MADAME O.G.

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Chapter 9: The Phantom's Opera

The moment he stepped onstage, Christine knew it.

It was supposed to be Ubaldo Piangi in the leading male role – safe Piangi, La Carlotta's lover, portly and hardly anyone's idea of a Don Juan. It had been Piangi only a few moments ago, describing the plot to seduce Aminta: she had seen him from offstage! But now that she had stepped onstage and turned her back to the curtains where Don Juan was supposedly hiding, Piangi had been replaced.

"The trap is set and waits for its prey," Erik sang softly, his voice echoing as a result of the theater's exquisite acoustics. The words sent a chill down her spine. She was not sure whether that was a result of his insinuating voice or the fact that the words to this particular song were particularly apropos – or whether she was wondering what, exactly, had happened to Piangi.

"You have come here in pursuit of your deepest urge," he went on, weaving his seducer's net of words around Aminta and Christine both. This was not the affectionate Erik who had wept in her arms after the masquerade ball. It was dark, half-handsome Erik who had convinced her that her father's promises of an Angel of Music were true. It was Don Juan – Don Juan Triumphant. Suddenly, she realized the delicious irony of the entire opera.

The orchestra kept playing, Erik kept singing, but Christine could not yet turn her head. It was not in the part – not in the part! She tried to convince herself not to break the carefully planned blocking for this vital scene, but she couldn't help it. She had to turn.

Even behind Don Juan's black mask, his gaze pinned her to the spot. She could not move. His dangerous side had not come to the forefront in recent days; the Opera Ghost was supplanted by the benevolent Angel of Music, teaching her how to sing properly, teaching her how to inflect each word so that the audience understood exactly what Aminta was feeling and thinking. Before, he had never sung Don Juan's part like this. Before, he had never inspired in her the sort of performance that only comes from true feeling.

Christine was a good girl; she had never been in Aminta's place before, could not express the mixed fear and pleasure of it. Now... now, she was beginning to understand. And it was her turn to sing.

Slowly, taking her time as the orchestra rested, she moistened her lips and began. The words were too true for her to hide her genuine reaction – a reaction appropriate for Aminta, she realized. There was the bridge from Don Juan's part to hers, the soft and tremulous words of a girl not really sure of what she might be doing; that part had always been easy for her. What had been difficult was coming.

"Past the point of no return," Christine sang, nearly as low as she could convince her voice to go. As she did, she stood, turning. It was not so much a mere lyric as a challenge. Erik rose to that challenge. He was a formidable opponent in this back-and-forth singing, holding his own as almost no one could against her amazingly strong voice. They followed the choreography then, mounting twin spiral staircases to the catwalk over the stage.

As long as she could not directly see him, she thought perhaps she was safe, perhaps she could gain control of her emotions once more. It was not true, she realized, as she reached the final step and raised her eyes once more to his. Never breaking her gaze, the Phantom twitched his cape off and moved inexorably closer to her.

He swirled that cape like a bridegroom headed to his wedding night, she thought, and stifled it. It was an indecent thought – and yet that was the point of Don Juan Triumphant, really, the indecency.

Then their duet began.

Christine had always thought of her voice as something strong in and of itself, something powerful and vital. Perhaps it was – on its own. In this aria, however, no matter how much strength she put behind her words it was insignificant. Oh, she was heard easily enough. But every note she sang, every phrase, rested on the bedrock of Erik's voice. Smooth, deep and steady, it anchored her and set her free, sobered and intoxicated her. She could not possibly go off into egocentric, decorative fripperies of song like Carlotta usually did, not with this voice behind her.

Yet the words they sang were powerful enough to do something entirely different, not tie her down but make anything possible. She had sung that they were 'past all thought of right or wrong,' and they were. Oh, they were.

Together they moved in time to the music, their steps measured and careful. She wanted to hurry, to throw herself into his arms, but she couldn't: that would break the rhythm, stop the music! And Erik's opera must be performed. His hand on her wrist, sudden and surprising as a real Don Juan's might have been to Aminta, burned. She could hardly think to toss her hair in that becoming way Madame Giry had suggested, hardly remember how she was supposed to half-turn her body to the audience. The opera was breaking down. The opera was becoming real.

They rested. One gloved hand came up to rest on Christine's neck in a motion that could be either menacing or tender. He could snap that neck now, she realized with a shudder, if he chose to – could grab her and throw her off their perch, maybe to her death. But he would not. "This is the point of no return," he said levelly, and jerked the ring from where it lay on the chain around her neck. Her father's locket fell, unnoticed, to the stage below. "Make your promises."

She raised her right hand to let him slip the ring on. It shone in the spotlight so that all the theater could see. "I won't ask you to take off your mask this time," she responded in a voice so low that no one could possibly hear but them. "Later, I shall." And as though it were simply part of the scene, as though she had practiced a great deal beforehand and knew exactly what to do, she tilted her head and stood on tip-toe to claim Erik's lips in a summer-sweet kiss.

Suddenly she felt his arm clamp hard around her waist and came back to herself. Offstage, she heard the shouting of angry men, the tread of boots. "They're coming!" she whispered, suddenly terrified and ashamed of her uselessness.

"Hold tight," Erik replied. The world dropped out from beneath them.

They landed in a pile of hay, obviously placed just for that purpose. Christine had the breath knocked out of her, but as she lay gasping Erik guessed what her first question would be. "I had a hand in the making of that set. Someone left anonymous suggestions for the designer. They were implemented. We are safe for now, far beneath the stage with the trapdoors all shut behind us, but we will not be safe for long."

Stifling the desire to lie down until her breathing returned to normal, she struggled up. Together they followed the paths that would lead them to the underground house, first slowly and then quicker as Christine recovered from the shock of their landing. They glanced at each other out of the corner of their eyes like skittish cats do, neither willing to give up and speak of what had passed between them on the stage of the Opera Populaire, both still unsure.

"I had no time to pack your things, though I brought them from your dressing-room for you. You shall have to do that now while I set some things in order. Work quickly. We have no time to lose. Soon someone shall explain this place, and then we will be pursued."

Christine did as she was told, finding that her clothes and personal items had been dumped unceremoniously on the swan-shaped bed and that there was a small, inadequate trunk next to it. If they were to be pursued, though, she ought to take nothing but what she could carry – so she quickly changed from her costume into a proper traveling-gown, using her pair of whore's hooks (so named because they allowed a woman to don a lady's dress without the help of a lady's maid) to do up the back. Then she packed only one other frock and the necessary unmentionables, using the rest of the space for the few things she could call her own: a tattered diary, a long-unread novel her father had given her when she was quite young, a small kit with which to darn stockings and mend clothes.

All in all, it did not take long, and when she emerged from the bedroom carrying her trunk Erik was standing before one particular section of velvet curtain. It was the section that hid the wedding dress. "We won't be able to take it with us, will we?" she asked, unnecessarily.

"What?"

"The gown – oh! I never told you. I found it that first night I stayed here, when you were gone to the shops. I won't deny it gave me a turn, then, but it is lovely..." Now that her mind turned to the subject, now that the pounding urgency of Don Juan Triumphant had receded in their disconcerting fall and the menial task of packing, Christine realized she was quite attached to the dress. It was not really the idea of being married, even; it was only that now, looking at it, she felt not the slightest urge to cry.

"You amaze me," Erik said hoarsely. "You would pledge your life to me? Knowing that it means an eternity of this before you?" He indicated his still-hidden face with one jerky motion that contained all the anger, all the pain, of years of frustrated dreams.

She put down her trunk, untied the ribbon of Don Juan's mask, and said "Yes."

This time their kiss was not sweet but passionate. Erik's hands moved over the unfamiliar shapes of her body, lingering at the nape of her neck, the small of her back. Christine's heart was in her throat, but it was so good, so perfect to feel those masterful hands that she did not mind in the least. For a moment she marveled at her feelings, but that thought was soon drowned in the warring sensations that fought for prevalence.

Unable to stop herself, whatever 'nice girls' did, she pressed her palms to the bare chest that his Don Juan costume left exposed. His skin was warm and surprisingly soft, no different than her own. Emboldened, she pressed her lips along the line of his jaw, the one part of his face that remained unblemished on both sides. They were so close that she could hear his breathing grow uneven, feel his heart beat faster under her fingertips.

"Erik," she said, without thought or planning, wanting only to reassure him – wanting to express the feelings she had never yet put a name to. "It isn't only a wedding because you've forced me. I'd have asked the Vicomte de Chagny to take me away if that was so. I – "

"Christine!"

"Speak of the devil," Erik said bitterly. A man had just come thrashing through the water to the closed portcullis, banging on the bars as Christine had the night of the bal masqué. It was Raoul.

End Chapter 9.