Chapter Text
SEE MIRRORSCOPE INNOVATOR STAR IN ‘LOVE NEVER DIES’ AT THE PHANTASMA
Coney Island Herald. August 10th, 1890
A mere five years ago moving pictures were little more than a few awkward stunt pieces; short, silent, and with limited coloring. That seemingly changed overnight when now renown Renaissance man Erik Nemo joined forces with Louis Le Prince’s group of filmmakers from Paris. Mr. Nemo's mastery of mirror illusions was the driving force behind the Mirrorscope Motion Picture Model I, which enables us to now watch moving pictures -- or movies, as our youth call them -- in the high quality we've quickly become accustomed to. In fact, a certain Ooh La La Girl got her now legendary start starring in the model's first test footage.
However, Mr. Nemo was directly involved in only one production at Le Prince Studios in Hollywoodland before artistic differences brought him back to the theater he designed and built seven years ago on his arrival in New York. The Phantasma, where people have gathered for thrills and chills since said Ooh La La Girl danced there before Hollywoodland stole her away, is finally back to its former glory.
Nothing is more thrilling or chilling than his latest venture. ‘Love Never Dies’ is a musical feast bordering on the operatic, with a fittingly macabre plot: what if the notorious Phantom of the Opera survived the ordeal of the now infamous Don Juan performance in Paris…and escaped to Coney Island to open a theater and win back his beloved?
Take this Gothic scenario and pair it with Mr. Nemo’s magic mirrors strategically placed to magnify angles and close in on the performers’ faces, and you feel as if you are watching a movie set in a dark, dangerous funhouse –
“Whoo-ee.” Harlean let the paper fall flat on her lap. She tapped a few ashes off her cigarette outside the partially open window of the dressing room. The hot space reeked of smoke and grease paint. The crimson wallpaper captured the heat and amplified it. Still, at least it wasn’t painted black like the rest of the theater – floors, walls, ceiling, all melding together into one nighttime void, the only brightness the odd ornament and sculpture. Of course, when the spotlight hit the stage all sorts of color burst from the backdrops and costumes, yes, that much was true.
She sighed and resisted the urge to violently rip off the ostentatious feathered headpiece she wore for her first scene. “The boss must’ve paid a pretty penny to the Herald for this write-up. You’d think the damn play was just premiering, instead of going into its fourth month.” She stole a glance at her costar, who was just finishing the last adjustments to her sleekly extravagant coiffure, securing the last of the hair bins. The performers were expected to take on a great deal of their own dress and makeup for ‘the time being’. The Phantasma was forced to cut back on wardrobe, hair, and makeup staff, after it became clear Love Never Dies wasn’t bringing in the desired profits.
While Marianne James lacked the exquisite doll-like features of the woman she played, or that strange, haunting air, she was still a very beautiful girl – refined and remote. These qualities made her perfect for her part, but not for backstage banter. After all, Miss James came from the right side of the bridge. She descended from a long line of theatrical greats who started their trade on the royal stage in London. Harlean Baker was born to a New Jersey fisherman and a mother who picked up johns on the side, so, frankly, she had a difficult time finding common ground with her colleague.
The age difference didn’t help. Harlean was ten years older than Marianne, a great irony. In real life and presumably in the play, her character was about a year or so younger than Marianne’s.
Harlean exhaled her last gust of smoke (“I know I should kick the habit, but what can I do? The boss wants my voice raspy”, she liked to say). She stood in front of the dressing room’s oval-shaped standing mirror. Yes, she was thirty-six now, and bloody well looked it – and looked it pretty darn good once she slapped on the grease paint. She frowned at her flamingo-like get-up: all large pink feathers and not much else, really.
She couldn’t help but let her eyes wander back to the quiet and demure Marianne, in her respectable, elegant traveling gown for her arrival scene. Next to Harlean, she looked as pure and fresh as snow.
That was the point Mr. Y was trying to make with their characters, right? No matter how talented and attractive former dancer and now insane showgirl Nan Dorival was supposed to be, she always looked like a dried up hag next to the sensational opera singer Karin Nilsson.
Harlean grimaced and turned away from the mirror.
Really, she shouldn’t complain. She’d been with this damn horror show of a theater since its earliest days, practically at its inception. Always, always she was relegated to the chorus. Nan was her first big role. She should be grateful.
Yet there was a bitter aftertaste when she finished each show. See, the person who first welcomed her here and treated the jaded showgirl as another girlfriend, and in fact pretty much saved her life, was that Ooh La La Girl the newspaper referred to, and for those in the know, the character Harlean now played. The helpful and cheerful star transformed into a poor flirtatious wretch who never wins the fame she seeks or the man she loves, and also might have a bit of a homicidal streak.
Harlean hated playing her this way. Oh, sure, the real girl had her aggravating moments. But don’t we all? She was always quick to put her nose in where it didn’t belong. Yet her heart was invariably in the right place, which made it impossible to dislike her.
Well, not so impossible for their boss, apparently.
Harlean had no idea how deeply Erik’s resentment of that poor dear girl ran until she read the script. Nor had she known how much he resented the woman behind Karin even, so much so that he had her stage counterpart killed each night. Honestly, Harlean expected him to tear apart the character of the vicomte, the successful rival, which he certainly did in the character of the arrogant drunk Michel de Mauzurier. Harlean considered it awfully lazy, but at least predictable. His destruction of Nan, however – it was almost grotesque.
She yawned now, kicking her foot up onto a stool. She eyed the young Marianne staring at herself gravely in the mirror and couldn’t help herself. “He won’t like the referral to You-Know-Who in the article. That ‘certain little Ooh-La-La Girl.’”
Harlean knew she shouldn’t enjoy seeing the young woman’s face flush, but she was feeling a lot of things lately she knew she shouldn’t. Besides, if this was what it took to thaw the girl and get her talking –
“You’re always implying something between them.” She wouldn’t raise her eyes, busying herself with her red leather gloves.
“You can’t deny how much he acts like he hates her. No man acts that way unless he actually –”
Marianne stood and walked briskly toward the dressing room door, just as “five minutes” was called out.
Tongue in cheek, Harlean followed.
Harlean privately noted Marianne didn’t have to leave the dressing room so soon. Harlean was on after the boss; Marianne didn’t make her grand entrance until several scenes later.
Yet as always, here she was as close to the stage as she could manage without the audience catching sight of her. Her lovely eyes gleamed dewy and entranced as the curtain rose. The dead black of the stage filled with a blue smog, giving the scene an ocean-hued tone.
In the center of the spotlight was Erik Nemo as Mr. Y, his phantom’s mask glowing an ominous porcelain white in the darkness. He pretended to make notes on sheet music, before melodramatically sweeping it all away from his organ’s rack.
As the music thumped menacingly, he sang out the opening lines in that haunting, frustrated tenor.
“Ten long years, living a mere facade of life!
“Ten long years wasting my time on smoke and noise!”
Harlean smirked at that bit. What do you think all this is, bub? And ten long years…hasn’t been quite ten years yet. It certainly wasn’t ten years back then. But hey, I get it. A ten year old child as little Pierre is easier to direct than a toddler.
Now came the part that always made Marianne’s hand fly straight to her heart.
“My Karin…my Karin…lost and gone…lost and gone…”
Harlean remembered all the Swedish names Erik considered for this mock version of his beloved, searching for one that came closest to sounding like the real deal. First it was Kristina (too long and too close to the original’s name), Kerstin (he disliked the short, hard end to the pronunciation), Charlotte (this Harlean didn’t know, but Charlotte was the full version of the pet name Erik’s rival gave her, and so he quickly abandoned it), before finally settling on Karin. He liked that it was easy to cheat the pronunciation so KarIN could become KarEEN. He was able to give it the same reverential cadence as the original.
This cheat also made Harlean’s life easier. None of the others rhymed with queen, which she needed in “My Dear Old Friend.” “Look at you, Karin, regal as a queen…”
She ruminated on the show’s failure with the public. The spectacle was jarring in tone for modern audiences; too overwrought and mawkish at one moment, ineptly satirical of American burlesque the next, and always with a splash of overwhelming gothic splendor that irritated eyes and ears rather than entrance.
Harlean couldn’t deny that the music, for the most part, passed muster. As uncomfortable as the costumes were, they and the sets were beautiful. If only the lyrics, plot, and characters matched.
As Erik sang, an immense painting appeared to drift down on its own (again, the mirrors’ angles were in play here, turning at the light in such a way the wire became invisible to the naked eye). The painting was, of course, by Erik himself. Clearly the portrait was meant to be Karin gazing out of the frame. The mirrors spun and reflected so to make it appear as if she blinked and smiled wistfully. However, anyone looking too closely would notice the portrait resembled less the young American playing her and more that Swedish singer who once took Paris by storm before disaster swept up practically her whole life.
That disaster was orchestrated by the very man pining in verse after the painting now. Despite changing her character’s name, everyone who had followed the Phantom’s saga in Paris from afar knew the true identity of his lost beloved.
At least he dropped the idea of using some automaton dummy here. That was just too creepy.
One thing Harlean took comfort in was that when it came to Nan, not a lot of people caught on who she was supposed to be. To Erik’s chagrin, no one saw the vibrant, cheerful young movie star in the embittered showgirl. Very few people knew how much the real mother worked behind the scenes, so mercurial pimp Madame Dorival was likewise unrecognized.
Good, she thought, though she was far less fond of the real Madame Dorival than she was of the daughter.
Even Harlean’s breath caught when Erik sang his highest notes. It was unavoidable. That voice belonged to an angel.
“Til I hear you sing once more!”
The music climaxed around this ethereal voice, and Harlean nearly jumped when Marianne suddenly clutched her wrist. Those dreamy eyes now wide open, she asked, “Harlean…you’ve been here so much longer than I. Do you…do you think he could actually be the Phantom? Like gossip says? Could the face we see offstage…that regal face, but...too waxy, too taut on the left side....could that be–”
“A mask to make him look like anyone?” Harlean parroted those same gossips and conspiracy theorists. She cast a dark look at Marianne. “Hard to tell.”
As Marianne turned back to the stage, wistful eyes locked on the figure fading in the dimming light, Harlean saw trouble on the horizon.
Hours after the performance ended, deep into the night, Erik Nemo sat in the seeming replica of his lair onstage. Two floors beneath the Phantasma he removed the mask like a half-moon and placed it beside a face that looked like anyone’s.
The greatest irony was he wore no makeup under the mask for the show. He wore his true face. At long last he was in control of when the audience truly saw him. He was in charge of when they screamed; he timed when they drew back in fear. No more waiting for his cue, shroud in a black hood inside a tent the same shade, as Janos extolled his dark, twisted virtues. "Yes, gather round, gents, gather round, ladies. I have behind this curtain the mind of Leonardo da Vinci and the voice of an Angel trapped within a face cursed by the Devil...."
His lair was in little better shape than the rest of his theater. Once starkly magnificent, the Phantasma had become mildewed, with creaking floorboards and patched over curtains positioned away from the audience’s view.
He felt a bitter kinship to his environs. All his plans and fantasies, his music, gone, mildewed and creaking, with his music patched over by desperation–
All because of the woman he stared at now.
Instead of Mr. Y gazing at Karin’s painting transfixed and transported by love, Erik stared now with a sort of masochistic zeal at article after article, picture after picture of a woman who inspired in him such fiery feelings of contempt and hatred that he told himself made a mockery of that other feeling.
His attempts to crush her failed. No one recognized in Nan Dorival the beaming young Meg Giry, the one and only “Ooh La La Girl.” Here she was photographed in a white satin gown at a premiere –or there in a still from her latest picture. Or there christening a boat while laughing. Or –
The girl was undeniably radiant onscreen, so the critics reflected, but not quite classically beautiful in the way crowds were used to. Certainly not in the way her dearest friend was. Without makeup, Meg’s was an almost childlike beauty instead. Because that body told a different story, however, the public found the contrast fascinating. And once the makeup department gave her the finishing touches?
Ooh la la.
Yes, dark brown freckles splattered across her face. The nose was rather comical. Frankly she'd never give Sarah Bernhardt a run for her money acting-wise.
But who cared if her dramatic skills were lacking when a genuine sweetness shone through no matter how tart or brassy the character? And when she smiled – when she turned at a certain angle – when that tawny lion’s mane caught the light, contrasting with her brown eyes so dark they looked almost black –
The pictures took up an entire wall of his abode. A shrine, yes – but not a shrine of love. Meg Giry orchestrated the loss of his muse, so what else could he do but instead take inspiration from his hatred of her? Thus, Love Never Dies.
Below her pictures was a small newspaper cutout, pinned to a corner of the wall separated from the rest. The subjects stood at the Port of San Francisco. One figure was of a woman dressed and comported much like Marianne’s Karin, but so distinctly apart from any other woman on earth and with the classical features Meg lacked. She ecstatically pressed close to her a man not easily recognizable. He was handsome but nonetheless a little worse for wear. Dark blond scruff covered his face in a coarse beard, his figure close to emaciated. In spite of his sorry state, happiness and adoration radiated off of him as he protectively wrapped his arms around the woman. Squeezed between them was a confused but grinning toddler boy, who looked so much like the younger version of this bearded man.
The headline read, “RELEASED REBEL ARISTOCRAT REUNITED WITH WIFE AND CHILD.” Below, the subheading: “Raoul le Vicomte de Chagny, recently released by the French government for his collusion with Moroccan rebels, surprises wife Christine and tiny son Gustave in Hollywoodland. Formerly Christine Daaé, best known for her ambiguous role in the Parisian Phantom of the Opera fiasco –”
Erik turned away, hissing as if the sight burned his eyes.
“My Christine…my Christine…lost and gone…”
...Thanks to her.
This hiss turned into a grim grin as he picked up what he’d earlier placed at the foot of his masochist’s shrine, almost like an offering. He lifted it with the reverence of a priest the holy grail, the image offset only by the demonic light in his eyes and the mad grimace locked on his face, contorting the thick smear of his lips.
He held a hefty envolope, full.
His previous attempts to ruin her may have failed, but now – he turned his eyes back to the radiant Meg in white satin, cameras flashing all around her, her smile emblazoned across the image. “My curse upon you,” he whispered. “This year is your end, little Giry.”
A quiver of doubt pricked the back of his neck. It was a sensation easily ignored, dismissed.