Page 62 of Our Strange Duet

She spun me around and pulled at the tie at my skirt so that the whole dress fluttered off me in a twirl of ruffles, revealing the green striped breeches I wore beneath. From the darkened house, I heard a few murmurs of appreciation at the sight of my hose-covered calves.

“You cannot speak,” she continued and crossed to the bed at center stage, “but kiss me in my husband’s absence!”

As the orchestra began the intro to her aria, Carlotta turned upstage to pull out an atomizer the stagehands had secreted away under a mound of pillows. It was filled with a mixture of ginger, honey, lemon, and a touch of slippery elm. Carlotta had bottles of the spray hidden throughout every opera set and used them frequently throughout the performances, claiming to all who would listen that the concoction helped keep her throat well lubricated, allowing her to hit astronomically high notes during her coloratura.

Once, I’d seen a faceted bottle left behind after a performance and had curiously tried it out. It didn’t seem to do a thing for me, but it had at least made my breath smell sweet.

I could smell the lemons now as Carlotta turned back downstage to address the audience. “Poor fool, he makes me laugh,” she began, and went into a soaring fioritura of laughter.

I took her hand and began pantomiming ardent kisses up her fingers to her elbow.

Just as I reached her shoulder, when I was meant to drop her into a wild dip, the stage lights flickered and a voice boomed out over the auditorium, roaring as loud as thunder.

“Did I not instruct that Box Five was to be kept empty?”

Everyone in the theatre, including all of us onstage, instinctively glanced toward the box in question. I could just make out the shape of someone silhouetted against the dim sconce lighting. It was Raoul.

A chill swept through me. What was he doing there—in that box, of all places?

I knew exactly who had spoken.

I knew exactly whose fury Raoul had baited.

“It’s him,” I murmured sotto voce, breaking both character and the scene before I could stop myself.

“The Phantom of the Opera,” someone hissed, and I squinted backstage to see Meg, already dressed in her country nymph costume, peeking from behind one of the legs as she looked fearfully into the front of house.

More whispers followed as other company members dared to duck onstage, hiding in shadows, to see what was going on.

“He’s here,” I said.

Carlotta whipped toward me, her painted face a nightmare of indignation. “Your part is silent, little toad!”

“A toad, madame?” Erik’s voice rang out. I hadn’t heard it since the night he’d abandoned me in my dressing room so many weeks before, and for it to now be here, in front of so many others, felt wrong. “Perhaps it is you who are the toad.”

Flurries of conversation broke out across the auditorium as the audience became more animated than they had been all evening. From the back of the stalls, one young man stood and yelled “Ribbit!” before collapsing in a fit of drunken laughter as his companions tried to hush him.

Carlotta studied the crowd with growing reproach. I could see the bows on her wig dance from the force of her barely checked rage. She was moments away from erupting into a monstrous tantrum.

From his position in the pit, Maestro Messenger gently tapped his baton against the music stand before him, drawing the diva’s attention. He offered her a small, pained smile.

“Perhaps from the da capo, my lady?”

Carlotta blinked, pulling herself back into the role, back into the music, and nodded.

“Maestro, per favore.” She took another spray from the atomizer, making no show of hiding it as she usually would, then fell back into an overwrought pose. “Serafimo, away with this pretense,” she sang again, and I rushed over to her side, already late for my blocking. “You cannot speak, but kiss me in my husband’s—”

A horrible noise exploded from her, landing with all the croaking ungainliness of a toad.

We stared at each other, struck dumb by what had just happened. It hadn’t been a slipped note or even a vocal crack—the most feared ailment to strike an improperly warmed-up singer.

No.

This had been…

This had been something far worse.

Carlotta’s hand shot to her throat, feeling the long, flexing column of muscles. She massaged the skin, searching for anything which could explain away that appalling sound.