The Metropolis Case_ A Novel - Matthew Gallaway [81]
Of less practical importance, but equally emblematic of a larger need to “reshape” himself, was his growing appreciation for opera at a time when he had felt saturated with rock. Given this, it hardly seemed coincidental—at least in retrospect—that the opportunity to buy his house had arisen after he saw his first Tristan und Isolde, just a few weeks before starting his new job. He could still remember the performance; though he had suffered through much of the first act—the music felt lugubrious, and the vaunted dissonance failed to impress him—he managed to return for the second, and as the piece moved deeper into the love duet, he felt his resistance erode, so that, as the doomed pair sang about their longing for love and death, the music seemed not only to locate the anger and grief that had been weighing on him like a swallowed rock but also to dissolve it into something benign, even potable.
Too stimulated to go home after the show, he left the Met and meandered down Broadway to Joséphine, the Viennese café on Fiftieth Street. Inside he admired the tall, beveled mirrors, marble-topped tables, and dark wood paneling, all of which seemed to recall old Europe perfectly without denigrating it, while the mix of decadent society types, artists, whores, and junkies added an intoxicating fin de siècle verisimilitude to the scene. He ordered an Irish whiskey and casually watched a table of attractive young men, whose animated conversation and games of flirtation further entranced and soothed him with the thought that there were some good things about the world that would never change.
The room was filling up when Martin was approached by an older woman—perhaps in her sixties—who caressed a long strand of black pearls in one hand as she addressed him. “Excusez-moi,” she began and then switched to English, “would you mind if my entourage joined you? As you can see, tables are now scarce, and I see no reason for a handsome young man to sit alone.”
Martin did not mind. “S’il vous plaît,” he responded in his rather tortured French.
“Je m’appelle Ghislaine,” she continued and nodded to a man who appeared to be around the same age, “and this is my husband, Arthur.”
Martin also nodded to the gentleman, whose intense eyes and lean body did not fail to catch his attention. Perhaps it was for this reason that he was less than surprised by Ghislaine’s next words: “I am also accompanied by Jean,” she said and patted the hand of a younger man next to her, “who—because I believe in candor at my age—I will disclose is my amant du jour.” Martin nodded at this man, whose long chin and messy blond hair pleased him somewhat less, as Ghislaine turned to the fourth member of their party, a man who—thanks to his robust build, length of the nose, curve of the ear, and swarthy skin tone—bore more than a passing resemblance to Martin, as if they both had ancestral roots in the same village in southern Europe.
Ghislaine acknowledged as much in her introduction. “And here I present you with your doppelgänger, Leo,” she continued with a small bow as everyone laughed, “who in the interest of fair play I will also disclose is Arthur’s lover. He shall sit next to you, for his English is by far the best among us.”
As soon as Leo sat down, it dawned on Martin why he looked so familiar. His stomach flipped at the thought, even though he felt faintly ridiculous to