Chapter 23
Days later, I stood on the stoop outside the Girys’ apartment, dressed in a new traveling outfit of green linen. Raoul had brought it back from one of his endless shopping trips around the city, as he readied for our holiday to come.
It was Meg who opened the door, and she immediately fell into my arms, embracing me with fierce exuberance. “Christine! Thank God!” I hugged her back as she pulled me inside. “We’ve been so worried,” she confided.
“Are you all right?” I asked as we stumbled into the small sitting room. Neither of us was ready to let the other go. “Raoul said he wrote to Madame, but we never heard back.”
Meg blinked in confusion. “Raoul wrote?”
“We knew you needed much rest,” Madame Giry said, suddenly standing in the doorway. Even after so many years of living here, under this roof, I’d never seen her look so…undone.
Her usual braided bun was uncoiled and lay over her shoulder like a long rope. Though it was the middle of the day, she wore a lavender nightgown and a long paisley robe.
I studied Meg more closely. She’d dressed, but she had done nothing to cover up the dark, pained circles beneath her eyes.
I grabbed her hand and squeezed tightly, struck by how incredibly lucky we were to be here—together, and relatively unscathed. If the chandelier had snapped free at just a slightly different angle…
“I’m so glad you’re both all right,” I said. “This week has been unthinkable. Just…awful. The things they’ve been saying in the papers…”
Madame Giry joined us, taking one of the rounded cane chairs. Her knees popped as she sank onto the cushioned seat pad, a glimpse into the future for all dancers once they’d reached a certain age.
“Have you been back?” I asked, glancing from her to Meg. “Have you seen the…” I wasn’t sure how best to finish the question. Wreckage? Ruin? Disaster?
A disaster beyond imagination…
But Madame Giry nodded, understanding anyway. “It is…quite extensive. The auditorium will be closed to the public—and the company—for many months to come.”
I felt sick. “What do they intend to do for the rest of season?”
Meg hissed out a tsk, sounding bitter and barbed. “We’re all out of a job.”
“Il Muto was always the final production before the August holiday,” her mother said, a pointed edge sharpening her words, and I sensed this was already a conversation long played out between them.
“They’ve canceled the remaining performances—obviously—and next season will simply have to wait until everything else is sorted. ”
My friend’s lips twisted unhappily. “It’s so unfair. It hadn’t been announced yet, but Mother had heard I was going to have a soloist role in Hérodiade.”
“Oh, Meg,” I began, ready to commiserate, but Madame Giry stamped her foot, silencing me before I could get another word out.
“Seven people are dead,” she spat. “And all you can think of is your precious part. Meg Giry, you ought to be ashamed of yourself.”
“It’s not all I can think of,” she snapped back. Though the Girys sometimes disagreed, I’d never heard them fight like this. “But I need to work. Not all of us have jobs waiting for us at the Conservatoire to fall back on.”
Madame Giry glanced toward me and offered a sympathetic expression. “I would welcome you both as instructors for the younger girls. You’ve certainly the skill set, and it would be better than—”
“I’d make more money selling flowers on the Place de la Concorde!” Meg snapped, her voice rising in pitch and volume.
Her mother’s eyes flashed in fury. “I’d rather you do that than sell yourself at that accursed nightclub!”
Meg let out a growl of frustration. “I’m not selling myself, for Heaven’s sake!
Christine was there. She’ll tell you everything!
” She turned to me, with eyes wide and pleading.
“I was offered a position at the Moulin Rouge, as one of the revue girls. It’s perfectly acceptable,” she added, throwing the words back toward her mother with an overly heavy hand.
“You saw. You know. Tell her, Christine.”
I didn’t need to look Madame’s way to know she was glaring daggers at me. I could feel them, prickling and sharp, at the back of my neck. “We were there last week,” I admitted slowly. “Raoul took us out for dinner.”
Madame let out a tfft of incredulity.
“It really is quite spectacular,” I went on. “The costumes and the lights…it’s just as well produced as one of our operas…”
I knew I wasn’t persuading her to Meg’s side, but at least they’d stopped bickering.
“See? It’s fine. It’s just like performing at the Populaire,” Meg said, starting everything up again.
“It is nothing like that!” Madame Giry exploded from the chair, striking its armrest. “There is no art there. No love. They do it only for the money, only for the—”
“I need the money!” Meg cried. “We need the money. We need the money, and I need—”
Madame Giry stormed out of the room, cursing beneath her breath. She stomped up the narrow staircase to the second-floor bedrooms and slammed one of the doors shut.
Meg glared at the ceiling above us, where her mother’s footsteps could be heard, pacing back and forth. “I’m so sorry,” she finally said.
“There’s nothing to apologize for. I…I wish I could have convinced her.”
She sighed. “There’s no convincing her of anything. You know that. Once her mind is made up…” Another sigh.
“You’re really going to become a revue girl?”
“For a while.” Meg raised her chin with pride.
“The pay is good, and—” She flinched as the sound of shattering glass filled the air.
“And the dancing is fun. It’s not like ballet, with all its stodgy rules and the endless repetition.
There’s life to it. And gorgeous costumes, and…
and…and the patrons,” she went on, drawing out the word with relish.
“You saw the type of men who go to the shows. They’re respectable and charming. Perhaps I’ll even meet my own Raoul.”
“Perhaps,” I echoed.
“You could join me!” she exclaimed. “I’m sure Charles and Joseph would bring you on in a heartbeat. You could sing too! It wouldn’t be all chahut and showing off your ankles.”
She looked so pleased with her idea I wasn’t sure how to tell her I didn’t need the job.
Meg guessed anyway, reading my expression like a book. “But…Raoul,” she guessed.
I could only nod.
After a moment, she covered my hands with her own. “I’m happy for you. Truly,” she added. “Will you be moving into his town house?”
“We’re going on a bit of a holiday. To Deauville.” My words were steeped in guilt.
“You’ll make sure to send me postcards?” Her lips rose in a smile, though her eyes remained flat. “I’ve never been to the beach before.”
“Come with us,” I said, the decision made in a heated rush.
“I’m sure whatever house Raoul has rented will have more than enough rooms. Or you and I can share mine, just like we used to.
Oh, Meg, it will be the grandest adventure!
I’ll show you the boardwalk and the café where Father used to play.
We can dip our toes in the sea, and Raoul will take us to the horse races. There are arcades and a pantomime and—”
“It sounds magical,” she said sadly. Now, not even her smile remained. “But you know it would never work.”
“It could! I’m certain Raoul wouldn’t mind.”
She scoffed good-naturedly. “He’s not going to want to share you for the whole summer. You know he won’t.”
“Then a week or two, at least. Surely you could come and stay with us for—”
“Maybe.” She sounded unconvinced. “I’ll have to see what the schedule will be like. I expect they’ll keep us very busy.”
I nodded, full of understanding yet still disappointed.
“When do you leave?”
“Tomorrow afternoon, once the doctor declares me safe to travel.”
Meg reached out and touched my temple, where I’d done a poor job of masking the lingering bruise. “That night was so frightening. I was in the wings when I saw the chandelier begin to fall, and when you hit your head…I was so scared I’d somehow lost you.”
I threw my arms around her, pulling her in for a tight hug. “Never,” I promised, then paused, thinking through her story. “Meg…when you were in the wings…did you see anything else?”
Meg tilted her head, seeking clarification.
“Did you see anyone else? Anyone who shouldn’t have been there? Maybe up in Box Five?”
Her eyes narrowed. “Do you mean the Phantom?”
I nodded.
Meg sat back against the seat cushions, looking uncomfortable. “Mother was at the meeting with the managers the other day, back when they were all trying to decide how to go forward with the season and the repairs, and…” She swallowed. “They think he’s dead.”
I was stunned. It had never occurred to me that Erik could have been caught in the disaster. It seemed too incredible to believe.
Erik, dead.
Even as the terrible thought took root in my mind, I dismissed it.
That was an impossibility. I’d seen him on the railing of Box Five.
He’d been nowhere near the floor. And had he somehow been struck by the falling fixtures, the papers would have certainly reported finding someone with his visage among the dead.
Such a face could not have gone unnoticed.
“I don’t believe it,” Meg said, her voice now hushed and low. She glanced at me and offered a tiny smile. “I don’t think he’s dead.”
“You don’t?”
I couldn’t decide which scenario was worse. Erik, and all his genius, lost to the world forever, or Erik alive and still enraged. Erik seeking vengeance and the settling of scores.
She shook her head. “It doesn’t make any sense. How could a ghost be killed? He was already dead to begin with.”
“Oh, Meg,” I laughed. There was nothing else I could do.
There was so much I needed to tell her. So much that I had to explain and confess.
And I would. One day.
“I shall miss you, so much,” I swore, sensing the conversation’s end.
“Promise me you’ll write? Once you’re all settled in at your very fine house, like some very fine lady?”
“Only if you swear to write back.”
Meg nodded. “Of course I will.” She let out a small snort. “Well, at least until some suitor of my own comes along and sweeps me off my feet.”
I cupped her cheek, memorizing her face. I wanted to remember her exactly as she was now, before our paths diverged, before our lives began to change too much. “I don’t doubt that’s exactly what will happen, Meg Giry.”
“It had better.”