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The party atmosphere was cloying, intense, with the scents of hot food thickening the air between sweat and perfume and hot, sticky, evening breath. For Leporello, who had spent the last decade immersed in crowded rooms full of food and dancing and far less socially acceptable behaviors as he managed things on behalf of his master, it was exhausting; for Masetto, it was clearly completely overwhelming. Ever since Leporello had dragged him down the stairs to join the dancing, only a few steps behind his master and Zerlina, the young man had begun to look more and more queasy. There was a puffiness about his eyes as if he had been crying, and he kept trying to furtively straighten his coat.
It was a good coat. He must have had it made just for his wedding day, a pale green with pink lining. It matched Zerlina’s dress.
Even now, as Leporello was flitting about the party, dodging kicking feet and outflung hands and thrown hats, spilled food and wine running slick across the floors, Masetto was watching Zerlina. He had thus far refused to dance with anyone since the music had begun, instead staring, furiously, at his wife and Leporello’s master.
Only a few hours before, he’d told Elvira she was neither first nor last. It hadn’t given her any solace; Leporello doubted if he told Masetto the same thing now it would give him any solace, either.
Instead, he scooped up a passing cup of chocolate, so hot that even through the china it burned at his skin. The smell of it cocooned him against the babble and fracas of the party and the dancing, bringing to mind as it always did a long afternoon in Naples, four years prior. It had been when Giovanni had fallen in love with those sisters from Ferrara who he had pursued doggedly in his own clothes and then in costume while Leporello had been left to distract their lady’s maid. When Giovanni had finally won the day, the chocolate that had been prepared for them in the afternoon was left behind, untouched. He and their maid had sat on the back steps of the house and listened to the fruits of his master’s labors and shared the chocolate right out of the pitcher, dipping first biscuits and bread and fruit and then their own fingers in, sucking them clean and laughing in shared bemusement at the vagaries of their betters.
He’d had it before, of course, always cold and always only the dregs. Leporello had licked clean many a pitcher of chocolate after his master was done with them—sometimes even while Giovanni had watched and goaded him on until he’d been flushed with both decadence and humiliation.
That was just the way things were, with Giovanni. Never a boring day, that was for certain.
By the time Leporello pushed to Masetto’s side, out at the far wall of the ballroom, his fingers had begun to smart faintly from the heat of the china.
Masetto glared at him. Leporello flourished his finest bow. “My dear Masetto.” He proffered the cup. “You should try to enjoy yourself, you know.”
“I should try—“ If it had been slightly quieter, Leporello thought it might have been possible to hear Masetto’s teeth grinding together, just as it was possible to see the jumping bunch of muscle in his jaw. “You are just as bad as he is, you—you—“ Masetto hesitated. Rather than seeking any further for what might be an appropriate insult, he sighed, running a hand over his hair.
Leporello shrugged. He couldn’t really deny it. He tried, but, at the end of the day...
Well, he had been a better man once, let him put it that way. He hoped he might someday be a better man again, although it would never happen so long as he stayed with Don Giovanni.
“At least try the chocolate.” He offered the cup again. Masetto eyed it warily. “Look,” Leporello said, making his voice soft and mellifluous in his best imitation of the kindest version of his master, “you’re here. Whatever will happen will happen, but there’s no point in hating yourself.” He reached to lift one of Masetto’s hands out from where his arms were resolutely crossed, pushed the cup into his limp grip. “You might as well enjoy it. Have the chocolate.” Masetto’s sharp face had been either furious or dubious from the moment they had met that afternoon, and it swung more towards dubious now, his heavy brows low. “You’ll like it,” Leporello promised. “Everyone does!”
Masetto grimaced, shrugged one broad shoulder, and—well, he didn’t throw the chocolate back, not exactly, but he certainly took a large swig of the thick drink.
There was something about the pose Masetto struck, head tilted back, long narrow throat bare above his cravat, other arm still firmly crossed over his chest, a few strands of straight dark hair escaping from his queue at the end of the day; the undainty way in which he held the cup, his grip almost white-knuckled on the porcelain; the way his throat moved as he swallowed.
When he lowered the cup, it was to gag. There was nothing left in the cup, but there was still chocolate left on his lips and tongue. “That’s—“ Masetto coughed, looking up at Leporello with tears in his brown eyes, “bitter! You like this?”
The decision came to him in a moment without hesitation. Perhaps he had simply spent too much time around his master, or perhaps Masetto, with his straight dark hair and night-black eyes and his sharp face and strong chin, reminded him of Giovanni ten years earlier, the handsome stranger in fine clothes who had plucked Leporello out of a tavern somewhere outside of Seville and given him a job and a good deal of money and a great deal of worry and grey hairs.
Leporello leaned forward and kissed the chocolate off of Masetto’s open mouth. Around them, the party went on, uncaring. The stomp of feet. The distant noise of the musicians, the overlapping ripple of voices as they sang and spoke and whispered. Here, now, in the shadow below the great stair, there was a single heartbeat of silence and calm.
Masetto had thin, firm lips. He was very well shaven, still clean even at the end of the day. He tasted almost overpoweringly of chocolate, made bitter the way Leporello and his master both liked, only the faintest hint of sweetness as an aftertaste.
He could feel Giovanni’s eyes on them. If Giovanni was watching, Zerlina certainly had to be watching, too. If one or the both of them was jealous—well.
Masetto raised one hand, which knotted in the lapel of Leporello’s good party coat, tangled in the honey-yellow brocade. He shifted, making a low noise, to reciprocate or pull away, and Leporello took advantage of the noise to slip his tongue into Masetto’s mouth and get one more taste of chocolate from where it still clung to his teeth.
He pulled away a moment later, unable to stop himself from grinning. He plucked the cup from Masetto’s other, unresisting hand. The one in his lapel stayed there.
A glance out at the party revealed, across the room under the great windows, Giovanni staring back at him, his whole face tight with jealous rage. He had frozen mid-step. Zerlina, it seemed, had not seen, for as Leporello watched she cajoled his master once more into the dance.
Leporello grinned at his master, too. He winked.
He lifted the cup to his lips and licked the last of the residue at the edge clean, then grabbed Masetto by the hand that seemed unable to let go of his coat. “Come along!” Leporello commanded, stepping out from the alcove of the stairs, back into the sweat and the smell and the roiling motion of the party’s human ocean. “You heard my master when we arrived. It’s time you danced!”
Dazed, Masetto didn’t pull away. If anything, when Leporello linked their arms together, Masetto seemed to like it.
If nothing else, here was one good memory for Masetto tonight, and Leporello’s job impressively well done, if he did say so himself.