DON JUAN: NEXT THURSDAY MORNING YOUR INSTRUCTIONS WILL AWAIT YOU AT NUMBER 5. ERIK.
Erik was insane, no doubt. After all this goddamn time, I'd all but given up looking for a response. I was merely doing it out of habit. Any normal person would have given up long since; I suppose that made me insane, too. And how the hell did he expect me to sneak into Box 5 at the Opera House in the morning? He'd forgotten that everyone was not a Phantom. It had to be Box 5 he was referring to. At least I hoped so.
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Lucie was no longer a kitchen maid, but a lady of leisure. Lili had befriended her and they were nearly constant companions, in spite of having nothing but small talk to make between them. It was more of a challenge for Lucie to get out at night, but she still she found her way to me. Our reunion was full of tears and recrimination. She wore Philippe's ring, yet refused to admit any feelings for him. She insisted that if I would not marry her, she would marry him when he returned in the spring. I threatened her that I would not be coerced, and if she wanted to whore herself to a man she couldn't love for a title and pretty clothes, to hell with her. Still, our lovemaking was more fiercely passionate than ever and we clung to each other as if we were drowning.
I've always been a perverse bastard. I felt fairly certain that I loved Lucie. Whatever it was I felt for her, I hadn't experienced it before. I don't know why I refused to marry her. I was afraid of something. Looking back now, I wonder how I could have been so obtuse.
Lili brought Lucie to visit me and presented her as Philippe's fiancée. We went through the sordid farce of making polite small-talk with each other twelve hours after lying tangled up together. I welcomed her to the family and she recalled seeing me from the kitchen garden. I could see that Lucie was terrified and I felt it was a pathetic performance, too, but if Lili found us transparent, she gave no sign of it.
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I snuck into Box 5 at the Opera House successfully. On one of the chairs, there was an envelope of fine quality, sealed in red wax with the impression of a death's head which looked to be a duplicate of the seal in Mother's trunk. My hand trembled as I reached for it. Though I was dying to open it, I rushed from the building; I couldn't bring myself to open it there.
I leaned against the side of the theater and slipped my finger under the seal; it was fresh and pliable. My breath caught in my throat when I saw the familiar handwriting, in red ink:
Don Juan,
There is a café across the square. A week from today at half-past five, take the outside table nearest the entrance to the Opera House. Dress in theater clothes and wear a red rose in your lapel. If you are not alone, you shall not hear from me again. I do not suffer treachery lightly.
Your servant,
E.
It was Erik, by God, without a doubt. I couldn't stop trembling; I was sure I wouldn't sleep all week. I had to begin a list of all the things I wanted to ask him. Only a week!
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I had stayed in Paris to try and quiet my mind after recovering Erik's note. When I returned home two days later, Lucie joined me late in the evening. She looked different in a way I couldn't name. I had undressed and slid under the covers; she was sitting on the edge of the bed, her back to me, clutching her chemise to her breasts to cover herself. I waited. She did not face me when she began to speak.
"I'm pregnant, Gaston, and it's starting to show quite a bit."
Shit. Oh, SHIT. Flaming balls of pig shit; Gaston, think.
"It's Philippe's, right?" Idiot.
Lucie was trying very hard to cry silently, so that I wouldn't be angry about her tears as well as her news. "I've lost everything," she sobbed. She sprung up from the bed as if it was burning. Her chemise dropped away as she turned. Jesus, she had a gigantic bump. Two, three days ago, last time she was with me, she looked like a normal girl. Now…she had a gigantic bump.
"Jesus, Lucie, you've got a gigantic bump!"
So much for crying silently. She ran from the bedroom; I was right behind her. No no, Lucie, let's not run naked from Gaston's house. I steered her back to bed.
"You don't want me," she accused. "Philippe won't have me."
"There's no way it could be his, you're sure?" It was really, really hard to imagine that he still hadn't got to her. You would think at Christmas when they made it official that he would have gone for a bit.
"It's impossible, Gaston," she insisted, fairly disgusted with me. "I know you can't believe it, but I don't want him and I haven't encouraged him."
So, I'd gotten a monster baby on my brother's fiancé, and in just a few days I had an interview with my mother's lunatic former beau. A few days after that, judging by the look of her, everyone would know that there was more in Lucie's belly than ever went in through her mouth. Things were shaping up beautifully. I flared with silent rage at Mother: if you were here, none of this would have happened. I let Lucie cry all over me; not what I had planned for the evening, but I felt that I would need to learn to be more flexible in the future.
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"Lucie, I've thought a lot about this." Her eyes were so bright, so tender. I'd agonized over this for several days, but no matter how I turned it, I came up with the same answer. It was critical that I get this mess behind me and get on with it. I had to get back to Paris and Erik, and what Mother wanted me to learn.
"I just don't want to marry you. I don't want to marry anyone. I'll give you money–for the child."
Lucie's face fell, but still I saw optimism in her eyes. "Can…I come see you then? Can I still be with you?" Hopeful again.
"No. No more, it's finished, Lucie. I'll give you money." I was struggling to stay strong. If I held her, she'd take encouragement from that. If I smiled at her, or tried to comfort her in any way, she'd be convinced that we still had a future, and we didn't. I wanted no part of her and her baby.
"I don't want money, Gaston, I don't want money!" she crumbled into complete hysteria. She groveled; she pleaded; she wailed and screamed and cursed me. She told me how sorry I'd be, because I loved her as much as she loved me. She promised that no one would ever love me as she did. Well, I had no doubt of that.
She wouldn't stop. She wouldn't leave. So I got on a horse and went to Paris.
-0-0-0-0-
It was not yet half-past five. I sat at the table Erik had specified in his note and ordered a coffee. I patted my breast pocket for the thousandth time to ensure that Mother's little book of sonnets was still there. I sipped the coffee; it was doing nothing for my nausea.
The cathedral bells struck the half hour and I turned toward the entrance to the café. For an instant, I met the eyes of someone familiar, but the next instant, the eyes were gone. Had I imagined it? I bolted from the table and around the corner. Catching up easily with the small woman in black, I grasped her arm and spun her around to face me.
"Aunt Giry? It is you!" An old friend of my mother's, we saw a good deal of her when we were young. She had been the ballet mistress at the Opera when Mother was there, and served almost as a surrogate mother. She was old, but straight and sharp as ever.
"Gaston!" she smiled. "What a surprise!"
"What are you doing here?" I asked, confused.
"I was just passing by, Gaston," she replied nervously.
"No, you saw me and you tried to duck out. I saw your face–just barely, but I know you ran when you saw me! What are you doing here, Aunt Giry?" I demanded. I was shocked to see tears spring into Aunt Giry's eyes.
"Gaston…" her voice quavered as she struggled for composure. She was always so self possessed. "Please, let it be. He knows nothing of you…he is old, Gaston."
"Who? Erik? Erik sent you here? How do you know him?"
"I was at the Opera for years, Gaston, of course I knew him." She dug her handkerchief out and dabbed at her eyes. "Gaston, please, do you have the Sonnets? He wants the Sonnets."
"No. The Sonnets were a lure; I might have turned them over if he'd come and spoken to me, instead of sending you, like a coward. I want to know about my Mother and him. Mother left me a trunk…of Erik's things, basically, and I want to understand it. Tell him he can have the book if he meets me and answers my questions." I replied, angry and bitterly disappointed.
"He's not a coward. He's old, I told you. He doesn't come outside."
"Is he ill?"
"Not particularly; he's reclusive–you know that much."
"Take me to him, then."
"I can't, Gaston. Please, you don't understand; he doesn't know anything about you."
"That's nonsense, he was obviously obsessed with my mother. No doubt he followed every move she made as best he could from his hiding place. You can't tell me he didn't know she married Father and had children. He knows she's dead–"
"Yes."
"Where is he? Is he over there?" I gestured toward the Opera House.
"Gaston, I can't…"
"What is it between you? Why did he send you? Tell me, dammit!" I shouted.
"I do the same for him now as I did at the Opera. I run errands for him sometimes."
"You've done for him all these years? You're his lover–"
"No! Gaston, he's alone, he has no one. I help him…oh, God, leave it, Gaston." She continued to shed tears.
"Why don't you think he's a fiend and a monster? Everyone considers him a fiend and a monster."
"No," she whispered softly. "Your mother didn't."
"You knew about them, then. You tell me," I shook her arm, more roughly than I intended. "You tell me what happened between Mother and Erik!"
"It's done now, Gaston, no one can change anything. Why do you open such old wounds? Love your Mother, love what she gave you. Go home and forget all this."
"My Mother wanted me to learn about this, Aunt Giry! This trunk that Father gave me, it had the Sonnets in it–do you know how this book is inscribed? Look, look: 'To my Muse. E.' Mother gave this to me! She gave me half-burned pieces of music; roses, dozens of roses; Erik's mask, broken to pieces–she collected all the pieces she could find, all but one, wrapped them up and preserved them so carefully all this time. There are three little notes he wrote her in there–do you want to see? Come to the house, I'll show it all to you. She wanted me to have these things; she wanted me to know…something; I don't know what. Father can't help me. He tried to tell me all he could, but he said he never asked Mother about Erik–do you believe that?"
"Yes, I believe it." Aunt Giry replied firmly. "Raoul is an extraordinary man." The way Aunt Giry said that; it was almost chilling. I pressed her.
"Erik was Mother's lover, wasn't he? Wasn't he? How did she come to be with Father? Tell me!"
"I can't say anything more, Gaston. Forget him. Forget all of this. You're so young; let it go." She sounded so sad, so tired. "Gaston, please, won't you give me the book? It would mean so much to him to have something of Christine's."
"You've got plenty of compassion for him, Aunt Giry. It's a pity you can't feel any for Christine's son." I walked away in disgust. My eyes began to sting ominously. I ran around the side of the Opera House, crouched down, pulled my cloak over my eyes and cried bitter, angry tears.