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By Root 482 0

Then, in the bright reflection of a ten-foot mirror, he was ashamed to notice a serious defect in the stitching of his jacket, so that it appeared lopsided as it rested upon his shoulders. Although this was in fact the reason he had been able to afford it in the first place, in his excitement he had convinced himself that it would be easy to camouflage, and he now regretted his stupidity. Dejected, he could barely bring himself to smile as Codruta led him into a drawing room and introduced him to the members of her petit clan. His mood did not improve when she placed him at a small table with Marie-Laure de Vicionière and her daughter Daisy. “Codruta informs us that you’re a very promising young singer,” Madame de Vicionière offered as her daughter sipped tea.

“She’s most gracious,” Lucien responded as he leaned to the side to allow room for his own tea to be poured.

Madame smiled indulgently. “Do you have a teacher?”

“My mother was a singer, but she died when I was three, so some of her friends at her theater—the St.-Germain—have helped me.”

“How kind.” She glanced at her daughter. “We’ve not been to the St.-Germain, have we?”

“It’s not—” Lucien stopped as he realized that he was about to disparage his mother’s theater for no good reason. It was not the Peletier, to be sure, but it was far from the worst opera house in Paris, with a respectable repertoire of bel canto, romantic, and patriotic fare by the likes of Delève, Theron, and a few other Parisian composers.

The St.-Germain was also where he had made his best friends as a child. He fondly remembered scurrying through the backstage tunnels and corridors, where he used to hide in the props, collect fallen flower petals from the soprano’s bouquets, dress up in wigs, and spy on the singers as they made costume changes or—just as frequently, it sometimes seemed—made love, often in unconventional arrangements that Lucien had long understood (even before such things were made explicit to him) were not always appreciated beyond the society of the theater.

“It’s not far away,” he finally concluded with more confidence to atone for his initial hesitation.

“We’ve been so busy lately,” Madame continued in a distracted manner.

Lucien turned his attention to Daisy. “Do you have a teacher?”

Marie-Laure replied on her daughter’s behalf: “When Daisy started singing I thought nothing of it, but then a friend of mine—regrettably not here today, or I’d introduce you—pulled me aside and said, ‘Your Daisy has the voice of a nightingale,’ and insisted that we immediately present her to Monsieur García.”

“You’re a student of Manuel García?” Lucien again addressed Daisy, amazed that someone so young could have been taken on by the famous teacher, although as soon as he said it he began to worry about how he would sound in comparison.

“Well, no.” Marie-Laure shook her head. “Or at least not yet. He assured us that Daisy has enormous reserves of untapped potential but cautioned against singing too much. I suppose you’ve heard what happened to Jenny Lind?”

“Yes, madame,” Lucien said, now disappointed, for despite his nerves he had begun to think that if he impressed them, his performance might open an avenue to the professor. He watched Marie-Laure turn to her own daughter, as if to say “You see?” Daisy in turn smiled with just a trace of disdain as she directed her gaze past her mother’s clucks.

Daisy had pretty eyes—they appeared almost turquoise against the pale green satin of her dress—and he wondered if she might like to kiss him, and if he would want to kiss her back; he thought of another game he used to play at the theater in which the loser (or winner) was locked in a closet for a few minutes with another chosen at random. He found that when he was given the chance to be alone with one of the girls, most were more intent on giggling and squirming away from him than actually kissing, but a few times he and another boy had snuck away to do the same, and they had kissed much harder, so that Lucien could still remember the unsettling sensation of their teeth clicking together.