THERE WAS, ALL AROUND THEM, the murmur of the theater, the groan of pulleys and chains as they walked behind the stage, the rustle of costumes wheeled down corridors, and the talk of stagehands, milling about like bees. It was Friday and Hector had two performances. It was not a day to entertain a friend.
“It’s nearly two o’clock,” he told Étienne. “That’s not nearly enough time to go out. You ought to have told me you would be visiting.”
He walked with quick, purposeful steps, and Étienne had trouble keeping up and evading the people walking by them.
“If I’d told you I was coming, you wouldn’t have seen me. You spend your days locked up either here or in your home. I’m surprised you even deigned to appear at my wedding.”
Étienne had been married five months before. Most brides preferred a spring wedding, which would allow them to travel in the summer, but Étienne’s new bride knew her name would stand out in the papers if she wed in the winter or fall. She was a tactician, Étienne’s wife.
“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.
He sat upon a couch, brushing aside the newspaper he’d left there.
He had in fact written to Nina. He had not been able to mail the letters, pausing when he had only one paragraph down, then tossing his efforts in the wastebasket. Pages suffused with horrid guilt and imprinted with another, ghastly feeling he couldn’t even name, but which caused him to count the days since he’d last seen her and to rip the letters to shreds. Six letters, and the sixth he did finish but it was terrible, so lacking in every sense that he’d given up and decided that his first instinct, never to write to her, had been correct. Now she was in the city and he thought, I should have written to her. The thought circled his mind, refusing to leave.
He performed that evening and the bit with the shark went well, the applause rising like a wave from the crowd. He bowed low, a hand pressed against his chest. When he was leaving the theater, he caught sight of Mr. Dufren.
“Mr. Dufren,” he said, “I have a novel request for you. Do you think you can find me someone who sells beetles in the city?”
“Beetles?” Dufren asked, looking baffled. “For a new act?”
“No. I need pinned specimens.”
“I suppose I can manage that.”
Hector nodded. He hoped it wouldn’t be too difficult. There must be a market for collectors, and anything you could imagine could be purchased in Loisail. He grabbed the door, ready to open it, and paused.
“Mr. Dufren, not mere beetles. Get me precious specimens, pretty ones.”
“Pretty. Why … yes, Mr. Auvray. When do you want it?”
“As soon as you can. And I’ll need something else. The address for Lise and Linette Beaulieu,” he said.
“Very well.”
Two days later, Mr. Dufren ushered an old man into Hector’s dressing room. He came accompanied by an assistant who carried a large box, which they set on Hector’s desk. They opened the box and showed Hector the contents: a multicolored collection of beetles, carefully preserved and mounted. Azure, yellow, red specimens.
“Green,” he told them.
The men nodded and laid out green beetles until Hector paused over one that had a delicate metallic shimmer.
“I’ll purchase this,” he said.
The men nodded and began putting their specimens back in the box. Mr. Dufren waited patiently to escort them back outside. Hector, behind his desk, tapped his fingers against its surface, frowning.
“Twenty of them,” he said.
The men looked at Hector in confusion.
“I don’t need one beetle. I need twenty.”
“Twenty beetles like that?” the assistant asked.
“No. Nineteen more. The rarest specimens you have, if you must go back to your shop to get them, do so. Twenty total. Mr. Dufren, do you have that address I asked for? I want you to send this one beetle there. Find a box for it, will you?”
“Yes, of course. Gentlemen,” Dufren said, and motioned to the men.
A while later, Dufren returned and stood in front of Hector’s desk. He placed a box on the desk. Hector raised his head and nodded at his assistant, handing him his calling card.
“Please send it,” Hector said. “Tell the messenger it should be delivered into the hands of Nina Beaulieu.”
“Sir, shouldn’t you attach a note to this?”
“The card will be all. Please make sure those men bring me the beetles I need.”
“If you don’t mind me asking, what do you need twenty beetles for?”
The question caught him by surprise. He had not considered what he meant to do; it was all knitting itself together, a wild amalgam of thoughts coalescing into a single thread.
He wanted to make amends. He had no idea if it could be done but he wanted to try. She deserved it.
He’d been frozen in listlessness and self-pity for a long time now, and he finally felt himself thawing, as if the spring and her presence had spurred him into action.
How strange, he thought.
“I forgot a lady’s birthday,” he said.
“You do realize it would be more appropriate to send flowers for a birthday, don’t you?” Dufren said with a sigh.
“She will like this better.”
Hector turned his attention back to his papers. It’s done, he thought. It’s done and nothing may come of it, but I hope something does.