Part 24 (1/2)
”Noir,” Thinnes said, ”see if the manager'll take this dog off our hands. If not, call Animal Control, then take it out for a walk before it has another accident.”
Noir nodded, without enthusiasm, and took the leash. Thinnes went back in the apartment to watch the tech photograph Abner West.
Fifty.
”What're you doing tomorrow night?” Rick's voice.
Caleb stood at the window of his office as he listened to the phone, watching the traffic crawl down Michigan Avenue. The Loop was aglitter with lights and feverish with the urgency of the season. Christmas shoppers. He tried to picture Rick in a Christmas context-shopping, stringing lights, or singing Christmas carols. What came to mind was a fantasy involving red ribbon and mistletoe. He blushed at the thought and said, ”I have tickets for the opera.”
”Tickets?”
”Wagner. Die Walkre.”
”You're going with someone.”
Nothing like being subtle, Rick, he thought. ”No...”
”Well?”
Caleb took a deep breath and wondered why he couldn't just say no. It was symptomatic that he felt he was being pressured into what he should have freely offered. And he resented it. What am I doing, going with this man?
”I've never been to an opera,” Rick was saying.
”Die Walkre is not the one to start with.”
”I'll be good.”
”That's not what I meant.”
”What's the drill?”
”Business attire-”
”No T-s.h.i.+rts?”
”The performance starts at six-thirty and runs nearly five hours. Latecomers aren't seated until there's a break or an intermission. Clearing one's throat is frowned upon; talking is grounds for murder.”
”Sounds pretty stuffy.”
”You don't have to come.”
”Where do I meet you?”
He took a cab. The usual hustle and rush of Loop traffic was intensified by the urgency of the season. Hanukkah. Headlights and brake lights flashed, and turn signals and Four-ways. There was the usual glitter and neon of the Loop, and all the Downtown trees were bejeweled with white Italian lights. For the first time in years, he felt the manic joy of the season. Ebenezer Caleb transformed by Christmas spirits. The words for the song, ”You're Just in Love,” mingled in his head with the carols and madrigals he'd heard recently on WFMT-Wa.s.sail and Oh Come, Oh Come, Emmanuel. Being in love-he recognized it as infatuation-was closely akin to insanity and probably biochemically congruent with the manic phase of bipolar affective disorder. He was-in strictly clinical terms-hyperrthymic. But the ”dis-ease” was strictly self-limiting, so he decided to enjoy it.
As the cab let him out in front of the opera house, Caleb's excitement built like an electric charge in the dry, cold air. Rick was waiting.
He looked gorgeous in a dark-gray mohair coat, gray suit, and gray paisley tie with traces of red and the same slate blue as his eyes. His only concession to the season was a small cloisonne wreath of holly leaves with a tiny, red AIDS-awareness ribbon in place of a bow. His greeting was more effusive than Caleb felt comfortable with under the circ.u.mstances-an awkward hug.
For a brief moment, Caleb felt like an old cat in the company of a puppy. ”Shall we go in?” he said.
The art deco doors opened, creating a temporary vacuum, and a great whoosh of cold air propelled them inside.
”The Lyric is a world-cla.s.s ensemble,” Caleb said. ”And the Civic's one of the world's premier houses. It's acoustically perfect, and there aren't any bad seats.”
They had drinks, then went to their seats. Caleb had a box, on the mezzanine, with a superb view of stage, orchestra, and audience. The spectacle was dazzling: bronze and marble, gold and glitter, and golden light.
He tried to see it as Rick must. There were upper-middle-cla.s.s people, middle-aged and older couples, gays as well as straights.
”So what's the appeal?”
”Ritual, spectacle, and drama.” Bread and circuses. Opera and hockey. Different metaphors for the same spiritual experience. In opera, the emphasis was on verbal a.s.sault. ”It fills the same need as soap opera, professional wrestling, and Kabuki. Or Greek tragedy.”
”Pretty heavy.”
He was being polite. Ponderous was the word more often applied, particularly to Wagner.
”How did you get interested?”
”My mother was the quintessential opera buff.”
As a child, Caleb had resisted his mother's efforts to interest him in opera. But, since his father always managed to have ”emergency” surgery on opera nights, Caleb accompanied his mother to performances from the time he was seven. He'd never enjoyed it. The music wasn't bad, but as with Gregorian chant, he'd liked it better before he understood the words-which in translation frequently were insipid. And there'd seemed no point in ruining a perfectly good drama-or dressing up a silly one-with songs in foreign languages.
Then one day he'd heard Maria Callas on the radio. It had been an epiphany.
”So tell me about this show,” Rick said.
”In Act One, Siegmund, the hero, arrives dest.i.tute and exhausted at Hunding's house, built around the trunk of an ash tree. Hunding's wife, Sieglinde, offers him sanctuary. When Hunding arrives, he reiterates the offer of shelter-until he hears Siegmund's story and discovers Siegmund is his kinsmen's enemy, whom he's sworn to kill. He tells his guest that he can safely stay the night, but in the morning, he's a dead man. Hunding and Sieglinde go off to bed, but she drugs him and returns to Siegmund. She shows him a sword a mysterious stranger once drove into the trunk of the ash. Siegmund retrieves the sword. They talk and discover that they're siblings, separated long ago. They fall madly in love and elope-”
”'Vice is nice, but incest is best,' eh? Who said that?”
”Oscar Wilde, I think.”
”So, does this sordid little tale of dysfunctional family living have a happy ending?”
”I'm afraid not.”
Just before the lights went down, he spotted a profile that was infuriatingly familiar, but which he couldn't connect to a name. The man was tall and powerfully built, and considerably older than the blond beauty on his arm. She was patently bored by the conversation he was having with two men Caleb recognized as real-estate heavyweights.
Then the lights began to fade-he never failed to feel a surge of joy, of antic.i.p.ation-and the magic drove all else from his notice.
He could tell, before the end of the overture, that Rick was going to hate it. At first, he divided his attention between Siegmund and Sieglinde and watched the surt.i.tles translating for them. Then he began to study people in the audience. By the time Hunding arrived onstage, Rick was examining the architecture, and the pattern of the carpet. He shot his cuffs, adjusted his tie, and surrept.i.tiously sc.r.a.ped imaginary dirt from under his fingernails. Then he s.h.i.+fted around in his seat to the sleep position adopted by bored students worldwide. Just as well, Caleb thought.