Mr. Revenel took a step back, then bent down like a broken steeple and brought his eyes to my level. "You will return by the promised time," he said. "And may the Godhead forgive you if I find so much as a single stray fiber on my little girl's cheeks. Angel knows, I won't."

Then he shut the door and walked away, returning to the tomb from whence he'd come.

I had negative interest in staying where I wasn't wanted, and responded accordingly, pressing my foot down on the accelerator and pulling out into the street.

Unfortunately, I had impeccably awful timing. Right as I pulled out, a car came zooming down the street, and then immediately slammed the brakes, just in time to avoid getting dashed to smithereens by the other vehicle's momentum. A glance at my rear-view mirror showed that Mortimer had turned around and was rapidly marching toward us in a torrent of righteous gesticulation and indescribable sound.

He raised an arm, as if to smite me, but we sped away just in time and were quickly swallowed up in the safety of traffic's honking embrace.

It goes without saying that we talked about it on the way over to the theater. Going over it, I don't think there was any way I could have avoided the first phase of that conversation. Though I'd come to know Pel quite well through our interactions on campus over the past month and a half, it had been only a week since I'd learned that she wasn't just any Miss Revenel, but the Miss Revenel.

"Is he… always like this?" I asked.

"If he isn't, it's the best-kept secret this side of anywhere," she replied.

I weighed whether or not to tell her that she could have done a better job of warning me about him. "He's not so bad, once you get to know him," she'd told me.

Sure, and I'm the Sultan of Benun, I thought.

But I didn't press the issue.

"How did I do, you think?" I asked.

"Daddy isn't the kind of person who shows his soft side, but I think he likes you. Or at least, doesn't hate you."

I turned onto the Promenade. From here, it was a straight trip to the Civic Center and the Old Theater District, where the Bealsthiller Theater awaited us in all its antique glory.

"I'll take your word for it," I said.

"Now, Ma, on the other hand…"

There was a pause.

"Yes?"

I dared to ask.

"Well…" Pel rolled her eyes and glanced downward. "…she really doesn't like you."

Little did I know the wild adventure that awaited me on that front—but that's a story for another time.

"Then again, Ma doesn't like most people."

This time, I couldn't pass up the opportunity to take a shot at them.

"Oh, so that's what your parents have in common."

And Pel laughed, flashing her teeth.

She had fudging gorgeous teeth. Like pearls, they were!

"Personally, I'm actually surprised he liked your choice of entertainment," she said.

"Really?"

"Yeah." Pel glanced out the window. "I'm not that knowledgeable about music, other than that Daddy likes the older stuff. I've heard of Biluše, but I've never seen it."

"Not even one of the film versions?"

She grimaced in slight amusement. "There are film versions?"

I pressed down on the breaks. Fortunately, we were right in front of an intersection, and the light had just turned.

"You haven't seen the movie?" I asked. "Evangeline Henrichy?"

"Daddy thinks most films are too decadent, I'm afraid. I can count on one hand the number of old movies I've seen. As for modern ones, I have to see them on my own, or with friends."

The driver of the car behind us honked up a storm at our sudden stop. Being a mature adult, I did not dignify him with a response.

I tightened my grip on the steering wheel. "Alright, this isn't just a date, it's now a Category 4 intervention."

She chuckled coquettishly. "Genneth, I don't think Daddy would approve of something like that, especially on a first date."

"Our first date?" I said, "But we've—"

"—Yes, and they don't need to know that." Pelbrum nodded her head just-so.

"At the very least," I said, "you should be able to recognize its most famous aria—the Song to the Moon. It's one of those immortal creations. A million years from now, when all of us have long since ceased to matter anymore, that aria will be one of the rare jewels that still endures. "Oh Moon, I'm spellbound now. Caught between fear and love. / Longing for a world I've never known."

"It really is important…" she said, "… that desire for connection."

"Yep," I said. Turning my head, I looked her in the eyes. "Speaking of which…" I grinned. "I haven't even gotten to the best part."

"Oh?"

"Take a look around," I said.

She did, gazing out the window, finding the marvels hidden behind the rows of street lamps. Suddenly, she noticed it.

"Wait. Why are you taking us to the Civic Center?" Pel asked. "Aren't the opera house and performing arts center up on Knob Hill?"

"Yes," I said. "Yes they are. But… we aren't going there." I tightened my grip on the steering wheel, my heart racing with excitement. "We're going to the Bealsthiller."

"That old theater you like talking about?" she said. "That one?"

I nodded, grinning some more. "The one and only."

There was much that the Prelatory had destroyed. The authoritarians who'd ruled it saw the First Republic as a cesspit of decadence and sin, and had no qualms about bulldozing anything and everything that they felt was contrary to the values they so clamorously professed.

Elpeck used to be filled with movie palaces. Yeah, not theaters. Palaces. For a brief moment in time, cinema became a new religion; a thing for the people, by the people; the best and the worst of us, all melded into one. On the Promenade alone, movie palaces stuck out like the prows of great ships, lit up in neon and ornament—filigree as far as the eye could see. They were lavish beyond belief, because they were ours and they were something to be proud of. The best of them were built to last for centuries.

According to what I'd read, it took a week—maybe two—at most to reduce them to nothing.

The Bealsthiller was one of the few survivors. Apparently, Prelate Zoster had had a soft spot for her.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

As did I.

I'd been planning to take Pel to the Bealsthiller ever since I first sussed out the fact that she'd never been. For me, the Bealsthiller Theatre was a home away from home. Dad had been appointed as their Resident Assistant Conductor. Unfortunately, the title sounded grander than it actually was. The Bealsthiller's glory days were long behind her. With the Prelatory's fall, entertainment returned to my country with a bang, and, sadly, the old Bealsthiller wasn't quite cut out to compete with places like the Henrichy-Shibawara Laserplex on Riverod Boulevard, to say nothing of what happened to the music scene with the likes of the New Elpeck Symphony, or the modern multimedia spectaculars that got shown at the Oxbee Center.

Fortunately, the Bealsthiller still had devotees like me, and with any luck, after tonight, it could count on Pelbrum Revenel's support going forward.

I turned off the Promenade and then made a left onto the old, narrow, stone-paved street that led to the Old Theater District.

The Old Theater District was a block-sized plaza tucked away in the armpit of Elpeck's Civic center. Most people got to the district on foot; the nearest parking lot was underneath the Imperial Palace. Unfortunately, I couldn't afford it, so I had made a gamble that I'd find a spot somewhere among the side-streets.

I smiled as I spied a spot in front of an old brownstone.

I turned off the car with a wave of my hand over the ignition port.

"We're walking?" Pel asked, as I opened the door and stepped out.

I walked around to the passenger side and opened the door for her. I gave her my hand and lifted her out.

"It's in a walking plaza. It's not far."

I glanced down the street.

"After you, my lady," I said, with a bow and an outstretched arm.

Pel grinned. "Who are you, and what have you done with my boyfriend?"

I smiled back at her. "I haven't the foggiest idea what you mean by that."

My dress shoes and Pel's low heels clacked on the pavement as we walked into the Old Theater District. I stopped us at the district's entrance.

"And here it is," I said. I gestured at the panorama before us.

There was really no way to describe Old Theater District other than to say it was a place infested by show-business. It was art deco and the Young Style, all lit up in neon. Every building stood up straight as it faced the center of the plaza, as if they were sizing us up—part bouncer, part madam. It was city within a city. Here, you could find it all: the stage, the cabaret, the music hall, and of course, the silver screen. According to legend, the Old Theater District had been built up around the spot where, in ancient times, storytellers and preachers—and prostitutes—gathered, to share their words and imaginations and more with pilgrims who'd come to worship in the Holy City. It just goes to show, with enough time, even the seediest places can become vaunted and reputable.

They even had a Marty's Mucks—the family friendly burger joint.

And there, at the center of the back wall, stood the Bealsthiller.

"You know," I said, "the Bealsthiller was designed by Hyman Kremphunt himself."

Her eyes widened. "The Melted Palace's architect?"

I nodded. "The very same. It was his last masterpiece before he went nuts from his tertiary syphilis."

The Bealsthiller was a dark dream of a theater: glamorous, jaded, and macabre. It was a nearly perfect rectangle stuffed between its neighbors, with square towers sticking up at either side, capped in bronze lighthouses that had long since turned blue. The façade was made up of dark stone broken up into a regular sequence of units both square and rectangular. The light from within shone warm and golden. Lozenge-shaped emulsions of wrought iron and stone swelled from the façade's sides, hiding lamps behind panes of tinted glass. As with many of the theater's details, those lamps felt like something Kremphunt had dug up from the musty ruins of a place and people faraway and long forgotten.

Like so many of Elpeck's old masterpieces, I loved it to death.

Pel looked up at it, staring in silence.

"It feels like it's watching us," she said.

"And it might very well be," I replied. I leaned in close. "You know, they say if you look closely, you can see its maker's madness haunting its design."

Pel smiled, pushing me away with a light, playful touch. "You'll have to do a lot more than that to scare me, Genneth Howle."

"Is that a dare?" I said.

She smirked. "It's whatever you want it to be."

I might just take her up on that, I thought.

I led her across the plaza, up to the theater. It was three short steps up to the Bealsthiller's doors. I pretty much hopped up them.

What can I say? I was mad with joy.

And love.

But Pel lingered. "Huh… there don't seem to be many people about," she said.

The surrounding lights glinted on her purse and her polished fingernails.

"That's probably because of all the time I spent waiting for you in the car," I said. "They're all inside, enjoying a meal before the show. Come on, let's go."

I pull the door open for her. "After you," I said, taking a minor bow.

I followed in after her. The door slid shut with nary a sound.

Hydraulics, you gotta love 'em.

The Bealsthiller got its grip on us the moment those doors slid shut. The first thing anyone noticed when they stepped into Bealsthiller Theater was its personality. I had known her since childhood. The theater was an old woman—a moldering starlet. She lived alone in her mansion, surrounded by her eclectic treasures and the servants who tended them. Her lamps were stained glass mushrooms that bathed both chamber and antechamber in a dim orange haze. She wore dark furs, woven in intricate, exotic patterns, as she wandered her halls with a fickle, wistful scowl, across the carpets that smelled of musty tea, waiting for Time to finally catch up with her.

I decided I would show her the drinking fountains after the show, or when time arose. I didn't want to overwhelm Pel's geek-tolerance-levels by rushing her over to see them first thing, even though they were these slightly abstracted bronze piranhas emerging from the walls that spewed water out of their mouths, and down into the lily pad shaped drainage bowl beneath them.

Let the place tell its own story, I told myself.

I'd learned the hard way that not everyone responded well to my tendency to gush anecdote after anecdote about every historical tidbit that tickled my fancy.

I'd vowed not to make that same mistake here. I let Pel take it all in on her own accord. And if she wanted to know more, I would be right there, ready and waiting to tell her whatever she wanted to know.

I was so focused on making this moment the best Pel had ever had that I hardly noticed that the theater was a little too quiet—its silence a bit too divine.

But I didn't.

"It's… magnificent," Pel said, at last.

I smiled. "Hopefully, you'll say the same about our dinner, and the show. Come on, it's this way."

I led her off to the side, where the lobby branched out into corners and halls. We turned past one of the drinking fountains and into the long T-shaped tunnel-room with the built-in cushioned seats and the scene-painted ceiling.

"Dinner is served," I said, with my arm outstretched.

I didn't even bother to do a double take.

"So, the dinner-guests are ghosts?" Pel said. She let out a single nervous chuckle.

Finally it hit me. Anvil, sledgehammer, a load of bricks, take whatever similes you like, glue them together, and multiply it by ten, and what I felt right then and there would still be a thousand times worse.

The room was empty. The tables were bare; the wheeled service trays were stowed away in their corners, unused and clean.

A twinge spread from my chin and into my jaws. I raised a hand to my cheek to find myself clenching my teeth. I had to fight to open my mouth.

"No, n-no…"

The muscle spasmed. My breath quickened. "How could we have missed dinner?" I said, barely above a whisper.

"Genneth…?"

I shook my head. "I—I'll get to the bottom of this."

Within, I was spiraling. I was desperate to convince myself that I had a chance to make things right.

I stormed off into the lobby. As I rushed down the short flight of steps down to the floor, I realized that the ushers weren't where they were supposed to be. They weren't anywhere at all. The only movement was from the man at the concession counter, and the thrip-thrip sounds of the deck of playing cards he was shuffling on the countertop.

For a moment, I stood still, unsure of what to do.

I hurried over to the concession counter.

"Ex-excuse me, sir?" I asked.

"Yes?"

"Isn't there a performance tonight? Biluše? Opera at the Bealsthiller?"

"No," he said. "Not that I know of."

I reached into my pocket for my console, only to find it empty.

"Flibbertigibbet!" I swore, muttering. I started wrestling with my tuxedo, searching for my PortaCon.

From a ways behind me, I heard Pel speak up. "Genneth?"

"Are you alright?" the concession man asked me.

Suddenly, my console fell onto the carpet. My heart leaped at the sight.

I'd been looking in the wrong pocket!

I brought up the app on which I'd purchased the tickets, accessed the record of my purchase and firmly placed my console on the counter, screen up.

"Here," I said. "Here are our tickets."

As the concession-stand-man examined our tickets, I felt a touch on my shoulder. Turning, I saw Pel behind me, standing beside a wizened old fellow in ratty blue overalls, the front pouch filled with cleaning supplies.

"Genneth," Pel said, "This gentleman says that—"

"—Aw, shucks," he said, "you don't need to go callin' me that." He ran his dark fingers through the gray, curly clouds on the sides of his head. He looked me in the eye. "Your wife says you're here for Biluše right?"

I nodded. "Yes, it's the last show of the season… wait." I stopped, suddenly, realizing what he'd said.

I blushed.

"No," I said, desperate to clarify, "she's… not my wife."

For a moment, Pel and I locked eyes. Both of us were flustered blush. We quickly looked away from one another.

"I mean, not… yet," I muttered. "Or… I dunno…"

"Call it whatever you wanna call it," he said, "but the last show o' the season was yesterday."

At this point, my wishful thinking had evolved into outright denial.

"No, no… that can't be right." I shook my head. "It's the 11th; the season ends on the 11th. That's today."

Behind me, the man at the concession stand murmured in agreement.

"No, he's right."

I turned around, eyes wide with hope.

"Look, here," he said, pointing to the tickets. "It says the 10th. Your show was on the 10th, I'm afraid."

I grabbed my console and stared at it. In order to be completely certain, I turned the screen's brightness all the way up.

No…

The guy was right: it was on the 10th. And today was very much the 11th.

I felt dizzy. I took a step back.

"I need to sit down." I looked around, desperate to find a nearby chair.

The janitor kindly pointed me to an open armchair.

I plopped down into it like a man sitting on his own grave.

"Wait—wait," the concession guy said. "You can't sit there. It's an antique."

I whipped my gaze at him, ready to snarl, but then my anger died and went to Paradise. I threw my hands up in the air, got up, marched over to the carpeted steps that lead up to the stage doors and planted my butt on the edge of the first step. But that was too deep. The strain on my slacks forced me to lift myself up one more step.

I shook my leg, with my fist clenched. I was fighting—hard—but I was losing.

I didn't want her to see me cry.

But, all my hard work—not to mention the money—… it was all for nothing.

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.