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He had not been expecting her. Oh, he had been thinking about her all day, of course. So much, in fact, that he had injected himself with nearly double his normal dosage. True, the morphine calmed his frazzled nerves, but it was poor substitute for the immense relief and comfort that could be provided by the mere accidental brush of her fingertips against his sleeve. For while the morphine soothed his anxiety with a cold, numbing embrace, Christine’s warmth had the power to make him feel blessedly, wonderfully alive. And he was addicted to it. When he thought of her, he shook; his stomach churned and heaved. He could not sleep for want of her presence. He wrote and played with trembling hands, clenching and unclenching, grinding his teeth without knowing he did so. She was an addiction, and any moment spent outside of her presence was pure and shameful agony.
He sat in his armchair by the fireplace, although there was no fire, and allowed himself every fantasy he had held at bay while sober, knowing he would not remember them when he came out of his trance. That was the sweetest bliss that morphine had to offer him: forgetfulness.
Thus unimpeded by his conscience or his fear of memory, he saw her dressed in a wedding gown: his Aida, his Christine. How many roles had he planned out for her? How many operas had he staged inside his fraying mind, shamelessly placing himself as her singing partner? How many variations on great works had he composed in these hours of stupor, in which Marguerite saved Faust from damnation, in which Desdemona calmed Otello’s wrath, in which Rigoletto’s wife had lived, in which Tamara’s love absolved the Demon? In a haze and in a fever he had spider-scrawled these scores; alternate endings and different courses of time that consoled him, but that would never see the light of day. No, Don Juan Triumphant was hardly alone, though it was by far the best, the most developed, the most original.
Mozart had been a force of musical genius to be reckoned with, but he had had no idea what he was doing when he attempted his Don Giovanni. Nor, for that matter, had Dargomyzhsky, Righini, Angiolini, or Caldara. Liszt and Gazzaniga had managed to come reasonably close, though their music was rather more descriptive of Paganini than it was of Don Juan himself.
No. They were, all of them, simply too much like him, you see; they could not see Don Juan clearly, because he was just too close.
Erik, however, was perfect. He was not only far away enough to see Don Juan; he was Don Juan’s polar opposite. The precise compliment. The most perverse of mirrors. Erik was Don Juan backwards and inside out. Perhaps that could account for his appearance.
But not now, not now. Now was time for Christine. He smiled at the thought of her.
“Christine,” he murmured. She appeared before him once more, not in the wedding gown, but in a simple yellow frock, patterned with little flowers. She offered him a radiant smile before parting those sweet lips and beginning to speak.
“Good evening, Erik; I have come to see you about this aria.” He smiled broadly, which would have been a truly gruesome sight if it were not for the mask.
“Christine” he said again. She was lovelier by far than he had ever seen her in his mind. She looked almost real, as if conjured by his thoughts to come and relieve his misery with the grace of a touch or a smile. He sighed happily at the thought of a Real Christine, come to visit him down here in the dark of her own accord. Implausible, of course, but when had his fantasies ever been so? He was, after all, a miserable old spider, and she the loveliest and freest of butterflies. He had ensnared her in his web, but it was she who had ensnared his heart! Perhaps they could set each other free…?
“Christine,” even her name was addictive. It felt good to say it, and what harm could it do? What ill could come from whispering himself to sleep on those two sweetest of syllables? He could not have her in his arms, but he could have her name on his lips, and he could be content with that. Or at least he could fool himself into thinking he was, most of the time.
“Erik, are you alright?” she asked, and he very nearly died when he felt her lay a hand upon the exposed part of his forehead between the edge of the mask and the edge of his receding hairline. She had an unbelievable talent, this girl, for finding and caressing his exposed patches of skin. He had thought himself thoroughly covered until Christine came along with her dear little hands and discovered the way he was given to ecstatic trembling whenever she sought him out and touched him of her own accord.
“You’re not running a fever,” the vision of loveliness murmured, “In fact, you’re ice cold. You’re always so cold, Erik. You aren’t ill, are you?” He was vaguely aware, somewhere, that she had asked him a question. But now that she had pointed out his own frigidity, he began to notice it himself. He could no longer tell if his shivers were from cold or residual delight at having been touched.
“Warm me,” he blurted, scarcely aware that he had done so. It was all a fantasy, a mad, desperate grab at happiness to have Christine warm him back to life. In the end he would wake alone in the cold and the dark and the damp, but for now he could have the dream creature’s arms around him, gently, gently…
And around him they went. He felt himself lifted on a cloud of delight, and then Christine was carrying him, bridal-style, across the threshold of the Louis-Philippe room. She gently laid him down upon the bed before taking off his shoes. With her assistance he found his way under the covers where he lay, still trembling, either from cold or from Christine or from the effects of the drug itself he could not tell. He closed his eyes, waiting for it to stop.
When he opened them again there was a fire in the grate, and two extra quilts upon the bed. But still he shook. Suddenly the bed moved, a rolling tilt, and—dear God!—he felt the soft, warm form of Christine folding her arms about his torso and pressing herself to his back. He breathed a moan: a long, low, pleading sound, beseeching her for he knew not what. In response she pulled him tighter to her, and he thrilled at the newfound feeling of safety. She was warm, so warm, and that warmth was slowly sinking down into his marrow, kindling and rekindling fires never lit or long gone out. He stopped shivering. Only tiny tremors now. Twitches and spasms few and far between.
“I love you,” he murmured, for if it was a dream he had nothing to lose, and if it was not all was probably lost already. He arched his back in undeniable joy as he felt the brush of two, very real, lips against his ear, whispering:
“I love you, too.”