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Chapter Nine: Shelved

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Tai checked his wristwatch for the umpteenth time, tapping his shoe testily on a step leading into the Palais Garnier. He turned and scanned the spread of tourists and commuters under one slow sweep of his eyes, hoping to spot Catherine's red coat, her black knit hat, those long blond tresses.

When his search yielded nothing, he raised his wrist back to his chin, thinking he had read the hour incorrectly. It wasn't improbable. Given that his watch used Roman numerals and hour and minute hands the widths of human hairs, it was easy to misread the time. Honestly, he preferred his sports watch and its simple digital numbers, timer capabilities, and water resistance, but the timepiece currently worn was a gift—from Catherine.

He tapped the clockface in an attempt not to look too pitiful. He was not the fool stood up for a lunch date. His watch was the one with the problems.

"Where the hell are you, Kat?" he muttered to himself.

He frowned as soon as he spoke the question aloud, some unnamable compulsion urging him to turn around and tilt his neck back. His answer was standing right beside him, lording over him, dwarfing him in its shadow.

Of course she was inside the Palais.

Grunting, Tai made his way up the steps into the building and hauled open a door. Half of him expected to plunge back into the night he had hastily left in a drunken stupor: the gauzy glow of warm, dim lighting, the sparkle of long dresses and sharp tailored suits. In their stead, he found himself staring at a herd of American tourists, loud and clad in puffy parkas and squeaky sneakers, taking pictures of every inch of ornament indoors.

That the building could change so dramatically within the span of twelve hours left Tai feeling grudgingly nostalgic. The Palais was beginning to become a place of abandonment for him, growing roots for itself in the part of his memory dedicated to loss. Usually, the theatrical marvel had something to offer its visitors—history, entertainment, photo ops, bragging rights. When Tai had toured it as a college student abroad, he barely noticed the difference between its interior and the street. It was a building, it held a roof over his head. What he was more interested in at the time was one other person in his tour group, the blonde girl with the swinging ponytail, keeping the lead in interest at the front of their class. He remembered standing beside her when they were shown the Grand Chandelier, and he had tipped left, brushing his arm against hers, offering a comment he could only make then because of Matt's French grandfather's stories.

"That looks like it could kill somebody."

She had giggled, turned her head, graced him briefly with a glimpse of her blue eyes.

"Wouldn't you know," she began, dryly, "it already has," and then proceeded to regale him with the story he already knew.

Later, he would find himself back in the Palais with her as her date. It would be the first time he'd attend the ballet, his first time dressed in a stiff suit to impress a girl, and the first of many times he'd be kissed by her lips, as soft and red as the theatre's velvet seating.

Now, the Palais was just a trap for the past, and a grim reminder that, currently, he was no one's date. Rather, he was her forgotten one.

Fed up, Tai pulled out his mobile phone and dialed her as soon as his fingers had defrosted. He hoped he'd hear her ringtone behind him, strident and shrill, but there was nothing save for the shuffle of feet, the chatter of people, the snaps and flutters of cameras at work. He waited for the ringing on her end to stop, to be replaced with a human voice. He'd even settle for a recording, so long as it was hers.

His neck snapped up when the ring cut off.

"Give me two minutes, Tai."

His eyes widened at her brief, albeit direct, message. The phone was pulled from his face, and he blinked at it before shifting his gaze over a shoulder, wondering if anyone else had heard what she said. Was it a plea or a command? By the extension of her vowels, he was partial to the former, but she spoke so crisply and quickly, he felt like he had just been scolded.

"Kat, where the hell—"

"I'm coming, I'm coming," she interrupted.

There was a click followed by the dead tone, and Tai sighed and slipped his phone back in his pocket. He raked a hand through his hair, letting it linger against the curve of his scalp, tempted to tug gently at the strands.

A minute later and he heard heels clopping up behind him, accompanied by high, labored breathing, very much like a child's after a rousing game of tag.

"Tai."

"Kat."

"I'm so sorry." She tucked loose hair behind her ears, wiped her fingers swiftly over the sides of her face, instantly drying any perspiration that could have accumulated in her sprint to him. She was flushed.

"Where've you been?" he asked. Openly, he looked her up and down, brow knitting at her state of dress. She didn't have her coat on. They were supposed to go out to lunch, and unless she had plans of eating at the Palais's in-house restaurant, that meant braving the Paris winter for a block or two for a jambon-beurre.

Catherine blinked vacantly at him, blue eyes round and unfocused, as if she were enmeshed in a dream.

"Here," she finally answered, as if it were obvious. Tai shot her look, which sparked a facial muscle to twitch, waking the rest of her to reaction. She averted her stare and let it rest on the painted ceiling, where the mythical faces of Psyche and Eurydice gazed down at her.

"I was interviewing the company's consulting psychiatrist," she explained. Her expression soured and she rubbed her temple, forehead wrinkling. "It... didn't work out with the artistic director."

"What do you mean?" Tai asked.

Catherine sighed and lowered her face, glaring at the floor. Her arms bent at the elbows, knuckles stuck to hips.

"He had a meeting with one of the choreographers about adjusting a step for the ballet tonight and refused to see me. I reiterated who I was, what I was doing there, who I worked for, why I was writing, but he waved me off. Literally shooed me away with his fingers." She reenacted the gesture, flicking stiff digits at the air. "I couldn't just leave—I had an entire interview prepared!—so I interviewed the only person who didn't mind it and told me he wouldn't mind it. I got a bit carried away." Grimacing, she brought a hand to her face, used it to smooth out an eyebrow—or obscure him from view.

"I lost track of time," she said, peeking at him between her fingers. "I'm sorry."

She exhaled deeply afterwards, which she needed after speaking non-stop for several sentences. But her eyes wouldn't stay on him. After the apology was uttered, left to simmer in the breath between them, they wandered, somehow always going back to one distant door at the end of the hallway. The door, he guessed, where she came from.

Tai's body struggled to stand still under the barrage of her frustrations. He knew she hated to be helpless, and when, rarely, she was, he couldn't allow himself to appear as lost as she felt. His hands would find her, hold her steady, create belief she could stand on, faith that could support her.

Sometimes an embrace fulfilled that need. Sometimes a kiss on the forehead. He opened a hand out to her, called her name.

She smiled weakly and took a step toward him, fingertips latching onto his own.

"Did you finish?" he said.

She shook her head, wincing.

"No, I didn't."

Tai looked down at her, considering her nearness for a moment. It must have happened in subconscious blinks. Where she stood a foot away before, now she was a foot nearer, and leaning nearer still. He placed a hand on her shoulder, or, rather, at the nape, thumb rising to smooth the line of her jaw. Her lips parted.

"You couldn't have told me that before I left the hotel?" he joked.

Her mouth closed and she smirked, rolling her eyes lightly as she reached for the hand he laid on her. She covered it, kept it where it was, head tilting toward his touch.

"Not exactly appropriate behavior to pull out my cell phone and text my date during an interview," she replied. "But... I know I should have communicated better. We'll have to reschedule this. I hope you don't mind."

Tai contained the involuntary twitch. As much as he hated the word, "reschedule," he tried to be accommodating, which was easier with her in his arms.

"No big deal," he said. "Lunch date is now a dinner date."

"Très bon," she said. "But I should still make it up to you."

He flashed her a roguish grin.

"Let's talk how you plan on doing that."

He clutched her gently at the curve of her waist before daring his hand to travel further south. She elbowed him in the ribs and broke from him, snickering.

"Fine, Tai," she said, pulling on his ring finger, leading him down the foyer. "Let's talk."

He suffered some awkward footing at the start, feet forgetting how to function as she directed him toward a side door in small, quick strides, heels clicking down the narrow corridor. Hand tugging turned to hand holding as he established his pacing and caught up with her, though Catherine seemed focused on their end destination. Her eyes had returned to that glazy look of mind-emptying wonder, deceptively vacant, as if she walked the same earth he did, but saw things he could and would never see.

For a second he was reminded of the night before, of the ballerina who guided him down her intimate labyrinth, showing him the guts and arteries of her old-fashioned playground. He looked at Catherine's hand, followed its straight line to her turned back, her cascade of long, blonde hair.

His curiosity couldn't help itself.

"Where are you taking me, Kat?"

"I said I would make it up to you," she answered.

"Now?"

She flicked her stare over her shoulder.

"Tai, really," she said, unenthused. "I'm not taking you to a secret subterranean lair to make the music of the night in my prop-infested bedchamber."

His face crinkled. For a hypothetical situation, it contained an alarming amount of specificity.

"I'm going to assume you're alluding to something I have no clue about. And who talks like you do, anyway? Bedchamber? The only person I know who talks like that is T.K. And it's rubbing off on Kari, too."

Catherine chuckled chirpily.

"Sounds like him," she said, and left it at that. "How's your sister?"

He gave his plain assessment based on his record-breaking three days at home. In short, she was working, she was well, and she loved T.K. to blindness.

"My baby sister has her shit more put together than I do."

"I didn't realize this conversation was about you, Tai," Catherine replied, playfully snide. "I thought I had asked about your sister..."

Tai jangled their entwined hands, drawing her to him. She bumped into his chest, and he left a peck atop her head before she retreated.

"And how're Mssrs Deneuve?" he asked.

Her blue eyes darted to him, lit with a twinkle Tai wondered was one of tender surprise. At the very least, her giggling left color on her cheeks, a pinkness he wanted under his fingertips. She looked away.

"Same as they've been since their retirement."

"Which country are they visiting this time?"

"The United Arab Emirates. Dubai."

"And after that?"

Catherine hummed in thought.

"They were thinking Iceland for the summer. But, then, they haven't been some place tropical for a while, so they were also thinking Goa or the Philippines."

Tai laughed humorlessly, ending the chain of flippant "ha-ha's" with an indecorous snort.

"A hard life," he remarked. "Tough decisions."

Catherine said nothing, which he interpreted as embarrassed agreement. Quite possibly, she was silent out of annoyance, but if she was, he couldn't summon the heart to care. She had to know the way her parents lived was unsustainable.

They reached a greywashed hallway, the natural light of outdoors shedding an ashen blue glow over the length of the passage. The dark wooden floors creaked lightly under his step as they entered, and he spotted reflected squares of light lining the pale walls: pictures framed in glass, a gallery of the opera's history.

Tai stared in bemusement at the corridor, wondering if he was in a colonial home or in the Palais Garnier. Half of him expected the walls to fall back, for the simplicity to be supplanted, revealing an antique spread of gold and ostentatiousness. Catherine released his hand and left him with a few words. He didn't catch what she said, but he stayed where he was and only half-listened to the sound of her fading steps as she scurried down the hallway and vanished behind a door. From his distance, he could see a name on the panel—the gleam of a placard gave that away—but he was too far away to read what it had written.

After the open door bumped to close, Tai was left in echoing silence. He shifted on the balls of his feet, turning slowly on his heel, adding much needed noise to the otherwise maddeningly quiet space.

He looked around, neck stretching and body slanting as he further examined his surroundings. Other closed doors ran the span of the hallway, each with a little window connecting the world outside to the one within. He stepped towards one, fulfilling his latent curiosity.

Other noise and chatter revealed themselves as he approached. He could hear yells in French, the deep swells of a piano at play, tap tap taps of feet keeping time, then thuds—a lot of them: thumps and bumps and pattering. Nothing sonorous or groundshaking, but drum-like, soft and controlled, like the cycling canter of a horse, or, even, human heartbeats.

Intrigued, Tai passed close enough by the doors to catch flitting glimpses of their interiors through the narrow windows. Eyes followed dancers moving in the studio rooms like leaves blown in autumn, spinning and loose. He had to blink several times to convince himself that they were, in fact, still touching ground with their feet.

Most rooms had several members of the company in them, no doubt in some sort of practice or broken rehearsal. While some danced, others were on break, sitting on the floor and stretching, drinking water from their bottles, watching reflections of their colleagues in the wall-length mirrors. Only one room, the last one he passed, was nearly empty save for a handful of individuals.

There was the pianist shoved off to one corner, the only part visible being a head, nodding and bobbing to the beat of the music. Occupying the center of the room were two dancers, a man and a woman, and though unseen, Tai knew there had to have been a fourth person, the one shouting the beats—"Et un, deux, trois, jeté!"—clapping with each click of the metronome.

While the speed with which the dancers worked was impressive, Tai was more surprised at their synchronization. Their maneuvers matched without waver, as if they shared lungs, a heart, a brain. He edged up to the door window, peering in, hoping to get a better view.

The man smiled too much. His grin was fixed, grappling-hooked up at the corners. It should have hurt to smile that durably. He also talked a lot. Tai could see his smirking lips moving throughout the drill, whispering mysteries to his partner, whose face Tai couldn't see. She was turned away from him, but it only took Tai a few seconds to recognize whom it was he was staring at. The bearing gave her away—again. He didn't know if the way she carried herself was cultivated pretentiousness or something bred into her muscles, inked into her bones.

She laughed, face finally visible with the gliding swerve of her head. A light lift-off on one pointed foot and she was guided into the air by her partner, suspended for only a moment before he set her down. As she landed, his hands stayed on her hips, ready for the repetition, which came almost immediately before their instructor interrupted them.

Whatever disapproval was communicated, it was taken with serious nods of the head and unbreachable stares. Only in the pause did Tai notice the rapid rise and fall of the ballerina's chest, the shimmer of sweat on her brow, her damp hairline. The studio lights shone harshly on them, paling skin to haggardness, highlighting the grey beneath her eyes.

Words were exchanged to both teacher and partner, and the dancers regrouped. She shook her arms, rolled her neck, and then snapped into position at the instructor's signal. Elbows curved, her torso angled, feet raised her to her toes. She swayed with such ease one would think she was controlled by someone else—like a puppet on its strings.

A pantomime of sleep or daydream followed. She closed her eyes, smiling unawares in the surrounding arms of her partner. The back of a hand slid under a resting cheek.

On a beat, the scene shifted at once. A heavy chord dropped on the piano, pinging through the air, and the dancer was tossed, her dream broken. She lurched a step, face struck by the pain of waking, eyes shocked open to paralysis. She stared straight at him.

Tai spun around, startled. He pressed his back against the door, hiding as best as he could out of her view, mortifyingly conscious of his escalating pulse.

Job fucking well done, Taichi.

"Tai?"

He turned and saw Catherine standing a ways off from him, stuck in his periphery. She raised an eyebrow.

"I was searching for you. I thought I told you I'd just be a few minutes."

He shrugged and pulled at the hem of his suit jacket, still fighting the jitters. The dancers eyes seemed burned on the insides of his eyelids. Every time he blinked, their memory only seemed to intensify.

"This hallway is a straight line, Kat," he said. "How lost could I get?"

She crossed her arms, poorly amused with his reasoning. Slowly, whatever lack of impression she had was filled with jest.

"You were curious about the dancers here," she suspected, leering at him. "You were interested in the dance."

Tai brushed off her whimsies.

"I heard some noise and I went to investigate. That's it. Besides, you left me in the hallway to do what?"

She grinned and pulled out two pieces of paper from behind her back, holding them in her fingers like a flimsy paper fan. Tai bent forward and squinted at the print on them. They were advance tickets to the company's performance of Coppélia, which was to be the highlight of their summer season.

"You said you're here for at least six months," she said, "so I thought, before you return to Japan, we could see this ballet together—not for work. I promise I won't interview anyone I don't need to—but, you know, as a... date."

Tai oscillated his stare from Kat to the tickets. Tickets to Catherine.

"Kat, you know how I feel about the ballet..."

"By which you mean you love it?" she bandied. "I mean, why else would you wander off, watching their rehearsal from the windows?"

"Very funny."

He shoved his hands in his trouser pockets, casting his look elsewhere, plotting disinterest. Catherine belayed him with a hand on the lapel of his suit jacket, tugging.

"And, if I recall correctly, one day, long ago, you took me to the ballet."

"That was for our first date," said Tai, gently freeing her fingers from his clothing. "And hell knows I did that just to impress you."

Her eyes narrowed, blue irises gaining definition, like water crystallizing to ice.

"Am I not worth impressing now?"

She stepped back, withdrawing the tickets.

A burst of panic compensated for the distance she created. He regained the step she took back, trying in the split second to keep her close, to change the direction of their conversation.

"Kat," he said. He smiled dopily. "Um... you know... there are... other ways to impress you."

She eyed him unmoved, though he shouldn't have expected much. Why did he always have to bring everything back to sex? Her fingers pushed at her lips, turning her head sideways as if to pardon a forthcoming cough or sneeze. She didn't do either, but he heard noise nonetheless, something bubbled and choppy, like a cluck of the tongue or giggles.

"Pure conjecture," she said at last. She sighed as she turned back to him. "I suppose it's no loss to me. The tickets were given gratis. Dr. Hiraki felt sorry for wasting my time. Maybe in your absence, I'll ask him to take me instead."

"Okay." Immediately, Tai held his hands up, suddenly feeling a physical need to stop what he was hearing. He plucked the tickets out of Catherine's grasp, keeping his eyes on her face. He couldn't get a read on her, whether she was satisfied with the gesture, or, worse, apathetic. "I can't make any promises—I'll be working almost exclusively from Geneva in a day—but I'll... I'll think about it."

"That's all I wanted to hear," replied Catherine. She smiled briefly. "For now, at least."

"Good." He reached into his back pocket for his wallet and deposited the tickets between wrinkled Euros. "What's this one about anyway? And why are you so eager to see it?"

Her posture straightened, a rosiness returning to her face.

"Well," she began, "firstly, I think you'll like it. Knowing you, you probably slept through Swan Lake, but Coppélia is lighter. No dichotomies of good and evil. No curses and deceptions."

Tai lifted an eyebrow.

"Okay," he drawled, still indifferent. "Go on."

"It's about a doll," she explained. She made undulating motions in the air with her hands, as if molding a figurine. "An inventor fashions a doll who turns out so lifelike, a local youth falls in love with her. The woman who loves him unrequitedly, in turn, pretends to be the doll so he can love her."

Tai sputtered a laugh.

"So much for deceptions..."

"It's in the name of love," Catherine defended, poking him in the shoulder. "Odile deceives in the name of power, but it's Odette who is cursed, Odette who suffers for it. The prince—" She stopped abruptly, like one catching oneself in a lie. Her smile faded. "Anyway," she resumed. "That's what Coppélia is about."

Tai chuckled lightly, endeared to the tint spreading on her cheeks. To think she was embarrassed over her enthusiasm. He reached out, hand a hair's width from landing on her arm, before a door at the end of the hallway opened. Catherine turned before he could even touch her. Tai recognized the figure of the company psychiatrist step out, and the doctor looked both ways before hailing Catherine with a wave, which she returned. Tai dropped his hand, hiding it back in his pocket.

"I'm going to have to let you go, aren't I?" he said.

She squeezed his arm softly.

"À bientôt, mon ami." See you soon, my friend. She spoke brightly, which eased his reluctance to watch her leave. Her fingers played with the lapel of his jacket for a time, biding her time with her departure—or thinking too much about it. She sighed, and he thought she'd set her hand on his shoulder, send him off with a comforting and pitiful pat pat, but her aim was elsewhere, higher. She looked up, thumb and knuckle tipping his chin.

"Wish me luck?" she said.

Tai shook his head.

"You won't need it."

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A/N: Hope you guys enjoyed this [faster] update! It's nice to write Tai back in the mix. And I know things are pretty slow at this point. Like, what even happened in this chapter, right? But good things come to those who wait? So please stay tuned! We've got maybe one or 2 more chapters in Paris before we switch back to Japan and see what's going on with Kari and T.K., since they have a few subplots revolving around them. (And we will check in with the Sorato wedding prep too, don't worry.)

Anywho, how's everyone liking Catherine? I keep asking because I am worried about her characterization. Is she likable as a person? Do you think she has chemistry with Tai? Is their relationship even convincing? Obviously you have a neurotic author here. Hahaha.

BUT, my hope is that you don't find this story appalling? I think that's not too much to ask for, right? Right? :P

Anyway, thank you, guys, as always, for reading. :D

Aveza