Scene 5 // Alex and Rene medical care Paris 9th Arrondissement | Le club Aéronautique | Sunday Morning | Le lever du soleil
“Dare I ask what happened?” Dr. Rene Aliberte asks while wrapping the bandage around Alex’s upper arm and shoulder.
“Pistols at one, demanded by that over-confident cockwomble Theo” Stephane states as he leans on the deep mahogany bar.
“I assume this is why I was roused in the middle of the night?”
“Likely.” Alex said while rubbing his temple with his forefinger.
“Clean those and put them back in the armory.” Rene motioned to the pistol case.
“You are lucky that relic grazed you.
Only a shard.
Those musket balls break up inside the wound. If initially survived, they come back to haunt.
Stephane, you should be young Alex’s conscience, not his Second.”
Stephane smirks, giving a jaunty two-fingered salute.
Rene, “You’ll be fine. Keep it clean.”
Alex, “Did Theo make it?”
Rene, “I never saw him, when I came down the cart was empty. Those two dimwits woke half the floor trying to find my room.” With a flourish of his hand “Clean this up.”
Scene 6 // The Paris Ballet Paris 11th Arrondissement | Paris Ballet Company | Monday Morning | Le matin
A severe woman in a seafoam and teal dress moves smartly through the dormitory hallway. Leaning into the door frame as Raquel’s roommates squeeze by, fleeing through the available space.
“Ma Cher! What have you done?!” The ballet mistress exclaims while taking both Raquel’s hands in her own.
“We were run down by a cart.”
Raquel hangs her head as though her accident was a personal failing. Her left leg elevated on a pillow with her back against the wall at the head of the bed. The ankle having ballooned over the last day and started its return to normal.
The Mistress cares for the dancer, but in an entirely transactional manner. Every dancer believes the company is invested in their talent. So many dancers have come and gone. Injury can be worked through only within the needs of the company.
“I will have one of the girls bring you some willow tea for the swelling.”
Searching her dress pocket, she produces a small vial of laudanum.
“Add a few drops of this into the tea for your pain. Do not overdo it.” She directs.
“Thank you, Mistress Camille, I will be at warm-up tomorrow.”
“Non Ma Cher, do not rush your recovery. I will return to check on you this afternoon.”
Raquel knows that the next stop for Mistress Camille will be to visit the program director to identify her replacement. The next performance in a few short days. Dancers drop like flies. There are always more flies.
The Paris Opera Ballet is a highly competitive and unstable environment with little security for young dancers. Raquel’s valuable and coveted contract only exists while she performs. Now, her contract would go to another. If she stayed, she would return to the bottom. If she maintained her abonné sponsor, Marcus, returning might remain an option. Marcus is a nice-enough necessity, having been his mistress for a few months as her star has risen, she has ascended socially as well.
The ballet will not board dancers who are not preparing for or performing. That afternoon Camille makes it clear her options are limited. Even though she is a talent, management expects her to recover elsewhere. Like Camille, Raquel must be a transactional mistress.
Scene 7 // An inauspicious Homecoming Paris 9th Arrondissement | Tuesday Morning | La fin de matinée
Theo’s head feels about to crack in half. His entire left side spasming between racking pain and numbness. His left arm hangs limp and useless. He’s failing a furtive attempt to enter his building and apartment from a side entrance without notice.
The landlord leans back on a low chair, seesawing on two legs, righting his balance with a booted toe against a sturdy table. His mid-morning ritual, strong coffee with his hens, Colette and Claudette, hunting and pecking about the table and kitchen.
With one eye on the hallway and the other in his morning newspaper, the creak of the door grabs his attention as it opens slowly. Morning rays light the dust as the door opens.
“Whoozat?!?”
The door crashes fully open bouncing against the wall as Theo loses his balance stumbling through the frame.
“Oi, shitbird!
THEO!
Oi!
Whatchu doin’ dere?”
Theo doubles over from exertion. Through a dry and dusty throat he rasps.
“Fuck. Off.”
Now angry the landlord pokes a jibe.
“Oi, I thought you was dead. Shot up in some stupid middle o’night duel. Mout-ing off to some fuckin’ Legionnaire.“
The landlord catches the scent of decay and gangrenous tissue… a smell forgotten since serving in Alsace in 1870.
“Uhhm, you smell like you soon be dead.”
He sets the chair on all four legs. Planting his feet in front of him. The tall man looks comical mantis-kneed in the low seat.
Theo’s body contorts, seizes and stiffens. The left side slack, the right jutting to the ceiling. With the motion Theo’s bloodied and torn jacket falls open. The gore on witness causes the landlord to push himself over the back and out of his precarious chair.
“Whatchu about Theo!?
Oi, shitbird!” The landlord says while puffing up and straightening to his full height to intimidate the shorter man.
Theo’s musket wound, cauterize-blackened looks like it was pitted with a garden trowel.
The seizure passes, Theo rasps, then chuckles,
“Well…”
Shaking his head, “Shitbird.”
Rasp gone from his throat replaced by a sonorous voice.
“Eyes up here.” He motions with a black-tipped finger from his chest to his face to the mouth agape landlord.
“You heard wrong.
Dead no.
Well, partially wrong.
Shot yes.
What is about to happen is also wrong.
You have the honor of sacrifice.
You are going to provide sustenance to this vessel.
I am going to take from you.”
“Fuck you…” The landlord trails off taken aback, noticing marks framing Theo’s face .
Oil-black ichor gathers at the edges of his wound, his mouth and his eyes. Theo attempts to break the distance in surprise, crossing the hall’s distance in a comically heavy-headed, toddler-esque run. Surprised by the burst of action the landlord fumbles back slamming the apartment door into Theo. More accurately, Theo’s head, knocking him to his knee. Realizing a genuine threat, the landlord slams his shoulder into the door. The solid door hits Theo’s head with sickening purchase. The landlord retreats further into his apartment knocking the table over, the chickens cluck and screech across the kitchen in a flurry of seeds and feathers.
The shorter man falls into the room via his head-won advantage over the door. Steadying himself, he raises black-tipped fingers to the deep gash above his right eye. The oil-black liquid frames what should be concussion-level trauma. Straightening himself, Theo smashes his foot down onto the table leg. Unbroken it sends reverberations through his core causing him to double over. The left side of his body racked again. Pulling the solidly built table toward himself both legs creak and begin to give. He rocks the table again snapping off one of the table’s legs.
Theo hefts the weight of the leg-now-cudgel in his hand. The landlord yells, tackling Theo at the hip knocking him into the door. The table leg flies from his hands.
The landlord gains enough distance to grab the kettle from the stove. Smashing it into Theo’s neck and shoulder, boiling water scalds his skin.
They fight and flounder, punch and scratch. The landlord gains advantage holding his elbow to Theo’s throat, choking the oxygen from the shorter man. Flailing his arms against the taller man Theo reaches, regaining the table leg, bringing it down on the landlord’s shoulder.
Returning to his feet he stands over the landlord. Theo winds the weapon in a great arc smashing the landlord across the jaw. His eyes roll back as blood and teeth skitter across the kitchen floor.
Stepping forward. Acrid smoke emanates from Theo’s nose, mouth and wound as he leans over the unconscious man. The smoke enters his ears, nose and mouth through bloodied lips and viscera. Like a chemical burn the smoke, consumes his skin, hair and the leather of his belt and his boots. The landlord’s skin goes gray, then drying to ashen desiccating in the smoke as Theo’s infected and open wounds heal.
Theo’s eyes begin to tunnel as he rights the chair. As he sits, he mouths “shitbird…” then chuckles. This spot will do. His mind goes black as he fades into catatonic stupor as Colette and Claudette peck around his feet.
Scene 8 // Destination Olympia Paris 11th Arrondissement | Paris Ballet Company | Wednesday
Rather than the bricks and the boulevard, Raquel connects first with Marcus to find accommodation at one of the hotels near the Paris Opera Ballet or in the Olympia. All her relationships in the city are through the ballet. His sponsorship must count for more than his sway with the ballet company.
She assumes he will keep her in a neighborhood away from Renet, his wife, so the 14th arrondissement is unlikely. Marcus, a member of a gentlemen’s club in the Olympia, must have resources. Already judged as a social climber for having an abonné she wasn’t going to be cast aside as soon as the caché of being a dancer fades. Her injury though temporary is a catastrophic setback for a dancer, she will recover, she will survive and she will thrive.
The Olympia, the block where all this started, is near the Palais Garnier opera house is host to fashionable department stores, independent perfumeries, tailors and milliners, high and low fashion houses. A myriad of restaurants, bars, beer halls and brasseries thrum and clatter throughout the day and early evening. Many nights it becomes a wilder albeit darker place with the intoxication of the theaters, clubs, casinos, dance halls, brothels and even an opium den on offer. The block blends layers and classes of Parisian society in a mix that is both heady and vibrant. The alleys cloak and veil what people do what they don’t want others to know.
Having met quite a few rich men during her time in the Foyer de la Danse, all spoke of the Olympia with an electricity in their tone. Paris is the cosmopolitan crown of Europe, France’s intellectual center, the Olympia is a jewel in that crown. It is a place people can make a dent in the universe. Artists, intellectuals, and spiritualists abound. Salons showcasing ideas of every sort constantly spring up in cafes and brasseries. Ranging must-attend affairs scheduled in the hotels and private clubs to open stages for the debates of the day. Olympia is one of the finest and brightest lights in the city of lights.
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