“Oh, hon,” Kayla said, her tone so doubtful about Caroline’s ability to ever figure this out that it stung.
They let the line hang in silence.
“Your coach called, by the way,” Kayla eventually said. “He’s worried about you all on your own up in Boston.”
Caroline wished she’d been able to take it all with her. Not just her clothes and belongings. Everything her family knew about her because she’d lived at home for all of college. Every disappointment and humiliation that she’d been forced to let them witness. It felt like tar sticking to her sneakers, the knowledge that they still saw her as a helpless child to be protected from any situation where she might be hurt.
“If he’s worried, he can call me and I’ll tell him I’m doing fine,” Caroline gritted out. “You guys don’t need to be planning my life behind my back anymore.”
“Okay, well, fine, I tried,” Kayla stuttered. “I’ll just tell him to fuck off if he calls again. That takes care of that. Glad you’re doing great. I’ll let everyone know.”
“Wait,” Caroline said, sensing that Kayla was about to hang up. She hadn’t wanted their first conversation to go like this. It had taken Kayla a lot to be the first one to call, and Caroline had been angrier than her sister. She searched for some neutral subject matter, something that would let Caroline show Kayla that she was managing despite no natural aptitude for any of this.
“What does Emmie want for her birthday? When’s her party?” Caroline asked, naming her older niece.
“Oh, don’t worry about it,” Kayla said angrily. “She’s turning four. She probably doesn’t even remember you.”
Caroline’s phone went to its home screen as Kayla hung up. She stared at the icons for a while, wondering if she ought to call back but unsure what she would say if she did. When the screen faded to black, Caroline put the phone in her purse. The corner of the business center where she stood was dark, and she had the disorienting sensation that she had forgotten what she was doing there. Her ears rang as she fought down the suffocating wash of shame that talking to her family always brought on. She had the sudden, desperate urge to go somewhere else. Do anything else. Speak to anyone else.
She took her phone out. It was a Thursday. She didn’t see Adrian on Thursdays. She might have called him on a Tuesday or Wednesday night, when they could get good restaurant reservations, or on a weekend, when they went out to shows and performances, but not on a Thursday.
She didn’t know if it was okay to just text him for no reason, for something other than their upcoming plans. She could make up something, but that was prettypathetic, wasn’t it? That would be taking up more of his time than they’d agreed, and she wouldn’t do that to him. She’d see him the next day. She’d be fine until then. She had classes on both days, and maybe she’d finish his book and Rima’s play with her free time. She’d keep herself busy.
She put her phone away, then bent to turn on the copier.
The lights in the theater were dimmed, but Caroline’s face was illuminated by the faint glow of her phone screen as she used it to read a translation of the libretto. Adrian would have told her that using her phone was frowned upon during a performance, but she couldn’t have failed to notice the scolding looks of the people seated around them, so he saved his breath.
She’d been subdued all evening, even while meeting him at the front door of the Boston Conservatory Theater. She wore the same black dress he’d picked out the night they’d met—she’d worn it to the opera the previous time as well. He wondered whether she thought that a short black dress was the only appropriate attire for a musical performance or if, more likely, she simply didn’t care if he saw her in the same dress all the time.
Part of him also wondered if she couldn’t actually afford to spend money on clothes. Although she’d never hesitated to buy anything he indicated that she needed, and his checks cleared the bank without fail, Adrian had passed a great deal of time with people who had money, and she didn’t act like she had any. The thousands of dollars a week she was spending on theater tickets and restaurant meals and a personal attendant to escort her were the outlier.
Adrian purposefully knit his hands in his lap when herealized that he was staring at Caroline again, head propped on his fist. He ought to be watching the stage: this was a performance by opera graduate students rather than the opera company, but the soprano was fantastic, better than anyone else he’d ever heard in the part.
Though the stage did not offer a great deal to look at. Perhaps that was the problem. No doubt owing to the brief run, the director had elected to forgo scenery and props. The performers wore street clothes. The entirety of the set consisted of long bolts of white fabric, which the singers held in configurations that suggested the different rooms of the ducal palace. (If he squinted. And used a great deal of his imagination. And thought back to the last time he’d seen this opera performed.)
No wonder Caroline had to keep her eyes on the libretto to figure out what was happening onstage.
Act 1 concluded in the rustling of fabric ladders and Rigoletto’s despairing collapse. Caroline looked judgmentally at the bare stage, black and pockmarked under the intermission lights. Adrian stood to stretch his back and shake out some of the cramping muscles in his thighs. Caroline remained seated, slumped in her chair.
“I thought all operas had, like, horned hats and big gilded sets with flower arrangements,” she said.
“Some of them do,” Adrian admitted, resisting the urge to educate her on the precise performances in which she might expect to see a singer in a Viking helmet. “I believe the concept behind this staging is that without the extraneous visuals, the patrons will focus on the music.”
Caroline snorted. “They had an opportunity to wear fun costumes in a pretend Renaissance palace, and they didn’t take it? They decided to wear jeans instead? I don’t get it.”
Adrian scuffed a shoe on a hole in the carpet, secretly in agreement with her.
“If we go to the opening night of one of these operas, you can be the one in the ball gown,” he told her. He still hadn’t found a reason to wear his tux for her, and that seemed almost like false advertising. Caroline would look beautiful in an evening gown.
She ducked her face to consider that, tilting her chin to the side. She looked back up at him through her eyelashes, big green eyes still shadowed.
“Okay,” she said.
With that inducement failing to excite her, Adrian gnawed on the inside of his lip.
“Are you not enjoying this?” he asked.
“I just don’t know what’s going on half the time at these things,” she said, frustration thick in her voice. As she absorbed her own words, she visibly steeled herself. “Probably because I don’t speak French,” she added, shooting another glance up at him.
