“Nonsense,” Hector muttered.
“Come, now, let us go eat.”
“I can ask for food to be brought to my dressing room for the both of us. Is that not enough?”
“No. It’s a ghastly idea. It’s already annoying that you must eat your meals at that desk of yours, but I won’t do it. You can’t possibly be needed here every single moment of the day.”
“I am rehearsing a new routine,” Hector said. “A spinning glass box, and I wouldn’t want to drop it.”
“As if you’ve dropped a prop in your life.”
“It’s filled with water, and even a moderately sized shark. The weight of the device is not inconsiderable.”
“Hector, come along and forget about the shark for one minute.”
Hector sighed. He turned to a man with steely gray hair who was at that moment instructing two young women carrying cutouts of giant anemones, part of the scenery that needed to be set up.
“Mr. Dufren,” he said, “I am thinking of stepping out for an hour. Are there any pressing matters?”
“I think we can manage, Mr. Auvray,” Dufren replied.
Hector nodded and ducked beneath a cutout, heading toward one of the side exits. The painted backdrops and silver moons of the Royal gave way to the bright day outside as he opened a door. However, the vision of the boulevard, full of carriages and passersby, did not fill him with joy. Truth be told, he was most comfortable in the confines of artifice, in the perfect world created by the stage.
“Where would you like to go?” Hector asked. “Anywhere nearby. I can’t spare more than an hour.”
“How about the Golden Egg? There should be a table available at this time of the day.”
Hector nodded and they walked three blocks to the ostentatious restaurant known as the Golden Egg because the owner had decked every wall with a gilded mirror wider than two men. Any surface that was not covered by a mirror had wood paneling with inlaid paintings.
The food there was excellent and the service appalling, which was a requirement at any chic restaurant. Anyone who was somebody, or on the way to becoming somebody, was supposed to make an appearance at the Golden Egg. Hector had already made a requisite visit to the place and resented having to make another, but he decided to bite his tongue, lest he make Étienne cross. He realized that he was being insufferable and he did not want to be if he could help it, not when it came to an old friend.
They sat in chairs of plum-colored velvet, and the waiter handed them a menu. Hector ordered the soup before even glancing at the offerings, hoping it might be faster than another dish. Étienne and the waiter both frowned since it was bad manners to pick an item quickly, one must fret at the offerings and ask for advice, but Hector did not care what anyone thought when it came to his lunch.
“Tell me, then, how have you been?” Étienne asked.
“Busy,” Hector said.
“You look fatigued. It’s not that business with Valérie, is it?”
He’d let his hair grow even longer than usual, and the dark circles under his eyes testified to nights spent staring at the walls in his room. “The business with Valérie is done,” he said.
It was not the exact truth. He did not pursue Valérie any longer and had accepted that whatever they’d once had ended long ago, but this did not mitigate the heartbreak. The bruise he’d suffered, however, had faded from black to a faint yellow.
“To tell you the truth, I worry about Nina mostly,” he added.
I should have written to her, he thought while he unfolded his napkin and placed it on his lap. The waiter arrived with the wine and poured them each a glass.
Étienne made his selection for a main course and then turned toward Hector, an eyebrow quirked. “I don’t know if what I am about to say will make it better or worse, but I suppose I should tell you before you hear Luc babbling on about it. Nina Beaulieu is in the city and I believe she is fine.”
“Is she with her cousin?” Hector asked.
“No, she’s staying with those great-aunts of hers, I forget their names.”
Hector had not thought she’d return to the city. The notion left him speechless. Was she spending the whole spring there? The Grand Season, yes. He had not imagined her attempting it. He recalled, dimly, that her birthday was in the winter. He had jested he would buy her an insect.
He had missed that birthday.
She was now twenty.
“How did Luc come upon this information?” he asked.
“He ran into her the other day. I think she was buying books. She looked in good spirits, he said. That’s all I was told. He spent most of an hour chewing my ear off about a card game he lost.”
Hector shifted a saltshaker without touching it, making it slide across the table, an annoying mark of restlessness. He checked himself immediately and stopped the motion.
“I’m happy to hear that.”
“All is well, you see,” Étienne proclaimed. “Now, if you’d only have lunch with me more often, you wouldn’t be looking this damn tired all the time.”
“I like to work hard. Nobody ever made anything of himself by lying around all day.”
“Share that philosophy with my youngest brother when you can. All he does is beg me for money. Father doesn’t give him a cent and Jérôme wouldn’t mind if he perished in a ditch, but I’m far too generous and he drains me every month.”
Étienne launched into an impassioned speech about the negative aspects of all his brothers’ characters, beginning with the eldest, Alaric, and ending with Luc, the baby of the family. Hector listened to him, and although normally this talk would have distracted him, even amused him, he could not be amused now.
When they parted, Étienne reminded Hector that he must come by for supper one day, now that he and his wife were installed in an abode of their own.
“We have one of the best cooks in town,” Étienne said. “I’ll be overly plump within a year.”
“You’ll be fine,” Hector replied.
Étienne patted Hector’s shoulder. Their long friendship must have clued Étienne about Hector’s ruminations, or else he was exceedingly simple to read that day. “Hector, you could always try to make amends to her.”
“To Nina?”
“Why not? Do you want me to ask Luc if he knows her address?”
“No,” Hector said quickly.
“Take care, then,” Étienne said with a shrug.
Hector went to his dressing room, his spirits curiously doused, and sat behind his desk. It was not a large dressing room, rather cramped for an important performer. A painted screen hid the area where he kept a couple of changes of clothes. Not all his costumes—he had too many, though a stray one sometimes ended up there—but a dining jacket and a couple of shirts in case he was required to attend a function after work. Behind the screen there was also a full-length mirror and an area where he kept ties, shoes, and a comb.
There were shelves piled with books and props, sheets of paper upon his desk, in a corner a potted plant. A wall showed a poster with his name emblazoned on it, the first big engagement he’d ever played. HECTOR AUVRAY, MARVEL OF OUR TIMES, the large letters read.