No Return: A Contemporary Phantom Tale (9 page)

Since it was a weeknight, the dancing ended at seven o’clock, but we’d had enough by then anyway—I don’t recommend salsa dancing on a full stomach! The crowd began to disperse, and we paused by the statue of King Carlos to one side of the plaza, trying to decide what to do next. Most of the shops and restaurants at the monument closed early in the evening, so if we wanted to continue, we’d have to decide on a change of venue.

I was tired, though, and usually I tried to go to bed early on Mondays because I had an eight o’clock class on Tuesday mornings, as well as a five-hour shift at the restaurant in the evening. Still, I hesitated—it didn’t seem fair for me to cut the evening short when Randall had had such a nasty shock.

He seemed to notice my diffidence, though, because he said, “Are you ready to pack it in?”

“I’m sorry, Randall—” It didn’t help that the cold was starting to really bother me now that I was standing still again, and I began to shiver.

“Can I persuade you to come back to my place?”

That would be treading on dangerous ground, I knew. I was pretty sure Randall had a good idea of how inexperienced I was, but he was, after all, a man, and of course he’d be wanting the relationship to progress physically. And I—well, I didn’t really know what I wanted. It didn’t help that my thoughts continued to be muddled by that dream I had had the night before. Surely some part of me was eager to experience the physical side of a romantic relationship. I just worried that, for some reason, some part of me didn’t want it to be with Randall.

Dancing with him had been exhilarating—we had moved together easily, and I had felt the familiar leap of my heart as he held me, but I did know that I wanted things to move more slowly than he did. But how to express that delicately without offending him—

“Not tonight, if that’s okay.” I wrapped my hands around my elbows, trying to persuade myself that I wasn’t as cold as I thought I was. “I have an early class, and then I have to work—”

The only real betrayal of his disappointment was a subtle tightening of his jaw. “Oh, right.”

To both our surprise, I stood on my tiptoes and kissed him full on the mouth. He hesitated for a second, and then he put his arms around me and pulled me in closer, his mouth opening to mine. When we broke apart, he was smiling, and I felt considerably warmer.

“Rain check?” I asked. “I don’t work on Thursday, and I don’t have class on Friday.”

“Deal,” he replied.

Then we walked arm in arm over to Union Station—I had taken the light rail from Pasadena, since it was actually cheaper than paying for parking—and he kissed me goodnight, thoroughly and well, before I climbed on the train and headed back home. I’m sure it wasn’t the first passionate goodnight kiss shared in the station, nor would it be the last, but the memory of it was enough to keep me warm until I lay myself down in my narrow, lonely bed, to a sleep unhaunted by any Phantom.

The room was dim, lit only by the four candles mounted in the candelabra that sat on the right side of the massive gilded organ. Erik sat in the semidarkness, mechanically moving through the third Brandenburg Concerto. His thoughts were not on the notes, as much as he had admired them in the past for their pure mathematical complexity. Things had finally been set in motion, and so far everything seemed to be going well, but still he felt vaguely uneasy. Jerome continued to track Christine’s every movement, and his report that she had spent another evening with Randall was disquieting. One would think that she had felt nothing when she had danced with Erik on Halloween. He knew in his soul that was untrue—he had sensed her heart quickening in her breast, watched her soft lips part as they had moved together. But apparently that brief attraction was not enough to distract her from that annoying young man.

 
And Randall, damn him—one would think going out on a dinner date would be the last thing on his mind, considering he was in very real danger of losing his house. That had been an elegant stratagem. Really, it was so easy to have those records hacked and altered, and since one of the basic tenets of survival in a bureaucracy was never admitting you had made a mistake, it would take Randall quite a bit of maneuvering to keep the lumbering beast of government from swallowing his pitiful little property whole.

His distorted mouth pulled to one side as Erik grimly remembered the last time he had been crossed. That time the fools had been his own neighbors, the family who had owned the property that shared the block with his mansion. He had always disliked their home, mostly because it was an uninspired piece of mid-century mundanity that offended his artistic sensibilities, but it wasn’t until they had decided to build a pool in the piece of their property that backed up to his own gardens that indifference had flared into hostility.
 

It wasn’t the pool so much as the fact that it became a haven for all the members of the family, including a pair of very noisy seven-year-olds, as well as seemingly every other child within a five-block radius. The sounds of their screaming laughter echoed off the walls and rendered that portion of his property completely unusable. In self-defense, Erik had a row of closely planted Italian cypress placed there in an attempt to buffer some of the noise. Instead of settling back into uneasy coexistence, however, his neighbors promptly sued him for blocking their view of the mountains. He immediately countersued for loss of property usage as well as emotional distress.

The legal bickering went on for quite a while, during which time he had some carefully placed bribes at city hall unearth problems with the permits that had been given to build the pool in the first place. The owners of the property were then hit with more fines in addition to the ever-mounting legal fees from their lawyer. The final blow was the recession, which caused the owner of the property to lose his software company along with any hope of paying off his enormous legal bills. Bankruptcy soon followed, and the home was sold at auction—to Erik, of course, who promptly razed the house, knocked down the wall dividing the two properties, and extended the stone wall that encircled his own mansion to include the new acreage. The hated pool was dug out, and he had a lovely neoclassical gazebo erected there in its place. It was still one of his favorite haunts.
 

Homelessness and bankruptcy were not really his plan for Randall, however. No, the boy would probably pull it out by appealing to his parents for money, but the whole process would be humbling at the very least, not to mention a colossal waste of his time. And that was what Erik wanted all along—to make life difficult for him, to distract him from Christine by any means possible until she literally disappeared out from under his nose.

The disappearance, though, was the most difficult part. As isolated as Christine was, she still went to school and had a job, and so there were people who would quickly note her absence if she turned up missing. But he could not wait forever—obviously, Christine and Randall were still seeing one another, and things would progress naturally unless she were taken away, and soon. Within the month, if possible.

His fingers stilled on the keyboard as a sudden thought struck him. Of course. He had been stupid not to think of it earlier. In less than four weeks, the perfect opportunity would present itself. In less than a month, it would be the Thanksgiving holiday, and she would not be expected at school for at least four days. He knew that she did not work on Mondays, and very probably no one would think it strange that she missed school the first day after a long weekend.
 

Yes—very soon, for the first time in his life, Erik would finally have a reason to give thanks.

Chapter 7

The envelope looked innocuous enough—just a slim ivory piece of paper with my name neatly laser-printed across the front. But then I looked at the return address, read it again to be sure, and dropped my books down on the dining room table. The letter appeared to be from the Long Beach Opera, and I was pretty sure it wasn’t a flyer advertising their latest production. They sent out slick brochures for that sort of thing.

“What the—” I said aloud, then ran my finger under the flap to tear it open. The envelope contained a single piece of matching ivory paper with the Long Beach Opera logo embossed at the top. Unfolding it, I quickly scanned its contents, then read over them again, slowly, at first unbelieving, then with my heart beating faster and faster.

“Dear Ms. Daly,” the letter read, “as you may know, our organization is always on the lookout for new and promising young talent. I was privileged enough to attend the master class recital several weeks ago and hear you sing. I was very impressed by your performance and would like to extend an invitation to you to come audition for our production of
The Rake’s Progress
, which is scheduled for next April. Our next auditions are scheduled for Monday, November 9, at 4 p.m. Please bring two prepared pieces, one in English, one in the foreign language of your choice. We look forward to hearing you then.”
 

The letter was signed “Andreas Mitisek, artistic director.” I’d never heard of him, but I wasn’t that familiar with the staff of the Long Beach Opera. I did know that they tended to specialize in less-performed operas and avant-garde pieces, leaving the more mainstream works to the L.A. Opera company.
 

“Monday, November 9,” I repeated, then groaned a little. Only five days away, and awkward timing, too, since I was done with class on Mondays at one o’clock and then usually headed straight home for Pasadena. So I had to decide whether to hang around campus for an extra few hours—not very appetizing—or drive home, and then turn around and make the slog all the way down to Long Beach just a few hours later, at the very beginning of the afternoon rush, which was even less appetizing. Still, you didn’t argue with audition times. You either showed up or you didn’t, in which case your slot would be promptly filled by at least ten other hopefuls eager to take your place.

I knew even then I’d just wait at campus—I’d have my laptop with me and could work on the paper for my comp. lit. class if nothing else. I just couldn’t afford to waste the gas it would take to go up to Pasadena and then all the way back down to Long Beach. Then I stopped for a second and shook my head at myself, just a little. Here I was, being handed an amazing opportunity practically on a silver platter, and all I could do was worry about the gas it was going to take to get to Long Beach!

The phone startled me then, and I picked it up on the second ring after placing the letter down on the love seat next to me.

“Hello?”

“Hey, Christine.”

Randall, probably calling to confirm our date for the following evening. Oops. In my excitement over the letter, I’d forgotten for a moment that George had called me in to work unexpectedly on Thursday night—and this time it wasn’t even Meg I was having to cover. Two of the other waitresses had called in sick with a nasty stomach flu that was making the rounds, and George really had no choice but to ask me to take their shifts. I knew Randall would be less than thrilled to hear that our date was canceled, so I opened with the unexpected letter from the Long Beach Opera.

“You will not believe what I got in the mail today,” I said.

“What?”

I explained about the letter, let him give me his congratulations, then said slowly, “Um, Randall—about tomorrow night—”

Even through the phone line, I could hear him tense up. “What about it?”

He was not making this easy. “It turns out I can’t make it. George needs me to come in.”

A silence. “George, huh?”

Well, if he was going to be that way about it—I continued, sounding defensive even to myself, “Look, Randall, it’s my job. Two of the other waitresses are out with the flu, and he needs me to help cover for them. It’s not like I volunteered or something.”

Another pause. God, I hated telephones. That was how I first found out about my parents’ deaths—the hospital called the home number the O.R. staff had found in my father’s wallet. They didn’t know that the only person at home to pick up the phone was a frightened fifteen-year-old girl who waited alone, wondering why her parents were taking so long to come back from that dinner party....

Randall said, “Okay, fine. It’s not as if I’m not going through something over here or anything—”

I felt a little flame of anger then. Guilt was the last thing I needed to deal with right now. “I’m not doing this on purpose, Randall!”

“Of course not. You never do anything on purpose if you can help it, do you, Christine?”

That
came right out of left field. I glared at the phone for a moment, then snapped, “What the hell is that supposed to mean?” I was angry enough that I didn’t bother to hide that fact. “If you really think I’m some passive-aggressive victim type, then fine! Think what you want—it doesn’t change the fact that I have to work for a living!”

“And I don’t?”

Possibly I had gone a little too far, but at that point I didn’t much care. “Well, at least you’ve got some kind of safety net. You can always count on your parents to bail you out, right?”

Silence again, this time so long I wondered whether he had hung up on me. Finally he said, “Well, at least now I know your opinion of me. Talk to you later.” And with that he did hang up.

Crap. I sat there for a moment, holding the useless receiver in my hand, until the dial tone changed to the angry busy signal of a phone left off the hook for too long. Then I did replace the receiver in its cradle, not sure whether I should be angry or hurt. The truth was, maybe Randall had hit a snag in his perfect little world, but even as upset as he was over the whole property-tax mess, he did have resources that I didn’t. His parents were very comfortably well off and could probably afford to help him out without too much effort. Whereas I—

Well, that way led to self-pity, and I’d been there often enough in the past that I really didn’t feel like revisiting the territory. If Randall wanted to be angry, then let him. Either we’d make up or we wouldn’t. I felt a pang then, wondering if he really were angry enough to call everything off, but I wasn’t about to play the needy girlfriend and call him with apologies I really didn’t mean.