by Megan Chance
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, raising 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….”
He stilled. His fingers froze at my waist, his kiss went slack though he did not move his lips from my throat. I felt the strain of his listening, and the remembered pleasure of how he’d always done that, how he’d always listened to me with his whole body, blended with the pleasure I felt at it now, so I didn’t allow myself to resist; I was so tired of resisting. I let the duet take me, and like today in the storage room, my voice reached for the notes the way a body stretches upon waking, slowly and with joy, like honey after salt, unbearably sweet and smooth and liquid, familiar and at the same time like nothing one had ever tasted before. And then my part was done, and I went silent, waiting for his answer, which came, his hand tightening against me, his song quiet and for me alone, and then the back and forth and our lines together, harmonized, and
it was over, the last notes joining the sunlight to make it seem brighter and hotter, and he was looking at me with a kind of wonder in his eyes, so strange. It was such a reverent expression it made me laugh, and then he was smiling and laughing with me, wrapping his arms around me, pulling me down onto his chest so I felt the vibration of his laughter.
We laughed for a long time.
He said, “How beautiful you are when you smile. How I’ve missed it.”
I felt my smile fade. I pressed my finger against his lips. “Ah, such flattery. You’ll turn my head.”
He caught my hand, holding it away. “I want to tell you something.”
I shook my head, afraid, leaning down to kiss him, whispering, “I want you again already.”
He laughed again, softly. “Still running away.”
I twisted loose, running my palm over his too-prominent ribs, downward.
He caught my hand again as I trailed it across his hip, stopping me just as the tips of my fingers reached him. “Listen to me, sweetheart.”
“Don’t tell me. Please. I don’t want to know.”
He ignored me. “I know you intended to leave me that night. I know you meant to ask DeRosier to take you away.”
“You … knew?”
“You’re not very good at hiding what you feel. I’d known it for weeks. I meant to let you go. I stayed away long after the performance was over to give you time. When I got back to the hotel it was nearly four. And then, when I saw him there and … all the blood—I went a little mad. I tore the damn room apart looking for you. By the time I realized you were gone, I was covered with blood myself.”
I covered my eyes as if I could blind myself to the image his words roused, then let my fingers drop when he continued.
“When they took me away, I said nothing about you. They thought I’d done it and I let them think it.”
“I saw the newspaper reports,” I whispered. “I always wondered … why.”
He looked at me as if he didn’t understand the question, as if it made no sense to him. “Because I love you.”
I stared at him. “You took the blame because you loved me?”
“Of course,” he said impatiently. “Why else?”
Why else? I had thought a hundred other things. He’d been caught; they didn’t believe him when he told them the truth; something. But not love. Love had never occurred to me. How little I’d believed it when he said the words. They were easy to say, after all, meaningless. He had used me and manipulated me. But what he’d done for me…. Once again, I had the disquieting sense that he was not quite who I’d thought he was.
He sighed. “I want you to understand. Sing Sing is … there’s no talk allowed there. Only the guards are allowed to speak. It’s silent, but it’s not quiet, and it’s heavy—there were times when I felt as if I were suffocating beneath the weight of it. All these … hushed sounds. It’s inhuman, somehow. I thought of you. I thought … somewhere she’s singing, she’s happy. I imagined it until I thought it was real. There you were, on a stage somewhere, smiling, singing…. It was what kept me sane.”
I buried my face in his chest, and somehow that was worse, the power those words had in their rumble against my cheek, and I lifted my head again. I looked toward the window, where the sun was too blinding to see.
“Then Willa wrote. I asked her for news of you. I wanted to know where you were singing, what the reviews were like”—he laughed shortly—”even what you were wearing. And she wrote back and said there was nothing. That you had disappeared. That you weren’t singing anywhere she knew, and that … that broke my heart, Bina. And made me angry. I’d made this sacrifice, and you had thrown it back in my face. You made it worthless. Four years of my life, thrown away. That’s what I mean when I say you owe me. That’s why I came after you. Because you weren’t singing, and I wanted to know why.”
I rolled away from him, onto my side, turning my back to him, and this time he let me go. I was sorry for everything, for his sacrifice, for the fear that racked me now that I knew the truth of it.
“What happened that night, Sabine?”
“You know what happened. I killed him.”
He whispered, “Tell me.”
He put his arm around my waist, pulling me back against him. His breathing was low and deep against my shoulder. I rolled again to face him. I kissed him, softly first, and then pressing, seducing, using my tongue and my lips to quiet him.
He took my face in his hands. “Tell me.”
I shook my head. I trailed my hand down his chest, to his navel, lower. I stroked him. “I don’t want to remember. I want you to make me forget.”
“You can’t ignore it forever,” he said, but he kissed me, and in relief I gripped him, bringing him closer. Yet I did not recognize his kiss; there was something there that was unfamiliar, an intensity that woke an equal desire in me, and he made love to me as if he meant to take me into himself, to consume me, as if he could make of us a single person, as if he could make me whole.
CHAPTER 23
I meant to go to the boardinghouse, to be alone, but Johnny had other ideas, and so I spent the night with him. I let him touch me and I thought of Gideon, and when Johnny was asleep I lay there and knew I must end things. Now. Tomorrow. I would send Gideon away, I would tell him about the news paper reporters Prosch had said were looking for him, looking for me, and ask him to lead them away from here. And then I would quit the choir until things were settled at the Palace. I had no choice, after all. The risk of discovery had grown too great.
I meant to do it too. The next morning, I told Johnny I had some errands to run: chloral to pick up for Duncan, a pile of gowns to take to the seamstress, and he did not question me but waved me away and went back to the accounts. I hurried to meet Gideon at the church with my hood over my head and drawn tight, checking over my shoulder for anyone following, nearly running in my haste to save myself.
He was already there. The storage room door was open; I heard the music as I opened the door to the basement and came down the stairs. He was playing “By the Margins of Fair Zurich’s Water” as if he loved it. I shut the door behind me and shoved my hood back with the same motion. He glanced up at me and smiled, but he didn’t stop, and I went to the piano and looked down at his hands racing across the keys, those lovely hands, and when he finished with a flourish, I found myself saying, “How strange that I don’t know … how is it you learned to play?”
He gave me a bemused look. “You’re asking this now? After all this time?”
“I … never wondered before now.”
He sighed. “My mother. She taught lessons to make extra money. There was a piano in the sitting room of our boardinghouse. She made me practice every day.”
He said it wistfully, and I saw it was a good memory for him. I would have said I knew Gideon Price better than anyone on earth, but now I thought of all the things I didn’t know about him, all the things I’d never questioned. The kind of child he’d been, for example, or what it had been like for him to grow up without a father. The sudden yearning to know who he was apart from myself took me aback.
The time for that has passed. This is dangerous. Just tell him to go. I opened my mouth to say it. But then he said, “Shall we begin?” and launched into Susanna’s “Deh vieni” and instead I sang, flirting with him as he flirted with me, and when the song ended, he said quietly, “I used to dream of that look on your face. When you sing, you’re even more … radiant,” in a sweetly sincere way that surprised and confused me, and I thought of Charlotte saying much the same thing and then … I could not send him away, and I could not give this up, no matter the danger. Not yet.
WITH FEBRUARY CAME the rain again, and I went to the church nearly every day, and then went with Gideon to his hotel after. I was miserable with guilt and fear, but I could not seem to stop. I had a hundred lies to tell Johnny, to tell Charlotte. The tales were varied and inventive, and I marveled at how easily they sprang to my lips and saw the
strain of my deceit in my face whenever I looked into the mirror. I expected any day to be discovered. I knew I must make Gideon go, and soon, but each morning, I thought, one more day. I’ll tell him tomorrow.
I tended Johnny the way I’d once tended Leonard Jerome, but I didn’t stay with him as often as I had for fear he would see the lies in my face. I told Charlotte I was with Johnny even when I wasn’t. But neither did I like to spend time in my boardinghouse room, because there was the journal Gideon had returned to me, and I was resisting it too. When I was there, I ran my fingers over the top of my dresser and thought of it and was afraid of what was in it, what it would tell me about myself, the things I did not want to know.
And if I was miserable with the deceptions, well … there was the music to make me forget. As always, it was the only thing that mattered.
“THAT’S ENOUGH FOR today,” Gideon told me one day after we’d been coming to Trinity for three weeks. I watched him put the music in the folio and tie it shut, and I followed him to the door. He extinguished the lamp and put his hand at my waist to guide me, and just then there was a commotion on the stairs, the clatter of something against the walls, and two workmen came into the basement, carrying a pew.
The men were frequently down here; Gideon and I backed up to the wall to give them room to pass, and then one of them looked up, and I saw it wasn’t a workman at all, but Robert Marsdon.
“Miss Olson!” he said, looking both pleased to see me and puzzled. His glance went from me to Gideon, then to the proprietary hand Gideon still had at my waist. The confusion on his face grew more pronounced. “Mr…. Price, wasn’t it?”
“You’ve a good memory,” Gideon said quietly.
Marsdon and the workman set the pew against the wall, and Robert dusted off his hands and told the other man that he would be back up in a moment. As the workman went up the stairs, Robert said, “What are you doing down here?”
I stepped deliberately away from Gideon and gestured helplessly to the storage room. “The piano—”
