No More Gifts
"The Opera"
(Part V)

CHRISTINE DAAÉ'S (SECOND) JOURNAL

"Erik!" I whispered, yanking him backwards. "There are other people in here!"

I have perhaps repeated this statement a thousand times in this journal alone, but it bears repeating once more: such is the way with Erik. In this I mean that nothing ever lasts forever in his company. No anger, no pain, no sadness, no joy. That sweet serenity we held between our palms could not have stood a chance against the incomprehensible force of nature which is Erik himself.

For it was with the smallest of voices that he whispered my name, shattering the silence and proving just how fleeting peace can truly be in this world. Startled from my thoughts, I turned to squint at him in the darkness, the flames of his eyes peering back at me, a sobering hearth fighting not to be put out by the tears that were always threatening to fall, even now, and I wondered what it was that he could possibly have left to say…

"How will you remember me?"

I could see his heart pounding in his chest, hammering against his breast bone with such brutality that it sent the lapels of his jacket fluttering. Was his heart trying to escape? I thought of the question from before – what happens to a heart filled with more love that it can handle? – and saw the answer now, right before my eyes, pummeling his chest and leaving bruises and sores all over his rotten innards. All of the hope he'd never had was finally bursting into life, giving him the courage that only the dying can have, filling his veins with the desperation that only the condemned can have…

"When I am – when you are gone, and I am but a faded memory in your mind… how will you remember me?"

And because that was still not enough for him, he added, with a smile built from the first and last of his earthly hopes:

"Will you remember me kindly?"

Oh, what was I supposed to say to that? Ever since the day we met, my head had become filled with the most blood-curdling visions imaginable, haunting the darkness behind my eyes each night when I laid myself down to sleep. I did not dream of horrors; they simply lived on in my memory, as breathing monsters who could bleed just as readily as real ones, as palpable as the little beady creeping things that ran over and under my skin when I tried to fall asleep in Erik's mother's bed. They replayed themselves over and over again, until I grew too weary to fight their torment any longer and at last submitted to their incumbency of my mind.

The bugs went away during the time that Erik and I shared a bed together. It seemed even they found him so revolting that they wished not to get any closer. No; no beady little insects with a thousand little legs ran across my skin when he was beside me; only his cold fingers, black-tipped from frost and decay, ever dared to prod my formicated flesh. And when they touched, or scraped, or tickled – oh, the terror that filled me! The terror, of the most fantastic breed… of the best breed… for I would never mistake his touch for any of those horrible beetles, worms, or spiders – I would never cry out with fear for a thick, over-juiced centipede crawling upon the inside of my thigh – I always knew it was just he who touched me, albeit with that disturbing, scuttling touch… and for that reason, no matter how much I shivered or shuddered or shook, I found myself never wishing to turn away.

So to the man who had hurt me in so many ways imaginable? Who had broken down my walls and made a mockery of my trust, who had deceived and manipulated me? Who listened to my private thoughts, which I spoke only when I thought I was all alone because no-one else was around, and in doing so came to know me better than I knew myself? Who built our love on a bed of lies, defiled from the outset, and refused to embrace the truth of anything that occurred between us? Who I still loved, regardless, for some reason… for some reason…

"It would be impossible for me to remember you any other way," I settled on. "I have only happy memories of you left in my heart. Of you, as my tutor… my Angel… my friend… my suitor… and, in most recent times, my husband. I do not regret a single moment I spent at your side, and I am for the better that we ever met."

Because Erik was right; I had always been a very good actress. The lies spilled easily from my lips, just as they always did. At the same time, my hand pulled softly from his clasp, trailing down to touch at his trembling knee. I did not dare move it further up this time, not wishing to overwhelm him – but he was very clearly straining for more contact, and so, seeing as I remained unmoving, he placed his own hand on his other knee and crept his fingers up and inwards.

A pulsing rhythm started up on the organ down below, grunting quiet staccato notes with each pass up and down the scale. I found my attention being torn away from Erik's lap as I peered over the balustrade's edge, suddenly fascinated with the music resonating all around. Although it was only an ostinato, to carry us through the changing of the sets, it was the first melody this evening to finally pique my interest. This was not Dorian, nor was it Phrygian, but something else… more ethereal, more dreamy… whole tone! What a concept. Every note, evenly spaced, strictly paced, so that each run along the organ's length was smooth and unstilted, not a catch to be found. In my mind I could visualize the player's hands upon the keys, slickened from the sweat of his accelerating pace, his expert fingers nursing each sweet little note with his doting affection, thumbing around for a moment just at the top, cradling the lower rounded registers, plucking and pulling at the perky knobs – until the entire room exploded with triumphant symphony, the orchestra cresting atop us all with wetted throats blowing against their horns and flutes, the cymbals crashing in blows like the waves against the shore, a storm of fury seizing us all in its euphoric convulsions… until the sound faded, like it always must, and left the entire theatre to sit in their shame in silence.

As the score returned to its previous uninspired monotony, I heard a ruffle of fabric, and looked back to Erik just in time to see him fiddling with something long and upright within his lap. Noticing my attention, he raised a bottle up from between his legs, freshly uncorked, and replaced his knife back in his coat pocket.

"Amontillado," he said, holding it up to show me the label. "A sixty-nine year old vintage. Just like last time, if you recall?"

I did, unfortunately. "…Did you bring that with you?"

"I brought many things up from the house with me, for our shared enjoyment," he said, fishing out a set of glasses from the side table. "This bottle being only one of them."

He poured me a healthy glass, nearly spilling over the top, and then set about pouring his own. As I waited for him to finish, I held the glass before me, peering through the crystal to ponder the amber fluid sitting patiently within.

"Do you like amontillado?" I asked him, without really thinking about it.

"No," he said sharply, before entreating me with a sincere smile. "It's rather the association that does it for me."

Really? I winced at the thought. The only 'associations' I could think of in his past that had to do with amontillado were the time I had 'plied' him with it as a nightcap, as well as the time his mother had 'drugged' him with it before she left… but I couldn't think of anything else beyond that. Could the answer be so simple? Was it truly just a life-long obsession, a complex of the most oedipal of natures, something he just couldn't let go? Curiosity alone led me to tempt disaster and clarify: "Of your mother?"

He shook his head, and tilted the glass to his lips. He took his time with his sip, savoring the glittering sherry as it poured all over his tongue and seeped back to color his pallid cheeks. Then he lowered the glass back down and held it between both hands like it was the most fragile thing in the world. "My father, actually."

"He drank amontillado?"

"Loved it," Erik said. "It was the only thing I ever saw him drink. Not any of that overpriced vinegar swill they sell in the shops around here, either – it always had to be of the most expensive import, special-ordered and aged to perfection. From Spain, where he lived, once, as a boy… from the fields that grow the finest palomino grapes…"

"You've never told me about your father."

"I haven't? Oh… well, there isn't much to say. He died when I was young," Erik took another sip. "He was sick. A muscular disorder – 'wasting', my mother called it. Looked like a skeleton, curled up in bed like he was. Bones under a blanket. Hardly opened his eyes. I don't think he even knew what I looked like."

"How old were you when he…?"

"Died? Young enough for it not to matter. I was spared of that grief. My mother was a wreck, of course, but thankfully she didn't take it out on us. She was always such a good mother like that." He chuckled at his joke before he continued on, swirling the wine in his glass once more. "She always told me I had his eyes."

"They're certainly unique."

"Oh – not the color, Christine," he laughed again, knowing my mind had only been thinking of the obvious. "Nobody in the world has eyes like mine. She just meant the hollow, deathly look of them. It was never a compliment."

"Are you so sure?"

"Yes."

I placed my hand over his, wrapping around the fragile stem of the glass. "Can you ever let yourself believe otherwise?"

"My imagination is not so strong."

"Are we not pretending right now?"

"That we are…" Another swirl, taking my hand with it. Then he sighed, and studied the glow of the stagnant amontillado for a minute. "Will it please you if I tell you a story about him?"

I nodded.

He tossed back another sip, savoring it slowly just as before, and then set his glass on the armrest between us. He held it there with loose fingers, the whole time, as he began to narrate to me in a soft and edgeless voice: "I have only one memory of my father worth sharing. It's from somewhere in a summer from my youth, on a dry evening in the middle of a month-long drought. I might have forgotten it as a dream, if not for the way the blistering heat scorched my throat so thoroughly that it's left me imperishably parched, with an unquenchable thirst, still, after so many years…

"My mother and her maid had just carried my father out to the porch, per the doctor's orders, for him to sit on a chair and breathe in some fresh air, with the hope of bettering his shriveled lungs. He was a deeply allergic man, a hypochondriac even before his decline, and was made impossibly more ill by everything inside our quaint country home. Absolutely everything, I tell you, from the few flecks of dust our maid forgot to wipe, to the soap we washed his quilts with, to the turpentine my mother brewed his tea with. We pitied him for this, and – oh, by the way, that was a joke, Christine. My goodness, your face could be a portrait worth millions. My father never drank tea, my dear; he only drank wine, remember? Wine mixed with turpentine…? Ah, you're no fun – and anyway we hoped to relieve him of some of his agony by risking the dangers of the world and exposing him to the outside breeze for an hour or so. We didn't remove him from his bed often; it was difficult work, even if he was just skin and bones, and we never really saw an improvement despite our efforts. Truth be told, I suspect the doctor just wanted some privacy to – how should I say this politely? – 'prescribe some cough syrup' for my mother's sore throat. You see, she was always sick, Christine, always… but this isn't a story about her, I guess, it really isn't at all, so I won't talk anymore about her or her affairs. But my mother and the doctor deposited him on the chair, angling him just right to look out at the field, to get him out of the way... and I sat at his feet, curled up like a dog, just like they told me to do… just like I still always do.

"Mother had put a glass in his hand before she went back in the house with the doctor. It was the one with the chip on the side, which she said was his favorite because it was the last of a set he had acquired in Bohemia. I don't suppose he actually cared much for what he was given; he never seemed to notice what was placed in his hand, let alone show any sort of contentment or recognition for anything at all. Still, all the same… there he sat with that glass, unmoving as a statue, staring wordlessly at the field of golden hay, as golden as the setting sun, as golden as the amontillado swirling slowly in his glass, until eventually he brought it to his lips and drank the smallest drop.

"We sat there in silence together for hours as he did this, working at his glass with a thousand small and silent sips until it was all dry and gone. My mother had given me nothing, not even a water bowl, and since I was not allowed to leave my father's side – someone had to watch him – I was forced to sit there, quietly desiccating at his feet, as I dreamed of a drop of water to sate my baking tongue. That was the way we always did it, more or less. I did not know my father's voice; he never spoke to me in all those years. He never looked at me, for that matter, except when he accidentally lulled his head in my direction. Even then, though, he never actually looked at me; for his dulled eyes always seemed to be looking past me, to something behind my repulsive face, as if he never even saw it at all.

"I was an active child back then, always clambering atop furniture and railings and rooflines and, yes, even chandeliers… but on these days I had enough sense to stay put and be quiet. Admittedly, it was wishful thinking on my part that I'd win any love by enduring my suffering in silence; as if my dehydration and discomfort would go away if I merely bit my tongue on any complaint I might've made. You see, I still had a child's naivete back then – much like you still do, Christine, though you deny it. To get my mind off the heat, anyway, I busied myself with drawing patterns in the porch planks, etching the wood with a sharpened stone – not quite smart enough to realize the connection between my hobby and the scoldings my mother gave me for being a destructive little demon – but this time I happened to look up to see my father staring down at me.

"He was a mason by trade, taught by his father, but because of his illness he never made a name for himself in the business. But Christine, hear me, truly hear me, and understand that I am not exaggerating when I say he was quite frankly the world's greatest draftsman. The man was a natural genius, with a talent for seeing through walls and imagining full constructions in his mind's eye without the use of even a paper or quill. He'd had an intense and rigorous apprenticeship under my grandfather's tutelage, being a prominent mason in his day who worked all across Europe restoring grand but largely decrepit castles back to their original glory… whether it was worth the effort, I can't say, as they were all demolished by the time I passed through in my own travels. Regardless, my father's meticulous drawings were the ones I studied, long after he died, which seeded my mind with the seductive art of architecture, of flying buttresses and ribbed vaults, of stiff-leaf columns and painstakingly erected bell-towers, which aroused a certain inspiration in me long after I left home and went off on my own. The palaces of Persia could not have been built without the foundation my father built for me; nor could a trapdoor have been set without his explicit instructions. Even my dearest friend, the torture chamber – who you hate! – owes its entire creation to my dead father's pre-written lessons in geometry. So, Christine, let me ask you now: if I am a murderer for the things I have built, does that not make him one as well? Should a teacher not be held responsible for the actions of his pupil, vulnerable and malleable as they are? I jest, I jest…

"Anyway, I think my drawings caught his eye. He certainly wasn't looking at me. As I said, he never looked directly at me… only past me, past my face, past my horrible and wretched face. I watched his blunt eyes travel up and down the ridgings I had carved in the wood, studying them in an almost critical manner, perhaps seeing something in my rough and clumsy linework that indicated I'd inherited a slight semblance of his skill. My chest puffed as I considered this. I let myself imagine all sorts of preposterous ideas: that he was impressed by me, that I was some sort of prodigy, that this was finally the moment I'd been waiting for where my whole life was about to change for the better. It was the first time I felt any pride for my work, and I prayed that even if he wouldn't look at me, that he would at last say something to me for once.

"Slowly, though, as his eyes tracked about my work, he began to lower his glass down, tilting it towards me – and it looked as if he was about to pour his sherry all over my hard work –

"I was mortified! Still, like the good little boy I was always trying to be, I forced myself to sit there and watch it happen. I promised myself I wouldn't cry. I had little experience with dashed hopes at that point in my life, you see, so I still lost my tears from time to time when something didn't go my way. I still do, I suppose, but we never really grow out of our disappointments, now do we…? Anyway, I watched the sherry crest to the top of the glass, crest near the edge, slosh around… and then roll back to the base, just like the ocean's gentle tide. My father straightened the glass a little bit more, to make certain it didn't spill, but still he held it before me, waiting for something that I couldn't quite fathom…

"Eventually I came to realize he was offering his glass to me. Me – little me – deplorable me! Me, who he had never spoken one word to before. He wanted me to take a sip. So I did, clasping my hands around the crystal with great uncertainty and fear, for I knew how expensive it was, even at that age – and yet swallowed it all with terribly reckless abandon, for I had been so unquaffably thirsty for so long – and it was… it was… foul!"

Here Erik pitched his face in a perfect display of a child's innocent surprise at being disgusted, with just that exact amount of accusatory hurt for being tricked into expecting something so repugnant to taste so much otherwise, as if reliving the actual moment in his mouth so many decades later. I couldn't help it as the corners of my lips twitched upwards, and I raised my glass up to hopefully hide my smile. He caught me regardless.

"Oh, don't laugh so, Christine. I was hardly three, maybe four. I hadn't developed a proper palate yet!" Despite his chastisement, he shared a few hearty laughs with me over it, so loud that I feared we were disturbing the women behind us. With them in mind, I quieted myself and covertly pointed behind us so Erik would remember we were in public. Erik only barked a harder laugh at that, which made me think that perhaps he didn't care what they thought after all… but after a moment, his laugh turned bitter and swiftly petered itself out on a sour note. We both took a sober sip of our respective drinks before he continued on.

"My father… did not laugh. Furthermore, by the time I had spit the liquor completely out, he had already turned his gaze back out to the field. But… as I went to hand back the glass, his weak fingers crept past it to wrap about my wrist. And his fingers – how cold they were! Like death, Christine, like mine and like death. I know how much you hate my touch; I hated his as well. I nearly pulled my arm away, repulsed by the sensation that those five cold fingers had about my little wrist… but I could not bring myself to do so! How could I? When it was his whose hand it was? He could not control the way his hand felt… but even still he had not the strength to pull me, only to guide me, and with that touch he indicated that he wanted me to stand. I rose to my feet – hardly eye level with him, as short as I was – and then… and then with his other hand… he touched the top of his knee!

"He patted it – not once, but twice! There was a clear lack of urgency in his movements, so much unlike my mother who lived and dreamed her entire life in a hurry, as if she had a specific plan for it that was unraveling at the seams faster than she could hope to mend it. No; just a couple of slow pats it was, with no forethought and certainly no afterthought, with no thought at all. It was an offer so obvious that even I, deplorable I, could not misunderstand it.

"I clambered up to sit on his lap, like a real little boy, and he held me in his fragile arms against his chest. Laying against him, all of his rib-bones poking into my back, I could feel his delicate heart beating softly beside my own. My head fell against his shoulder, upon that hard beam of a clavicle, and there I listened to the soft whistle of his breaths, each inhale and exhale a little fainter than the last. His embrace smelled of a slow death, a stagnant rot, which must have rubbed off on me, for from that moment I've never smelled of anything since.

"But together we sat, the only time in my entire life: me on my father's knees – his stare still vacant, tired, uncaring – myself scared, constantly flitting my eyes back to the house for fear that my mother would come out and see – but together regardless, looking out at an endless field of hay, golden as amontillado, golden as his eyes, in a single fleeting moment that has lasted as an eternity in my mind."

I watched as Erik sagged his shoulders with this final uttered line, choosing now to stare emptily down at the stage as if reciting this story for me had sapped him of all his energy. For a few quiet beats he did not speak, he did not move, he did not even breathe – and then suddenly he lifted his glass and downed the rest of his drink.

"Between you and I," he said, "I don't think my father was ever actually sick at all."

Before I could respond, he plucked my glass from out of my grasp, and set both his and mine back on the table.

"Now, Christine, did that make you feel a little better?" he asked. "For me to bear my soul a bit more to you, as if there's a reason anymore for us to know each other more than we already do?"

I felt his bitterness slipping out, even as he feigned such flippancy. How much of that story was a lie, I still have no clue. I suspect he may have begun the tale closer to the truth and diverged as he went on… or perhaps it was the other way around? Were his father's eyes gold or not? There was no way of knowing.

"Oh, Erik, my husband," I said, patting his arm, trying to make him remember his own game. "What on earth are you talking about? Is it not good that a woman is curious about her husband?"

He picked my hand up from his arm, loathfully eyeing it like some dead rat, before putting it up to his lips and kissing my fingertips. Two fingers slipped past and found themselves fondled by his wet and moldering mouth, as he murmured around them almost sweetly, "Ah, but curiosity is never a good quality for a woman to have, dear wife."

"Perhaps if I knew more, I would have less to be curious about," I retorted, just as lightly, "because I would already know it."

Suitably checked, he gave my hand back and sighed.

"Flawless logic as always, my wife," he said, in a way that assured me he most certainly did not agree with me. "And what if, pray tell, you did not like what you found out? What would knowing be good for?"

"I would not be curious anymore," I replied rather childishly, resisting the urge to wipe my slickened fingers on my skirts.

"And what if I told you what really happened to your boy – your Raoul?" Erik said, folding his arms with a humored sneer. "Is it so simple that you would just not be curious anymore?"

The blood washed out of my face. This was a topic I assumed we would never speak on again. I had my suspicions of course, as I had about everything Erik did, but I never dared wish for them to ever be confirmed. I had been all too willing to accept the bleak ambiguity of simply not knowing for the rest of my life, if it meant I would never have to face the horrible possibility that Erik had, once again, lied about the very thing he had promised me he hadn't done.

Now he was tempting me with the truth, tempting to break through my carefully curated menagerie of willfully ignorant lies I told myself. I did not want to consider why Erik could parade around the halls of the Opera house wearing Raoul's face as a ghastly mask without fear that the man himself would come for retribution. I did not want to consider how difficult it would be to find a runaway cabriolet in the middle of a giant forest during a thunderstorm while lugging around a drugged, stuporous hostage. I did not want to consider Raoul's final screams.

I did not want to consider anything.

Not then, at least. Not when the arrangement with Erik was so futile, and the concept of knowing was so pointless. Why make myself hate a man I was forced to live with for the rest of my life? Why embitter myself so completely and actively choose to be so unhappy, when it was so much easier to deceive myself into banal contentment? There was no way to escape back then; what else was I to do but construct some walls in my mind and close my eyes to the truth…?

But now… now, things were far different than before. Now I was going to leave Erik forever and return to my own life. Now I did not need to turn a blind eye to reality, because my year's stay in fantasy land was finally about to come to a end. Now I did not need to like Erik. Now I did not need to even tolerate him.

Now I could dare to be curious.

Even still – we were in Box Seven. And Box Seven, as Erik had told me before, was no place for the truth. It was a box built of lies and furnished with the very same hazy clouds that filled our dreams. It was not a place for curiosity. It was not a place meant for resolution. It was not a place meant for anyone to ever be honest with each other about anything. It was a place to deceive - and to be deceived.

Thus I made myself nod, even as the words could not be made by my strangled throat.

Erik raised his naked brows, apparently quite amused at my reluctant insistence, and said, "Truly, Christine…? If I killed your boy, if I told you that I did… if I told you I found him in the forest, bruised and broken, but not quite dead… and then grabbed him about that pompous neck of his and threw him here and there… if I choked him until his head turned red, then purple, as he foamed out his unintelligible, frothing appeals for life all over his proud boyish chin, dripping down past the point of it and dribbling his disgrace all over my throttling hands, only increasing my fervor and my rage the slicker they became… if I told you I took my knife from out of my pocket and thrust it deep into his core, deeper than he'd ever been cut before… if I slid my knife in and out as I sought his largest vessel's release, driving it in to the hilt each and every time, and in doing so coaxed that last gasping breath from his lungs… would that really not change anything between us? Besides the simple fact that you would know?"

I couldn't feel my lips as I forced myself to say:

"It wouldn't change a thing, dear husband. If anything, I would love you all the more for it."

And then, against all my desires, I kissed him.

It was not the romantic sort of kiss that comes from the passion of two lovers' loins; nor was it the heated, angrier sort that comes from even further down. It was but a peck – a polite brush against his cheek, as a wife would give her husband – and nothing more.

He groaned and slunk back in his chair, rubbing his cheek with a great sort of annoyance even as a faint pink hue on his cheeks betrayed him. "Your acting is atrocious, Christine. I'm very nearly offended. But rest assured, I am only being a prat. He isn't dead. Or is he? Ha ha… hum. It doesn't matter anymore what I say. Nothing matters. Is there anything else you're curious about, girl, while we're at it?"

So many things, I wanted to say – but did not. Instead I said: "You were right, my husband. I was wrong to pry."

"You have always been wrong," Erik grumbled. "If only you could have had the sense to see that when we first met."

"I'm sorry," I told him.

"I'm sure you are," he said. "Now that you're getting exactly what you always wanted."

"I'm sorry," I repeated.

He sulked further, sinking down in his seat. "How is it that I can always see right through you? I know you better than you know yourself. It wasn't on purpose, mind you. I never intended for it to get to this point. I just – I just wanted… was it so much that I…?"

"You fell in love," I finished for him quietly. "There's no shame in that."

"But you never loved me," he replied in an aching voice. "I was a fool to insist. I never should have let it get this far. I only ended up hurting myself."

As well as countless others, I did not say. A good wife would not remind her husband of his innumerable crimes, against her or anyone else for that matter. "You were hurting a long time before we even met."

"Well, yes… I suppose so…" He stared emptily at the stage, which was still roaring with action, though it seemed so very far-away at present. "It has been a terribly lonely life."

"I imagine so," I agreed. "People – society – can be such a judgmental force. I know the feeling intimately, Erik. Singing in front of an audience of thousands each night… feeling the heat of their glares as I try to live up to their expectations… wondering what they could possibly be thinking of me… listening to them gossip when they think I'm not around… I never feel more alone than when I'm in a room full of people." Here he grumbled something quite disparaging, so I quickly amended: "Of course, I can't ever know what it was like for you, dear husband Erik, for your experience is just so much more woeful and tragic compared to mine. All the sum of my tortures, fears, and sorrows can never hope to equate to the depths of your anguish. No other person can possibly relate to the pain you have felt, and no other injury can possibly compare to the abuse you have endured." Then I feared I was becoming a little too insincere, so I eased up a touch. "But as I said, Erik, I have known the pain of other people, even if less than you. The whispers and stares – Erik, I have felt them. I have been made miserable by them too. Not as often as you, of course, but I still know a little bit about how it feels. And to know this is how it's always been for you – that it's always been so inescapable – that even tonight, with that Baroness shouting at you like that…"

Up until this point he had been listening with a pitiful pout about his face, hardly acknowledging my words except by the fact that remained quiet long enough to let me speak. At this last sentence I spoke, though, he suddenly stirred and asked, "Who?"

"The… Baroness?" I reminded him uneasily. "The woman from earlier who yelled at you as if she despised you with every fiber of her being? Who wore that giant fur coat and called you some very mean names?"

He squinted his eyes as he tried to recall. "I need more than that. Mean names… such as what?"

"Um…" I bit my lip. I didn't want to rile him up again, but he seemed genuinely at a loss. "She called you a… um… bone-bag?"

"Oh, her," he said just as blankly as before – then promptly doubled over in a raucous fit of laughter, an awful grin splitting across his face as he slapped his knee. "Oh! Oh, Christine! Sweet, innocent Christine! Pure Christine!" He wiped a tear from his eye. "She isn't a Baroness, child."

"Do you know her?" I asked, confused.

"Although – I suppose she is a Baroness, in a way," Erik went on, ignoring me, "since she was escorting the Baron of Tremaine to this opera. What is a wife but a woman with whom a man has relations?"

"…Excuse me?"

"Which is why the two of us aren't really married, by the way, dear wife," Erik continued, simmering back down. "Not in the way they are. And do you know what's the funniest part of the whole thing? They love each other. Deeply and profoundly. Real love – more than he ever loved the true Baroness of Tremaine." He blew a breath. "Did you know he's the only customer she ever takes anymore?"

No, I did not say.

"Yes, indeed… he buys her all sorts of beautiful things. Bracelets, charms, rubies, hairpins… all of the luxuries today's woman could desire. I buy you nice things, Christine, or at least I think I do, but he buys her even nicer things than I can afford. Things that she doesn't even appreciate. And she doesn't have to appreciate them, you see, because she loves him even without all that fuss. It's not that she doesn't like his gifts; she's a very materialistic woman, make no mistake about that. What woman wouldn't like some tacky diamond bauble? I buy half a dozen shoe ribbons for you and your face glows right up with delight. So, no, it's not that she doesn't like his gifts. It's the fact that she doesn't want them, for whatever reason… and he continually ignores her. He rents a three bedroom suite for her in that new Ritz hotel and tells her to stay there. Imagine that, Christine, three bedrooms just for one foul old woman! Wouldn't you be so thrilled? I've seen them all, in the course of my meetings with her, and I tell you – they are just as resplendent as the papers say! The linens are some of the finest I've ever felt; I've never known a night of sleep before I rested my head upon those sumptuous pillows. Hungarian goose down, I tell you! As soft as a willing lady's bosom! And there are real medieval tapestries hanging in every room – one that I even recognized, in fact, as being stolen from this gloriously decaying castle somewhere out along the Carpathian Mountains, which I stayed at a few decades ago at the behest of its host, who was just some hapless old brood with an equilibrious predilection of books and blood – not that I judged much, mind you, as we all must have our eccentricities! – and anyway, though the hotel looks a true museum, a better exhibition than the Louvre itself, what with all those priceless artifacts loitering about the place… there's absolutely nothing telling you not to touch anything! Oh, when I saw all those relics… I simply had to smash a vase to see what would happen. Which deity would smite me? I threw it down on the floor – the floor, by the way, is made of the purest strain of sparkling marble I've ever seen. The masonry is impeccable, Christine, simply impeccable, with each tile lined up against the next with hardly a trace of their slits in-between, except when they get wet, and oh, how wet they get when I use the tub! – slippery, too – but anyway, marble, you know, marble is very soft, so when I threw that vase down, as she screamed, it created the most horrible gash beside the fireplace. Jade went everywhere, into the hearth, under the chaise, across my ankle. And I bled, Christine. I bled so much. She did, too, but not from her ankles, because she was already on the ground and her feet were kicking about safely in her skirts. But I bled, so much so that I soaked my socks and left the clumsiest red footprints all over the place. It was like being in my sweet sultana's bed chambers all over again! It's fascinating, honestly, how much of a mess one measly Shang Dynasty vase can make. The miraculous thing was, though, the next time I came back… not only was the vase replaced with a new one, which was even older and fragiler than the first, but the entire floor had been ripped up and paved with fresh marble. There was not a hint that a single thing had been amiss in that room; not a scratch on the stone, not a drop of blood in the grout. It was fascinating. Of course, I had to throw that second vase against the floor again to make sure it wasn't a fluke. It shattered and scuffed the floor just like before, and sure enough, the next time I came back everything had been replaced once more. It's an awfully convenient system they have there! There's no gaslight, only electricity, and there's plumbing in every room. I'll admit to being a little jealous… I only have two bedrooms in my own home. That's not as many as three! Of course she has her own rooms besides those, in another part of the city – somewhere in the gutter, I'd imagine – but still he rents her these rooms as a gift. And she absolutely loathes them. She has pride, Christine, just like we all do. She wasn't born into poverty; she was forced into it, by that evil, Machiavellian brother of hers. You know how some families are. He took the money and the house after both their parents died, and took all their antique furniture too – even though it had all been promised to her! – and offered not a dirty sou to her in return. Not a sou! So she made her way to Paris as a beggar, as we all eventually did; and in coming here, slid her way horizontally through the aristocracy until she landed herself beside that good Baron you met. It was never her aim to make him her lover – she just knew a good purse for her pocket when she found one – but sometimes these things simply fall into our laps and there's nothing anyone can do about it. The Opera has a way of doing that to people. After all, just look at you and… and… and… nevermind. What were we talking about again?"

I bit my lip and attempted to retrace the thread of conversation back to the original point. Erik's ramblings had confused me, and truth be told I understood little of what he had said. He himself had gained a glazed look as he'd blathered on, the way he did when he unconsciously spoke to me as he played piano, but it was since dispelled and I could tell now that he sincerely did not realize how much he just said out loud. "You were telling me about the Baroness – well, I mean, the woman who I thought was a Baroness…"

"Call her Jeannette. It's her name, for Christ's sake." Erik cleared his throat. "Anyway, there isn't much more to say, other than that she's a bitter old woman who has no reason to act the way she does at this point in her life, save for pride."

"You… seem to know her very well."

"You know I frequent the Bois," he groused. "I happened upon her there a few years ago, and met with her a few times since." Then he looked away. "Christine, pardon me, but I'm not quite in the mood to explain my entire detailed history with this miserable woman right now. It's not an exceptionally pleasant one, and honestly I don't think you'd care to hear it."

Once again the switch had been flipped, it seemed. Erik could go from monologuing until he was blue in the face to doling out precious few words while slumped over in a pathetic sulk. In a mood like this, I knew I couldn't hope to get much out from him. But I was not ready to close the door on the subject, at least not before I made one last comment:

"Did you know I saw her drinking amontillado? Palomino Fino, even, just like you."

I don't know why I felt compelled to say it. Perhaps it was simply too interesting, too suspicious of a coincidence to let pass without comment. Or perhaps I was just hoping to help Erik recognize a kindred spirit out in the world… someone who liked, say, amontillado just like him, who was miserable just like him. I doubted he'd ever let himself relate much with anyone before in his life.

But Erik just sighed, shrugging his shoulders.

"I know," he said, as if it were a concession. "It's his favorite."

"The Baron's?"

"No."

And with that last answer, which was spoken with a cryptic sort of sadness, I knew that was all I would be getting out from him on the matter.