5Chapter 4
"Harold! Harold!" Christian yelled at the top of his lungs, hammering the door with his fist. But there was noone who could hear him because no matter how loud he yelled, no matter how hard he banged his fist against the door, all the commotion that had begun the moment the crowd started arriving will drown out his cries.
Christian leaned forward in defeat till his forehead touched the door. He felt like a fool for walking into such a trap. The moment Harold Zidler had brought him to the back of Moulin Rouge, an isolated part of Moulin Rouge, he should have knew that something was amiss. Obviously his eagerness to meet Satine once more clouded his judgement.
"Satine," Christian whispered, closing his eyes, frustrated at being so close to the most valuable thing in his life and yet so far out from his grasp.
"Satine," the man next to her whispered.
Fear and awe gripped her at the same moment. Her instincts told her to be afraid of this man and yet there was something that was compelling her to him.
"That is your name, yes?" When she did not reply him, he continued in the same soft velvety voice. "The Sparkling Diamond."
It was not a question. It sounded like he was stating the fact. Like he already knew.
She looked at him. "Yes, that is my name. What is your name, sir?" She managed to say when she remembered to compose herself.
The stranger laughed. It was a soft laugh, soft but still distinct even from the noise emanating from the Moulin Rouge. "You're going to be late."
Satine's eyes widened as she realised that he was probably right. Her walk had taken longer than she expected with the meeting with this stranger. She immediately headed for Moulin Rouge, she had a show to put on. The man followed in step as she hurried her way to the place. She glanced one last time at him before she took the route to the dressing rooms of the Moulin Rouge.
He nodded at her, a beautiful smile playing on his perfectly curved lips.
"I never got a name."
His smile widened in reply. "Marcus. My name is Marcus."
Satine would have stood, rooted to the spot if Harold had not found her there and started yelling for her to get ready for the first scene. There was just something in his smile that simply mesmerised her. But he turned away and headed for the entrance when Harold approached them, his face red, clearly agitated with Satine.
"Hurry up, Satine. The show's about to begin." Harold grabbed her arm and dragged her off to the dressing rooms despite the fact that her attention was still focused on the figure of the stranger who had turned his back and begun to walk away from them.
Or was it straight into their lives?
Satine gasped for breath the moment she was backstage. There was something very wrong with her tonight. But no, the show must go on. She closed her eyes and faked a smile, ready for the second scene as the curtains arose again.
Marcus sat in the middle of the hall, eyes fixed on her. There was something different about this woman. True, she was a beauty, far more extraordinary compared to an average human. But it was not her beauty that caught his attention. There was something...intriguing about her. It had been long since he felt an interest for anything. 'Since...' he left the thought unfinished, refusing to remember the past he was here to forget.
From where he sat, he got quite a bad view of the scene. For an ordinary person that is. But for him, it did not matter. He could be in the building across and still have a clearer view than any of those miserable humans in the front row. From his view, he could see every single detail on stage. From the detailings of the heavily decorated stage to the pained looks that flashed across Satine's face every now and then. She concealed it well as the looks hardly appeared for more than a mere second before it was gone, but it hardly fooled Marcus. She was dying, he could tell. 'Ill,' he assumed. 'Perhaps what I'm feeling is a weariness for my own lonely lifestyle. Perhaps it is time I have a little more company.' He thought as his smile widened. 'Yes perhaps.'
He focused her attention back to Satine who had stopped in the middle of a song, gasping for breath. She was running out of time. He could tell that she would not last another day. His attention diverted from her when a man in the front row, almost got out of his seat in alarm when she gasped. He narrowed his eyes at him. Amusement and annoyance filled him when he saw the ties between them. The skinny man was in love with her. 'Obsessed even,' he mused as he observed the Duke. 'Ridiculous.'
Marcus frowned. Despite the loud music from the stage, he could hear someone yelling faintly from somewhere beyond the stage. Shrugging, Marcus ignored the noise and turned his attention back to Spectacular Spectacular.
"Toulouse! Someone let me out!" Christian yelled.
Frustration and anger were already threatening to explode. Here he was, in the same building as Satine and yet here he was, stuck in a wretched closet of a room, so isolated from everything else that noone could even hear him bellowing his lungs out and there she was, on stage performing the play that they had worked so hard on together.
He ran his hands through his hair in impatience. He looked around the room trying to find anything that would be his magical ticket out of this prison of his. He realised that there was no point in screaming and yelling anymore. If anyone could hear him, they would have heard him by now.
Christian squinted in the dark, trying to make out of the useless materials that were strewn around in the room. The room seemed to be an old unused storage closet. His eyes caught sight of a metal bar at the far corner of the room.
The room spun the moment she stepped backstage at the end of her scene. Satine extended an arm to keep herself from falling. A pair of arms caught her, supporting her.
"Are you alright, Satine?"
She looked up at the speaker and found herself looking into a pair of concerned eyes. "I'm fine, Toulouse."
He nodded. "Feeling light-headed from meeting Christian again I suppose." He chuckled.
Satine's blood ran cold. "Christian?"
"Yes, didn't you meet him? He's back." Looking puzzled, he continued, "Didn't Harold bring him to you?"
"What?"
"You don't know that Christian is back?"
"Whaa..." But before she could continue, someone had pushed her out on stage for her scene.
Realising that Satine had not met Christian and that Christian was strangely missing, Toulouse hurried to find Harold Zidler for some answers.
"Where's Zidler?" He demanded to the group of girls who were preparing for their own scene. "Where's Christian?"
The girls looked at him in bewilderment. "Harold is on stage. Are you drunk, Toulouse? He's playing the Maharaja remember? Christian? Is that the writer? He left a long time ago didn't he?"
Shaking his head, he left the girls, muttering to himself under his breath. "Stupid stupid fool. Now Christian is missing and it's all your fault!"
"Christian! Christian, where are you?" He yelled, running around like a madman.
"Toulouse! Here! Let me out!"
Satine breathed a sigh of relief when the crowd stood, giving them a standing ovation. Her eyes travelled across the audience, searching for the man Toulouse had mentioned. Instead, another man caught her attention. No, it was not the overeager, enthusiastic Duke who was practically jumping up and down in the front row. No, it was not...the man Toulouse had mentioned. It was the man in the middle of crowd, the same strange man who she had accompanied to Moulin Rouge.
She hurried backstage with the rest of the cast who were all caught up in the success of Spectacular Spectacular. So caught up that they did not notice that their leading actress had fainted.
He caught her before a single strand of her hair could touch the ground. He was so fast gone that noone noticed. But he noticed them, and he was sure that he saw two men stumbling into the room yelling her name before he left.
Satine's eyes fluttered open when she heard someone call her name.
"Satine. If you could have it all, if you could keep it all, would you?"
She shook her head, not understanding. Her hand flew to her lips when she begun to cough. She looked at her palm and saw blood. "What?"
"If you could have all that you wanted, would you mind trading your life in return for everything? Everything that you've long dreamt and sought after?"
She shook her head again. "What would it matter? I'm already dying."
"It does not matter?" He repeated.
"No."
He nodded solemnly. That was all the answer that he needed.
Marcus bent his head down and kissed her lips gently.
Back in the Moulin Rouge, there was chaos everywhere.
"Where is she?" Christian kept asking but noone knew the answer. The Sparkling Diamond was missing.
"She's gone."