“Bridget was right,” Leslie said from behind the hugging girls, “you sound way worse.”
Eva watched as Bridget gave Leslie a little push of remonstration.
“Sorry,” Leslie said belligerently. Leslie looked from Bridget to Eva.
“Envy green doesn’t look so good on you,” Jerome laughed at Leslie, who blushed. Jerome had been the tall, handsome object of affection for most of the girls in Eva’s class, especially Leslie. Jerome, however, seemed only to use Leslie’s obvious attentions as a point of sport. Eva had always assumed it was his way of flirting but she wished he wouldn’t, Leslie seemed to always find something to be unhappy about. According to her, the teacher’s unfairly picked on her, Eva was unfairly lauded because of her parents, if Leslie did poorly on a performance or exam it was always because of something someone else had done to purposefully hinder her performance.
Eva tried not to take the other girl’s comment to heart. She tired her best to smile but found herself unwilling to say anything. It would, after all, only prove Leslie’s point.
“Let’s go in.” Bridget turned toward the entrance where other well-dressed opera patrons were already going in.
“I feel like the opera audiences are always disproportionately full of old people,” Jerome said too loudly. An older couple turned to look at Jerome and Bridget snapped her eyes at her friend in annoyance.
“I can’t take you anywhere,” she hissed at Jerome once the people had turned away from them. Now Eva did smile.
They’d purchased the tickets when they were still students and gotten a great deal. The seats were in the side orchestra and she whiffed heavy perfumes and spicy aftershave from the crowds of people surrounding them.
Eva felt more fully the magnetic pull she’d begun feeling all the way from the East Side. There was a special energy in the building that seemed to carry Eva all the way to her seat.
As Eva sat down she rewrapped her scarf around her neck and exhaled. The breath felt good against her vocal chords and she took a deep inhale and exhale again through her mouth.
“I’m so glad you came,” Bridget leaned over in the dimming lights.
“Me too,” Eva whispered back.
“Aw, me too,” Jerome said in a mock girlish voice, smiling at both Eva and Bridget.
Leslie leaned forward, “Shh, it’s starting.” She put a finger to her lips and widened her eyes.
The attention of the audience turned to the stage and Eva looked on with a magical sense of transportation and wellbeing. This was her favorite place in the world. This was where she wanted to spend the rest of her life.
Ambrose Leroy came to the stage with a breathtaking sound. His voice resonated through the building like a man singing into a great canyon. Eva gave a sharp intake of breath and leaned forward, she hung on his every note, his every perfect burst of sonorous sound.
Eva felt herself pulled into the man’s spell. Playing Don Juan was the perfect role for the magnetic man. She was in complete and utter rapture.
“He is perfect,” Bridget said turning to Eva as the lights came up for intermission.
“The most perfect,” Eva agreed, her mind still on the man. “He’s like a…like…” Eva trailed off as she looked at her friend’s face.
“Eva,” Bridget stared open mouthed at her friend, “your voice.”
Eva put a hand to her throat. She hummed a little chord from what they’d just heard. Her voice felt… it felt restored. Her vocal chords felt supple and flexible, ready to take flight.
“Bridget,” Eva spoke with the same trilling sounds she’d always had before her recent decline. “Do you think…maybe it’s been nothing at all, maybe I have allergies to something in the air, maybe…” the clear tones of her voice made her laugh with happiness.
“Maybe it’s psychosomatic,” Jerome leaned forward into the conversation as he made way for a woman struggling through the row.
“But I had tests, I had specialists…the best,” Eva could have burst into song at that moment of perfect euphoria. She had a voice and she was dying to test it out.
Eva spoke with exaltation all through the intermission, making her words as fluid and songlike as possible, she even hummed phrases of her favorite songs to her friends who were merrily goading her on.
“You could audition now. You were invited to more auditions than anyone else in our class,” Leslie said with a slight snap of bitterness.
“Oh,” Eva sighed and leaned back in her seat, “if it were anyone but Ambrose Leroy I would have to leave immediately and go wake all of my neighbors.”
“But it is Ambrose Leroy… and he is the most beautiful man I’ve ever seen. The things I could do with a man like that.” Bridget gave a lascivious look under her eyebrows.
“Most beautiful man? Let’s exaggerate,” Jerome said as he struck a pose.
The lights flicked and people swarmed back to their seats and back into the spell of Don Juan.
The final notes ended to a rush of wild applause.
“Bravo,” Jerome called as Eva bounced in her spot, clapping wildly. She applauded with abandon, as if drunk on the performance.
Eva watched as the house lights came up and people began to spread away from performance and out into the New York night.
“But I don’t want it to end,” Eva turned to Bridget.
“Back to reality.” Jerome smiled with a c’est la vie shrug.
Eva turned in the appropriate direction with her heart aching to stay. She meant exactly what she said, she didn’t want it to end, she wanted it to go on forever.
Eva had just made it to the end of the row when a man, dressed in a plaid suit, stopped her. She thought he was going to ask for directions or the name of a good restaurant but he surprised her by saying her own name.
“Eva St. Marie?” The man’s skin glowed a pale waxy color under the lights.
“Yes?” She searched his face trying to remember where she might have met him before.
“Mr. Leroy has expressed a desire to meet you.”
Chapter Two
The man gave a soft smile and Eva stared at him not knowing what to make of his words.
“Ambrose Leroy?” Bridget said from behind her.
“Yes, he’s in his dressing room… your friends may, of course, come as well.” The man spoke to Eva then looked at her three gaping friends.
“That would be… very nice. Thank you,” Eva stammered.
“Do you know Ambrose Leroy?” Bridget whispered into Eva’s ear as the two made their way past leaving people and toward a door closer to the stage.
Eva shook her head and mouthed a silent, “No, I have no idea.”
“But how does that guy know you?” Bridget hissed, pointing to the man in the plaid suit.
Eva looked to her friend, trying to think up some plausible explanation, but none came.
The group followed the man through another door and past other members of the opera and orchestra in various states of disarray.
When they went up a small flight of stairs Eva, Bridget, Leslie, and Jerome all walked into a well-appointed room. Sitting in chair with his stage makeup smeared onto a towel nearby, sat a shirtless Ambrose Leroy. He looked fresh despite his recent hours until the hot stage lights.
Eva looked at him dumbfounded. She’d thought him perfect in photos and video online but it was nothing compared to the real thing. His muscular chest and arms were stealing her focus and she tried desperately to look only at his face.
“Eva St. Marie,” Ambrose stood looking at the group, “and these must be your friends.”
Eva smiled dumbly. Possibly understanding her openmouthed gaze, Ambrose lifted a shirt from a nearby chair and put it on. The smell of sandalwood and lemon floated to her nostrils.
He was perfect in every respect. His skin was smooth, his lips pulling at a hint of a smile, his eyes glowed a deep green, and his jaw was a tight masculine line. His hair sat as a tousled bundle of light brown curls, almost golden when
they caught the light.
His gaze was so powerful that she barely knew where she was or who her friends were anymore.
“This…” she extended a hand in the direction of her friends without looking at them or breaking eye contact with Ambrose. “…this is…”
“I’m Jerome.” Jerome put a hand out and Ambrose moved his eyes from Eva and reached a hand to Jerome. The two seemed to give each other a rather over masculine handshake. “This is Bridget and Leslie,” Jerome continued the introductions as he gave Eva a curious look.
“And how did you like the performance tonight?” Ambrose turned his attention to Eva again and she felt as if she were being clasping in his grip.
“It was perfect,” she said, though she could have really been saying, you are perfect.
He turned to look at her three friends with a question on his face.
“Excellent, sir,” Bridget gushed.
“Please, call me Ambrose.” He smiled and the world seemed to shatter beneath it.
“I have always been a fan of your parent’s work,” he turned to Eva again. “Your mother’s voice…well, I don’t suppose I have to tell you how talented she was.”
Eva felt her face grow flush. So, was he just a fan of her parents? Was that why he had taken an interest in meeting her?
“She sang like an angel…and looked like one too,” he continued when Eva didn’t say anything. His eyes moved over Eva’s face very carefully. “You look quite a bit like her.”
Eva smiled, “Thank you. I was young when they…” Eva looked away.
“It was tragic,” Ambrose’s voice crept over her, over her neck, down her spine.
Eva nodded then looked back at the deep green eyes.
“Your father was a master with the baton.” Ambrose lifted his eyebrows. “…And your mother at La Scala.” His face moved as if he were in the throws of ecstasy, not dissimilar to the way Eva had been looking at him all night.
“But you’re much too young to ever have seen them,” Eva knit her brows. She didn’t actually know how old he was, at least a good ten or fifteen years her senior.
“Not too young to have listened to the recordings though.” He smiled and Eva kicked herself. There had seemed something in the manner of his saying it, something that had suggested a closer connection… but of course it must have been the recordings. Perhaps he had the type of connection to her parents that she’d always felt to Ambrose himself and she had never met him before tonight.
“And does the daughter sing as well as the mother or perhaps conduct like her father?”
“She sings… and she’s better than her mother was,” Jerome said from behind Eva. It was the sort of statement that Jerome had never voiced directly to Eva before.
“She was best in our class at Julliard, all our teachers said Eva would go on to be one of the greats,” Leslie looked at Eva with the slightest tinge of envy.
“Oh come on,” Eva admonished her friends.
“It’s true,” Bridget added.
“Then I must hear for myself.” Ambrose turned to Eva as if she would start trilling that very moment.
“No, but I…” She was about to protest that her voice wasn’t up to it, that she was on vocal rest, but her voice felt, in that moment, as if it wanted to leap out of her body.
“I suppose this room is a bit too small for a real performance.” He looked around at the upright piano in the corner. Eva assumed that he warmed up in that very room before every performance. “You should have a real stage and I happen to know where we can find one.”
Ambrose nodded to his friend in the plaid suit then ushered the whole group out of the room.
The man in the plaid suit walked them to the wings of the stage.
The stage had already been wiped clean and the opening scenery replaced. The orchestra had packed up and left, the other singers gone home to a warm bath or an after-performance meal with friends.
Ambrose walked out onto the stage and opened his arms. “This will do nicely, what do you think?”
Eva followed slowly behind him. She heard a few bars from the piano and she looked down to the orchestra pit where the man in the plaid suit seemed at home on the grand piano.
Bridget, Jerome, and Leslie all walked down into the first row of seats and Eva had no idea what to say or do. It was all too abrupt, she should warm up, she didn’t have anything prepared. She had been daydreaming about a moment like this for years but now the reality of it made her go weak with apprehension.
“Ray can play anything you like.” Ambrose put his hand on the base of Eva’s back and she felt his warm breath against her neck.
As Ambrose walked away, down the stairs, and out into the audience in front of her, Eva began to panic. Her voice hadn’t been working, she was rusty, it wouldn’t come out well she was sure of it. She couldn’t bear to let Ambrose down after he’d said all those things about her parents, the way he’d looked at her. What if she crashed and burned? Then she would be destined to live out the potentially horrible moment over and over again for the rest of her life.
She looked to Ray who was looking up at her expectantly.
“Um,” Eva tried to make her mind work.
“She sang Dido’s Lament for her finals,” Bridget offered to Ray who immediately began playing.
The sound of the piano lifted up to Eva’s ears and embraced her. She felt the music in her soul, felt the lift and strain in her belly as she pulled in breath. Her body began preparing without her having to ask just as it had done so many times before.
Eva’s mind had been ready to walk off, to dismiss the ploy, but her body, her soul said otherwise.
As she began she started slowly, softly. Her voice was dancing slowly over the words, holding each, testing them out. Then, she felt the weight of her breath push against her ribs, begging to be set free. Eva obliged.
She let her voice unfurl into the full space of the opera house. She held nothing back and her voice felt agile and young. She pressed to the edges of each note and her voice surpassed any expectation she might have held.
The music gained in force and Eva let her body move, let her arms lift and pull in, extend out as the notes built to a full and brazen high note.
When the song ended, it was a few moments before Eva remembered the emptiness of the seats in front of her, the cavernous space of unfilled seats where only four human souls focused their attention on her. With a quick glance, she remembered her three friends, then her eyes searched into the space and found Ambrose.
She could read the look of hunger and delight in his face. She felt his attention so fully given over to her that it was like a hundred eyes focused all at once. She accepted it greedily.
Ambrose started clapping and Eva’s friends followed suit. Ray stood to examine her as if she’d only just becoming truly interesting to him.
“That voice,” he said as if she were not the owner of it, “deserves an audience.”
“I have the best possible audience right here,” Eva gushed—too pleased by Ambrose’s praise to feign any sort of nonchalance.
“Drinks are in order,” Ray called out from the pit.
Ambrose lifted his eyebrows in question toward Eva who was still blushing at the burning sensation his eyes left on her. She nodded in response to his look.
“I’m in,” Jerome called and Eva once again remembered her friends.
Ray jumped out of the orchestra pit, “I know just the place.”
“Oh my, what a gentleman,” Bridget clapped her hands together twice as Ray offered her his arm. Ray waited for Jerome and Leslie to begin up the aisle before him, then followed behind with Bridget who, while clutching Ray’s arm, looked back at Eva with wink.
Eva walked to the side of the stage but before she could make it to the stairs, Ambrose held out his hand for her. She went to the lip of the stage where Ambrose lifted her like she weighed nothing at all and placed her on the floor. He kept his hands at her waist for a long moment as he look
ed into her face.
“I hate to take you down, you so obviously belong up there… but I think you already know that.” His voice was soft and intimate, his face close to hers.
His smell, his proximity, the line of his jaw, all made Eva break out in goose bumps. She felt his hands on her waist so intimately he might have been undressing her.
Eva leaned into his smell, felt herself pulled toward him. Perhaps it hadn’t been the opera house with the magnetic field after all. Perhaps it had been Ambrose. She smiled at the thought.
“Coming?” Jerome called back, interrupting the purely intimate space between them.
“I guess we’d better,” Ambrose said with a smile.
Eva nodded then moved in the direction of her friends.
The night felt electric. The feel of Ambrose’s strong hand on her back thrilled and terrified her. She was hardly able to concentrate on anything anyone said. The group walked a few blocks to an underground, speakeasy style bar only a few blocks from the opera house. It small but packed to the gills with the most stylish people Eva had ever seen. Cravats, hats, bold patterns, film noir clothing splashed in modern artwork fashion.
“Just think, we were right down the street all this time and never knew of this place.” Bridget shook her head. “It’s fantastic!”
“Probably for the best, we would never have gotten our work done.” Eva followed Ambrose who seemed to be creating a path to the bar just with his presence.
Bridget watched the people move out of Ambrose’s way, some nodding, some smiling, one woman running a hand across his chest. “He’s like royalty, I need to learn that trick.”
“This,” Ambrose put his hand down on the bar top and turned to Eva, “is one of Manhattan’s best kept secrets.”
There was a live quartet in the far corner and Ray lifted Bridget’s hand spinning her onto a makeshift dance floor.
Leslie smiled widely, no doubt, thrilled to be partnered with Jerome for the night. She held up Jerome’s arm while she spun a circle underneath it. Jerome looked to Eva plaintively, but Eva just laughed at her friend. Jerome laughed too and gave in to Leslie’s spinning. He looked to Ray and began copying some of the other man’s dance moves—not too poorly either.
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