The Metropolis (34 page)

“I know what that’s like.” He nodded. “Bad lesson?”

She shook her head. “I have a Queen of the Night in three weeks, and I’m feeling overwhelmed and unmotivated.”

“
Quelle horreur!
” he said, but then added, “I’m sure you’ll be fine.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“I can’t.” He grinned. “But I thought you might like to hear it.”

Maria smiled wryly. “I guess I’ll take what I can get,” she offered before she looked at him more closely. “Please don’t take this the wrong way,” she continued, “but you look kind of familiar.”

“Maybe you’ve heard me sing?” he suggested, and for a second Maria could see him as a young man, eager to impress, as he affably held out his hand. “Leo Metropolis.”

“Leo Metropolis!” she cried, forgetting her anomie.

He laughed. “Is that a problem?”

“No, no—of course not.” Maria now felt embarrassed and wished that she had met him a day earlier, before her collapse, which had left her feeling so weak and tentative. “It’s just that my roommate saw you in
Walküre
like five years ago,” she managed, “and still talks about how great it was, and—well—she’ll die when she hears I met you.”

“I’m happy to be of service,” he said, but in a distant, inscrutable tone that reminded her he was an enigmatic figure in the opera world, a leading heldentenor who performed rarely and only with certain companies, almost always in Europe except for the rare appearance at the Met. Moreover, he refused to give interviews or appear in publicity photographs, which helped to explain why Maria didn’t recognize him. Many who had been fortunate enough to hear him—and his performances were often unannounced—claimed he was the greatest Wagnerian of the century, while others tended to dismiss him
as a spectacle, hardly deserving of accolades. Nobody knew where he lived, although she had heard rumors that he was exceedingly wealthy and when not singing could most often be found in castles, seaside villas, and luxury apartment buildings like Anna’s.

Maria felt childish for having complained about anything, like he was really going to care. She wanted to emulate him instead of falling back on the brash arrogance and disdain that had possessed her since she’d marched out of the terminal after breaking up with Richie. She saw herself as shrill and forced, displaying a lack of dimension that had literally made her susceptible to being knocked out. “Can I ask you something?” she ventured in a halting but earnest tone as it occurred to her that he was in a position to help. “About singing? Do you ever have doubts? I mean, would you still be a singer if you could do anything else?”

“It’s not an easy question,” he said before reflecting. “Right now I’d say yes—there’s nothing I would rather do—but if you had asked me at another point in my life, I would have said something very different.”

“Why—what happened?” asked Maria, at once incredulous and despondent, because she had been expecting a more reaffirming answer from someone in his position.

“When I was your age—maybe a little older—I thought everything was perfect with my career and my life, and maybe it was—I don’t know, it’s always hard to judge, except for those few minutes right after a performance, when every doubt seems far away—but then I had some real problems, not so much with my singing but with the relationships in my life, and I wasn’t old enough to understand that turmoil is inevitable—especially for those of us in the theater—and I ended up in a crisis. I was so sure that my voice was hurting me—or more important, those I cared for—that I gave up singing. I vowed never to enter an opera house again.”

Stunned by this information, Maria took a moment to respond. “But how—how was it hurting you?”

He lowered his voice almost to a whisper. “I didn’t think I could do both—sing and live. I thought that to sing with any passion was making me too vulnerable, so that I felt wounded both on
and
off the stage, and also too self-centered, oblivious to the suffering of those around me or—even if I was aware—incapable of helping. When you perform, everything seems so alive, and—as much as I tried—I couldn’t make myself acknowledge
real life
because by comparison it was so tedious and messy and unrehearsed.” He laughed quietly and sighed. “It took me a long time to learn how to separate the two, which also isn’t easy, because you can’t be two completely different people—you have to give yourself to the stage, obviously, but you have to maintain some kind of distance, too.”

“How did you come back?” she asked and already felt a little bereft as she considered the answer, and what it might entail for her or, for that matter, already had. For years she had told herself that there was nothing she wouldn’t do to be the best singer she could be, yet the resolution now sounded hollow and frightening.

“One night I went to the opera, and I realized as I was watching it—I was sitting there with tears streaming down my face the entire time, just shy of sobbing, much to the horror of those around me, I’m sure!—I realized it was killing me
not
to sing. I knew I had ostracized myself from what I loved most, and for those few hours I saw my life the way you sometimes do—like you’re viewing it as another person—and I knew that I was barely going through the motions, not really enjoying anything or anyone, like I was already dead. There was no love in my life! I knew that I
had
to sing, that it was the only way I could offer myself any kind of beauty or forgiveness, which is ultimately what mattered most. I thought singing was the problem—and maybe it was—but from then on,
I knew it was also the solution.” As he finished this thought, he focused his attention on her. “Was that more than you expected?”

“I’m not sure,” Maria said, “but thank you—it’s helpful.” As she spoke, she felt a shift in her perspective, something indefinable but present, so that the previous hours seemed no more consequential than a few errant clouds crossing the vista of her life. As she and Leo spent a few more minutes idly chatting—about some of his favorite roles and her upcoming
Magic Flute
—she could imagine herself like him, a working singer with a battle-weary sense of pride and resignation, which was an end that—at least for now—seemed better to justify the means.

A
FEW MINUTES
later she arrived at Ronald Spelton’s master class. She found a seat near the back of the amphitheater—not surprisingly, it was crowded—and tried to enjoy the mild buzz of affirmation that continued to spread through her in the wake of her conversation with Leo Metropolis. She felt like she had taken a big fall but with his help had landed safely in a pool of water. The only problem was that not more than two seconds after Ronald stood up and began to speak, her resolve was shattered by a dry-throat, finger-biting, twirling-the-ends-of-her-hair kind of attraction for him that had her fanning herself in a room not much warmer than a refrigerator. Despite her earlier talk with Linda—which she now remembered with renewed annoyance—this desire was as completely unexpected as it was undeniable, and she could not take her eyes off him as he paced back and forth in front of the room, lecturing and singing in what might as well have been Martian. Beyond her long-standing attraction for solidly framed men, she wasn’t exactly sure why he did it for her; he was probably thirty years older than she was—even older than Leo—and more than a bit trollish, with thick eyebrows,
lumpy shoulders, and the perpetually surly leer of someone about to tell a dirty joke; but she could not deny the intensity of his bleak, serious eyes, or how his clothes were tight in all the right places, and she mentally undressed him a thousand times in an equal number of seconds.

When the class ended, she lingered in her seat for several minutes before she went to the front and carved out a position on the outskirts of a ring of students. She stared down at least two others—did they have the same idea?—who tried to insist they were in back of her, but she exerted her seniority to push them ahead. Finally it was her turn, and she plied him with a series of questions related to interpretation, agents, and possible career trajectory—the answers to all of which she already knew—as they walked out of the building.

They paused in the somber glow of the November sunset. “I don’t know why,” Maria remarked, “but this time of day makes me feel seasick.”

“Transitions are tough.” Ronald nodded. “Let me guess: you’re a night person?”

“I am,” Maria confirmed. “I’m always in a daze until three or four in the afternoon.”

“That’s not a bad thing for a singer, although it can be hell when you have a matinee.”

“Or a final dress,” Maria pointed out.

“Or a final dress,” Ronald agreed.

The conversation seemed to have reached a dead end, and as they stood on the corner of Broadway, Maria decided to move beyond this charade of pleasantries. “So where are you headed?”

“Back to my hotel for a few minutes, then I’m meeting some friends for dinner—”

“You don’t have an apartment?” Maria interrupted, determined to keep the conversation on point.

Ronald appeared to hesitate for a second, and Maria wondered if he was on to her, for his tone was perhaps a trace more seductive as he explained, “I always stay at the Callaghan.”

Maria suppressed a shudder. “What’s that like?”

“It’s not bad. I have a little suite with a kitchenette, and there’s a nice view of Central Park from the balcony.”

“I bet I’ve seen better,” Maria declared in a display of truth and confrontation as she thought of Anna’s apartment.

Ronald grimaced and scratched at his tooth, which gleamed through a slightly oily five-o’clock shadow surrounding his mouth. “It’s only two blocks away if you want to see for yourself.”

Maria looked at her watch. She was supposed to meet Anna in just over an hour. “Okay,” she said. “Lead the way.”

A few breathless minutes later they were at the hotel, and after what seemed like seconds after that they were on the elevator up to his suite. Then they were inside, and Maria heard the click of the door over the internal din of her racing heart. As she looked past the foyer toward the bed, where the floral print on the bedspread started to kaleidoscope, she wondered what she was doing here, and whether she should politely excuse herself and leave like a fellow guest of the hotel who happened to have stepped into the wrong room.

Ronald tossed his coat on a chair and invited her to do the same. “Um, I don’t—,” she began to say, hesitating.

“Don’t worry, I won’t bite.” He winked at her. “Unless you ask me to.”

“Cut the crap.” Maria looked back at him and frowned as she wondered how she could be so attracted to such a lecherous character, yet at this same moment she could not resist finding out what he
really looked like under those ill-fitting clothes, and whether he was as good in bed as he was on the stage.

“I sincerely apologize,” Ronald said, his tone dripping with insincerity as she dropped her coat and then allowed him to take her hand in his own and bring it to his lips. He looked up at her, and it was only at this moment that he, too, seemed to waver. “Just so we’re on the same page,” he went on as he lightly kissed each one of her fingers in turn, “this
is
why you’re here?”

“I thought,” Maria responded in a low, breathy tone that almost made her laugh at the idea of playing such a sexpot, “you were going to give me the name of your agent.”

She pulled him up to her and leaned into him, close enough that his taut belly jutted up against her own, close enough that she could see the wrinkles around his eyes and his thinning hair, and so that she could even smell the slightly foreign and mildewed aroma of a man so much older than any she had ever experienced, and like a cheap wine all of this left her both nauseated and intoxicated. She was filled with suspense as she again wondered whether she was actually going ahead with this, but as she lowered her lips to meet his she knew the answer was yes, apparently, she was.

Ronald returned the kiss with some violence before he pushed her away. “Let’s not rush,” he said as he unhitched the top button of her jeans and caressed the small patch of exposed skin above the line of her underwear. He fell back onto the bed and pulled Maria on top of him, where she straddled him for a few seconds before he rolled her off and then somewhat more forcefully unfastened the remaining buttons on her jeans, which he removed one leg at a time and then dropped, inside out, onto the floor. He dispensed with his own clothes with the calculated speed and acuity of one who had been through thousands of costume changes, first his shirt—to expose a fat, hairless chest of
fish-belly white—then his pants, and finally his socks and underwear. For a second he glowered over Maria, who was now flat on her back, before he collapsed onto her in what was practically a body slam—not that she minded, since she was a lot taller than he was, although he definitely weighed more—and attacked her with his tongue. He quickly traversed her body, a strategy that soon delivered her to delirious heights she had never suspected could exist until she realized that he was fucking her with the slow, heavy force of twenty elephants.

The frame of the bed was knocking furiously against the wall, which made her hope that the neighbors were out to dinner. She gasped and writhed under his weight, smothered by a mix of pain—his dick was not long but, like the rest of his body, squat and almost grotesquely hard—and bliss unlike anything she had ever experienced. When, however many minutes later, she regained her senses, she felt more calm than frightened, although both emotions were present. She turned to Ronald and noted how his eyes—shiny, black, and limpid, like those of a seal—stared up at the ceiling as he softly hummed to himself. She observed his bloated body with renewed admiration and disgust. “I can’t tell you how much I needed that.”

“Uh, anytime?”

Maria laughed and ran her pinkie over the hill of his stomach. “You’re married, right?”

He turned toward her abruptly. “Why?”

“No reason.”

“That’s not exactly an innocuous question.”

“Does your wife know that you—?”

“No—and I’d like to keep it that way.” He sat up on the bed, his back to her. “It’s not like I do this all the time.”