The Metropolis Case_ A Novel - Matthew Gallaway [82]
“Are you a singer?” he asked tentatively.
“Yes—opera,” Leo confirmed.
“Tristan?”
Leo raised an eyebrow. “You know it?”
“I was there tonight,” Martin admitted. “I was very moved—it was my first time.”
Leo seemed to waver before he responded. “So I’ve made you an expert.”
“I’ve been called worse.” Martin shrugged and then sipped his drink. He might have been more disappointed by the chill he detected in Leo’s voice if he had not long before trained himself to expect the worst from artists whose music he professed to admire. It was always a delicate procedure, given his assumption that someone on the level of Leo Metropolis had no particular need for his approval, but Martin still felt it better to acknowledge his admiration than to pretend—as some of his former music industry colleagues always did—that he felt no particular attachment to an artist’s work.
To change the subject, Martin asked Leo where he was originally from and learned that he had grown up in Paris, although his father was from Greece.
“And you?” Leo asked in a tone that fell somewhere between dismissive and playful.
“Well, I’m American—I grew up in Pennsylvania,” Martin replied. “But I was adopted.”
“I see,” Leo mused. “Well, my mother was from the South of France, so if our passing resemblance is any indication, I think it’s probably safe to say you have some Mediterranean blood in you.” Another round of drinks arrived; while Ghislaine and the others resumed their own conversation across the table, chattering in French, Leo again turned to address Martin. “So you don’t know who your birth parents were?”
“No. The records were sealed, and my interest has always been more superficial—more of a conversation piece than a real desire to know.”
“And your adoptive parents know nothing?”
“No,” answered Martin and then briefly explained what had happened to Hank and Jane.
“I’m sorry,” Leo murmured and then seemed to look through Martin for a few seconds before he returned his gaze to him. “Although if it’s any comfort—and please don’t take this the wrong way, because I speak from my own perspective, which I understand often places me far outside of the norm—I sometimes like to think that death, at least in the case of those we truly love, allows us to appreciate what they have done for us in ways that are not possible when we’re all here, constantly changing and fixated on how to get from one day to the next. Death offers us the chance to reflect on who they were, which of course is a way to understand ourselves. As painful as it can be to see them go—and I don’t mean to diminish the sense of loss or grief we all feel—there is also no greater gift.”
Martin, who in the surrounding mirrors could see an infinite number of Leos repeating into the distance, was struck by the man’s eyes—the way they glinted like jade in the shadowy light—as well as the beguiling tone of his voice, both of which made Martin remember he was talking to a man whose performance had shattered him only hours earlier. “I see you take your Tristan to heart,” he remarked, not unappreciatively, for Leo had accomplished the difficult trick of acknowledging death with neither cold detachment nor the uncomfortably overwrought displays Martin had come to expect from a certain percentage of others with whom he shared this information.
Leo’s expression barely changed as he nodded. “Let me guess—you’re thirty-three?”
“Very good.” Martin laughed, less unnerved than slightly astonished in a way that sometimes happened during such barroom conjecture, and also relieved to move away from the maudlin overtones of their earlier conversation. “How’d you guess?”
“Woman’s intuition?” Leo also laughed, then shrugged in a charmingly self-deprecating way that gave Martin the impression that it really had been nothing more than a lucky guess.
“And you’re … fifty-two?” Martin replied, taking care to shave a few years off his real guess.
“That’s not something we singers are ever inclined to disclose,” Leo said,