"I want to go outside."

"What?" I stopped moving, hovering above her, my hands propped on either side of her as she lay on the Persian rug. I was taking a break from my incessant fiddling with the phonograph; I hadn't even left the house in days. "Now?"

"No, I just remembered now that I wanted to ask you."

"Christine, we can talk about this later, can't we?" I had other things on my mind. Well one, if you considered her as one object instead of many interlocking and endlessly fascinating parts.

"You told me you'd change. That if I was with you you'd be happy and you could live like anybody else. We don't live like anybody, Erik."

"Don't you like it here, love? You have the Opera right upstairs. You needn't go anywhere for rehearsals. And I know where you are."

"I know, but we never go anywhere at all." Was that impatience I heard?

"Are you unhappy here with me? Are you bored?"

She shook her head, and the tiny movement of her body was sweet torture. It was all I could do to keep myself still. It seemed irreverent to speak about such mundane things while in the act of loving, an act I felt was tantamount to worship. "No. But there are other places, Erik. Places husbands take their wives. Like…" She paused to think. "Dinner. Or shows. Or walks."

This was starting to get tiresome. "Christine, is this really the time?"

"I have a husband, Erik. I want you with me. What am I going to tell everyone?"

"Could you really see me in restaurant? No one would be able to eat."

"A walk then. We could go for a walk."

"Christine." It sounded more like a moan than a name, but her name was more like a prayer than a mere word anyway.

"Please, Erik?" She moved suddenly, under and around me, and I gasped. "I want to go outside. I want you to take me."

"Yes," I growled finally, unable to resist any longer.

"You'll take me?"

"Yes!" I said and I pushed her knees up and there was no more talking for some minutes.

The truth was, I had said those things about living like regular people with her at my side. It was all nonsense, really. As foolish as my thoughts of forcing her to marry me. I couldn't change the world by sheer force of will, as much as I hated to admit it. Certain people in it, perhaps. But to go outside, in full view, with a mask or without? Man did not posses the technical ability to make this face bearable, not yet anyway, and I had been fooling myself as well as her if I'd thought Sunday afternoon strolls by the Seine were going to be a reality. It didn't matter who was on my arm.

Lying beside her on the rug, pressing my face into hair the color of sunlight (or so I remembered), I realized I had no desire for the outside world. She was the outside to me, and if I'd been looking for some connection to the world around me, some conduit to bring me out of my kingdom of solitude, I had found it in her and there my desire stopped. I had thought she was the means but she was the end. I'd been mistaken, that was all.

But if she'd saved me, a nagging voice said in my mind, why couldn't I change? Haven't you been bragging about how much you've changed? Funny how the voice had acquired a light but distinctive Persian accent somewhere along the line. Very well, I answered back silently. I'll prove you wrong. I glanced at the clock on the mantel and decided it was dark enough.

"Will you be ready for our walk soon, love?" I asked, helping her to her feet.

She smiled and I had to be mistaken about the gleam of triumph that seemed to color it. She was just excited. "Let me change my dress and I will be." Change her dress. As if she had anything to change out of. But she never addressed our intimacy. If I spoke too freely of it or any of the wondrous particulars of her body, she would blush furiously but say nothing. I let her wash up and I did the same, telling myself the whole time that I had to prove this to someone. My pride did allow for the concession of a thick, hooded cloak, however.

We crossed the lake in the boat, Christine in back like a figurehead in reverse while I propelled us with slow strokes. A reluctant Charon who was no longer just the ferryman but a passenger and wasn't at all sure he wanted the ride. I didn't want to reach the other side, but I wouldn't turn back. I was being steered as surely as I rowed this boat, the mockery of that voice and the memory of her hands prodding me in equal measure. I would suffer the scorn of neither, so I had to do this.

I had often thought of the lake as beautiful in some strange secret way, and never more so than now when I had no desire to leave it. The water reflected the light of the lamp back onto Christine's face as she gazed into the distance, and her skin seemed to move and change with the lake's surface. She looked ethereal, as if creating her own light against a backdrop so dark one could hardly tell where the lake ended and the shore began. What need had I of light other than this? What could I possibly have wanted that I did not have now? She looked over at me and smiled and her eyes could have been made of the same stuff as the lake, so dark and fathomless they seemed. Then again, the lake wasn't as deep as it looked.

I docked the boat on the other side, unable to justify further hesitation, and helped her onto the ledge that led to the tunnel that would take us out. This way we wouldn't have to go through the Opera house itself. "Are you ready?" she asked. When I hesitated, she took my hand, and it was enough. It would have to be. I followed her up to the gate only I had the key to, but my hands fumbled so much that she had to take it. "You've done this millions of times, Erik," she said. Aside from the slight exaggeration it was true. I had. And often as not it had ended with someone being hurt or a contract being issued for my eyes to be put out. "I'm with you. Remember that." And she kissed me, fully on the lips. I was never one to take anything for granted and familiarity had not lessened my hunger for her, but as I gave in to it she pushed the gate open and we were outside.

She broke from me instantly, touching only the hand she used to lead me away from the building and onto the middle of the sidewalk. I glanced around at the pedestrians and the carriages and the general activity and wondered of everyone I saw if they'd seen me yet. I was convinced they all had, or were about to. And they would all know that under this hood and this mask which was far too white and still to be human lay the face of a monster and a murderer and a madman and anything else they cared to layer onto it because it was all true and I was all those things. A palimpsest of sin and hate and nightmare. My mouth felt dry and my heart raced and I could feel my breath coming in painful little bursts and I knew with absolute certainly that I couldn't do this. Not even for her.

"Erik?" She was trying to walk down the street, looking for all the world like she was a young wife on the arm of her husband out for an after-dinner stroll. And for her part, she was. She looked perfect; alive, strong, at home. I would never be any of those things, for all my vaunted physical and mental vigor. People divided around us like water flowing around two rocks and I waited anxiously for one of them to touch me. I didn't belong here. I wasn't part of this, which was why I'd abandoned it all those years ago until she'd awakened some desire in me again. I'd mistaken my desire for her for a desire to rejoin the world but how could I have forgotten what it was like? So many eyes, so many minds behind them and you couldn't know what they were thinking or what they'd do. I wasn't afraid of them, not really. I could fight them off if I had to. But I was tired and I didn't want to fight anymore. I had spent the better part of my life trying impossibly to be what they were and it was never going to happen and there wasn't even any reason I should want it to happen. She tugged on my arm and suddenly I was in motion again, only back the way we had come. I didn't even register whether she resisted or not but within moments we were back inside the gate. I leaned against the wall just within, catching my breath. I couldn't do it. I had failed and I didn't even care.

I didn't want to be seen, any more than I wanted her to be. Any contact would break the spell, any intrusion on this finally most perfect of lives would cause the whole thing to dissipate into thin air like one of the soap bubbles she so carelessly popped in the bath. There was nothing wrong with wanting to prevent that. Even if I was a pitiful hermit incapable of human interaction beyond that which I had carefully structured within my own parameters. I had structured it. I had succeeded by dint of my own ingenuity. Wasn't that enough?

"Erik, what is the matter?" she asked. Demanded, rather.

"I can't do this, Christine."

"What do you mean? Do what?"

"I can't… This. Outside. With them. It's been too long, Christine. I'm sorry, but I can't just walk out there like I'm normal. I'm not normal. I tried my whole life to be and this… you… are the closest I've ever come. That has to be enough. It is enough, for me."

She frowned, disappointed. "But you said you could. You told me I could help you, that you wanted me to help you. I thought that was what you wanted. I thought I was doing good." She thought she could make me normal.

"I do want you to help me," I said, trying to decide whether her earnestness was touching or irritating. Probably something of both. "You are doing good; you've given me something to live for, Christine. You've given me faith and life and… and you make me eat and… I don't think I've ever felt this alive."

"Then why can't you do this?"

"Because I'm not alive, Christine. Not really. I can't compete with them; it's like holding a match up to the sun and saying they're both hot."

"What?"

She didn't understand and I could never make her understand. Sometimes I wondered if she even tried or if her eyes just glazed over the minute I started explaining myself. My previous question was answered and I'd settled on irritating. But I could make her understand me somehow. Make her feel me, at any rate. She would listen to this.

My head fit neatly under her skirts and I'd pulled away her underclothes before she could protest. She tried to step away as my tongue found her but I held her fast. Her hands pushed ineffectually at cloth that covered my head.

"What are you doing?" she hissed. I was busy and didn't answer. "Someone will see us."

I leaned back slightly so that my muffled voice could travel up through the layers. "I thought that was what you wanted, Christine." She trembled and I imagined her looking out from between the iron rails, captive and in deadly fright that some passing nobody would see a dim figure in a doorway with her skirts pulled too wide. I touched her until she shook but with that victory it was I who felt defeated, and I lay at her feet, anointing her with my tears. My own personal Christ whom I could only beg to dry with my hair. Even now she bent over me, absolving me, but I couldn't look at her, only huddle on the ground like a pathetic supplicant whose surrender to his god's will is so complete that he's afraid to take a step without divine advice.

"Erik…" Her arms made an attempt to encircle me but I sat up out of her reach, already ashamed of my display. "Erik, tell me. I… I want to understand."

She didn't, even if she thought she did. The only way she could understand was to be like me and neither of us wanted that. I tried anyway. "I'm so weak," I said finally.

"I don't think that."

No, she wouldn't, would she, who only saw what she wanted to see. But I'd been fooled as well. I'd always considered myself nearly indestructible. And now I was undone by an evening's walk, a stray glance, a woman's soft, secret flesh. I was flimsy and brittle and worth less to anyone than ever. My failure made me less deserving of that world than I had been before trying to rejoin it. At least then I'd found confidence in the illusion of my strength.

"You're very strong, Erik. You… you let me into your home. You let me into your life. You didn't have to do that." No, I'd had to. And it was surrender, not strength. "And you've done so much for me."

"Have I?" I stood, impatient already with the line of thought. It was silly, really. I'd be dead if I was really that weak, wouldn't I?

She stood with me. "Of course. You made my papa's dream come true. And mine. Don't you think that's important?"

"I suppose so," I ventured.

"I don't need to go outside, really. It doesn't matter that much. And maybe… maybe I pushed you too hard and you weren't ready. Maybe when you're more comfortable we can try again." I let her talk but steered her towards the boat. I was never going outside again, I knew, but there was no reason to tell her that now. I rowed us back home in silence, and I knew that sooner, rather than later, I had to record her singing. It was Wednesday, and the opening was only two days away.

Luckily Christine had been given the day off on Thursday in order to rest. Not content with missing rehearsal, she insisted on singing the last trio in Faust with me. I had been working on my phonograph during every possible moment, and whatever improvements I had been able to make would have to suffice for now. I told her I had something to finish first and that I would appreciate her leaving me for a few minutes, during which time I brought the machine in and set it up behind a screen. Only the microphone had to catch her voice, and I tried to ensure that its placement would allow for the best sound, though of course I hadn't tested it with piano and two voices.

"I'm ready, Christine," I called from the doorway. I had only to touch a switch and the motor would start turning, the needle begin its transcribing of what I was certain would become a legendary talent.

She entered and came to kiss me on the forehead before we sang. I gazed at her angelic face as she settled herself next to where I sat to play the piano and I tried to imagine her as Marguerite, sentenced to death for the murder of her own child. I would sing Mephistopheles when I could and Faust during the trio although I knew I was probably the devil since no one had ever offered me youth or knowledge or beauty in exchange for my soul. I would have taken him up on the offer, given the chance. I would sell my soul for her, I thought, just as Faust had, and suddenly we were singing and the room erupted in sound and motion, Faust pleading for Marguerite to come away with him while she can do nothing but remember the past days of their love. Our voices soared and dipped and whirled around each other until I felt delirious with it. I could almost see the wings of angels when they came to take her away to heaven.

"Why are thy hands reddened with blood? Go! I abhor thy sight!"

Her last lines rang in the silence which followed and I heard the click of the phonograph needle coming to the end of the disc. I felt condemned. It wasn't the opera or the music or any of that: I'd always considered opera a form badly in need of some innovation and in fact it was a little trying living somewhere like this where one heard the same trite stories and hackneyed composition night after night. But her voice… our voices, together, were magic, and it had nothing to do with the kind of sleight of hand I had mastered in my travels. One could trick the ears but not the soul. It didn't matter what words we sang or who we were; our voices would mean something to anyone listening. And I had captured it! I had plucked that perfect moment from the air and etched it indelibly onto that unassuming disc of metal alloy behind the screen. I almost showed it to her then and there, but I held myself back, focusing instead on her shining eyes as she looked vaguely down at me.

"I'm ready," she said. I nodded. She was more than ready. She was too good for them and I didn't see why anyone else should have the chance to see her. "I wish I was singing it with you tomorrow night," she said softly. "It seems more real with you."

I looked down at my hands. Did she want it to be real? Could she see the blood on them? Did she think about the lives I'd taken with them as they touched parts of her no one else ever had? "We both know that's out of the question, my love," I said. I had accomplished far more in my life than any baritone soloist, but it was all underground, undercover, unacknowledged. Suddenly it was all I wanted to be a mindless male diva. Had it been decided that my multitude of talents made up for the fact I couldn't display any of them? Better to have been born without the capacity to understand my fate.

But no. I didn't really believe that. Not anymore anyway, and looking back I realized that I probably never had wished for death or ignorance. I had reveled in my talents while simultaneously lamenting the life I created with them. If I'd wanted death, I would have found it. I'd guided so many others that I surely knew the way. And now I wanted us both to live forever. I'd been so wrong in trying to join life, not knowing how much easier it was to create my own.

"You would have been the best," she said, and those simple words were among the most moving I'd ever heard. I was happy, I told myself. Tomorrow and the opening and all my fear didn't matter. This is what happiness means. No crowd's mere adoration could take that from me. Christine was bound to me with blood and music and every devoted fiber of this worthless body.