by Megan Chance
"That's true," he admitted. "I wasn't honest. But I saw a fortune in you. The same fortune your family saw."
"I don't think they viewed it quite the same way. They wanted the best for me."
"How was the best for you sending you across the country with only me and your ne'er-do-well brother to tend to you?"
I stopped dead on the boardwalk, heedless of the people who bumped into me and then cursed at the obstacle I made. "Are you saying my family cared nothing for what happened to me?"
Gideon took my arm, propelling me steadily forward. "Of course not. But they sent you unprepared into a world you had no knowledge of, and then they disliked what you did to survive it, though they liked the money well enough. They were hypocrites. Barret was the worst of them."
I stared at him uncomprehendingly.
Impatiently, he said, "He wanted you to be a prima donna. He had to want it. But he saw what was happening between us, and he knew what I would do about it. He hated me for the influence I had on you. And he was unprepared for what you were."
"For what I was?"
"A woman who knew how to get what she wanted," he said--and there was a pride in his voice that surprised me. "And one who had the ambition and talent to go along with her will. Barret was no match for you."
"The way you make him sound ... Barret loved me."
"Yes. But he would have preferred you to be a safe, biddable sister." He threw me a thin smile. "And as I've been trying to tell you, you're far from biddable."
We were both breathing hard, climbing the steep grade of Jefferson Street. The cold seared my lungs, and my corset pinched. I saw the ugly bell tower of the church ahead and found myself both wishing to be there and wanting a little more time. The things he'd said confused me; I had questions I could barely articulate, a sense that he was opening wide something that had been shut tight.
Then there was no more time. We were there. We paused outside to catch our breath.
Gideon hoisted the folio higher beneath his arm and looked appraisingly at the clapboard building. Then he looked at me and smiled. "Well then, enough of the past. Shall we begin the future?"
We went inside. The church was empty of those in contemplation, no doubt because of the noise of construction, which was a constant cacophony of hammering and sawing and the shouting back and forth of workmen to one another.
I led Gideon to Mr. Anderson's office. The door was open, but the choirmaster was nowhere to be seen.
"Where's the piano?" Gideon asked.
"In some storage room," I said. "Though I don't know where--"
Just then, Mr. Anderson rounded the corner. He was carrying music, and when he saw us standing there, he burst into a smile. "Miss Olson! And this must be the friend you spoke of."
"Gideon Price," I said, introducing them quickly.
As they shook hands, Mr. Anderson said, "Is that music you're holding?"
"We hadn't decided which selections to use," Gideon said. "It seemed best to bring it all."
"To find the song that will best serve is one of my most difficult tasks," Mr. Anderson said. "I've some music as well, if you care to look through it. In my office. My observation is that Miss Rainey seems to prefer the more joyful melodies."
"Miss Rainey?" Gideon looked at me in question.
"Charlotte, of course," I said, then, quickly, to Mr. Anderson, "I think I've only ever referred to her by her Christian name. I never think of her as Miss Rainey."
"Such good friends are rare indeed," Mr. Anderson said with a smile. "Well, I won't delay you. Please, follow me and I'll show you the storeroom." He turned to lead us down the hallway, and then turned to go down some narrow stairs I had never before seen. "As I told Miss Olson, you must forgive us the disarray. With the building going on ... the best place for the piano was here. In fact, it's the only place there's room."
At the bottom of the stairs was a dark space that held a broken pew, a coatrack, several crates. It smelled of dust and mold. Mr. Anderson led us to a door on the far side. It was dark as pitch inside, and I heard him scrabble about, and then the strike of a match, and he was illuminated. As he adjusted the flame of the oil lamp, the room came into view: shelves stacked with hymnals and Bibles, crates holding candles, incense burners, and boxes of incense, so the room smelled of dust and dampness and fragrance, of old paper and oil. In the middle of it sat the piano, and all around it were crates holding other things that had been put here to save them from the builders.
Mr. Anderson looked apologetic. "You see."
"It will do nicely," Gideon said. He set the folio on top of the piano and smiled. "We could wish for nothing better."
I looked about in dismay. It was not that the room was terribly small, but it was full, and that made it closer than I liked. Though the room was enough removed from the rest of the church that it afforded us the privacy to keep a secret, it was that very privacy I dreaded as well.
But I thanked Mr. Anderson for the privilege.
"If nothing else, it's quiet," he said. "You won't hear the construction down here, and it's loud enough up there that no one will hear you either. Your surprise should remain one."
Then he was gone, closing the door behind him, closing us in. I heard his footsteps beyond on the stairs, the thud of the upper door--not so much as a sound, but as a vibration.
Gideon asked, "Who's Charlotte?"
"A friend of mine. I had to tell him something."
"Does she know anything about you?"
"If you mean about my past, then no. She knows I sing in the choir. She works at the Palace. She's one of the per formers."
"A whore?"
"Well, yes. But she's who suggested the choir. She comes every Sunday to watch."
"Are you close?"
I glanced at him sharply. "Why?"
He shrugged. "I find it curious. You've never had much to do with other women."
"I suppose it helps that she's neither trying to upstage me nor sleeping with my manager."
"You mean attempting to sleep with your manager." He turned to the piano, going around it to flip up the lid, trying the keys. "It's in tune," he said in surprise.
"It should be. It was in the nave until the organ came."
He sat on the bench, running his fingers over the keys, elegant and easy, the same run he did before every practice. How well I remembered it. How often I'd watched those fingers, mesmerized by them, by the memory of how they felt against my skin....
I turned away to stare at the shelves, the boxes of incense, trying to contain emotions that seemed suddenly too raw.
He finished with a flourish. "Come. Shall we see how much damage needs to be undone?"
It was a relief, and there was an anticipation too that made me go quickly to stand on the other side of the piano, settling my hands upon the top, feeling the vibration of the notes as he took me through the warm-ups. For weeks now, months, I'd done things Mr. Anderson's way, but I fell into Gideon's routine as if there had been nothing in the interim. I knew exactly which warm-ups he wanted, how he would lead me through them, and my body responded with the habit of years; without thinking, it knew his voice and the sound of his fingers upon the keys, the exact press, the pause, the way I must breathe, and the last months, the last years, fell away. I was Gideon's again, and I knew with a soft dismay that no matter what other teachers I'd had or would have, his was the imprint that mattered--I was poured into the mold he'd set. I was helpless to resist his commands, I was anxious to please him. He spoke shortly, pointedly:
"Sustain that."
"Rounder please."
"Less breathiness."
Over and over again, for half an hour, forty-five minutes, an hour, each comment accompanied by a nod of satisfaction or a frown. I found myself taking more pleasure than I should at his nod, trying to impress him--short-lived, that, because he snapped, "Don't strain. You'll ruin everything. You're weeks away from that note."
"I can hit it in the choir."
> "You can mark it there, you mean, when no one wants you singing with your full strength. You won't be marking it when you're singing the Queen of the Night."
"I hate singing the Queen. I won't sing her again."
"When I have you back, there will be no bothering with anything but the premiere parts. No one wants to see you sing Pamina. You'll be singing the Queen."
"If I decide I even want to perform again."
"As you say," he said, though there was a gleam in his eyes when he said it, and I knew he was only humoring me.
It made me angry. "And if I do decide to go back, I'll decide what I sing."
"Some things never change."
"What does that mean?"
"Only that here's what's familiar--arguing with you about the difference between what's best and what you want."
"You always won those arguments, just as you won everything."
"Did I? How is it then, that you ended up singing Tannhauser?"
"What was wrong with that? I love Tannhauser."
"Wagner's what's wrong with it. If you recall, you were unavailable for anything else for two months after."
"People loved it."
"It wasn't your best," he said. "You're a coloratura soprano, Sabine, which you know very well. Let others throw their voices at Wagner. You haven't the stamina."
I was stung. "You always said that. It wasn't true."
"Indeed not. I suppose giving up the Peace Jubilee concert the next month had nothing to do with wearing yourself out night after night with Elisabeth."
I went silent, remembering. Coming back to the hotel each night hardly able to speak, exhausted beyond bearing. I remembered him arguing with me about cutting short my contract. My insistence that I not, and then two months of forced inactivity, restlessness, tempers while I recovered. He'd been solicitous, hovering, concerned even through his anger.
It was a strange memory. I had to admit he was right, but it wasn't that fact that had me feeling suddenly unbalanced. It was the realization that I had forgotten it. Uncomfortably I remembered the things he'd said on the way here. What else had I chosen to forget?
"In any case, you're further along than I'd expected," he said with approval, and my distress faded at his compliment. "Now let's try 'Vedrai carino.'"
"At least give me something with a little challenge to it. Why not Donna Anna?"
"You're too impatient. You always have been."
"You would have me singing Zerlina forever."
"She was your favorite once."
"When I was a child."
"We'll start off with her nonetheless. And Susanna, until you're ready for more. Eventually we'll get to Faust."
"Shall I have to sing Marguerite forever?"
He glanced up quickly, and I realized suddenly what I'd said, what he would read into it.
He said softly, "Not if you don't wish it."
The moment strung between us. The room seemed very small; he was so close. I could touch him by just putting out my hand. I curled my fingers hard into my palm. "Shall we go on?"
He hesitated. Then he said, "Let's try this."
He went into the opening chords of the Countess's "Porgi amor," and though it was a lament to lost love, I could not contest the joy I took in the music, nor the need to raise my voice to match it. I let the music wind its way through me, and I sang the cavatina I knew so well I had hardly to think about the words, they were a memory like a dream pressed into my flesh, a part of me I could not cut away, because to do so would be to stop breathing, to stop existing, to ... stop.
I let my voice grow. I felt the pleasure of it swell inside me the way it had that day on the dock with Charlotte, and the sheer joy of releasing it was enough; whatever flatness or scratchiness touched it was immaterial. I felt myself falling away, and there was no saying where it stopped and I began, because I was only the voice, nothing more. I was nothing but music, and it seemed the very walls around me quaked and shivered with the pressure of that sound, as if they might burst and fall away, because nothing could contain it, and I was exultant, and he was there before me, just as he'd always been, and there was a joy in that too that I could express no other way. I sang "Porgi amor" for him. I looked into his eyes and sang for him as I always had, and then--too soon--it was over, my final note carried on a sigh, the last measures of the piano bringing it to a close, Gideon's hands resting on those notes, the gentle fade. All was quiet.
And I realized in that single moment what I'd done, what he'd meant for me to do, what he'd no doubt known all along would happen.
How could I go back to being Marguerite Olson now? How could I give this up again?
I backed away from the piano. I hardly saw what I was doing; I backed into a shelf, sending boxes of incense falling to the floor, one breaking open, scented cones scattering.
Gideon was on his feet in a moment. "Bina," he said, and when he came toward me I put up my hands, terrified that he would touch me--Dear God, if he touched me.... It was all tied up together. The music, my love for him. I could not separate it. To have one without the other was impossible, yet to have them both was more impossible still.
He pulled me into his arms and I was resistant, stiff, my hands at hard angles. And then I felt his kiss in my hair, and it was like a spell--I went pliable and soft, burying my face in his chest, putting my arms around him, pulling him close, holding him as I had not allowed myself to hold him, even two days ago in his room, when I had kept myself separate, giving in to desire but not to love. And still I knew how dangerous it was to love him, when he had control of me so completely, when I was his to exploit or use as he would, as he always had.
"Come back to the hotel with me," he whispered.
I shook my head violently against him.
"Bina, there are things I need to say--"
"I don't want to hear them."
His lips were at my ear. "We can't stay here. Come back with me."
His breath was warm, sending the tiny hairs at my temple shivering. I clutched him, unable to let go. I knew already that I'd surrendered. When he pulled away, when he picked up the music and took my hand, leading me from the storage room, pausing to blow out the lamp, to close the door, I went with him like a little child.
Mr. Anderson was nowhere to be seen, but as we went through the nave I heard him talking to one of the workmen behind the canvas wall. He didn't see us, and no one stopped us. I wanted to be stopped; I wanted the moment to change my mind, to tell him no and mean it even as I was afraid someone might give me the chance to do exactly that.
The sun was so bright I had to squint against it. Gideon didn't pause; he took me down the street, walking fast, dodging around the people and merchandise that crowded the boardwalks ramping up and down, pulling me after him until we were before the New Brunswick. My last chance to refuse him passed in an instant--by then I knew I was incapable of taking it even had it lasted longer.
There were the stairs, the lobby, then the hall, the strains of Faust loud now in my ears, Satan's deep call, "Me voici!" and Marguerite's seduction and destruction, and then we were in his room, and he was closing the door and I was stepping into his arms. His hand was hot against my still-cold cheek. His thumb slipped over my scar, the strange half-numbness of that touch seemed to invade my whole body.
He undressed me slowly before the mirror above the dresser, such deliberation, taking down my hair pin by pin. His hands seemed to erase the ugliness that shrouded me, and with every piece of clothing he let fall to the floor, something beautiful rose, something hidden away from the world, from myself.
In the mirror we were the only solid things in the center of a light that was too bright to be real, that both polished our edges and eliminated them. He led me to the bed, the crumpled sheets blindingly white and warm, and when he came down to cover me, it felt as if I were in the center of the sun, his heat all around me, inside me, burning me up, and I was sweating and suddenly urgent, my hands sliding over his skin, rai
sing my hips to his, clutching him.
He ground himself against me, and I came with a cry, a release of breath, a sudden arching that had him gasping and shuddering too, groaning as he withdrew, and I felt the wet heat of him on my stomach, spreading between us as he collapsed upon me with a moan.
We lay there quietly for a few moments. I traced his spine, unable to resist touching him. It roused him, and as he made to draw away I made a little sound of protest and he captured my hip and brought me with him as he rolled onto his back, kissing me softly and lingeringly while his fingers trailed over my shoulder, through my hair, to my waist. His lips left mine to press against my jaw, my throat, and that was when I heard him, the broken hum, breathless, soft, the words not spoken but echoing hushed and muted in my head, "Tu, perfida," and I was drowsy and sated, caught in the dream of his body and the winter sun. I found myself whispering back, my own voice breaking with the strain of singing so quietly, "A te il mio sen...."