Fanfiction: Like Everybody Else (2/11) - Phantom of the Opera
Title: Like Everybody Else (2/11)
Fandom: Phantom of the Opera (Leroux, Kay)
Rating: Mature (sexual content)
Summary: A sequel to the events of the novel, Christine returns to Erik to live as his wife. But the promises Erik made are difficult to keep, and a kiss is not enough.
Notes: Thanks to
stefanie_bean for her editing help and
joy for her support and inspiration. Also available at the AO3 and The Fifth Cellar.
Chapter One
I slept the sleep of an ordinary, exhausted man, rather than the half-waking delirium of the barely-alive. And I dreamed ordinary dreams which, on waking, I thought had only been sent to taunt me until memory returned and I realized they had come true. I had to see for myself though. She could have left, the vicomte (or was he Comte de Chagny, now?) could have arrived in the night and taken her off again, the daroga could have broken in and convinced her to make love beside my comatose body before whisking her back to Persia--any number of scenarios played out in my mind in ever-increasing theatricality. I shook them off and rose from my bed, slightly unsteady but upright. I would have to go back to my own wardrobe for fresh clothes, as those I wore had become fairly rank, but I would just look in on her first. There wasn’t any point wasting energy bathing if I was just going to die again.
The packages and things were still piled in the doorway to her bedroom, so unless she had forgotten them in her flight she remained here. I crept around the corner like a child breathlessly torturing himself by postponing his first sight of the tree on Christmas morning. The sight that greeted me was far lovelier than any Christmas gift, wrapped in silk and lace and flesh. I had watched Christine in sleep before but for the first time I felt I had the right to, that she was mine at last, truly mine. She looked so alive even in her stillness, even as I was at my most incongruously dead when in action. I wanted to stay and watch her until she awoke, but I tore myself away. I could hardly expect to present her with such a glorious sight upon waking, but at the very least I could be decent.
I wanted to linger in the marble bath, letting the hot water dissolve the sweat and grime from my body as Christine’s presence was eating away at the hard shell around my soul, but I was worried lest she awake before I was ready. I wanted to look immaculate; I was too thin, as always, but a good tailor was worth all the threats of secrecy I could make. I was not yet feeble. My recent failed surrender had more to do with my will than this body which had kept me alive and moving long past my usefulness to myself or the world. It was morning, but I put on a pressed evening suit anyway. I wanted her to be impressed. I wanted to make sure she had not a twinge of doubt about what she had done. I would never be her vicomte, with his unlined face and blond hair and exuberance, but he would look like me soon enough and I at least could give her my talent and soul and impeccable taste. Her pathetic former suitor certainly didn’t approach me there.
Former suitor. I wondered where he was now; if he was grief-stricken or if he had already moved on (my imagination suggested a suitably disease-ridden house of ill repute) or if he was perhaps on his way here at this very moment. I wouldn’t hesitate to kill him now, now that Christine had made her choice clear. Before, his death would only have accomplished her certain hatred and disgust. Now I had no such impediment.
I sketched gleeful portraits in my mind of his disillusionment and death as I finished my toilet and walked back towards the sitting room where Christine slept. I settled into an armchair across from the sofa to watch her sleep. Her breath disturbed a curl of her hair which she had let down and now lay across her breast as it gently rose and fell. Had she told him where she was going? Had they fought? Had he given up, knowing the futility of his cause? If he had, I thought with disgust, he was a fool. But I couldn’t be too terribly critical of his foolishness, if it had allowed me the prize. As closely as I was observing her, I heard the change in her breathing before she opened her eyes. Did she remember where she was, or had she been dreaming of him? Perhaps she thought herself safe in her room, or in his bed. But no, the eyes that opened were bright and focused, and the smile was meant entirely for me.
“Good morning, princess,” I said softly. I knew my voice was capable of many things, and most of them were beautiful and terrible both, but the tenderness I heard there now was always unexpected and wondrous to me.
“Should you be up, Erik?” she asked nervously. She sat up and tried to arrange herself, blushing slightly. Her skin was so fine, it showed her every humor.
“I’m perfectly well. Completely cured.” It was too bad my peculiar restorative powers had never extended to healing my face. I wore the mask now; for all her protestations the day before, I couldn’t be sure she really accepted what she’d chosen. If I could barely stand to look in a mirror after all these years, I could hardly expect her to want it in front of her all the time. “I imagine you would like to freshen up.”
She nodded. “I brought some things.”
“I noticed.” They were piled in the doorway like a child’s abandoned building blocks. “Why don’t you do what you like while I find us some breakfast.”
She smiled. “I would like that,” she said, flitting forward and bending as if to kiss my forehead. She paused in the act and had already turned away when I remembered the mask. When she turned again in the doorway to face me, her arms full of luggage, she wore a vaguely worried expression. “You don’t need that anymore,” she said simply, and was gone, and I could have skipped to the kitchen, had I ever been wont to do that sort of thing. I kept the mask on, for now. There was a kind of security in it, in trying to make things easier for her.
No. If I was going to launch into this new plan of being worthy of her, I would have to be honest, at least with myself. It wasn’t Christine I needed to make this easier for. It was a foolish thought, but I couldn’t help but see the mask as a barrier between what went on in my diseased brain and what she knew. Just the thought, the knowledge, that Christine was at this moment engaged in soaking her delicate, bare skin in the marble tub I’d installed was enough to send my imagination sailing to unknown parts and make me feel like the dirtiest, most undeserving cad who’d ever fooled a girl into leaving her fiancé. Here there be dragons, indeed, and even if I was unfamiliar with the territory, I knew that one of the monsters lying in wait was myself. The mask was a flimsy defense, but she was so close, so nearly mine, that it was all I had. We hadn’t talked about this part of the arrangement, but even such an innocent as she was could have no doubts about what her decision meant. She’d heard my music, for God’s sake. And even if the kisses of her bloodless hero hadn’t awakened anything within her, surely she’d been privy to the ribald conversations of the other girls. Tales that could make me blush, though I doubted it looked as fetching on my cheeks.
So I schooled my thoughts as I absently moved about the kitchen. I’d had a great deal of practice in that, these last months, but now it couldn’t be so terribly wrong to imagine the rosy tint the water’s heat would give her skin, or the way her wet hair would fall in tendrils down her shoulders and her chest, how her eyes would slide shut from the purely sensual pleasure of being warm and immersed and when she was done she would rise from the bath, gradually clearing the inadequate veil the bubbles provided, until-
“Is breakfast ready?” Christine asked. I couldn’t look at her right away, not until I’d banished the thought of her naked form from my thoughts, so I looked at the stove instead and discovered I’d made an omelet.
“Yes,” I said obviously as I imagined how soft and fresh her skin must feel right now, scrubbed and warm and now enveloped in the miles of frills and flounces and buttons that ladies called fashion. I looked up to see her standing beside me, looking down at the sizzling mass on the stove.
“It will burn,” she said, and I turned off the gas. The omelet was big enough for both of us. I’d never had much of an appetite, and it had grown less now that the deterioration of my sense of smell had rendered all but the most bitter food virtually tasteless.
“You look lovely, my dear.” Like a bride, I almost added, but refrained. Her dress was virginal white, lacy and fine, almost like a ballerina, and I wondered if indeed I’d stolen it from the costume shop. I couldn’t remember, but there were other things to think about, like the way her eyes did not waver from mine even as I took in the details of her rosy-cheeked, freshly washed appearance. “Shall we?” I motioned to the dining room, and Christine led the way, carrying the plates on which I would serve our breakfast.
“Are you going to eat?” she asked anxiously, but from concern for my well-being or anticipated dread at watching the process I was not certain. “You’ve not eaten anything except for the soup in days.” Well then. I removed the mask slowly, wondering if I wrote my thoughts on my face the way she did, wondering if she could tell any of what I’d been thinking, was still thinking, about her. But no, she was as careless of my expressions as she was of the rest of my face; it was just something to let your eyes gloss over, because it did not bear thinking heavily on. Ignoring it was really the best policy. It was easier for me, being on the other side, perhaps. I divided the omelet and we sat, not at opposite ends of the table as we had in the beginning, but at the corner. She really was amazing, the way she had decided to forget what I looked like as if there was no more to it than that. And she’d come back to me. The greatest miracle of all. Watching her work healthily away at the food I’d made for her, I knew everything was as it should be. Perfect.
“It’s very good,” she said after primly wiping her mouth with a napkin. “Of course, you’re always making wonderful things.”
“Flattery will get you everywhere, my dove,” I said dryly and picked up the dishes. “No, I’ll wash up. I want you to decide what we’re doing today.”
She perked up at that. “Oh! Well I thought I should go see the managers, let them know I’m not retiring. I might have to take some chorus roles for awhile, I suppose, but I’m sure they won’t hold that… night… against me. I’ll just explain-“
“I rather thought we could spend the day together, love.” The thought of her leaving again so soon filled me with dread. So much could happen up there. I couldn’t be sure who she’d see or who would see her and what they might convince her of. I was convinced I’d never see her again.
“How thoughtless of me. I can go tomorrow, or another day. I should have thought. You’re not going to lose me, Erik. I told you what I’ve decided. I’m not going to do that to you again.”
“I know, I know. But let’s just… let’s enjoy each other’s company today. It feels like months since I saw you.” But I didn’t want to think about the last time I saw her, what I’d said, what I’d done to her, watching that fool place his jacket around her shoulders in a clearly proprietary gesture. As if he was the alpha dog in our trio, though I supposed I had just rolled over and given her away-
No, that hadn’t been weakness. It had been my salvation, the reason I had been granted Christine’s return and her solemn promise. For once in my life, I’d been rewarded for a good deed.
“That sounds nice, Erik. What would you like to do?” What didn’t I, Christine, when you looked up at me with your impossibly innocent eyes as if I’d just removed your veil and it only needed a kiss to seal the vow between us-but we’d had that kiss already, hadn’t we? What came after?
I wrenched my thoughts away from the creative scenarios her question had prompted. Women wanted wooing, and no matter how willingly she’d put herself in my power, I would wait for the right time. “Would you like to sing? It won’t do to let yourself get out of practice.”
“I know I haven’t been practicing the past few days. I’ve been a little preoccupied.” She followed me to the piano.
“Understandable, Christine. Here, shall we go over Aida?” She nodded happily and we launched into her warm up. She really had improved, I thought with pride. I had fashioned her voice from rough marble, like the David, until it shone, nearly transparent. And there was something else that hadn’t been there before, a hint of the life she’d experienced in the past year that lent her voice a depth that went beyond the purely technical. She was always, now, at her most realistic and lively when singing. There was some inner passion she kept in reserve in daily life so that it always surprised you when it burst forth in her voice.
But I could never tell how much of it was training, and how much she actually connected to what she sang. Did she sense the appropriateness of the piece I’d chosen? Was she even now thinking about joining her lover in death, in the dark, rather than choosing the light? I joined her, singing the other parts as necessary. When we’d finished, when Aida had pledged herself to a dead man, I looked up after the last chord to see her eyes shining from unshed tears. Was she reconsidering her decision? Or was she moved by the slave girl’s loyalty to her lover?
“That was exquisite, Christine,” I told her. I was curiously moved myself; but then, I’d always had trouble keeping my feelings in reserve whenever music or Christine was involved. I stood, and something in her white, trembling form, in those huge glistening eyes, made me bend my face to hers, made me touch my twisted lips to her forehead, her eyes in turn. She’d promised herself to me, and the effort to wait for that promise while she was living here, just a room away, had been so monumental. I wasn’t sure I could wait any longer. Neither did I want to.
I had never kissed her of my own volition, but desire was roiling in me now and I was incapable of damming it back up. So long, so long I’d waited for this moment, for this woman (any woman, but not just any woman) and there was no reason to wait any longer.
“You came back to me,” I said, my voice suddenly stripped of its beauty. She nodded. I took that as tacit agreement and kissed her, finally, on the mouth. I felt her, warm and soft against my lips, and I reached for her to draw her close. I had never stood this close to her, though I had carried her before, all the while trying to ignore what I felt through her clothes. Now I savored the sensation, even with all these layers between us. She was mine, mine to claim, as I was hers.
I carried her to her bedroom, laid her in her bed, my deathbed. She was silent but looked up at me with a queer expression I, for once, could not read. “I want to see you,” I said. “I’ve waited so long to see you…” I started with the buttons, my usually clever fingers suddenly stupid with her. Something seemed to be wrong with my body, and command of it came less easily. Finally the dress was off, discarded like an envelope which has served its purpose. What was left seemed like miles of petticoats and corsets and things I wasn’t certain of the name for, and finally she moved, pushed my hands away, and began undoing the complicated machinery which held everything together. Her hands were shaking too, I noticed, but then my eyes were drawn elsewhere as she revealed, inch by inch, her white skin. Skin none but her husband had the right to see, and now I held that exalted position. In deed, if not in name, for as romantic and foolish as she had made me I had no illusions that we could actually wed. I wasn’t even sure I was a legal entity anymore, and furthermore I was convinced that no priest upon seeing me would consent to such a union.
When the ties and bows and buttons were undone, she lay back, and I was given the last, breathless gift of parting the folds of cloth, peeling away the cloth that seemed, in the western world at least, to be just an extension of skin, for all you ever learned of what lay beneath. She was so beautiful, more beautiful than I could imagine, skin smooth and perfect like a doll’s porcelain face, so white it was difficult to tell if blood ran through her at all. Like a marble statue, her body fashioned by God, or Nature, just as I had formed her voice. I was content to share authorship of such perfection.
But it was all so agonizingly slow. Now that I had decided, now that she had given herself up to me, I didn’t want to wait any longer. I had worshiped her for so long. I knew, in the back of my mind, that I was supposed to be gentle, gentlemanly, but the need was so intense I realized it was a very fortunate thing I had never before let it get the slightest advantage over me. I fairly tore off my clothes, but she didn’t even look, her eyes wide and fixed on my face. Except for her eyes, she might have been dead. She was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen, more beautiful even than Michelangelo’s Pieta, or the ruins of Athens, more beautiful than anything the hand of Man could create. I wondered if my suddenly imperfect, hopelessly bloody hands would mar her, would alter her somehow from the finely-crafted work she was.
I had heard about what was supposed to happen. I had good ears, and while I generally distanced myself from the pain of such conversations, I had picked up enough. I wanted her to be happy. I wanted her to feel this as well. I lowered myself over her. I wanted to explore every inch of her perfect body, naked now but for the plain gold ring I’d given her a lifetime ago.
But perhaps that would have to wait. I recognized the feeling growing in me, the feeling that preceded the thing my mother had beaten me so soundly for. “Filthy!” she’d yelled. “You dirty creature, demon child! Do you want to go to Hell? Do you? Well perhaps you ought to. It’s the only place you’ll ever belong!” I didn’t care anymore, I didn’t care, this was good, this was marriage, sanctified, even if God hadn’t presided, I didn’t care, because it felt so good and anyway I had always been destined for Hell, but in the meantime it was so good to finally be with her, in her, part of her, just like our voices melting into one voice and then my body was out of my control, moving in a way I didn’t command and it frightened me but not enough to stop and not even her gasp was enough to make me stop and I couldn’t see her anyway, nothing but an almost (but not quite) painful blaze and then nothing, blackness, and as I dropped into it I wondered if she had killed me at last.
Chapter three
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Fandom: Phantom of the Opera (Leroux, Kay)
Rating: Mature (sexual content)
Summary: A sequel to the events of the novel, Christine returns to Erik to live as his wife. But the promises Erik made are difficult to keep, and a kiss is not enough.
Notes: Thanks to
stefanie_bean for her editing help and
joy for her support and inspiration. Also available at the AO3 and The Fifth Cellar.
Chapter One
I slept the sleep of an ordinary, exhausted man, rather than the half-waking delirium of the barely-alive. And I dreamed ordinary dreams which, on waking, I thought had only been sent to taunt me until memory returned and I realized they had come true. I had to see for myself though. She could have left, the vicomte (or was he Comte de Chagny, now?) could have arrived in the night and taken her off again, the daroga could have broken in and convinced her to make love beside my comatose body before whisking her back to Persia--any number of scenarios played out in my mind in ever-increasing theatricality. I shook them off and rose from my bed, slightly unsteady but upright. I would have to go back to my own wardrobe for fresh clothes, as those I wore had become fairly rank, but I would just look in on her first. There wasn’t any point wasting energy bathing if I was just going to die again.
The packages and things were still piled in the doorway to her bedroom, so unless she had forgotten them in her flight she remained here. I crept around the corner like a child breathlessly torturing himself by postponing his first sight of the tree on Christmas morning. The sight that greeted me was far lovelier than any Christmas gift, wrapped in silk and lace and flesh. I had watched Christine in sleep before but for the first time I felt I had the right to, that she was mine at last, truly mine. She looked so alive even in her stillness, even as I was at my most incongruously dead when in action. I wanted to stay and watch her until she awoke, but I tore myself away. I could hardly expect to present her with such a glorious sight upon waking, but at the very least I could be decent.
I wanted to linger in the marble bath, letting the hot water dissolve the sweat and grime from my body as Christine’s presence was eating away at the hard shell around my soul, but I was worried lest she awake before I was ready. I wanted to look immaculate; I was too thin, as always, but a good tailor was worth all the threats of secrecy I could make. I was not yet feeble. My recent failed surrender had more to do with my will than this body which had kept me alive and moving long past my usefulness to myself or the world. It was morning, but I put on a pressed evening suit anyway. I wanted her to be impressed. I wanted to make sure she had not a twinge of doubt about what she had done. I would never be her vicomte, with his unlined face and blond hair and exuberance, but he would look like me soon enough and I at least could give her my talent and soul and impeccable taste. Her pathetic former suitor certainly didn’t approach me there.
Former suitor. I wondered where he was now; if he was grief-stricken or if he had already moved on (my imagination suggested a suitably disease-ridden house of ill repute) or if he was perhaps on his way here at this very moment. I wouldn’t hesitate to kill him now, now that Christine had made her choice clear. Before, his death would only have accomplished her certain hatred and disgust. Now I had no such impediment.
I sketched gleeful portraits in my mind of his disillusionment and death as I finished my toilet and walked back towards the sitting room where Christine slept. I settled into an armchair across from the sofa to watch her sleep. Her breath disturbed a curl of her hair which she had let down and now lay across her breast as it gently rose and fell. Had she told him where she was going? Had they fought? Had he given up, knowing the futility of his cause? If he had, I thought with disgust, he was a fool. But I couldn’t be too terribly critical of his foolishness, if it had allowed me the prize. As closely as I was observing her, I heard the change in her breathing before she opened her eyes. Did she remember where she was, or had she been dreaming of him? Perhaps she thought herself safe in her room, or in his bed. But no, the eyes that opened were bright and focused, and the smile was meant entirely for me.
“Good morning, princess,” I said softly. I knew my voice was capable of many things, and most of them were beautiful and terrible both, but the tenderness I heard there now was always unexpected and wondrous to me.
“Should you be up, Erik?” she asked nervously. She sat up and tried to arrange herself, blushing slightly. Her skin was so fine, it showed her every humor.
“I’m perfectly well. Completely cured.” It was too bad my peculiar restorative powers had never extended to healing my face. I wore the mask now; for all her protestations the day before, I couldn’t be sure she really accepted what she’d chosen. If I could barely stand to look in a mirror after all these years, I could hardly expect her to want it in front of her all the time. “I imagine you would like to freshen up.”
She nodded. “I brought some things.”
“I noticed.” They were piled in the doorway like a child’s abandoned building blocks. “Why don’t you do what you like while I find us some breakfast.”
She smiled. “I would like that,” she said, flitting forward and bending as if to kiss my forehead. She paused in the act and had already turned away when I remembered the mask. When she turned again in the doorway to face me, her arms full of luggage, she wore a vaguely worried expression. “You don’t need that anymore,” she said simply, and was gone, and I could have skipped to the kitchen, had I ever been wont to do that sort of thing. I kept the mask on, for now. There was a kind of security in it, in trying to make things easier for her.
No. If I was going to launch into this new plan of being worthy of her, I would have to be honest, at least with myself. It wasn’t Christine I needed to make this easier for. It was a foolish thought, but I couldn’t help but see the mask as a barrier between what went on in my diseased brain and what she knew. Just the thought, the knowledge, that Christine was at this moment engaged in soaking her delicate, bare skin in the marble tub I’d installed was enough to send my imagination sailing to unknown parts and make me feel like the dirtiest, most undeserving cad who’d ever fooled a girl into leaving her fiancé. Here there be dragons, indeed, and even if I was unfamiliar with the territory, I knew that one of the monsters lying in wait was myself. The mask was a flimsy defense, but she was so close, so nearly mine, that it was all I had. We hadn’t talked about this part of the arrangement, but even such an innocent as she was could have no doubts about what her decision meant. She’d heard my music, for God’s sake. And even if the kisses of her bloodless hero hadn’t awakened anything within her, surely she’d been privy to the ribald conversations of the other girls. Tales that could make me blush, though I doubted it looked as fetching on my cheeks.
So I schooled my thoughts as I absently moved about the kitchen. I’d had a great deal of practice in that, these last months, but now it couldn’t be so terribly wrong to imagine the rosy tint the water’s heat would give her skin, or the way her wet hair would fall in tendrils down her shoulders and her chest, how her eyes would slide shut from the purely sensual pleasure of being warm and immersed and when she was done she would rise from the bath, gradually clearing the inadequate veil the bubbles provided, until-
“Is breakfast ready?” Christine asked. I couldn’t look at her right away, not until I’d banished the thought of her naked form from my thoughts, so I looked at the stove instead and discovered I’d made an omelet.
“Yes,” I said obviously as I imagined how soft and fresh her skin must feel right now, scrubbed and warm and now enveloped in the miles of frills and flounces and buttons that ladies called fashion. I looked up to see her standing beside me, looking down at the sizzling mass on the stove.
“It will burn,” she said, and I turned off the gas. The omelet was big enough for both of us. I’d never had much of an appetite, and it had grown less now that the deterioration of my sense of smell had rendered all but the most bitter food virtually tasteless.
“You look lovely, my dear.” Like a bride, I almost added, but refrained. Her dress was virginal white, lacy and fine, almost like a ballerina, and I wondered if indeed I’d stolen it from the costume shop. I couldn’t remember, but there were other things to think about, like the way her eyes did not waver from mine even as I took in the details of her rosy-cheeked, freshly washed appearance. “Shall we?” I motioned to the dining room, and Christine led the way, carrying the plates on which I would serve our breakfast.
“Are you going to eat?” she asked anxiously, but from concern for my well-being or anticipated dread at watching the process I was not certain. “You’ve not eaten anything except for the soup in days.” Well then. I removed the mask slowly, wondering if I wrote my thoughts on my face the way she did, wondering if she could tell any of what I’d been thinking, was still thinking, about her. But no, she was as careless of my expressions as she was of the rest of my face; it was just something to let your eyes gloss over, because it did not bear thinking heavily on. Ignoring it was really the best policy. It was easier for me, being on the other side, perhaps. I divided the omelet and we sat, not at opposite ends of the table as we had in the beginning, but at the corner. She really was amazing, the way she had decided to forget what I looked like as if there was no more to it than that. And she’d come back to me. The greatest miracle of all. Watching her work healthily away at the food I’d made for her, I knew everything was as it should be. Perfect.
“It’s very good,” she said after primly wiping her mouth with a napkin. “Of course, you’re always making wonderful things.”
“Flattery will get you everywhere, my dove,” I said dryly and picked up the dishes. “No, I’ll wash up. I want you to decide what we’re doing today.”
She perked up at that. “Oh! Well I thought I should go see the managers, let them know I’m not retiring. I might have to take some chorus roles for awhile, I suppose, but I’m sure they won’t hold that… night… against me. I’ll just explain-“
“I rather thought we could spend the day together, love.” The thought of her leaving again so soon filled me with dread. So much could happen up there. I couldn’t be sure who she’d see or who would see her and what they might convince her of. I was convinced I’d never see her again.
“How thoughtless of me. I can go tomorrow, or another day. I should have thought. You’re not going to lose me, Erik. I told you what I’ve decided. I’m not going to do that to you again.”
“I know, I know. But let’s just… let’s enjoy each other’s company today. It feels like months since I saw you.” But I didn’t want to think about the last time I saw her, what I’d said, what I’d done to her, watching that fool place his jacket around her shoulders in a clearly proprietary gesture. As if he was the alpha dog in our trio, though I supposed I had just rolled over and given her away-
No, that hadn’t been weakness. It had been my salvation, the reason I had been granted Christine’s return and her solemn promise. For once in my life, I’d been rewarded for a good deed.
“That sounds nice, Erik. What would you like to do?” What didn’t I, Christine, when you looked up at me with your impossibly innocent eyes as if I’d just removed your veil and it only needed a kiss to seal the vow between us-but we’d had that kiss already, hadn’t we? What came after?
I wrenched my thoughts away from the creative scenarios her question had prompted. Women wanted wooing, and no matter how willingly she’d put herself in my power, I would wait for the right time. “Would you like to sing? It won’t do to let yourself get out of practice.”
“I know I haven’t been practicing the past few days. I’ve been a little preoccupied.” She followed me to the piano.
“Understandable, Christine. Here, shall we go over Aida?” She nodded happily and we launched into her warm up. She really had improved, I thought with pride. I had fashioned her voice from rough marble, like the David, until it shone, nearly transparent. And there was something else that hadn’t been there before, a hint of the life she’d experienced in the past year that lent her voice a depth that went beyond the purely technical. She was always, now, at her most realistic and lively when singing. There was some inner passion she kept in reserve in daily life so that it always surprised you when it burst forth in her voice.
But I could never tell how much of it was training, and how much she actually connected to what she sang. Did she sense the appropriateness of the piece I’d chosen? Was she even now thinking about joining her lover in death, in the dark, rather than choosing the light? I joined her, singing the other parts as necessary. When we’d finished, when Aida had pledged herself to a dead man, I looked up after the last chord to see her eyes shining from unshed tears. Was she reconsidering her decision? Or was she moved by the slave girl’s loyalty to her lover?
“That was exquisite, Christine,” I told her. I was curiously moved myself; but then, I’d always had trouble keeping my feelings in reserve whenever music or Christine was involved. I stood, and something in her white, trembling form, in those huge glistening eyes, made me bend my face to hers, made me touch my twisted lips to her forehead, her eyes in turn. She’d promised herself to me, and the effort to wait for that promise while she was living here, just a room away, had been so monumental. I wasn’t sure I could wait any longer. Neither did I want to.
I had never kissed her of my own volition, but desire was roiling in me now and I was incapable of damming it back up. So long, so long I’d waited for this moment, for this woman (any woman, but not just any woman) and there was no reason to wait any longer.
“You came back to me,” I said, my voice suddenly stripped of its beauty. She nodded. I took that as tacit agreement and kissed her, finally, on the mouth. I felt her, warm and soft against my lips, and I reached for her to draw her close. I had never stood this close to her, though I had carried her before, all the while trying to ignore what I felt through her clothes. Now I savored the sensation, even with all these layers between us. She was mine, mine to claim, as I was hers.
I carried her to her bedroom, laid her in her bed, my deathbed. She was silent but looked up at me with a queer expression I, for once, could not read. “I want to see you,” I said. “I’ve waited so long to see you…” I started with the buttons, my usually clever fingers suddenly stupid with her. Something seemed to be wrong with my body, and command of it came less easily. Finally the dress was off, discarded like an envelope which has served its purpose. What was left seemed like miles of petticoats and corsets and things I wasn’t certain of the name for, and finally she moved, pushed my hands away, and began undoing the complicated machinery which held everything together. Her hands were shaking too, I noticed, but then my eyes were drawn elsewhere as she revealed, inch by inch, her white skin. Skin none but her husband had the right to see, and now I held that exalted position. In deed, if not in name, for as romantic and foolish as she had made me I had no illusions that we could actually wed. I wasn’t even sure I was a legal entity anymore, and furthermore I was convinced that no priest upon seeing me would consent to such a union.
When the ties and bows and buttons were undone, she lay back, and I was given the last, breathless gift of parting the folds of cloth, peeling away the cloth that seemed, in the western world at least, to be just an extension of skin, for all you ever learned of what lay beneath. She was so beautiful, more beautiful than I could imagine, skin smooth and perfect like a doll’s porcelain face, so white it was difficult to tell if blood ran through her at all. Like a marble statue, her body fashioned by God, or Nature, just as I had formed her voice. I was content to share authorship of such perfection.
But it was all so agonizingly slow. Now that I had decided, now that she had given herself up to me, I didn’t want to wait any longer. I had worshiped her for so long. I knew, in the back of my mind, that I was supposed to be gentle, gentlemanly, but the need was so intense I realized it was a very fortunate thing I had never before let it get the slightest advantage over me. I fairly tore off my clothes, but she didn’t even look, her eyes wide and fixed on my face. Except for her eyes, she might have been dead. She was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen, more beautiful even than Michelangelo’s Pieta, or the ruins of Athens, more beautiful than anything the hand of Man could create. I wondered if my suddenly imperfect, hopelessly bloody hands would mar her, would alter her somehow from the finely-crafted work she was.
I had heard about what was supposed to happen. I had good ears, and while I generally distanced myself from the pain of such conversations, I had picked up enough. I wanted her to be happy. I wanted her to feel this as well. I lowered myself over her. I wanted to explore every inch of her perfect body, naked now but for the plain gold ring I’d given her a lifetime ago.
But perhaps that would have to wait. I recognized the feeling growing in me, the feeling that preceded the thing my mother had beaten me so soundly for. “Filthy!” she’d yelled. “You dirty creature, demon child! Do you want to go to Hell? Do you? Well perhaps you ought to. It’s the only place you’ll ever belong!” I didn’t care anymore, I didn’t care, this was good, this was marriage, sanctified, even if God hadn’t presided, I didn’t care, because it felt so good and anyway I had always been destined for Hell, but in the meantime it was so good to finally be with her, in her, part of her, just like our voices melting into one voice and then my body was out of my control, moving in a way I didn’t command and it frightened me but not enough to stop and not even her gasp was enough to make me stop and I couldn’t see her anyway, nothing but an almost (but not quite) painful blaze and then nothing, blackness, and as I dropped into it I wondered if she had killed me at last.
Chapter three
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