Chapter Twelve: Adventures in WordPerfect
The keyboard rattled as she pounded away on it, entirely heedless of the fact that Erik had at last passed out on her bed. It had been six hours— six hours of word definition, bickering over paragraphs and chapter separations, chapter titles, Erik's favoring of certain well-worn cliches, the need to appeal to a wider demographic, and Erik's irritation with Lonny's admittedly atrocious spelling. She'd finally gotten so sick of his calling her on i-e and e-i words that she gave up the computer for him to type for a while— whereupon he sat down and immediately got writer's block. Lonny had nodded and snickered to herself for a bit before being dramatically threatened, and then sat back down and things went on as before— exactly as before.
Six hours.
Two chapters more, and Erik was obviously exhausted. He wasn't used to telling his story— even when appearing before his adoring fans, he spoke little about his past. The story was too well known as it was; it needed no repetition. And now, tired from the task, he'd finally passed out in the middle of a critical examination of the conversational habits of the ballet rats. Lonny, who had stopped paying attention some forty minutes prior, noticed with concern that the last phrase he'd gotten out was 'delicate upper arches.' With relief she realized he'd been talking about their feet.
She now alternated between editing the fifteen pages of chapters two and three, and posting her latest entry in her blog.
No one's going to believe this, she wrote, but since no one reads this anyway, I don't guess it matters. The Phantom of the Opera is currently living in my basement bedroom. Not the fun, sexy, Gerry version— the real guy. Full mask, smell of death, tendency to try and strangle me, the works. Okay, so I'd be lying if I said I wasn't disappointed by his lack of Scottish accent. But I'm starting to realize that this guy—
She paused, lifted her fingers delicately off the keys, and glanced towards the tortured soul who was sleeping heavily on her denim bedspread. Sleeping hard— stretched out on his belly, the mask pressing into his face in what appeared to be a painful manner, his arms bent up above his head.
She turned back to the computer.
Never mind what I realize. Seriousness isn't my strong suit, and anything I could possibly say would be impossibly corny, no matter how true it is. What I want to know is, if the Phantom of the Opera has no nose, how is he managing to snore?
A light, a delicate sound, yet it still made her stifle a giggle or two.
Curiousity strikes sudden, it strikes hard.
I wonder what he looks like—
Bad idea— she knew perfectly well it was one of the worst ideas she could possibly have. But— it was normal to be curious. It's the effort to hide something that attracts the most attention.
How asleep was he?
Oh, God, why did her body always act without waiting for an order from her brain?
She was leaning over him, one hand reaching out, before she even realized what she was doing. She wasn't breathing at all— she wasn't even sure her heart was still beating— everything had gone dead silent, and the only movement was her hand, inching towards his face.
So close—
So close—
Too close.
His eyes shot open and fixed on her the hardest, coldest glare she'd ever seen. She stopped dead, transfixed by his eyes—
His lips moved. "I do not want to have to kill you," he said.
Her voice— her voice was gone. Kill her— no, he didn't kill Christine when she saw him underneath the mask, but he loved Christine. Love stayed his hand. But in this situation—
His eyes demanded a reply.
She finally managed one.
"And I do not want to have to die." Too flip for the occasion, entirely too flip.
His voice, like steel. "Then remove yourself from my vicinity with all haste, mademoiselle, before I forget what I owe you."
"Oh, that hurt," she said, but quietly; she didn't think he'd heard her. It did hurt, anyway— she meant it. To think— to know that he only restrained himself from killing her because he felt himself obligated to her.
Although, actually—
She turned back to him, as he sat now looking at her alertly. She flashed him her brightest, 100-watt smile.
"Has it struck you yet, how ludicrous this whole situation is?" she enquired.
He regarded her warily.
"What do you mean?"
She stuck her lip out and did her best Bogart. "Of all the basements in all the towns in all the world, you walk into mine," she said. The blank look in his eyes made one thing perfectly clear. "Not a Bogie fan, are we?"
"Who is this Bogie?"
"Old time movie actor. I was doing his voice."
"Ah." His brow cleared slightly. "He speaks with a lips?"
"Not so much a lisp as a mouthful of spit," she explained pleasantly. "I'm sorry I reached for your mask."
"I trust you won't do it again."
"Lets hope not," she said fervently.
He nodded at her then, and stood up, his form bent slightly as he leaned forward to peer at the screen. "You are still typing?"
"Yes," she said, sliding immediately into the chair and trying to close the window that held her blog. As usually happens when you try to close something before someone else sees it, she closed every window but the one she wanted to. She could feel his gaze on her; if he hadn't noticed the frantic motions of her hands, the flush on her cheeks would undoubtedly give her away.
Sure enough—
"Are you writing about me?" he inquired gently, his breath brushing against her cheek. She swallowed hard and leaned, ever so slightly, away from him. Too confusing, she thought, too much, just let me be and leave me alone, I can't take it. Assault on the senses. Get away, please. Overwhelming.
She leaned away a little further, her breath coming hard, and slid off the chair. He watched with amusement in his eyes as she fell in a heap, brushing her hair out of her face and looking at him with as much innocence as she could muster at the moment.
"No," she said, breezily, "what makes you think that?"
A second longer he gazed down at her, no smile on his lips but that same amusement in his eyes. "I don't appreciate being lied to."
She planted her palms on the ground behind her and pushed herself up to her feet. "Very few do," she conceded. "Yes, I was writing about you. Its my journal, I write about everything in there. No big deal."
Erik nodded slightly, raised a hand to his chin and fingered his lips pensively. "And if you're quite finished with that," he said, "perhaps we could go on?"
She settled slowly back into the seat, yanking her t-shirt untucked from her jeans, and focused on the screen, calling WordPerfect back up and tilting her head at it thoughtfully. "You're enjoying this, aren't you?"
He glanced at her suddenly in surprise, and didn't seem to know quite how to answer that. Obviously the idea of enjoying something like this had never occurred to him. She cast her eyes towards him for just a second, and tried unsuccessfully to hide a smile. "You don't have to say anything," she said.
He resented that, she could tell. Mostly because his eyes flashed fire and he said, harshly, "Did you not tell me that writing this story would change things, would bring Christine and I together? Is that not an adequate reason to wish that the storytelling would go on apace, so as to get it over and done with as quickly as possible?"
"Yes—"
"So let us not attempt to come up with the workings behind my mind," he said, "but let us simply do what we are here to do. You have a short time on this earth only. Pray do not waste it."
Somewhere in her mind the retort, "And writing fanfiction isn't a waste of my time?" echoed, but she didn't say it. She merely nodded, pressing her lips together firmly to hide her frown.
That's right, he's immortal, I forgot.
Is that an immortal's way of saying, "I haven't got all day?"
Beside her, Erik took a deep breath.
"And now," he said, "where did we leave off?"
