The Metropolis by Matthew Gallaway

away,” he finally concluded with more confidence to atone for his initial hesitation.
    “We’ve been so busy lately,” Madame continued in a distracted manner.
    Lucien turned his attention to Daisy. “Do you have a teacher?”
    Marie-Laure replied on her daughter’s behalf: “When Daisy started singing I thought nothing of it, but then a friend of mine—regrettably not here today, or I’d introduce you—pulled me aside and said, ‘Your Daisy has the voice of a nightingale,’ and insisted that we immediately present her to Monsieur García.”
    “You’re a student of Manuel García?” Lucien again addressed Daisy, amazed that someone so young could have been taken on by the famous teacher, although as soon as he said it he began to worry about how he would sound in comparison.
    “Well, no.” Marie-Laure shook her head. “Or at least not yet. Heassured us that Daisy has enormous reserves of untapped potential but cautioned against singing too much. I suppose you’ve heard what happened to Jenny Lind?”
    “Yes, madame,” Lucien said, now disappointed, for despite his nerves he had begun to think that if he impressed them, his performance might open an avenue to the professor. He watched Marie-Laure turn to her own daughter, as if to say “You see?” Daisy in turn smiled with just a trace of disdain as she directed her gaze past her mother’s clucks.
    Daisy had pretty eyes—they appeared almost turquoise against the pale green satin of her dress—and he wondered if she might like to kiss him, and if he would want to kiss her back; he thought of another game he used to play at the theater in which the loser (or winner) was locked in a closet for a few minutes with another chosen at random. He found that when he was given the chance to be alone with one of the girls, most were more intent on giggling and squirming away from him than actually kissing, but a few times he and another boy had snuck away to do the same, and they had kissed much harder, so that Lucien could still remember the unsettling sensation of their teeth clicking together. As for Daisy, while he decided that any verdict would have to wait until he heard her voice, he smiled back at her with gratitude. Their moment of shared impatience with adult superficiality made the room seem less constrained as he sipped his pomegranate tea and helped himself to a second macaroon.
    C ODRUTA SOON REAPPEARED to announce the
commencement
of a musical interlude. “We are very fortunate this afternoon to have Daisy de Vicionière, who I have been assured has a talent to match her most youthful beauty—does anyone detect a note of jealousy?—and Lucien Marchand, who in the most neighborly of gestures—andI mean that quite literally—has agreed to sing for us.” Daisy arose from her chair and curtsied before she went to the piano, where she accompanied herself on a pair of popular songs by Gustave Theron. Lucien relaxed the second she opened her mouth, for her notes neither pierced his heart nor hovered like trembling soap bubbles; she did not lack talent, but to hear her gave him nothing beyond a somewhat tedious sense of enjoyment, the way he sometimes felt sitting through a tired production at the St.-Germain.
    After Daisy had finished and received a polite round of applause, Lucien’s turn came. He went to the piano, where he delivered Gluck’s “O del mio dolce ardor” followed by Monteverdi’s “Lasciatemi morire.” Although Lucien at fourteen was only a fraction of the singer he hoped to become, it was obvious to all present that his voice already possessed an intrinsic beauty and a natural legato that were the hallmarks of real talent. As his last note hung in the air, even before Codruta approached to embrace him as she whispered “Bravo” into his ear and presented him with a dozen white roses, he knew that he had accomplished exactly what he had hoped. Turning back to her friends, the princess dabbed at her eyes with a napkin and