble staircase with a cast-iron banister arched upstairs, flanked by walls painted an immaculate shade of white, corniced and embellished with moldings that were both modern and classic at once. At the top of the stairs was a small suite with a sitting room and a bedroom, whose similarly refined white walls contrasted with the rough wooden beam ceiling soaring nearly twenty feet overhead.
"Erik…" she said, not even knowing where to begin, "this is beautiful."
"Does it suit you?" he asked, looking over his shoulder at her. "It's more of a 'secure property' than a proper panic room, but it is rather well disguised in plain sight. It's one of my more recent efforts, I finished it probably… well, it must have been just over a year and a half ago."
"Have you been back here since then?" Christine asked, still looking around at the beauty of the space, and the mix of old and new.
"No…" he said, and paused. "Once I met you, I felt a rather powerful urge to stay in Manhattan. I'd planned to only be there for a few months, but..."
Trailing her fingers across a dark wooden desk, Christine, frowned, her thoughts solidifying, but not on the words he'd just said. "If you haven't been here in more than a year, why isn't it covered in dust?"
Erik uttered a word that sounded like, "Haichvack," looking at her quizzically.
"I don't know what that means."
"'Heating, Ventilation, Air and Cooling' - think of it as a sophisticated, automated, climate control," he said. "It's been running since last I was here. All circulating air goes through heavy filtration."
"Isn't that... expensive?" Christine asked, and at his gentle eye-roll and hand gesture of flitting away something that didn't matter, she added, "or at least, bad for the environment?"
"My optimistic dear" he said blithely. "I can hardly be bothered to give a damn about the people currently on this planet, let alone the ones who will walk it after I've finally - and in all likelihood, explosively - freed myself from this mortal coil." She rubbed her forehead at the sharpness, at the quippy non-realness of his answer, and he seemed to see it and soften. "But if it bothers you, I could probably pay someone to come in and clean once a month. Maybe a charity that employs the underprivileged - orphans are carbon neutral, yes?"
She glowered at him. Waiting for him to realize, and feel remorse. It took a solid minute of dagger eyes before he suddenly blinked in recognition of what he'd said.
"Christ, I'm sorry."
"You ought to be," she said indignantly, almost proud of finally feeling unequivocally justified in being pissed at something he'd said.
"You must realize - I've gone so long without ever having to worry about the effect my words had on another person." He looked at her helplessly, and she relented.
"Erik, I… I wish you could have the same concern for the rest of humanity's existence that you have for mine."
"...The ceiling beams are pine," he said, changing the subject, "They should be lovely for acoustics, if you'd like to have a lesson?"
XXXXXXXX
Strangely, surprisingly, by the tenth day she had fallen into life in Istanbul, with Erik, in a house that was a mansion inside and a seemingly condemned eyesore outside. His hypervigilance had relaxed, gradually, such that he was no longer fearful of her standing too close to windows, or constantly quizzing her on potential exit paths or passport stashes. They had begun to venture out - first to secretive dining establishments as they'd been to in Tokyo, and then to secluded dining rooms in mainstream restaurants.
Some days she missed Raoul. Other days she felt guilty for not missing him more. Neither feeling was something she could do anything about at the moment - on another continent, on the lam, completely powerless except for the influence she had with Erik - and so Christine forced the thoughts from her head. She had spent years of her life drowning in sorrow and helplessness and loss; she couldn't afford to feel those things now. And so, from one strange day in a life outside her life, to the next day, she just lived. Erik took care of the rest.
One night, pleasantly fatigued from a particularly long vocal lesson, sitting in a jewelry box of a private glass room at a restaurant, surrounded on three sides by windows with the fourth wall open - lamps glowing golden in every corner of the room, and more lights of the city rolling down the hillside below the restaurant - Erik conversing fluently with the servers and explaining the delicate spices of each dish to her as it arrived - she thought that it might be possible to simply decide to be happy, and to possibly do so now.
XXXXXXXX
With time, Christine felt more comfortable, more secure; she stopped wearing the wigs entirely in favor of a modest headscarf, and her heart no longer leapt out of her chest when Erik abruptly stopped them in their tracks for a perceived threat that inevitably turned out to be benign.
She wandered into her bedroom one afternoon, thinking to curl up on her bed with a book for the evening - and found a tower of black boxes tied with a black grosgrain ribbon in the center of the bed. The top box held a pair of sparkly earrings; the middle a pair of navy blue evening shoes. Lifting the lid of the largest box and pushing aside the crisp black tissue paper, she saw a mountain of silk chiffon in a beautiful dark slate blue color. Lifting it by the shoulders, she could tell - this wasn't just a dress, this was an full-on gown...
"The İstanbul Devlet Senfoni Orkestrası is playing tonight - that's the symphony. I thought you might like to attend. Box seats." Erik leaned in the doorway, rather transparently affecting nonchalence.
"The symphony? Oh, that would be wonderful." ...To go out in the world a bit more, something other than utter privacy and secrecy all the time. He smiled at her obvious delight, and she couldn't resist asking innocently, "Not the opera, though?"
"Too soon," he replied decisively, with a knowing half-smile that suggested he'd seen right through her. He turned to leave, and called out as he walked away, "we have an early dinner reservation; get dressed."
"Thank you," she interjected before he could walk too far, "for planning an evening out. And for the dress; I think it's just lovely."
He stopped in his tracks and tilted his head back toward her, but didn't fully turn around. "I'm glad," he said, then hastened away.
XXXXXXXX
"Lovely," was an understatement; the dress was beautiful, with the sort of eternal elegance she associated with old movies, and she wondered how he'd come to choose it for her. The full skirt swept the sidewalk and the chiffon straps over her shoulders fluttered in the light breeze as she stepped out of the towncar. The early evening hours were warm here, and she carried her coat for later draped over one arm. Erik's hand was a palpable presence behind her elbow, guiding without ever touching, as he moved them across the sidewalk, toward a massive stone building with Roman columns on either side of a carved copper doorway.
"It was a bank, many years ago," he explained, gesturing at the soaring dome thirty feet above them, as they walked inside. "Most of the buildings on this street still are, in fact; Voyvoda Caddesi was the financial center of the Ottoman Empire. This one has just been converted to serve a more interesting function."
The space was cavernous, with an elegant lounge on the ground level, full of chic Istanbulites sipping wine at a polished silver art deco bar with a mahogany countertop. At the rear of the building on the right side, a curving staircase led to the restaurant on the mezzanine level upstairs, and long metal beams supporting a stylish lighting fixture were suspended over the bar area, dangling on wires bolted into the ceiling easily fifty feet above.
A suited maître d' guided them up the staircase, with excessive politeness and making no mention of the flesh-toned mask Erik wore; he led them to a table at the edge of the mezzanine, which had several other parties already dining at the early hour.
"Erik," Christine whispered, half shocked and half pleased, "We're at a public restaurant, at a table in the same room as everyone else."
"Well, it's still the best table," he said, the corner of his mouth threatening a smile. "And the most secluded from the rest of the restaurant, with a clear view of the exits. I will always prefer dimly lit restaurants and private rooms, but with a sufficient fee to 'confirm the reservation,'" - and here he raised his visible eyebrow - "one can more or less ensure reasonable decorum at some public establishments. And I know you wanted to leave the house more."
"Thank you," she said, feeling a small burst of optimism, at the idea that he would do something he disliked, just to meet her wishes.
Midway through the second course he looked sharply to the left and dropped his fork with a clatter. She bent over to pick it up off the floor, only to find his hand reaching over, pressing on the back of her shoulder, keeping her bent down below the edge of the stainless steel planter boxes bordering the balcony.
"Stay low," he said in a sharp, low voice.
"What do you mean?" she asked… before realizing, as though the previous week's concerns had been a century before, a different life, "Is it Agent Khan?"
"No," he said in a voice that was tinged with anger. "Significantly worse. I'm so sorry; this was a terrible mistake."
"Erik, what -"
"Do you trust me?" He leaned over, so that his eyes could meet hers. "I need you to do what I say, even if what it doesn't immediately make sense, even if it seems dangerous. Do you trust me, Christine?"
"Yes," she whispered immediately.
"Then we're going to live."
XXXXXXXX
Dear Readers, you amaze me - your reviews and PMs (and I heard there might be fanart?) - hearing from all of you is the fuel that inspires me to keep writing, and that keeps this story growing longer.
I love hearing about what you like, what you didn't like, and what you think is coming next. And I adore hearing your casting suggestions as well! I know all too well how a good actor or actress can change your opinion of a role entirely. (It was Ramin Karimloo's Phantom that inspired me to pick this story up again last year, and having just seen Jeremy Hays' floppy-haired so-earnest-it-hurts Raoul last week, I'm now re-thinking chapter 14 entirely.)
Also - I've heard from some readers that the FF.n author alerts are not going through to their gmail accounts. You can check your spam filters, but if you're worried that you'll miss an update, I will also start keeping an email list that I personally send out with new chapter announcements. Just PM me your email address and I'll add you. Alternatively, I will also post new images on the tumblr and LJ from my storyboard each time I update a new chapter. (Tons of new shots for this chapter! Can't wait to hear what you think. veroniqueclaire*tumblr*com or veroniqueclaire*livejournal*com .)
(This chapter was revised in March 2014, and the new version owes many thanks to Darcy for fashion expertise.)