H'okay! I think I've worked this chapter as much as I can. The night is just too long to be stuck in one, so this is going to be called "Dream, Part 1" the same way I had parts 1 and 2 of "How Not to Ignore Problems" on chapters... 21 and 22 I believe they were.
That said, I want to believe it is safe to say that I love this chapter. He was just being really... uh... well, my Phantom has like multiple personalities, he really does. Tonight he was just thrilled, to say the least. I'm not allowed to talk much about what he knows, or thinks or feels all the time because it's a secret, but this is him being thrilled... I hope I have done it to his character's appropriateness.
And if you like the way he's behaving, you can thank Charles for that.
This cutie-pie has had a real effect on He's There for the past few chapters. I just love him. I love how he stares off in space when he's totally taken aback, how he's all gentlemanly but endearingly psycho at the same time. I love Robert too, but the Phantom's been acting like Robert for lots of the story, and now that they are closer, his inner-Charles is coming out. Although... whenever I make him whisper, I hear Robert saying the lines... *melt* He just has that sexy of a voice, I can't help it...
I listened to Strange & Beautiful by Aqualung on repeat while writing some of this. It just gets me in the zone... I hear him... I hear him whispering... x3 I give in... This is totally the Phantom's theme song.
What I liked
It had good lines! I enjoyed writing the dialogue. I thought I slipped in a lot of foreshadowing sort of comments in there from Erik.
The fact that they both ate the bread together. They really aren't an Erik & Christine that are typically polar... This is a small thing that helps her start to realize that more.
What wasn't that great
As usual, I fail at visual description.
Nanowrimo count
35555 / 50000 words. 71% done!
HE'S (@) THERE
Chapter 34 - Dream, Pt. 1
I gradually stepped to the other side of the doors and saw his car still sitting under the draping tree branches. When I had time to think, I noted that it was gold-ish in color, a typically sized four-door... I didn't know the make. You're probably wondering why I'm mentioning this... It seemed like a smart idea to remember something like a car, in case I ever saw it again. If I ever needed to identify him. Whatever the case may be. On my way out, I took a scrap of paper and pen from my purse and walked to the car very slowly, all the while scribbling down the license plate number. I think I'd done it fast enough not to be noticed.
I opened the passenger door and stepped in, and I noticed he seemed to sort of just be staring ahead until it registered he was no longer alone. I didn't feel like saying anything, although he smiled a little in my direction.
He was thorough enough leaving the school. I had the opportunity, with arms and legs very close to my body, and fingers entangled in the string of my purse, to watch the entrance drift away...
"Put your seatbelt on." He laid his hand on the gearstick, waiting patiently. If there was one right decision I could make that night, I guess this was it.
I didn't really pay attention to anything after he started down the road. I had sort of sunk in my seat, holding my phone in hand, trying to think how I would ever approach Meg again and tell her I was sorry. I didn't truly know if it was his fault or mine right then. So he had been the one who asked me to ditch... But I invited him, knowing he wouldn't bring about the most conventional dance experience.
She had every right to be angry with me.
Why was I giving myself the option of coming with him anyway? Why didn't I force him to come inside?
Suddenly he turned on the radio and a pleasant string quartet filled the car. It didn't really fit with how I felt at that moment, at all... It seemed kind of uncharacteristic for him even to be listening to it.
"It's been quite a while since I was asked on a date," he said. If he was trying to be funny, it kind of worked, but I was too guilty to play off of it. He seemed to be waiting for me to say something. "...Giry will keep her company." It was kind of weird hearing him tell me things about Giry, as if he knew her.
"I don't think I'll be able to look Meg in the face for days, to be honest." He didn't say anything. "Although I really wasn't looking at her much lately anyway.
"I think you were right."
"About what?"
"About her not really wanting to see you."
"I always try to convince myself that when she acts like I shouldn't know you... she's just joking. I don't think so anymore."
"Meg's a smart girl... She's right to distrust me."
"I know." My voice became quiet at that. "She doesn't know you. ...But then neither do I..." I trailed.
He focused on a road a moment, the reflection of the lights moving across his mask.
"You know I care about you." ...Oh dear. After all this time, hearing stuff like this shouldn't have made me jump inside, but it did.
"That's why I asked you to come... But..."
"It'd be more of a mistake to stay than go, I thought," he finished for me, very calmly, looking up into his mirror.
I kind of begged to differ, but I didn't really feel like arguing with him about it then and there.
The signs said we were heading into Portland when he turned into the exit lane. Before long, the car was surrounded in closely packed buildings, parked cars lining the sides of the roads. He seemed very sure where he was going. At a particularly long stoplight, I took my focus off the glare of red on the rain-specked windshield and noticed he was smiling at me. To make me feel better, I'd assume... He was wearing me down. I was guilty but I was here, and if I was going to be here when I shouldn't, I figured I should make it as worth it as possible.
Eventually he pulled over, looked at me, and said "stay here" before getting out of the car, although I heard him strolling the back. The door opened on my side and he was learning forward with an umbrella. (That one I'd thought wasn't around earlier, yes.)
He held it over me the whole walk, to wherever we were going, paying little attention to the water soaking his other shoulder. Two people of such different height sharing the same umbrella was kind of a task, but I thought it was cute nonetheless.
People stared at him, and it awed me even though I expected it, I think because this was the first time I had seen him in the presence of others, besides that late late bus ride and even then, only the driver saw us. He had been alone at that theater or stalking my neighborhood for three - going on four months - then, and now we were walking the streets together, and my hands were firm around his arm. ...I'm sure we looked like we were dating from the outside, and dressed up for no particular reason. Something about it thrilled me.
"...Do you come here often?"
"Yes."
"Do you have friends here?"
He paused before he answered. "I do."
As we crossed the buildings, one after another, a bit like a haze of lights, I caught sight of a woman, covered in moth-eaten layers, leaned against a stoop, sleeping. Erik passed her without even looking down. I watched her until we walked straight through a group of people singing, not the most tasteful of music. A cloud of smoke hit us both on the way out.
"...You don't come to Portland often, do you?"
"You can tell?" Tell? He probably knew.
"Things surprise you. When you've lived here, nothing does anymore. Anywhere..."
"It doesn't necessarily surprise me... It makes me sad seeing homeless people, though..."
He looked down on me. "I know quite a few homeless... Some of them are fine that way," he said, ending with a smile, then looking off. "A large percentage of schizophrenics have no home... For many it's easier than trying to integrate themselves into society."
"...That's not you, is it?" I jokingly asked.
He looked at me once more and when he paused, I regretted it. "No."
At this point, I lowered my gaze to the ground for a while before his pace slowed. "Christine?" I jerked in his direction. "You should call Giry and tell her where you are." I stared at him a moment. "To be safe..." he added. I questioned him with my eyes a moment before my hand dug blindly for my phone.
I would've turned off to the side, but he was still holding the umbrella over me, and for good reason, so I just clicked her name and waited, feeling awkward standing directly in front of him without saying anything.
"Lily?" Her voice answered, after many rings, backdropped by the obnoxious bass of the music.
"Hi Giry," I replied, Erik staring at me all the while.
"Hey. What's up?"
"...You're not mad at me, are you?"
"No... why would I be?"
"Oh, you know, there was that thing where I ditched the dance and the Phantom showed up and Meg is upset-" He smiled, presumably because of the way he was mentioned.
"I don't think sh.... ier... ou if.... nsi... 'ay."
"What?"
"Hold on a sec. It's too fucking loud in here, hahahah..."
I laughed just to humor her and waited. It allowed me time to look around us, and to the building in front of us. Beyond the windows was a dim lobby. To what, I wasn't sure. After some shuffling, the music faded out of hearing range.
"Okay," Giry continued. "... I said I don't think she would've been much less upset if he'd actually came inside. I didn't want to tell you if you were going to have a good time tonight, but... Maybe I shouldn't."
Erik continued to stare at me. "...What?"
"...She just told me she wasn't happy about it. Let's leave it at that. She's having a good time right now though. I got her and Jeffrey talking!"
"Heh, that's great... I wish I could've helped... Hopefully he likes her."
"I think he does... Like... you'd just have to see them. They're being really cute together."
"Heh..."
Erik looked off down the street and his breath escaped into the cold air. "Well... I just wanted to tell you I'm... with him right now... and..." I thought of what to say, and Giry was silent. "I'm not exactly sure where we are, it's in Portland..."
"If you give it to me, I'll tell her," he interrupted, his spare hand raised between us. Hesitantly, I lowered the phone from my ear and gave it to him.
"Madame?" Heh. Heheh. "...Are you enjoying yourself?... ...Wonderful... ...Yes. I'm taking her to dinner." ...Hm? "It's called Giussepe's, on the seventh floor of the Lurriott Inn... It's on Everett Street... 10th avenue, I believe... I don't expect to stay longer than an hour or two." He smirked at me, almost like he thought it was cute he was being so specific. "...I hope so." Hope what. "...I will. ...Goodbye." He slapped the phone closed and handed it back to me.
"Hope what?" His eyes widened slightly.
"I told her I hope you enjoy tonight."
I wanted to immediately say "I will," but it didn't seem entirely sincere yet.
"Come," he continued, placing a hand on my back and leading me up the steps. He closed his umbrella at the top and shook it thoroughly. By then I'd held the door open for him, but he came to my side and gripped it at a higher place, gesturing with his other hand for me to enter.
"Phantoms first."
"Heh ... I couldn't."
"Yes you could," I argued.
We both remained for a long moment, and this made me look down the sidewalk to make sure no one was going to walk by wondering what we were doing. To my dismay, a few people were well on their way, and the pressure to move got to me.
"Just to get the ball rolling," I reasoned. He seemed very pleased while stepping in from the cold himself, and then he gave me his hand. It was then, when the feel of his gloves hit my fingertips that I realized this sort of moment; this night, was not common for our relationship, and may not have been afterwards either. I tried to become as alert as possible, taking in even the simple things like the pattern of the carpet, the silence across the length of the room, and the lighting against Erik's shape.
He lead me into the elevator and the doors closed behind us. Once he had set the floor, we started moving, and he leaned in to my ear. "...Have you ever been stuck in an elevator?"
"No... am I about to be?"
"That would be a terrible date, wouldn't it?"
I nervously chuckled. "Depends on how long and who with. It'd make for a good story if it happened with you."
"Heh, well I have a better story planned. Maybe another time," he replied, his eyes directed at but not entirely focused on me. The light of the seventh floor flushed over the elevator soon after, and a host at the front desk was literally right there when we stepped out. He eyed us up and down. Erik didn't feel like wasting time. "Somewhere less crowded... would be nice..."
The host smiled, I knew it was a courtesy smile you had to make no matter how strange your customers looked, but as he lead us along, a couple people on the way I caught staring at Erik. I don't know why, but I liked that we were being stared at. I liked being part of an oddity. Usually I was sitting at one of those tables, with my parents, a book underneath the table cloth.
I was holding my book's hand at the moment, and soon he was helping me into my seat. I made sure to keep sucking in the moment... The restaurant had a very stunning glow to it; a light carpet, lights over each table surface, people's jewelery; my bracelet and ring; the silverware... all glimmered. Even the salt and pepper shakers looked like treasure. I set my purse out in front of me and absentmindedly glanced at the time on top my cellphone cover. 6:48 already. My focus switched to Erik, who was sitting up straight and watching me, the menus, untouched, in front of him.
I raised the hand holding the phone just slightly and smiled at him. "I never so much as thought about this thing until you."
"Hm?"
"I have to check it all the time these days."
"I'm sorry... Do you want me to stop?"
"No," I said. Not at all...
"Are you sure? You don't always respond."
"Well sometimes you leave me messages, and... I know this is a shocker, but... I don't understand what they mean."
"Heh. Like what?"
"Uhmm..." I flipped open the phone and browsed my inbox. I settled on the one from several days before when he had said "behind you" out of nowhere. I handed the phone to him so he could have the experience of reading it himself. He paused.
"Were you, really?"
"I don't know." He handed it back to me. "Depends if you want me to be."
"If I want you to be behind me...?"
He smiled. It struck me again. I closed the phone slowly.
"Would you still be, if I didn't?"
He did not seem like he had his answer prepared.
"Hello..." I looked up to the waiter. I almost could sense he was aware he'd come at the wrong moment. "My name is John, I'll be your server tonight..." Erik very weakly smiled at him. "Can I get you anything to drink?" Erik darted his eyes to me. I hadn't even thought about it.
"Uhhh... Sprite?"
"Okay..." He jotted it down and looked to Erik.
"As well," he added. I watched carefully for the server's reaction... There really was no way he wasn't thinking about the mask.
"Alright, I'll be right back with those..." As quickly as he arrived, he was gone. I noticed Erik smiling to the table just a bit before I decided to speak up.
"Do you go everywhere like this?"
He looked up. "It's not really an option."
"You mean, the mask..."
"There would be much more stares without it." So he was confirming what he had claimed to have done, yet again... "I told you..." He added, voice low.
"For some reason, I don't believe it's as bad as you say..."
"They never do."
I looked around us to make sure no one, even several tables down, was paying attention, and leaned forward.
"Will I ever see it?"
He thought a moment. "Do you want... 'exciting' ambiguity, or honesty?" I didn't know how to answer. "...The first is that it's extremely unlikely... We'd have to see how things... turn out. The latter is... that you never will."
He threw me off with the two answers. The pace at which he had said the first... suggested there was some significance to it. That could have been part of the trick though.
"Well... There's more to a person than their face. I can still learn everything about you, mask or not..."
"Heh... Sometimes a mask is... quite transparent once you start on that journey... of getting to know someone..." When he leaned forward, the tips of his hair brushed the table. "I think you can only trust the people who see you behind it..."
"Here you are..." The waiter set the two drinks down right in front of us, along with a basket of bread. "Are you ready to order or would you like a little more time?"
I glanced at the, still untouched, menus.
"A few more minutes?" I asked.
"Certainly." He backed off again. When I watched him leave, I noticed what appeared to be another girl, my age give or take, staring at Erik. I looked back to him and his eyes were a little downcast. He handed me a menu, and I opened it in front of me, but truthfully, I didn't particularly want to eat... Not in front of him, anyway... Everything seemed like too much.
Uncomfortably, my eyes ended up on him. He arms rested on the table. He was scrolling the menu, but it seemed very disinterestedly. I sighed audibly and he looked up, but didn't speak.
"I wish I had more of an appetite... It's just..."
"A foreign situation, and you're nervous..."
"I-It's difficult... with you... right there," I swished my hand, "the Infamous Note-Sender, across the table from me."
He laughed under his breath and smiled in another direction. I looked down at my lap.
"The 'Note-Sender'..."
"Yeah... That was my nickname for you... A while ago..." His smile seemed to grow all the larger.
"Tell me, do you nickname every guy you want to talk about without spoiling who it actually is?"
"Or if I don't know who they are," I pointed out. "And yes, it is a habit. I thought most people did it though."
"Not quite with as much abuse."
If he knew about some of my past nicknames for crushes, this was very embarrassing.
"Well it's all mock-abuse. That's just Meg and I's humor."
"I've noted. Although it took me a little time to figure that out. Sometimes I thought... 'they must be fighting'..."
I laughed. "Words, humor, what things are defined as in a relationship... can be very complex," I said, mostly down to the bread rather than him. "What one thing means to two people could mean something entirely different to another two... Whatever you saw, it was from a distance, so of course you wouldn't understand right away..."
I rose my eyes to him and he was locked on me.
"Meg... thinks we're near constantly mean to each other and extremely dysfunctional... for example. But she has no idea."
"We are dysfunctional," he said, "we don't function how she expects us to. That just isn't something that needs to be fixed, to me. I think I function best with you, to be honest. It just took some time. The best things don't happen so fast, you know."
I gazed at him a while, answering him in my head in a lot of ways but wondering how best to actually put how I felt about him at the moment. He was the strangest mix I had ever met. He was both sweet and flattering, and attached and terrifying. If I had no feelings back, I would've left him long ago, but I did. Whenever he looked at me, I could tell I was the absolute center of his world. I was the one that listened. I was his compassion. Anyone as interested in me as he was, as intelligent, as insightful... had to be heard. Had to be cared about by somebody.
He threw all his potential into being there for me. That's why I felt I was doing right.
He must have noticed that I was officially out of words because he leaned to his side and pulled a small lavender box from under the table. "Oh... oh- What is that?" He moved away the clutter in between us and set the box in front of me.
"I saw this the other day. I thought if you had been there with me, you would have wanted to keep it."
"Erik, you already gave me a music box, for God's sake."
"You can't wear a music box," he reasoned.
I bit my lip and I reached out to lift the top. There inside was a butterfly, edged in "diamonds", two rows of jewels dangling below it as if the wings were a tied ribbon. I gaped a little and he sat there and laughed at my reaction, very quietly.
"This better be fake," was the first thing I said.
"It is," he replied honestly.
"And cheap. Otherwise..."
"You don't... deserve it?" He finished.
I paused. "I'm glad you caught on."
"You're silly." He said. Although... it did not seem to be an addition to our banter.
The waiter arrived again and I realized neither of us had really looked at the menus.
"All ready?"
I looked to Erik for a direction.
"We've decided to put off dinner, if that's okay..." He said to him. "We have a lot of... catching up to do..." By his last word, he was entirely focused on me.
"I'm sorry... I... we-... Is that okay?" I asked, strangely guilty.
"Not a problem at all. I'll drop by in a while to see how you're doing." He took a quick scan of the table... I'd sipped my drink but Erik hadn't touched his. I smiled as he left. Erik saw how perfunctory it must have looked and grinned while leaning back in his chair.
"...You think he minds?"
"I don't care if he minds. I'm paying to be here."
"Heh. I guess that's a valid point." I couldn't quite take the way he was looking at me so admirably, so I looked down to the necklace again. "I'm sorry I'm not that hungry."
"Don't worry... I'm not either."
"Heh." I smiled. It made me happy I wasn't alone, although the bread in the basket nearby was starting to tempt me.
We started talking again after that, one subject flowing into another. It was, in all the nicest ways, very weird and very surreal, just to be sitting there, having a conversation with him as long and directionless as one would be with Giry, when we went out, or Meg...occasionally. Meg was never big on restaurants.
Eventually I went for the bread. He watched me pick at it with a smile.
"So you're hungry after all."
"Just a little..." I reasoned. "...I like bread." He smiled wide enough to show his teeth. It was almost a new expression, and I really can't tell you why of all the comments I made, the one about having the bread seemed funniest to him... but soon he was copying me. It was like we were the same person in two completely different bodies... And he'd said that once before. I mean, something like it. I just didn't know where he got it from.
"You shouldn't eat with those," I pointed out, directed at his gloves. I felt terribly motherly after I said it, and wondered how he might react. He paused, mid grab. "...They're just... you know. You've touched a lot of doorknobs with those I'm sure. You could get sick."
He took great entertainment in this. Although he was silent and his face was turned, I knew he was trying very hard not to laugh at me. It was completely... perfectly... wonderful to watch him in this state. I had reached something in him genuinely human. It was like I was laying in his lap again, feeling his heartbeat against the side of my face.
He looked down to his hands, and he decided, then, to remove the glove on his right hand. He reached for the bread again and I could not held but stare. It was nothing out of the ordinary - pale as his face, the same long fingers... He turned them over when he rose them to his mouth and there seemed to be markings on them, as if he had poked them repeatedly with a pen. His red pen, it seemed.
He returned the glove shortly after. I tried to think of something else.
"Thank you..."
"...For what?"
"For everything you've been doing lately. You're making me feel spoiled."
I looked down at the butterfly within the box.
"You should try that on." I looked up.
"Right now?"
He rose from the table, so I followed his lead, and we approached our own reflection in a sort of hallway of mirrors at the end of the room, concealed by a turn in the walls. When I saw him in such concentrated light, in every surrounding reflection, it was a bit unnerving. He watched himself a moment, almost put in a trance by his own eyes, but I could see him when he finally neared me from behind and reached for the necklace. I took off the one I was already wearing and his hands rose over me. The cold butterfly fell lightly over my chest. His fingers were tickling the back of my neck trying to lock the clasp, but I tried not to show it.
After a struggle, he stopped. "These gloves aren't helping."
"Heheheh... Let me." I took the ends from him and did it rather quickly, all the while smiling at myself as he loomed over my left shoulder. It was a perfect fit for me... a butterfly... I wondered why exactly he picked it. Things were rarely without reason for him.
He continued to watch my reflection in silence.
"You're not gonna say it looks good on me?"
"You seem to argue with me whenever I...imply... that you're even relatively attractive, so..." Oh, I see how it was.
"I-I like arguing a little."
"If it would make things easier..." He leaned into my ear. "...You look fine, I suppose..."
I laughed a little in my exhale, and so did he; I could feel it on my skin. I liked and was unsure about our proximity all at once, but my body, a bit on its own, moved away from him, although I could tell he was following me. I did not need a mirror to tell me that, as I walked towards a window out in the open, stretching from floor to ceiling. The cityscape faded into the dark, nothing but a thousand lights below. It reminded me of one of the first times I had ever talked to Erik in the theater. Before I could so much as tap my extended finger on the glass, he held me from behind and very gently leaned into the side of my head. It gave me a sensation I wasn't used to at all.
"I think you've underestimated what I offered you ever since we met..."
I laid my hands over his, trying not to tense up, focusing on a blue light far away from there. "I'd like to spoil you, Christine..." I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. "As long as you confide in me, I'll give you anything. You haven't tested that. I think you should."
"What do I give back...?"
"You don't have to worry about that."
"But there's always something. It's only right."
"I told you... You've given me what I wanted already."
"But what is it?"
"I'll tell you when it'll mean the most. Not now..."
I believed he would.
"How about we leave now?"
"I don't want you to take me home yet."
"I wasn't about to."
He let one hand slip away from my waist and lead me back to the table, where I collected my purse and we put on our coats. When we came to the front desk, although it was a little unconventional, they printed our bill for us there and he pulled nothing but a wad of money from his pocket. The bill was so cheap, he paid entirely in ones. I would've chipped in but I had nothing in my purse except the phone and a couple lip glosses.
I didn't know where we were going once we were outside the building. He started down the opposite direction that we had arrived, and I just went with it. Staying close to him, talking... Holding his arm... He welcomed it all. So well, I started to wonder how this date would end.
Favorite Quote(s)
That said, I want to believe it is safe to say that I love this chapter. He was just being really... uh... well, my Phantom has like multiple personalities, he really does. Tonight he was just thrilled, to say the least. I'm not allowed to talk much about what he knows, or thinks or feels all the time because it's a secret, but this is him being thrilled... I hope I have done it to his character's appropriateness.
And if you like the way he's behaving, you can thank Charles for that.
This cutie-pie has had a real effect on He's There for the past few chapters. I just love him. I love how he stares off in space when he's totally taken aback, how he's all gentlemanly but endearingly psycho at the same time. I love Robert too, but the Phantom's been acting like Robert for lots of the story, and now that they are closer, his inner-Charles is coming out. Although... whenever I make him whisper, I hear Robert saying the lines... *melt* He just has that sexy of a voice, I can't help it...
I listened to Strange & Beautiful by Aqualung on repeat while writing some of this. It just gets me in the zone... I hear him... I hear him whispering... x3 I give in... This is totally the Phantom's theme song.
What I liked
It had good lines! I enjoyed writing the dialogue. I thought I slipped in a lot of foreshadowing sort of comments in there from Erik. The fact that they both ate the bread together. They really aren't an Erik & Christine that are typically polar... This is a small thing that helps her start to realize that more.What wasn't that great
As usual, I fail at visual description.Nanowrimo count
HE'S (@) THERE
Chapter 34 - Dream, Pt. 1
I gradually stepped to the other side of the doors and saw his car still sitting under the draping tree branches. When I had time to think, I noted that it was gold-ish in color, a typically sized four-door... I didn't know the make. You're probably wondering why I'm mentioning this... It seemed like a smart idea to remember something like a car, in case I ever saw it again. If I ever needed to identify him. Whatever the case may be. On my way out, I took a scrap of paper and pen from my purse and walked to the car very slowly, all the while scribbling down the license plate number. I think I'd done it fast enough not to be noticed.
I opened the passenger door and stepped in, and I noticed he seemed to sort of just be staring ahead until it registered he was no longer alone. I didn't feel like saying anything, although he smiled a little in my direction.
He was thorough enough leaving the school. I had the opportunity, with arms and legs very close to my body, and fingers entangled in the string of my purse, to watch the entrance drift away...
"Put your seatbelt on." He laid his hand on the gearstick, waiting patiently. If there was one right decision I could make that night, I guess this was it.
I didn't really pay attention to anything after he started down the road. I had sort of sunk in my seat, holding my phone in hand, trying to think how I would ever approach Meg again and tell her I was sorry. I didn't truly know if it was his fault or mine right then. So he had been the one who asked me to ditch... But I invited him, knowing he wouldn't bring about the most conventional dance experience.
She had every right to be angry with me.
Why was I giving myself the option of coming with him anyway? Why didn't I force him to come inside?
Suddenly he turned on the radio and a pleasant string quartet filled the car. It didn't really fit with how I felt at that moment, at all... It seemed kind of uncharacteristic for him even to be listening to it.
"It's been quite a while since I was asked on a date," he said. If he was trying to be funny, it kind of worked, but I was too guilty to play off of it. He seemed to be waiting for me to say something. "...Giry will keep her company." It was kind of weird hearing him tell me things about Giry, as if he knew her.
"I don't think I'll be able to look Meg in the face for days, to be honest." He didn't say anything. "Although I really wasn't looking at her much lately anyway.
"I think you were right."
"About what?"
"About her not really wanting to see you."
"I always try to convince myself that when she acts like I shouldn't know you... she's just joking. I don't think so anymore."
"Meg's a smart girl... She's right to distrust me."
"I know." My voice became quiet at that. "She doesn't know you. ...But then neither do I..." I trailed.
He focused on a road a moment, the reflection of the lights moving across his mask.
"You know I care about you." ...Oh dear. After all this time, hearing stuff like this shouldn't have made me jump inside, but it did.
"That's why I asked you to come... But..."
"It'd be more of a mistake to stay than go, I thought," he finished for me, very calmly, looking up into his mirror.
I kind of begged to differ, but I didn't really feel like arguing with him about it then and there.
The signs said we were heading into Portland when he turned into the exit lane. Before long, the car was surrounded in closely packed buildings, parked cars lining the sides of the roads. He seemed very sure where he was going. At a particularly long stoplight, I took my focus off the glare of red on the rain-specked windshield and noticed he was smiling at me. To make me feel better, I'd assume... He was wearing me down. I was guilty but I was here, and if I was going to be here when I shouldn't, I figured I should make it as worth it as possible.
Eventually he pulled over, looked at me, and said "stay here" before getting out of the car, although I heard him strolling the back. The door opened on my side and he was learning forward with an umbrella. (That one I'd thought wasn't around earlier, yes.)
He held it over me the whole walk, to wherever we were going, paying little attention to the water soaking his other shoulder. Two people of such different height sharing the same umbrella was kind of a task, but I thought it was cute nonetheless.
People stared at him, and it awed me even though I expected it, I think because this was the first time I had seen him in the presence of others, besides that late late bus ride and even then, only the driver saw us. He had been alone at that theater or stalking my neighborhood for three - going on four months - then, and now we were walking the streets together, and my hands were firm around his arm. ...I'm sure we looked like we were dating from the outside, and dressed up for no particular reason. Something about it thrilled me.
"...Do you come here often?"
"Yes."
"Do you have friends here?"
He paused before he answered. "I do."
As we crossed the buildings, one after another, a bit like a haze of lights, I caught sight of a woman, covered in moth-eaten layers, leaned against a stoop, sleeping. Erik passed her without even looking down. I watched her until we walked straight through a group of people singing, not the most tasteful of music. A cloud of smoke hit us both on the way out.
"...You don't come to Portland often, do you?"
"You can tell?" Tell? He probably knew.
"Things surprise you. When you've lived here, nothing does anymore. Anywhere..."
"It doesn't necessarily surprise me... It makes me sad seeing homeless people, though..."
He looked down on me. "I know quite a few homeless... Some of them are fine that way," he said, ending with a smile, then looking off. "A large percentage of schizophrenics have no home... For many it's easier than trying to integrate themselves into society."
"...That's not you, is it?" I jokingly asked.
He looked at me once more and when he paused, I regretted it. "No."
At this point, I lowered my gaze to the ground for a while before his pace slowed. "Christine?" I jerked in his direction. "You should call Giry and tell her where you are." I stared at him a moment. "To be safe..." he added. I questioned him with my eyes a moment before my hand dug blindly for my phone.
I would've turned off to the side, but he was still holding the umbrella over me, and for good reason, so I just clicked her name and waited, feeling awkward standing directly in front of him without saying anything.
"Lily?" Her voice answered, after many rings, backdropped by the obnoxious bass of the music.
"Hi Giry," I replied, Erik staring at me all the while.
"Hey. What's up?"
"...You're not mad at me, are you?"
"No... why would I be?"
"Oh, you know, there was that thing where I ditched the dance and the Phantom showed up and Meg is upset-" He smiled, presumably because of the way he was mentioned.
"I don't think sh.... ier... ou if.... nsi... 'ay."
"What?"
"Hold on a sec. It's too fucking loud in here, hahahah..."
I laughed just to humor her and waited. It allowed me time to look around us, and to the building in front of us. Beyond the windows was a dim lobby. To what, I wasn't sure. After some shuffling, the music faded out of hearing range.
"Okay," Giry continued. "... I said I don't think she would've been much less upset if he'd actually came inside. I didn't want to tell you if you were going to have a good time tonight, but... Maybe I shouldn't."
Erik continued to stare at me. "...What?"
"...She just told me she wasn't happy about it. Let's leave it at that. She's having a good time right now though. I got her and Jeffrey talking!"
"Heh, that's great... I wish I could've helped... Hopefully he likes her."
"I think he does... Like... you'd just have to see them. They're being really cute together."
"Heh..."
Erik looked off down the street and his breath escaped into the cold air. "Well... I just wanted to tell you I'm... with him right now... and..." I thought of what to say, and Giry was silent. "I'm not exactly sure where we are, it's in Portland..."
"If you give it to me, I'll tell her," he interrupted, his spare hand raised between us. Hesitantly, I lowered the phone from my ear and gave it to him.
"Madame?" Heh. Heheh. "...Are you enjoying yourself?... ...Wonderful... ...Yes. I'm taking her to dinner." ...Hm? "It's called Giussepe's, on the seventh floor of the Lurriott Inn... It's on Everett Street... 10th avenue, I believe... I don't expect to stay longer than an hour or two." He smirked at me, almost like he thought it was cute he was being so specific. "...I hope so." Hope what. "...I will. ...Goodbye." He slapped the phone closed and handed it back to me.
"Hope what?" His eyes widened slightly.
"I told her I hope you enjoy tonight."
I wanted to immediately say "I will," but it didn't seem entirely sincere yet.
"Come," he continued, placing a hand on my back and leading me up the steps. He closed his umbrella at the top and shook it thoroughly. By then I'd held the door open for him, but he came to my side and gripped it at a higher place, gesturing with his other hand for me to enter.
"Phantoms first."
"Heh ... I couldn't."
"Yes you could," I argued.
We both remained for a long moment, and this made me look down the sidewalk to make sure no one was going to walk by wondering what we were doing. To my dismay, a few people were well on their way, and the pressure to move got to me.
"Just to get the ball rolling," I reasoned. He seemed very pleased while stepping in from the cold himself, and then he gave me his hand. It was then, when the feel of his gloves hit my fingertips that I realized this sort of moment; this night, was not common for our relationship, and may not have been afterwards either. I tried to become as alert as possible, taking in even the simple things like the pattern of the carpet, the silence across the length of the room, and the lighting against Erik's shape.
He lead me into the elevator and the doors closed behind us. Once he had set the floor, we started moving, and he leaned in to my ear. "...Have you ever been stuck in an elevator?"
"No... am I about to be?"
"That would be a terrible date, wouldn't it?"
I nervously chuckled. "Depends on how long and who with. It'd make for a good story if it happened with you."
"Heh, well I have a better story planned. Maybe another time," he replied, his eyes directed at but not entirely focused on me. The light of the seventh floor flushed over the elevator soon after, and a host at the front desk was literally right there when we stepped out. He eyed us up and down. Erik didn't feel like wasting time. "Somewhere less crowded... would be nice..."
The host smiled, I knew it was a courtesy smile you had to make no matter how strange your customers looked, but as he lead us along, a couple people on the way I caught staring at Erik. I don't know why, but I liked that we were being stared at. I liked being part of an oddity. Usually I was sitting at one of those tables, with my parents, a book underneath the table cloth.
I was holding my book's hand at the moment, and soon he was helping me into my seat. I made sure to keep sucking in the moment... The restaurant had a very stunning glow to it; a light carpet, lights over each table surface, people's jewelery; my bracelet and ring; the silverware... all glimmered. Even the salt and pepper shakers looked like treasure. I set my purse out in front of me and absentmindedly glanced at the time on top my cellphone cover. 6:48 already. My focus switched to Erik, who was sitting up straight and watching me, the menus, untouched, in front of him.
I raised the hand holding the phone just slightly and smiled at him. "I never so much as thought about this thing until you."
"Hm?"
"I have to check it all the time these days."
"I'm sorry... Do you want me to stop?"
"No," I said. Not at all...
"Are you sure? You don't always respond."
"Well sometimes you leave me messages, and... I know this is a shocker, but... I don't understand what they mean."
"Heh. Like what?"
"Uhmm..." I flipped open the phone and browsed my inbox. I settled on the one from several days before when he had said "behind you" out of nowhere. I handed the phone to him so he could have the experience of reading it himself. He paused.
"Were you, really?"
"I don't know." He handed it back to me. "Depends if you want me to be."
"If I want you to be behind me...?"
He smiled. It struck me again. I closed the phone slowly.
"Would you still be, if I didn't?"
He did not seem like he had his answer prepared.
"Hello..." I looked up to the waiter. I almost could sense he was aware he'd come at the wrong moment. "My name is John, I'll be your server tonight..." Erik very weakly smiled at him. "Can I get you anything to drink?" Erik darted his eyes to me. I hadn't even thought about it.
"Uhhh... Sprite?"
"Okay..." He jotted it down and looked to Erik.
"As well," he added. I watched carefully for the server's reaction... There really was no way he wasn't thinking about the mask.
"Alright, I'll be right back with those..." As quickly as he arrived, he was gone. I noticed Erik smiling to the table just a bit before I decided to speak up.
"Do you go everywhere like this?"
He looked up. "It's not really an option."
"You mean, the mask..."
"There would be much more stares without it." So he was confirming what he had claimed to have done, yet again... "I told you..." He added, voice low.
"For some reason, I don't believe it's as bad as you say..."
"They never do."
I looked around us to make sure no one, even several tables down, was paying attention, and leaned forward.
"Will I ever see it?"
He thought a moment. "Do you want... 'exciting' ambiguity, or honesty?" I didn't know how to answer. "...The first is that it's extremely unlikely... We'd have to see how things... turn out. The latter is... that you never will."
He threw me off with the two answers. The pace at which he had said the first... suggested there was some significance to it. That could have been part of the trick though.
"Well... There's more to a person than their face. I can still learn everything about you, mask or not..."
"Heh... Sometimes a mask is... quite transparent once you start on that journey... of getting to know someone..." When he leaned forward, the tips of his hair brushed the table. "I think you can only trust the people who see you behind it..."
"Here you are..." The waiter set the two drinks down right in front of us, along with a basket of bread. "Are you ready to order or would you like a little more time?"
I glanced at the, still untouched, menus.
"A few more minutes?" I asked.
"Certainly." He backed off again. When I watched him leave, I noticed what appeared to be another girl, my age give or take, staring at Erik. I looked back to him and his eyes were a little downcast. He handed me a menu, and I opened it in front of me, but truthfully, I didn't particularly want to eat... Not in front of him, anyway... Everything seemed like too much.
Uncomfortably, my eyes ended up on him. He arms rested on the table. He was scrolling the menu, but it seemed very disinterestedly. I sighed audibly and he looked up, but didn't speak.
"I wish I had more of an appetite... It's just..."
"A foreign situation, and you're nervous..."
"I-It's difficult... with you... right there," I swished my hand, "the Infamous Note-Sender, across the table from me."
He laughed under his breath and smiled in another direction. I looked down at my lap.
"The 'Note-Sender'..."
"Yeah... That was my nickname for you... A while ago..." His smile seemed to grow all the larger.
"Tell me, do you nickname every guy you want to talk about without spoiling who it actually is?"
"Or if I don't know who they are," I pointed out. "And yes, it is a habit. I thought most people did it though."
"Not quite with as much abuse."
If he knew about some of my past nicknames for crushes, this was very embarrassing.
"Well it's all mock-abuse. That's just Meg and I's humor."
"I've noted. Although it took me a little time to figure that out. Sometimes I thought... 'they must be fighting'..."
I laughed. "Words, humor, what things are defined as in a relationship... can be very complex," I said, mostly down to the bread rather than him. "What one thing means to two people could mean something entirely different to another two... Whatever you saw, it was from a distance, so of course you wouldn't understand right away..."
I rose my eyes to him and he was locked on me.
"Meg... thinks we're near constantly mean to each other and extremely dysfunctional... for example. But she has no idea."
"We are dysfunctional," he said, "we don't function how she expects us to. That just isn't something that needs to be fixed, to me. I think I function best with you, to be honest. It just took some time. The best things don't happen so fast, you know."
I gazed at him a while, answering him in my head in a lot of ways but wondering how best to actually put how I felt about him at the moment. He was the strangest mix I had ever met. He was both sweet and flattering, and attached and terrifying. If I had no feelings back, I would've left him long ago, but I did. Whenever he looked at me, I could tell I was the absolute center of his world. I was the one that listened. I was his compassion. Anyone as interested in me as he was, as intelligent, as insightful... had to be heard. Had to be cared about by somebody.
He threw all his potential into being there for me. That's why I felt I was doing right.
He must have noticed that I was officially out of words because he leaned to his side and pulled a small lavender box from under the table. "Oh... oh- What is that?" He moved away the clutter in between us and set the box in front of me.
"I saw this the other day. I thought if you had been there with me, you would have wanted to keep it."
"Erik, you already gave me a music box, for God's sake."
"You can't wear a music box," he reasoned.
I bit my lip and I reached out to lift the top. There inside was a butterfly, edged in "diamonds", two rows of jewels dangling below it as if the wings were a tied ribbon. I gaped a little and he sat there and laughed at my reaction, very quietly.
"This better be fake," was the first thing I said.
"It is," he replied honestly.
"And cheap. Otherwise..."
"You don't... deserve it?" He finished.
I paused. "I'm glad you caught on."
"You're silly." He said. Although... it did not seem to be an addition to our banter.
The waiter arrived again and I realized neither of us had really looked at the menus.
"All ready?"
I looked to Erik for a direction.
"We've decided to put off dinner, if that's okay..." He said to him. "We have a lot of... catching up to do..." By his last word, he was entirely focused on me.
"I'm sorry... I... we-... Is that okay?" I asked, strangely guilty.
"Not a problem at all. I'll drop by in a while to see how you're doing." He took a quick scan of the table... I'd sipped my drink but Erik hadn't touched his. I smiled as he left. Erik saw how perfunctory it must have looked and grinned while leaning back in his chair.
"...You think he minds?"
"I don't care if he minds. I'm paying to be here."
"Heh. I guess that's a valid point." I couldn't quite take the way he was looking at me so admirably, so I looked down to the necklace again. "I'm sorry I'm not that hungry."
"Don't worry... I'm not either."
"Heh." I smiled. It made me happy I wasn't alone, although the bread in the basket nearby was starting to tempt me.
We started talking again after that, one subject flowing into another. It was, in all the nicest ways, very weird and very surreal, just to be sitting there, having a conversation with him as long and directionless as one would be with Giry, when we went out, or Meg...occasionally. Meg was never big on restaurants.
Eventually I went for the bread. He watched me pick at it with a smile.
"So you're hungry after all."
"Just a little..." I reasoned. "...I like bread." He smiled wide enough to show his teeth. It was almost a new expression, and I really can't tell you why of all the comments I made, the one about having the bread seemed funniest to him... but soon he was copying me. It was like we were the same person in two completely different bodies... And he'd said that once before. I mean, something like it. I just didn't know where he got it from.
"You shouldn't eat with those," I pointed out, directed at his gloves. I felt terribly motherly after I said it, and wondered how he might react. He paused, mid grab. "...They're just... you know. You've touched a lot of doorknobs with those I'm sure. You could get sick."
He took great entertainment in this. Although he was silent and his face was turned, I knew he was trying very hard not to laugh at me. It was completely... perfectly... wonderful to watch him in this state. I had reached something in him genuinely human. It was like I was laying in his lap again, feeling his heartbeat against the side of my face.
He looked down to his hands, and he decided, then, to remove the glove on his right hand. He reached for the bread again and I could not held but stare. It was nothing out of the ordinary - pale as his face, the same long fingers... He turned them over when he rose them to his mouth and there seemed to be markings on them, as if he had poked them repeatedly with a pen. His red pen, it seemed.
He returned the glove shortly after. I tried to think of something else.
"Thank you..."
"...For what?"
"For everything you've been doing lately. You're making me feel spoiled."
I looked down at the butterfly within the box.
"You should try that on." I looked up.
"Right now?"
He rose from the table, so I followed his lead, and we approached our own reflection in a sort of hallway of mirrors at the end of the room, concealed by a turn in the walls. When I saw him in such concentrated light, in every surrounding reflection, it was a bit unnerving. He watched himself a moment, almost put in a trance by his own eyes, but I could see him when he finally neared me from behind and reached for the necklace. I took off the one I was already wearing and his hands rose over me. The cold butterfly fell lightly over my chest. His fingers were tickling the back of my neck trying to lock the clasp, but I tried not to show it.
After a struggle, he stopped. "These gloves aren't helping."
"Heheheh... Let me." I took the ends from him and did it rather quickly, all the while smiling at myself as he loomed over my left shoulder. It was a perfect fit for me... a butterfly... I wondered why exactly he picked it. Things were rarely without reason for him.
He continued to watch my reflection in silence.
"You're not gonna say it looks good on me?"
"You seem to argue with me whenever I...imply... that you're even relatively attractive, so..." Oh, I see how it was.
"I-I like arguing a little."
"If it would make things easier..." He leaned into my ear. "...You look fine, I suppose..."
I laughed a little in my exhale, and so did he; I could feel it on my skin. I liked and was unsure about our proximity all at once, but my body, a bit on its own, moved away from him, although I could tell he was following me. I did not need a mirror to tell me that, as I walked towards a window out in the open, stretching from floor to ceiling. The cityscape faded into the dark, nothing but a thousand lights below. It reminded me of one of the first times I had ever talked to Erik in the theater. Before I could so much as tap my extended finger on the glass, he held me from behind and very gently leaned into the side of my head. It gave me a sensation I wasn't used to at all.
"I think you've underestimated what I offered you ever since we met..."
I laid my hands over his, trying not to tense up, focusing on a blue light far away from there. "I'd like to spoil you, Christine..." I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. "As long as you confide in me, I'll give you anything. You haven't tested that. I think you should."
"What do I give back...?"
"You don't have to worry about that."
"But there's always something. It's only right."
"I told you... You've given me what I wanted already."
"But what is it?"
"I'll tell you when it'll mean the most. Not now..."
I believed he would.
"How about we leave now?"
"I don't want you to take me home yet."
"I wasn't about to."
He let one hand slip away from my waist and lead me back to the table, where I collected my purse and we put on our coats. When we came to the front desk, although it was a little unconventional, they printed our bill for us there and he pulled nothing but a wad of money from his pocket. The bill was so cheap, he paid entirely in ones. I would've chipped in but I had nothing in my purse except the phone and a couple lip glosses.
I didn't know where we were going once we were outside the building. He started down the opposite direction that we had arrived, and I just went with it. Staying close to him, talking... Holding his arm... He welcomed it all. So well, I started to wonder how this date would end.
"A large percentage of schizophrenics have no home... For many it's easier than trying to integrate themselves into society."
"...That's not you, is it?"
"Phantoms first."
"Sometimes a mask is... quite transparent once you start on that journey... of getting to know someone... I think you can only trust the people who see you behind it..."
"You shouldn't eat with those," I pointed out, directed at his gloves. I felt terribly motherly after I said it, and wondered how he might react. He paused, mid grab. "...They're just... you know. You've touched a lot of doorknobs with those I'm sure. You could get sick."
He took great entertainment in this. Although he was silent and his face was turned, I knew he was trying very hard not to laugh at me. It was completely... perfectly... wonderful to watch him in this state. I had reached something in him genuinely human. It was like I was laying in his lap again, feeling his heartbeat against the side of my face.
"I think you've underestimated what I offered you ever since we met..."
I laid my hands over his, trying not to tense up, focusing on a blue light far away from there. "I'd like to spoil you, Christine..."
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