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((I didn't mean this moment. I just meant to actually carry through with your commitment.))

She'd been asking stagehand after stagehand after worker and even one of the sewing mistresses in the costume room where to find the new managers. Few knew where to find the two gentlemen beside their offices and they weren't there. For the love of God himself, they had to be here! Antoinette was a very impatient woman and she wanted this whole mess over with as soon as possible. She found it rather funny that she should want such a thing even though it would never happen. In an Opera House, tensions were high, drama was abroad, and everyone suspected the other of some heinous crime at least once. Things around here, she realised with a sigh, were done 'operatically'. The performances never ended.
It was then that she heard a few voices coming from the front of the Opera House. The voices were hardly familiar since the two men were new, but she recognised them nonetheless. But why the screaming? Even the patron, Raoul de Chagny, was going on about something! One hall led to another that was not the way she wanted to go and Antoinette cursed for all her nerves being rattled by the day's events. Was it even noon yet? She certainly thought not. Why was she getting turned around so much as well?
The note felt like lead in her pocket and Antoinette nearly smacked her hip where it lay, useless. Erik had certainly put this place in an uproar with replacing the Italian diva with a chorus girl. Just as she found her way into the great hall before the front doors, Antoinette picked up the managers' voices, complaining about Christine. Hah, well, she'd add to this.
"Miss Daae has returned." She said tartly and rather loudly. Let them wait for the damn letter. Antoinette felt like a mother to Christine and if they wanted to badmouth the petite brunette, then they could do it with her right there.
It was all rather funny, seeing both managers holding on to the pink-covered fluffy puff that was La Carlotta Giudicelli. The woman's face was red enough to match her lipstick though she was sure it wasn't meant to look like a large cold sore. Even the patron looked upset. The managers? Bah, they were morons if she ever did see any. Quite an odd pair, but at least both of them combined made one man. One foolishly short-tempered man, but that was another story.

Down in his home beyond the lake, Erik was contentedly unaware of the uproar that his notes had caused, but he would not have been in the least bit surprised to know that it was going on. There was no doubt that La Carlotta would be having a fit over the note that he'd sent to her. Most people hated to be around when she was in the middle of one of her tirades, but he loved to be there. It was probably because he would never show himself to her so that she might yell him in the face. He always hid in the shadows and watched her strut around in one of her obscenely garish outfits while puffing and bellowing like an angry walrus.

Letting out a chuckle he shook his head as though mentally admonishing himself for what he'd just thought. "Oh that is horrible of me. I should not be so insulting to the walrus," he muttered as he sat scribbling something on a piece of paper in his horribly childish handwriting. His handwriting had always been horrible, and no amount of practice had ever made it any neater. At least it was legible. There had been a point where even he had been unable to decipher some fo the things he had written down. It had been his horrible handwriting that had ended up getting him a salary of 20,000 Francs a month, which was two and a half times what he had actually been asking for. He had considered correcting the management, but he'd figured that he wouldn't make a very convinceing ghost if he did that. Thus the management had accidentally cheated itself out of an extra 144,000 Francs a year, and this was something that not even Antoinette knew. He knew she wondered why he asked for so much, but since she had never asked he had never bothered to tell her. It was amazing the things she might learn if she ever bothered asking about them.

Putting down his pen for a moment, he rubbed his eyes, which seemed to be growing heavier with each passing second. He had not gotten any sleep last night as he'd swung between the ectasy of having Christine in his home and wondering if bringing her to his house had been a mistake. If only he'd know the answer beforehand.

Attempting to divert his attention, he stared at the picture he had taken from Antoinette's room. "Monsieur, did you ever know about me?" he asked looking at the face of the man in the photograph. He was not a particularly handsome specimen of the human race. His nose was a tad bit too large for his face, but even in the photograph taken so many years ago one could see a kind man in his eyes. "Of course not. She has never told anyone about the poor wretch that she rescued from the gypsy carnival."

Leaning forward in his chair, he propped an elbow up on the table and rested his cheek against his fist. Through half-opened eyelids he stared at the thing that he had been scratching down on the paper. With his other hand he quickly grabbed the paper and crumpled it into a ball. He was going to need a fresh supply of paper soon, but for now he had a few blank sheets. "She's never told anyone about the poor little monster she hid away in the opera house," he mumbled as he stared rather vacantly at a blank sheet of paper in front of him.

At the moment it mirrored his mind. So much had happened just within the past day, and he was emotionally and psychologically worn out. As he continued to stare at the sheet of paper his head slowly began to droop lower and lower until finally it came to rest against the table. The fearsome Opera Ghost, as he had so many times before, had fallen asleep while in the midst of his work.


((*shrugs* I wanted to give Erik a little something to do while waiting to come back in at the Il Muto scene. This means that the manager gets to read all the way through the note that Mme. Giry delivers. It will probably be easier to do it that way anyway.))

(I feel a dead member, so, I might as well post -something-)

If anyone had thought Christine would be sleeping, their assumptions would be wrong. Even if she was, there would be nightmares, nightmares that never played themselves before in her mind. Instead, she was holding the rose she had recieved a few nights before. Fingers absent-mindedly playing at the ribbon, her eyes focused on the pedals, tracing over them carefully. Even if she had forgiven Erik, the fact that he had decieved her struck her deeply, but she couldn't stay that angry with him.

Shaking her head, she placed the rose down, looking to the bed and quietly decided on going to sleep, just to get rid of the stress that was being upon her, not knowing she would again be awoken in a short while to play the role of the pageboy. But even still, a bit of sleep is better than none.

Raoul was relived to learn that she was safe, and not alone. Although he couldn't help wonder where she had been. What happened? Was she okay?

"May I see her?" He asked Mme. Giry.

Malakai began raising the battens for the evening's performance of "Il Muto" He felt something in his gut that told him this particular evening would not go well. He and this phantom had an understanding, or rather a belief on malakai's part. He should not to be in the hanging scaffolding during shows. He should be offstage minding the sidelights/lighting footlights before the show began or in the upper flyloft to observe. He was never contacted by this ghost, he was unsure if he was even aware of Malakai, passing by (though below or above) as everyone seemed to do.
A faint fluttering of fabric in the upper flyloft sent him a signal. He should leave the scaffolding and flylofts to the stage manager Josef Bouquet this evening. His gut told him to be higher...but where?

Antoinette raised a thin black brow at the group's eagerness to know whether or not Christine was going to perform instead of the Italian woman before them all, dressed up like a giant candy ball with fur. She over-did everything, even her voice. And coming from someone as dumb to music as Antoinette, that was saying something. The elder Giry couldn't tell a quarter note from a decrescendo.
Suddenly she remembered the note in her skirt pocket and she almost jumped to get it out and away. It felt almost like it was burning a hole in her pocket with a need to be read. Taking the envelope between her thin forefinger and thumb in a pinching manner, the woman lifted it from her pocket and stared at it for a moment. The red skull wax seal was perhaps the heaviest thing about it. Antoinette didn't know why he picked up the habit of having black lined envelopes (which were all but screaming insult in themselves) and even the red ink was scandalous. Perhaps he meant to tease and prey on those he gave these things to, but it was all a bit over-done in her opinion. Leave Erik to never give better judgement a second thought.
"Here, I have another note." She said in a rather nonchalant voice after pulling the envelope out and extended it out just barely, her head tilted to the side in expentancy. Who would be the idiot to scramble for her hand first? She was betting the shorter manager would since he was rather red in the face right now. Antoinette raised her brow again and swayed the note in her hand.

((*groan* Another long post from hell? *sigh* Ah well...here it goes))

Another note!? Oh Moncharmin was quite sure this whole damn opera was mocking him! Usually the ever-calm one of the two, M.Moncharmin was starting to register with his overly burdened intellect the indignant right to be furious, as the obvious blood-rush to his head indicated until his skin matched Carlotta's silk pink skirt. He certainly looked like he belonged in the Italian's ensemble.

The prima Donna’s tail feathers, fanned out across the Opera Populaire's marble floor by now, all felt that same horror from the single sentence procured by the old lady with her silver cane. Of course their horror was only mocking what appeared to be a face aghast upon the painted countenance of their Signora, and so they copied her expression because (although they could never draw attention away from her) they must at all cost alleviate any stress and horror that their pink candy puff felt so as to preserve her, in her wonderfully packaged form. If Carlotta frowned, so they must ten fold. Oh the anxiety she must be feeling! they simpered, that we have the privilege to share her burden when she must have it all placed upon her delicate shoulders!

Needless to say, the whole array of gaping spectacles made for a rather awkward early masquerade scene as Moncharmin scanned the parlor for conformation that ...yes! he was being mocked! Even if the idea did seem somewhat irrational, Moncharmin was completely irritated by this ghost manner, this simply wasn't something that business men in his position should have to deal with and the sight of this new note sent shivers under the closely-lined insides of his wallet. He had half a mind to steal Carlotta's fur-lined muff to keep himself warm; well, he had half a mind at least. Surely though, his wallet-gut was shared by his equally frustrated business partner yet, what's this? It seemed their roles had switched! and now M.Moncharmin was red in the face and M.Richard was quite lost in troubled thought. How could Andre forget to take his own advice? But now certainly wasn't the time to be quarreling over such slight moral crumbs, here at the table was a larger issue at hand, one that got Andre steaming red in the face, because over much deliberation the elitist manager realized the committed wrong against them. Firmin's cool composure in such troubling times therefore, ironically, a direct result of his lack of thought on the entire situation as a whole.

But if Firmin had thought about it, Andre insisted, he would have seen through all this foreplay of the "phantom" and he certainly (and this point was key) he certainly wouldn't favor the tardy Christine over the prudent Carlotta. M.Moncharmin’s attention was drawn back to the note and the woman who held it. Haughty, that was always her attitude, indignant against them and any superior authority that she didn't agree with, this woman in her dingy dress and cane seemed to them, ever the bearer of bad news. Haunt them! How ridiculous that a woman of such low levels should ever cause his temperature to rise and his blood to boil! Her scowling manner and aging figure should certainly have been the pitiable type that would become wholly forgotten in the epic of the Opera, not some messenger whose visits they loathed. Yet that seemed to be the repetitious pattern of occurrences, attention being drawn to the smallest characters; those who had been in the shadows now being drawn into the stage's spotlight. The memory of the note was being burned into the Andre's mind, whether by direct or indirect means those shadows were starting to manifest and thus this was the characteristic that M.Moncharmin's respectable intellect attributed to all the shades about him. All were marked guilty until proven innocent and now the manager had a means to filter through the suspicious and the inconspicuous, and thusly he took this moment to discriminate between those gaping mouths and the contributors of this continuing conspiracy.

Glaringly susceptible was Madame Giry, brandishing her note in a manner that begged Andre to dislike her. For this woman had been among the shadows since the beginning of their reign (and it is sad to note that, yes, Moncharmin did consider his stint in the Opera house a reign of sorts); in fact, he deemed it would be fair to say that she was the one who invited the very annoyance that hung about their heads that very instant! And with her, from the pit of obscurity she pulled Mademoiselle Daae, and even now what an uproar the young singer caused! Quite a marvel for such a quiet girl it seemed. And then there was this situation with the Vicomte, that is, the awkward coincidence that their patron was even involved at all. Oh he hardly liked thinking to imply it! but the pink flush on his face could hardly deny the rush of brain juice when he did. To think that a note from this ghost told him to stop trying to see Mrs. Daae, why was he trying to see her? Andre could very well attribute the cause he was trying to blame for Christine's push towards popularity, which he already did, and from this popularity the Vicomte sees and becomes attracted, but how very unlikely for a man of his state-hood and being! Surely he would not lower himself thusly, to become so meagerly attracted to an Opera singer just because she sang divinely on her first debut (divinely...ah yes Moncharmin remember just how divinely still). But this very action, Andre thought, paralled Madame Giry's actions, giving Christine a helpful ascent to a throne; was this the Viscomte's desire as well? Would he play these jokes then, and make a mockery of this Opera, of their opera?

There in her hand, one last note, one last clue, and then it would all make sense. "Let me see it!"