Another chapter - a day ahead of my Saturday posting schedule! Thank you to PhantomFan01 and Sittol77 for your kind reviews.
Good 'ol Raoul makes his debut in this week's chapter. Let me know what you think of him. :)
Chapter Two
On Monday morning, three pieces of correspondence reached me before I had a chance to settle into my work.
The first:
There was a bouquet of red roses waiting at the reception desk for me on my way in. The card that came with the flowers was unsigned and carried a simple message, "Saturday at 7 pm," in masculine block letters. Red roses and a curt demand? I had no doubt that the flowers were from Erik. To quash office gossip, I 'announced' they were a surprise from Raoul and placed them - sans card - in a vase on my desk. The office shredder made quick work of the accompanying note.
The second:
A voicemail from Richard Firmin, the university's vice-president revealed that an anonymous donor had made a $5-million gift for the music department. The gift had come through electronic transfer of securities from a numbered bank account. A banker had included instructions to use the funds to renovate the Walden Performance Centre and to purchase a new pipe organ for the space.
The third:
A department-wide email from the Dean of Fine Arts carried news that the grand piano in the Walden Performance Centre had been vandalized. Someone had entered after hours and broken all of the strings in the piano, smashed its keys, and sawed open the case. The Dean's email sounded irate, but I knew that the music faculty would count the damage as a blessing. The aging piano had been a gift from a retired professor and the university had been obliged to accept it, despite its poor condition. Wryly, I guessed that the vandalism was connected to the anonymous donation.
It was 9:24 am and my head was already spinning. Groaning, I folded my arms over my desk and set my head down to try to relax and bring my thoughts into focus. The masked face of Erik St. Clair appeared in my mind and found myself wondering how many of the morning's events were connected to the reclusive, demanding entrepreneur. And, more importantly, why did he care so deeply about the Walden Performance Centre?
I recalled the voicemail from the vice-president of development; he'd had no idea who the donor was and had been frustrated by his or her methods. Most anonymous donors made their gifts personally, but kept their names confidential. This allowed the university to thank the donor and, after a period of time, prepare to ask for their support again. A numbered account was difficult to trace and, if announced poorly, could raise suspicion.
Taking a deep breath, I picked up my phone to return the vice-president's call.
Richard answered on the second ring.
"Christine, good to hear from you! Congratulations on a successful Arts Gala."
"Thank you. I hear you had a busy evening." That was an understatement. I'd sat the vice-president at the head of the room. Between posing for photos with city councillors, schmoozing with top donors, and negotiating budgets with department heads, he'd been well occupied.
"You know how these events are," he chuckled. "Listen, did you have a chance to listen to my voicemail? The College of Fine Arts received a very large, very anonymous gift over the weekend. Did this come through one of your prospects?"
"I… I'm not sure," I stammered. Anonymous gifts usually counted towards fundraising targets. Though, in virtually all cases, the university knew the donor but respected his or her wishes for privacy. And then there was my hunch, unproven, that Erik St. Clair was involved. "I'll have to check in with one of the donors I've been working with."
"Does that donor have a name, Christine?"
"They do. He does. I just want to be sure before sending that information off to records."
Richard sighed. An anonymous gift could rile students (and staff!) who enjoyed conspiracy theories.
"I'll give you two weeks to match the gift with a name. If we get a name, great, we'll record it for the development team. No name, no problem. Either way, we'll work with PR to come up with an anonymous gift announcement."
So he was preparing to accept the donation. They always take the money. A year ago, when I'd began my job, another department had accepted a donation from a large tobacco company. The student union had been outraged. The administration had been cowed into returning the money and making a statement on fundraising ethics and academic integrity.
"Okay, I agreed. "I'll be in touch again before the end of the month."
"Thank you, Christine. Frustrating as it is to be in the dark, I appreciate your delicate handling on this one. Good luck with your mystery donor."
I said a thank you and, after a set of polite goodbyes, we each hung up. Exhausted all over again, I leaned back in my chair and huffed in the direction of the ceiling. The pockmarked panels lay flat and silent, unaffected by my sounds of frustration.
Not telling Richard about Erik meant that I would be the one to find out whether or not he was the donor.
It would have been easy to reveal my guess and let Richard ask the questions. Five-million dollar gifts were out of my usual range. People with that kind of money expected meetings with deans or senior administrators, not lowly development managers.
There was also the chance that I'd guessed wrong. That I'd connected Erik's demanding personality and private nature to someone else's gift. And, if that were the case, I didn't think he'd be pleased to be taking calls and emails from university fundraisers.
I had to be more subtle. And being subtle meant accepting his invitation - demand? - to attend the opening of Don Quichotte.
And I hadn't told Raoul about any of this.
After coming home from the gala, I'd found Raoul in bed, asleep, with the reading light on and a dog-eared detective novel under his left hand. He'd been waiting for me. Raoul was an early riser and usually went to bed by ten o'clock, which made the gesture all the more touching.
I'd met Raoul four years ago, while I was finishing my master's degree in vocal performance. Goaded by a colleague into taking a more active interest in the arts, Raoul had attended a recital I was performing in. It had been the worst performance of my life. My usual accompanist had been ill and her replacement wasn't familiar with the pieces I'd chosen to perform and I'd had to cover for his mistakes while performing in front of an audience. My nerves had come close to paralyzing me that night and I'd heard a rumor that a casting director from the opera house would be in the audience, which had added to my distress. Raoul had lingered after the performance to congratulate me. He'd insisted on walking me back to the subway station and had stopped along the way to pick up a bouquet of flowers from a street vendor.
At first, I'd questioned whether I could date someone from the university. Raoul was seven years older than me, had finished his PhD, and was beginning an academic career. Always a gentleman, Raoul had been patient but persistent. After a few cautious dates, we were spending every weekend together. When my father died in a car accident, Raoul invited me to move in with him. Feeling lost, and wondering how I'd afford my apartment without my father's income, I agreed and gave my landlord two months' notice.
That first apartment had been a cramped one-bedroom in a turn-of-the-century brick building in Chinatown. It was a third-floor walk-up and we'd had to be creative to fit most of our furniture, clothing and books into the small space. Between the two of us, we owned nine shelves' worth of books. After I began my position at the opera house, we moved to a larger apartment in a new, low-rise building. Having fewer neighbors and more space meant a second bedroom that Raoul used for work and I used for vocal practice.
In our new home, our relationship had strengthened. He found my creativity charming and inspiring. I found that his academic personality had a centering effect on me. Raoul, eager to marry and start a family, had proposed earlier this year. In love and content with our peaceful, calm partnership, I accepted.
I needed to tell him about Erik, I decided. Honesty demanded it. If Raoul was uncomfortable, I would ask Erik to meet with another university representative on Saturday night. Or I'd ask him to meet me somewhere else. Satisfied with that resolution, I straightened my head, leaned into my desk, and began tackling my inbox.
The rest of the day passed in a blur of meetings and projects. I had arranged follow-up meetings with several prospective donors who'd attended the university's fine arts gala. Seeing the list of upcoming meetings, Karen was pleased and said that she felt certain that "we'd" exceed our annual fundraising target.
In the afternoon, Meg Giry had stopped by my office to thank me for allowing her to attend the gala with such short notice. The younger Giry resembled her mother only in build. The older Giry had straight, dark hair and hazel eyes; her daughter had curly blonde hair and wide green eyes. Meg was friendly and outgoing and spent several minutes at my desk chattering about the dance patrons that she'd met at the gala and their interest in her graduate work. I listened with polite interest until Erik's name was mentioned.
"And Erik St. Clair – I've never seen him out before – but he didn't stay very long. He's a friend of maman's, you know," she said. "They've known each other since I was very small."
"I didn't realize – how did they meet?" I asked, keeping my eyes on my computer screen and feigning disinterest.
"I think maman was a friend of Erik's family," Meg said. "She doesn't talk about him very much. He's very quiet, almost reclusive. The mask, you know."
I didn't know. But, insead, I replied with, "I can't imagine."
My response must have sounded automatic, since Meg straightened and took a step back from my desk.
"My gosh! I'm sorry to take up so much of your time, Christine. I should let you work. But thanks again for inviting me to the gala. I had a great time."
"I'm glad that you were able to attend and I hope to see you at more events," I said, meaning the words. Meg was bright, talkative and had a knack for slipping into conversations and social events with ease. Raised by a woman like Antoinette Giry, she was unafraid of even the most austere patrons and art lovers. Her youth and optimism sparked instant friendships.
"Have a great day," Meg said before bouncing out through my office door. "I hope to see you around campus!"
The small room deflated after she left and I leaned against my desk, wishing away the last hour of the day. I needed to get home, needed to take a hot bath and, after he came home from teaching his evening class, try to explain some of this to Raoul. I rehearsed in my head: "Raoul, one of the guests at the gala invited me to his private box at the opera house. I turned him down, of course. But he sent flowers to my office this morning and I have reason to think he may have given a large sum of money to the university and may have had a hand in destroying a very old piano belonging to the music department. And he wears a mask."
There were a lot of ands in my explanation, I thought. And Raoul would ask questions that I didn't have answers to. No doubt, he'd question my hunch that Erik had been my mystery donor. And he would question my professional obligation to find out whether I was correct. An obligation that would demand that I attend the opening night of Don Quichotte.
Raoul trusted me. More than ever before, I was relying on that trust.
Feeling frustrated, I clicked open the web browser on my computer and typed "Erik St. Clair" into the search bar. As I suspected, I found very little. No social media profiles. No news clippings. A basic company website that contained no biographical information. Remembering a trick one of the IT guys had taught me, I copied the hyperlink of the company website and pasted it into a WHOIS domain name look-up service to find out who owned his company's site. I found nothing – whoever had created had used a proxy to register their domain name. My frustration increased and I let out a loud groan.
"Not feeling well?" a sympathetic coworker asked, passing my desk.
"No, no I'm not," I answered. "Actually, I think I'm going to head home early tonight. I've had a massive headache since the weekend."
"Hope you feel better soon," she chirped automatically.
"I hope so too," I said, glancing again at my blank computer screen and wishing that I had more information.
Buoyed by my decision to leave early, I sent a quick note to Karen to let her know that I was on my way out before gathering my things and leaving the office. If I was quick, I'd be able to catch Raoul before he left for his evening class.
My journey home was a two-minute walk to the nearest subway station and then a ten-minute ride to my stop, followed by a ten-minute walk to my apartment. While I'd learned to drive as a teenager, I'd never owned a car of my own and didn't intend to for as long as possible. Instead, Raoul and I had chosen to live closer to the center of the city, where we could walk or take transit to get anywhere we needed to go.
We lived in a four-storey brick apartment complex that was built in the late forties. While the outer walls showed their age, the inside of the building had been updated with a buzzer system, an elevator and new flooring in the common areas. Each unit was heated by sturdy white radiators, which gave off a gauzy warmth in the winter and became useful places to hang wet towels during the summer months.
Raoul was just about to leave. We met in the doorway and stepped awkwardly around each other, our winter coats adding bulk to our steps.
"Christine! You're home early," he said and pulled me into a tight hug. He was smiling widely behind flushed cheeks, practically vibrating with excitement. "I just got a call from my department head – you won't believe the news."
"What is it?" I asked, setting my bags down on an end table.
"I texted you just a minute ago. I've been invited to present some of my graduate work at an international symposium on classical history this week," he said, spitting the words out in a rush.
"International?" I questioned.
"The university is flying me to Berlin. You won't believe the people at this conference – tenured professors from the Ivy Leagues, Christine, from the top universities in Europe! One of their presenters fell ill and the organizers asked me to step in at the last minute. What an honour!"
"Raoul, slow down. When are you leaving? This is so sudden."
My fiancé calmed instantly, his face stilling into a soft frown. "I'm leaving tomorrow morning, if it's all right with you, of course. I'll only be gone a week."
"A week?" I echoed.
"You could come with me, you know. Be a tourist while I'm at the conference. I know we're saving for the wedding, but we haven't set a date and I'd love to have you there with me."
"I can't, Raoul. I have work, meetings with donors. And it's almost Christmas. We haven't finished our shopping yet."
"Oh," he said, shoulders slumping.
"Any other time and I would go with you," I said. "But I want you to go. You'll meet some incredible historians and academics who share your interests. It's important for your career, Raoul."
At this, he brightened again, his soft lips stretching into a gentle smile.
"Thank you for understanding sweetheart. I really do have to run or I'll be late for my lecture. I need to cancel my next two classes and give the students in my first-year class an extension on their assignments. I'll be in my office late tonight, but we'll talk more when I get home, okay?"
"Okay," I agreed, squeezing his hand in encouragement.
Raoul leaned over to plant a kiss on the top of head, mussing my curls with his stubbled cheeks. "I love you," he murmured, pulling my hair back into place and tucking a stray curl behind my left ear.
"I love you too," I whispered before watching him disappear out the door.
After he left, I pulled off my boots and hung my jacket in the hall closet. Because Raoul worked sporadic hours and did much of his marking and planning at home, I rarely had the apartment to myself and I found that I enjoyed the echoing quiet. I padded down the hallway in sock-covered feet and walked into the bathroom, where I poured soaps and salts into the tub and began to run the water for a bath.
Like many small children, I was happiest when I was in water. As an adult, I loved going to the beach, swimming in pools, and taking long baths. Satisfied that there were enough bubbles forming in the water, I pulled off my blazer and slipped out of my tank top, pencil skirt, and underthings. Naked, I tiptoed back to the kitchen to fetch candles, matches, and a glass of red wine.
Later, as I lay in the bath, I contemplated the next several days without Raoul. Since he was gone for a week, I had the perfect opportunity to wrap the gifts I'd gotten him for Christmas. I could also do a couple projects around the apartment, or go on a girls' night with a few friends. Or go see the opening of Don Quichotte with Erik on Saturday, I thought. Immediately, I felt a twinge of guilt.
But. It was just an opera. With a man who'd sent me flowers.
I huffed, expelling the tension that was twisting my stomach into gummy worms. It wasn't fair to make assumptions. I didn't know what Erik's intentions were. Perhaps he was an eccentric man who sent flowers instead of emails? Hmmpf.
Still. Raoul would be away for several days. While this seemed like something I should tell my fiancé, there was no reason it couldn't wait.
I grimaced. It seemed wrong somehow to run to Raoul and to tell him - what exactly? That a wealthy man had spoken four sentences to me at a work event, spotted my engagement ring, and invited me to join him at the opera. It didn't make sense. Or I was overthinking it. Telling Raoul could wait until he returned from Berlin, I decided. If there was something worth telling.
Satisfied that I was sparing myself an uncomfortable conversation, I took another sip of wine and sank further into my liquid nest of hot water and rose-scented bubbles.
After a solid twenty minutes spent relaxing in the tub, I emerged, slightly wrinkled, and returned to my regular evening activities: cooking dinner, watching a bit of television, and practicing some of the more challenging pieces I'd performed as a student. After changing career tracks, singing was no longer the central focus of my life. Still, I wanted to maintain the tone and range I'd worked so hard to attain.
The second bedroom of our apartment functioned as office space for Raoul (though he preferred to work in the kitchen or living room, closer to the television) and music studio space for me. The room contained shelves of history and music books, my record and CD collections, a small desk and chair, an armchair, and a modest sound system. When Raoul was in class or grading papers, I occupied my time in this room and, of all the spaces in the apartment, it was the only room that truly felt like mine.
In the next hour, I rehearsed from La Bohème. At the opera house, I'd sung in the chorus, contributing backing vocals and harmonies to support the main cast. In my studio, with no one to hear me, I sang the part of Mimi, the leading soprano role. More than two years had passed since my last performance and I missed the discipline and rigour of auditions, memorization, rehearsal, and production. My evenings in the small bedroom were a wistful indulgence, a slow goodbye to a life I'd left behind.
Some nights, I fooled myself into thinking that I could rejoin the opera company, work my way up into more challenging roles. It was a gamble. I was 27 now and wouldn't be able to compete for ingénue roles after I crossed into thirties.
More practically, there was Raoul to think of, his needs to consider. My fiancé was well into his thirties and growing more vocal about his desire to marry and start a family. I'd said that I wanted the same things. Any indecision I might have had wasn't worth jeopardizing a secure, comfortable relationship with a man who loved me.
And so, two months ago, when Raoul had dropped to his knee during a walk along the bluffs, I'd said yes.