My six other pairs, one for each day of the week if I wanted, amused the tenor. I like them, he said, as they were set in one by one. And then it was done; he paid the bill outright. He left to wait downstairs and let me dress and say good-byes. The maid stayed at first to help me, but I shooed her away. As I closed the door, Euphrosyne came and sat down on the bed.
I told them I pick first, she said, and then plucked at the few things the tenor had rejected—mostly lingerie. We will buy all new ones for you, he’d said.
When she saw there was nothing she wanted, she turned her attention to me.
It’s nothing to me, Jou-jou, she said. It’s a favor you do for me, though, really, she said. You’ll tire of him. You’ll see. Give me a kiss and let it be done. We must stay friends, for we love each other.
She had slept beside me coldly since that night I first sang for him. This had angered me, as the fantasy act that introduced me to him had been her idea, and so I had been cold in return. But she was right.
I bent down and gave her a kiss.
Just be sure to be careful. It will be harder to refuse him now. And if he beats you, promise me you’ll show him that knife.
I nodded.
I have a confession, she said. Please forgive me. She withdrew something from her blouse and set it on the bed.
It was silly of me, she said. And terrible. I was . . . I loved the story, she said. I would take it out and pretend the Emperor had given it to me.
The rose pin sat there, strangely dark in the light, almost black. She’d had it this whole time.
I made myself go to the bed and pick it up.
She kept talking, not quite meeting my eyes. Her voice seemed focused past me, as if on someone listening in.
I meant to give it back sooner, for it was really childish of me, but then when our tenor friend chose you over me, it was as if you’d stolen from me, and I felt we were even. But we aren’t, are we? Nothing like that will ever happen to me, you see, she said. I don’t have any other talents except this, and she gestured to her figure. And when this is gone, nothing. So forgive me, please. And you! You will finally be the singer you were fated to be. He will help you, I think, yes? And you must come back often and tell me everything.
With that, she came close and embraced me.
You must kiss me; we must stay friends, she said.
I did.
The tenor’s driver came for my new cases then, and as I followed him downstairs, I passed by the open door to the room where it had begun, the faux opera boxes and the illusion stage. The maid was mopping the floors clean of the previous night’s exertions. I looked back up the stairs, but there was no sign of her. There was only Odile at the foot of the stairs calling for me to come.
§
That first time I entered my apartment on the brand-new avenue de l’Opéra, I felt as if I were an interloper visiting someone else’s home.
The walls were painted carefully, a beautiful dove gray, and furnished in what struck me as the most elegant furnishings I’d ever seen, though I might be less impressed to see them now. Enormous crystal chandeliers hung in nearly every room, even the boudoir. There was even a music room with a piano.
As I left the maid to set my things out in the new apartment, I knew what I’d been too proud to say in front of Euphrosyne, what she had even tried to tell me.
There was always at least one client who was reluctant to leave. This is paradise, they’d usually exclaim first. They’d joke with Odile, ask her what she would charge to stay the night; and she forbade it each time. The Plaisirs closes at dawn, she would say to them. It is the only rule. That, and that you must pay.
This was what they wanted. A house of tolerance with just one girl. The apartment like his own music box, and when he opened it, I was what moved and sang.
This apartment was not my freedom, and it would not have been hers, either. Instead, it was as if I were shut inside one of the theaters and told I was to live in there with him, or for him, or both.
As I examined the sconces on the wall of my new music room, I half expected to see Odile’s eye peering at me through some hollow bottom in one of them, making sure all was as he wanted it.
As the maid unpacked me, she found my little ruby rose and held it out to me, praising it before putting it in a little jewelry box on my dressing table.
The sight of it mocked me—my charm, back with its strange luck. It was a kind of mercy Euphrosyne returned it to me only after the bill of fare had been settled. I did not have to see it discussed, or worse, valued.
I could guess what it was worth now. And while I hated Euphrosyne for stealing it and still felt she had trapped me by doing so, I could never have paid Odile back with what I would have gotten for selling it. Just as I could never have made my way to Lucerne with whatever I might have sold it for.
I was finally worth more than any of my things, in any case. This tenor, I had seen what he had paid Odile for his fantasy of making me a singer.
Let it remind you of that, I told my reflection the next time I pinned the brooch to my lapel.
And, for a while, it did.
Nine