Thank you for all the lovely comments.
Erik rubbed his eyes gently and looked back at the screen. Disappointingly, the spreadsheet did not improve.
Damn. He'd spent the last few days doing his financials in preparation for the holiday season and it wasn't what he'd hoped. The doors would stay open, sure, but there wouldn't be enough for real improvements or meaningful retrofitting.
His days as the owner and manager, as well as program director, musical advisor, stage overseer, accountant, financial planner, and, as the need arose, plumber, would continue. Erik had hoped to hire at least some of the workload out. Not that the students and interns didn't do well, but once they knew a few things, they left or went back to school. The range of skills they learned meant they were in high demand, but his return on investment was dismal.
It wasn't for lack of quality that they left but, if pressed, Erik might admit there was a certain lack of polish or perhaps originality to the recent repertoire. Which meant developing new shows. Which meant time and effort.
Erik's shoulders drooped. The point of this exercise was to find the slack so he could relax, even a fraction, not drive himself even harder. A few years ago he might not have minded; hadn't, in fact. He knew what a seventy hour week felt like- whirling, wild, and magical. Exhausting and busy.
Busy enough to forget how lonely it was. Surrounded by people, yet lonely.
His phone chirped.
.
Finished a job! Free to celebrate?
.
He hadn't seen Christine in three days. Maybe that was why he was being a morose bastard.
.
I have champagne.
.
Without a chance for an assistant in sight, the coming season would make days like these frequent. Long, tedious days. Long days would be easy to face if Christine was there to help with the cold, lonely nights. And that was up to him, wasn't it?
.
Champagne? Is it cold?
.
He hadn't had champagne since the company completed their last big run what, four? Five months ago? Three glasses and then back to his office to start writing the checks. Prior to that, he could count on his hands the times he'd bothered with it.
.
Of course.
.
She was on her way. Erik got out two champagne flutes and held them by the stems. Funny, he'd never opened champagne in this apartment, yet once he knew Christine had landed a big job, he'd immediately bought a bottle for the day she finished.
Christine sparkled with laughter and kissed his neck and chin when she arrived. She whooped with glee at the loud pop of the cork, and giggled when the fizz tickled her nose.
"So," she began when he poured her second glass. "Do you always keep some bubbly on ice or did you have other plans for this?" Christine held up her glass, bubbles streaking up the sides in tiny stripes.
This kind of happiness was the best disease. Erik bent for a quick kiss, hoping to catch more. "You know, it's the strangest thing."
"What?"
"Not sure what it is, but I always feel like celebrating these days."
Oh, he was buying a case next time.
…
It is said that no work is ever finished, but merely abandoned. Erik's critical eye scoured over the bars and stanzas of his work and still found it wanting.
The music itself would be glorious. The half-finished lyrics- lovely. A counterweight, carefully measured to neither outshine nor hide behind the singer it accompanied. It built and crested, was given structure by brass, then capped off with crashing percussion and towering strings. There was just one problem.
Christine would never choose it for herself. Okay, maybe not never, but it wasn't what she liked. Wasn't what she asked for when they sang together. Erik sighed as he ran a hand down his face, rubbing at the strain in his eyes.
It was beautiful. Beauty wasn't enough.
How ironic.
A sharp rap at Erik's office door brought his attention back to the present, so he closed his laptop and slipped the mask back on. Before he rose from his desk, he scrawled a little note:
Write for Christine, not the audience. Not yourself.
The next three hours were spent glad-handing patrons and hoping his accounts would reflect it soon.
…
The winds were too cold to leave the balcony doors open. Erik disliked the way the closed space flattened Christine's voice, but he couldn't broach it yet. Couldn't ask her to sing in the theater for anything other than fun on empty mornings until he had a piece ready for her.
As they took a break for water and fresh drinks, Erik tapped at his laptop and opened a file of new fliers and playbills his company had prepared. As he flipped through them, Christine sipped her tea and looked at the screen.
"Who made those?"
Erik zoomed in on an image and grimaced. It was badly pixelated and poorly cut from another image. "A guy from the company. He did his best."
Christine sipped her wine. "How much did you pay?"
"Pizza and a six pack."
"Hmm," Christine set her drink on the table and got out her phone. She swiped and tapped, then held it up for him to see. "Here. Work sample. Give me three days and I'll have these polished up."
Erik took the phone. Within a few seconds he wanted whatever the images were selling. He didn't even own a cat, but if he did, he'd buy this… thing.
It was settled. "How much?"
She laughed. "No charge, but I expect benefits."
…
Three hours of Erik's day were suddenly freed when a patron generously offered to coordinate a union safety inspection for him. The patron got one-on-one time with the cast and crew, an unlimited, all-access pass for the day, and an insider's view of some updates he'd helped pay for.
Erik got to sit the hell down. It was a win-win.
The futon was not so dreary now. Despite the lumpy cushion and eroded finish, it wasn't such a bad spot. Positive associations were funny like that.
Erik gave a half smile when he heard a crinkle and found an errant scrap of paper just under a slat of the armrest. He plucked the paper free and unfolded it. It was one of the notes that had flown free a few days before. He skimmed the note, recalling the musical it was from.
Overlay scene with theme as character 1 has emotional reveal.
He really wasn't looking for a poignant reminder, yet here it was.
He had planned on taking a nap. Now all he could think about was the comfort in Christine's arms and the softness he found there. Erik leaned back, rested his head on a board and imagined falling asleep beside her, skin still tingling from her touch, the ease of a bed that was already warm and the way her curls would float on the pillows. To wake up with her, mushy and creased from sleep, both of them vulnerable and so very, very right. Erik knew what he had to do, but the how of it blocked his path.
How do you overcome a lifetime of hiding and overcompensation?
How… rude. Now his nap was ruined.
Erik was beginning to answer his own questions when the safety inspection finished and he had to abandon his train of thought to answer the union rep's questions. The patron was keen to continue his own backstage tour, and picked Erik's brain for another hour over the chipped paneling and the outdated house light switch. Things Erik knew needed work, but he just didn't have the means.
Everything needed work, but some things deserved his attention more than others.
…
It was nearly eight, and the streaking sunlight that once ushered in his evening music in the had long set. The last suggestions of purple had faded an hour ago, leaving the courtyard below black but for the floating lights hanging from skeletal tree limbs.
Erik tapped his fingertips on the door frame. Christine was working on the new fliers, playbills, and posters and said she might have something ready tomorrow or the day after.
That was good. Great, really, but Erik had made a decision and needed to follow through before he backed out. He'd backed out of that first kiss and hated that he did- he might have been kissing Christine a whole day earlier if he hadn't gotten tied up in himself. So here he was, not tied up, at risk of backing out again.
Erik surveyed the room carefully. Every cue, every prop, in precise position. The stage was set. Once she opened the unlocked door, there was no going back.
He opened the balcony door and welcomed the rush of cold air, sharp with the tang of snow. He turned on the balcony light and left the others off, then he tapped a message and sat at the piano.
Open your balcony door.
He'd last played Schubert's Ave at her request. Tonight he played it as a summons. She would come. She had to. Christine would have to walk closer to see him, would have to take the last steps. Erik had come as far as he could.
The mask was on the kitchen counter; close enough to be seen, but out of reach. Christine would see it when she walked in and he'd be at the piano, barefaced. More naked than he'd been in years.
The subdued variations he created were as delicate as the floating lights in the garden below. Achingly beautiful, with gentle rises and falls like wavelets lapping at the shore. Understated questions from a supplicant. Long lost from one devotion and falling headfirst into a new one.
He began the song again. Perhaps she was not home. Perhaps she was simply enjoying the song.
Perhaps that was the door.
"Erik?" Her voice came from behind him, as though she'd stopped to contemplate the mask on her way. His stomach lurched, and he missed a note.
"Shhh," Christine hushed, and began to sing, her lack of warm up leaving her catchy and full of gravel and butterscotch. A touch, just at the back of his neck, soothing his hunched shoulders, before drifting forward to his throat and chin. Her favorite places to kiss.
Cool fingers lifted his chin and Erik abandoned Schubert. Tears burned in his eyes and he closed them. Maybe it wasn't her first look but it was it was his face. His own feelings were confused and muddied.
Silence rang in his ears, darkness behind his lids. A light touch wiped away a tear.
"You know, they say eyes are the windows to the soul," Christine whispered.
One eye at a time, Erik opened and looked up. She was so soft in this light. Her brow was frowning but her trembling lips (the ones he kissed and kissed) were just turned up at the corners. Compassion and pity are cousins but they are not the same.
Erik cleared his throat. "In some cases, they forgot to hang drapes." He was without the softness of flesh. Hard angles and exposed sub structure like abandoned framework.
Her cool hands cupped his face, thumbs lightly grazing his cheekbones. "You don't hang curtains in a cathedral."
…
A dry throat woke Erik during the night and he untangled himself from Christine, careful not to wake her. As reluctant as he was to get up, it was sort of nice- he got another look at everything he'd never had before. He had someone in his bed to not disturb.
Erik leaned against the sink and drank deeply, then turned to face his other guest. They were a package deal.
"Hello, Pretty." Erik said softly. The dog had been watching him from the moment he emerged from the bedroom.
The dog's bushy eyebrows twitched and it gave a low whuff.
"It's a bit unfair, you know," Erik said, kneeling a bit. "Ugly dogs get contests and fundraisers. I'm ugly, and I have to wear a mask and stay backstage."
This close to the floor, a certain scent made Erik splutter. A dark circle in the carpet pooled around a piano leg.
He gritted his teeth. "You son of a-"
Before he could finish, a sleepy sound came from the bedroom. "Erik? Are you coming back?"
The dog looked up at him accusingly.
Erik stood, charitably not strangling the offending rat dog. "We may both be ugly, but I have a theater. Don't you forget it." He closed the door behind him and made a mental note to soak the carpet.
He promptly forgot the moment Christine snuggled against his back.
...
If anyone is wondering, I mostly imagine Muirin007's Leroux Erik as my story model. :) He looks like a human rendering of a gothic cathedral to me.