He immediately stood back up and stepped away. I couldn’t help but laugh. Motioning him back, I shook my head.
“Don’t be scared. My playing will do more insult than you will.” I lifted the lid on the keys and let myself run up and down the scales, a few times.
This instrument was perfection. The touch, the response, the tonal color. Even my awful scales were made beautiful.
“Warm up,” I said. “Ma may me mo moo?”
“It’s been a long time since I did vocal scales, but yes.”
We ran through a few warm up scales and I could hear the room grab our voices and toss them out into the seats—a very different sound from the concert stage I’d started to grow used to. I glanced out and saw the chandelier, and laughed into the vocal warm up.
“What’s funny?” Maddox pitched his voice quiet.
“The chandelier is right there,” I answered. “I could sing the whole damn Phantom here in the very house that the story takes place in. Ilikebeing in this band. I never would have taken this chance even if I was here without you.”
“Fame opens many doors,” Maddox said. “I only use it once in a while, though. For things like this.”
Tearing my eyes away from the ceiling, I focused back on the keys and played the first stanza of the song without either of us singing, just to make sure I still knew the music. “Ready?”
Maddox nodded. “I’m Rufus.”
“Zurga,” I corrected.
“Rufus.” He grinned at me crookedly.
It did funny things to me. Shit.
Maddox took the count. “One, two…”
My fingers played the first notes as I opened my mouth and let the words out.
“Au fond du temple saint
paré de fleurs et d'or,
Une femme apparaît!”
Maddox took up the echo that Zurga lent the duet. “Une femme apparaît!”
I carried the song, but Maddox kept up ably. He must have taken voice lessons at some point to be able to project and hold the way he did. He knew all the cues, and he hit all the notes perfectly.
For a moment, I wondered if he had ever looked up the meaning of the words. There were two ways to sing the song and I didn’t know if he was singing with the heterosexual understanding or if he removed it in his intent. I knew I had no hetero overtones in what I sang. It made more sense to me. I always felt that Nadir and Zurga had a love affair going on, and used the desire to be seen as brothers as an excuse to eschew the beauty of the Brahmina for the company of a man.
“Oui, partageons le même sort,
Soyons unis jusqu'à la mort!”
I sighed as the last two lines faded into the auditorium with the last of the piano notes. The translation echoed in my head as the sound disappeared.
“Yes, let us share the same fate,
let us be united until death!”
Before I could really think on it, the manager stepped out and was applauding wildly. “Monsieur Donner, that was incredible! Your voice is perfection! Please, Monsieur Jones, tell me you plan to let this man sing on your albums. I cannot believe the quality and strength of his sounds!”
“Merci,” I said, ducking my head.
“He will be,” Maddox said. “We have a song we’re already working on from him for the next album.”
