about you?” she asked. “What’s your verdict?”
“I think I’ve seen it too many times to be objective anymore,” he said. “But it’s interesting you say that about Puccini’s being too reserved with it. I’ve always kind of thought the same thing. I actually like Leoncavallo’s interpretation of Murger’s book much better.”
She grinned. “I do, too.”
He grinned back. “That puts us in the minority, you know.” “I know.”
“In fact,” he added, “I like Leoncavallo’s La Bohème even better than his Pagliacci, an opinion that will get you tossed out of some opera houses.”
She laughed at that. “I like it better than Pagliacci, too. Looks like we’ll be kicked to the curb together.”
He chuckled lightly, both of them quieting at the same time, neither seeming to know what to say next. After a couple of awkward seconds, Della ventured, “Well, if you’ve already seen La Bohème too many times, and you don’t care for it as much as you do other operas, then why are you here tonight? ”
He shrugged, but there was something in the gesture that was in no way careless, and the warmth that had eased his expression fled. “I have season tickets.”
Tickets, she repeated to herself. Not ticket. Plural, not singular. Meaning he was indeed the owner of the empty seat beside his and had been expecting someone to occupy it tonight. Someone who might very well be with him all the other nights of the season. A wife, perhaps?
She hastily glanced at his left hand but saw no ring. Still, there were plenty of married people who eschewed the ring thing these days. Della wondered who normally joined him and why she wasn’t here tonight. She waited to see if he would add something about the mysteriously empty chair. Something that might clarify the sudden drop in temperature that seemed to shimmer between them. Because she sensed that that vacant chair was what had generated the faint chill.
Instead, he shook off his odd, momentary funk and said, “That is how I know you don’t normally attend Lyric Opera performances. At least not on opening night, and not in the seat you’re sitting in tonight.” He smiled again, and the chill abated some. “I would have noticed.”
She did her best to ignore the butterflies doing the rumba in her stomach. “This is my first time coming here,” she confessed.
His inspection of her grew ponderous. “Your first time at Palumbo’s. Your first time at the Lyric. So you have just moved to Chicago recently, haven’t you?”
She was saved from having to reply, because the opera gods and goddesses—Wagnerian, she’d bet, every one of them—smiled down on her. Her companion was beckoned from below by a couple who had recognized him and wanted to say hello—and who addressed him as Marcus, giving Della his first name, at least. Then they proceeded to say way more than hello to him, chatting until the lights flickered once, twice, three times, indicating that the performance was about to resume. At that, the couple scurried off, and he—Marcus—turned to look at Della again.
“Can you see all right from where you are?” he asked. He patted the chair next to him that still contained the unopened program and rose. “You might have a better vantage point from this seat. You want to have the best angle for ‘Addio Dolce Svegliare Alla Mattina.'”
The Italian rolled off his tongue as if he spoke it fluently, and a ribbon of something warm and gooey unfurled in her. Even though the vantage point would be no different from the one she had now—which he must realize, too—Della was surprised by how much she wanted to accept his offer. Whoever usually sat there obviously wasn’t coming. And he didn’t seem to be as bothered by that as a man involved in a romantic relationship should be. So maybe his relationship with the usual occupant of the chair wasn’t romantic, in spite of the red, red rose.
Or maybe he was just a big ol’ hound dog with whom she’d be better off not sharing anything more than opera chitchat. Maybe he should only be another lovely, momentary memory to go along with all the other lovely, momentary memories she was storing from this evening.
“Thank you, but the view from here is fine,” she said. And it was, she told herself. For now. For tonight. But not, unfortunately, forever.
Marcus Fallon sat in his usual seat at his usual table drinking his usual nightcap in his usual club, thinking the most unusual thoughts. Or, at least, thoughts about a most unusual woman. A woman unlike any he’d ever met before. And not only because she shared his passion for, and opinions about, opera, either. Unfortunately, the moment the curtain had fallen on La Bohème, she’d hurried past him with a breathlessly uttered good night, scurried up the aisle ahead of everyone else in the box and he’d lost her in the crowd before he’d been able to say a word. He’d experienced a moment of whimsy as he’d scanned the stairs on his way out looking for a glass slipper, but even that small fairy-tale clue had eluded him. She was gone. Just like that. Almost as if she’d never been there at all. And he had no idea how to find her.
He lifted his Scotch to his lips again, filling his mouth with the smooth, smoky liquor, scanning the crowd here as if he were looking for her again. Strangely, he realized he was. But all he saw was the usual crowd milling around the dark-paneled, richly appointed, sumptuously decorated room. Bernie Stegman was, as usual, sitting in an oxblood leather wingback near the fireplace, chatting up Lucas Whidmore, who sat in an identical chair on the other side. Delores and Marion Hagemann were having a late dinner with Edith and Lawrence Byck at their usual table in the corner, the quartet framed by heavy velvet drapes the color of old money. Cynthia Harrison was doing her usual flirting with Stu, the usual Saturday bartender, who was sidestepping her advances with his usual aplomb. He would lose his job if he were caught canoodling with the patrons.
Thoughts of canoodling brought Marcus’s ruminations back to the mysterious lady in red. Not that that was entirely surprising, since the minute he’d seen her sitting opposite him at Palumbo’s, canoodling had been at the forefront of his brain. She’d simply been that stunning. What was really strange, though, was that once he’d started talking to her at the Lyric, canoodling had fallen by the wayside, and what he’d really wanted to do with her was talk more about opera. And not only because she shared his unconventional opinions, either. But because of the way she’d lit up while talking about it. As beautiful as she’d been, seated alone at her table in the restaurant, she’d become radiant during their conversation.
Radiant, he repeated to himself, frowning. Now there was a word he’d never used to describe a woman before. Then again, that could be because he’d seldom moved past the stage with a woman where he found her beautiful. Meaning he’d seldom reached a stage where he actually talked to one. Once he bedded a woman—and that usually came pretty early after meeting one—he lost interest. But that was because few women were worth knowing beyond the biblical sense.
Unbidden, a reproving voice erupted in his brain, taking him to task for his less-than-stellar commentary, but it wasn’t his own. It was Charlotte’s sandpaper rasp, made that way by too many cigarettes over the course of her eighty-two years. More than once over the past two decades since making her acquaintance, he’d let slip some politically incorrect comment about the opposite sex, only to have her haul him up by his metaphorical collar—and sometimes by his not-so-metaphorical collar—to set him straight.
God, he
