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The Last Room at the Masquerade

By Ophelia Ravenwood

The explorer’s mask had a small mountain growing out of its left eyebrow. Wystan turned it sideways, hoping the mountain might be detachable.

“It doesn’t come off,” said the woman behind the counter. “The snow melts at midnight. Keep it away from suede.”

He put down the mask beside a queen, a celebrated poisoner and the Inventor of the Second Moon. The queen had a handsome expression of having already dealt with something. He almost chose her instead.

“What does the explorer do?”

“Finds things. Talks beautifully about the things he’s found.”

This seemed a useful combination. At thirty-eight, Wystan could describe the internal construction of a chair for twenty minutes without once making a person want to sit beside him. He’d bought his ticket to the masquerade six weeks ago, in the interval between drinking a second glass of wine and remembering that he would have to attend it. Now he was here, the doors stood open behind him, and his good coat had a pale rectangle where he’d removed the shop badge.

“Does he dance?”

“That’s between you and your feet.”

Wystan paid the mask deposit.

The woman passed him a printed card. A borrowed life until midnight. No actual kings, poisoners or inventors impersonated. Please return all mountains.

He tied the ribbons behind his head.

A coast unfolded in his mind. He could smell warm rock and see a yellow sail lifting beyond a breakwater. He knew how to reach a city whose stairs had been cut for the stride of giants. Its name waited on his tongue. For a moment the entrance hall, with its damp umbrellas and queue of impatient guests, seemed impossibly small.

Then the man behind him trod on his heel.

“Sorry.”

“Quite all right,” said Wystan, in the voice of someone who had survived an avalanche through courtesy alone.

He went into the ball.

The old assembly house rose through three galleries around a floor crowded with moving colours. Glass birds drifted beneath the ceiling, each carrying a light inside its breast. As the music quickened they dipped lower, and golden reflections ran over the masks below. Wystan had seen the house from the street all his life. He’d delivered a chaise longue to its office once, through the back door. He’d never imagined this air above the dancers, so much room doing nothing but shine.

A woman in a silver antler mask asked him where he’d been.

“The southern ice,” he said.

He hadn’t intended to. The words arrived with a dazzling picture of green light enclosed in a glacier.

“How marvellous.”

“It makes a noise like cutlery being dropped very far away.”

This interested her. It interested Wystan, too. He talked about sleeping in a tent with a blue fox curled against his knees, and three people stopped to listen. The fox had stolen his boot. He remembered the annoyance as vividly as if he’d been annoyed only that morning.

Then someone asked whether he’d ever been afraid.

“All the time,” he answered.

The glacier vanished. For an instant he was back in his shop, holding a phone after a man he’d liked said he wasn’t looking for anything serious. They’d been seeing each other for eight months. Wystan had stood with the phone in his hand until its screen went dark.

“I mean, the fox was enormous.”

The woman laughed, but he had lost the blue tent. He excused himself in search of a drink.

At the supper table, a man in a peacock mask was attempting to eat an olive without letting it touch his moustache.

The moustache was made of spun gold. It curled past both cheeks and trembled whenever he breathed. His coat was wine-coloured velvet, his waistcoat silver, his shoulders broad enough to make the costume look less like clothing than a dare. A small olive already hung from the left curl.

“Don’t,” he said as Wystan approached.

“I haven’t said anything.”

“You’ve got the expression.”

“What expression?”

“The one people get before suggesting I sing for my supper.”

Wystan looked at the olive. “I was going to suggest you harvest it.”

The man followed his glance, went briefly cross-eyed and said something very ordinary beneath his breath. His speaking voice was low and slightly rough. Wystan liked it at once.

“Would you?” the man asked, holding out a napkin.

Wystan took the olive between the folded edges. The golden curl clung to it. He had to put a hand against the man’s jaw to keep from pulling the entire mask sideways.

There was a warm cheek under the absurdity, and a patch of dark stubble the gold didn’t cover. The man stood still. Wystan became intensely aware of the narrow distance between them.

“There.”

“My rescuer.”

“Only the first course. Don’t thank me yet.”

The man smiled. His real mouth was wider than Wystan had expected.

“I’ve sung before emperors,” he said, with sudden magnificent resonance, “and made the very stones weep.”

From somewhere inside his waistcoat came a burst of applause.

They both looked down.

“Oh, that happens,” he said. “Ignore it.”

Wystan began to laugh. He hadn’t laughed like that in weeks: an undignified, reluctant noise that got worse when the other man tried to keep a straight face.

“Whereas I,” Wystan said when he could speak, “have eaten a turnip on the highest peak in the world.”

“A turnip?”

“That can’t be right.”

He waited for the mask to improve the expedition’s provisions. It did not.

“A frozen turnip,” he added.

“You win.”

They stood at the table eating tiny pastry cases. The singer discovered that turning his head to one side allowed him to get food past the moustache, though it gave him the appearance of listening closely to each mouthful. Wystan told him this. The singer offered him a pastry, held at precisely the wrong angle, and Wystan had to catch his wrist before the filling went into his collar.

“Cruel,” he said.

“Yes. Emperors weep for several reasons.”

A bell sounded above the musicians. The floor opened for a slower dance, and Wystan felt the old familiar interval in which an invitation might be made and wasn’t.

The singer wiped his fingers. “Do explorers dance?”

“Apparently that’s between me and my feet.”

“Have you discussed it with them?”

“They’re opposed.”

“Mine are persuadable.”

Wystan set down his glass.

They found a place near the edge. The singer took his hand with a confidence the mask couldn’t possibly have lent him, because he immediately stepped the wrong way.

“Sorry.”

“You’re leading.”

“I was hoping you were.”

“Oh, excellent.”

For half a circuit they negotiated direction by collisions narrowly avoided. Then Wystan recognised the pattern of the dance from the lessons he’d taken with his sister years ago. He put his hand more firmly against the velvet back, and the singer yielded with visible relief.

“There you are,” the singer said.

Wystan couldn’t answer. He was counting.

They made a turn. The mask supplied a recollection of dancing at a mountain wedding, ankle bells chiming beneath a thousand stars. It was wonderful. It was also considerably less interesting than the pressure of the man’s thumb across his knuckles.

The singer moved more easily now. He smelled faintly of citrus soap. When another couple swept too close, he pulled Wystan towards him, and the mountain scraped his golden moustache.

A handful of snow fell down the singer’s neck.

He gave a high, appalled yelp.

The orchestra continued. Around them people turned with grave grace. Wystan stopped dead, horrified, while his partner stood with his chin lifted and a melting rivulet inside his collar.

Then the singer looked him in the eye.

“Is that how you lost the fox?”

They abandoned the floor laughing so hard that the woman with silver antlers stepped aside to let them pass.

At the foot of the stairs, the singer tugged at his collar. Wystan offered his clean handkerchief. As he did, a white moth settled on his sleeve.

It unfolded into a card.

The celebrated explorer and the golden voice are invited to delight the company in the Blue Salon at eleven.

Below that, in smaller letters: Entirely voluntary. Entirely applauded.

The singer read it over his shoulder.

“No,” he said.

Wystan was disappointed before he could stop himself.

“I thought you sang before emperors.”

“Emperors aren’t here.”

“There are at least four downstairs.”

“That’s the problem with these events. Anyone can get in.”

Wystan turned the invitation over. He had been noticed. For once he wouldn’t be the man who quietly helped stack the chairs when a party ended. He could tell a story about the glacier. He could make a room listen.

“We don’t have to,” he said, far too carefully.

The singer watched him. “You want to.”

“A little.”

“Then go. I’ll come and clap.”

“No, I didn’t mean—”

But someone was calling for the golden voice. A woman at the stairs had recognised the costume, or perhaps simply wanted to hear what the mask could do. She was beckoning them towards the upper gallery. Wystan’s borrowed memories rose eagerly: a river full of silver fins, the bridge on which he’d challenged a storm, the city beyond the yellow sail.

He started up. The singer followed more slowly.

The Blue Salon contained twenty chairs and far too many people who looked comfortable in them.

Wystan knew the chairs. He had re-covered six of them the previous winter, working around the assembly house’s bookings. One still bore a faint crescent where he’d pricked his thumb against the underside of its frame. He looked at it now and wished he’d chosen a different colour for the piping.

An attendant cleared a little space by the windows. A painted sea moved very slowly across the ceiling. Wystan could see waves break noiselessly against the cornice.

“An adventure,” someone suggested.

He began with the yellow sail.

At first it went beautifully. He had the harbour, the white gulls, the rope burning his palms. He described an island that appeared only when its trees flowered, and an old woman who kept a lighthouse for ships that hadn’t been built yet. The listeners leaned towards him. Even the singer, standing by the door with his arms folded, was smiling.

Then Wystan noticed a button hanging loose on the coat of a man in the front row. It was a large pearl button, secured by one dwindling thread. Whenever the man breathed, it tipped forward.

It would be lost in the stair carpet. Someone would stand on it. Wystan had a needle in the small case he always carried, and the right thread, or near enough.

The island disappeared.

He tried to call it back. He had been going somewhere. There had been a flowering tree.

“And beyond the harbour,” he said, “we found—”

The button fell.

Wystan caught it before it reached the floor.

For a moment everybody waited for this to be part of the story.

“That’s yours,” he told the man.

“I know.”

“I can put it back.”

Silence spread from the front row. The singer lifted a hand towards his face, then let it fall. Wystan wanted him to laugh. He wanted somebody to laugh so he could laugh too.

“I’ve lost where I was,” he said.

“The island,” said a woman kindly.

“Yes. I’m sorry. It seems to have gone.”

The man accepted his button. Applause began, courteous and much worse than silence. Wystan gave a small bow, which made the mountain tip snow over his shoe.

The singer stepped into the space beside him.

“I’ll do something brief.”

He sang one note.

It was enormous. It filled the room, opened into a whole chord above their heads and sent the painted waves running up the walls. Every glass on the tray by the door rang. Wystan felt the sound in his ribs. He turned to look at the man producing it, astonished.

The singer stopped.

“Good heavens,” he said in his ordinary voice.

Somebody laughed. This time Wystan did too, a little breath of gratitude.

The singer attempted another note. It came out equally splendid, but he had chosen it too high, and the mask carried him into an elaborate passage which required far more breath than he had. Halfway through, his face reddened. He broke off with a cough. The last shimmering sound hung beneath the ceiling without him.

“Well,” he said. “I’m usually in the water when I do that.”

There was real laughter now, and he bowed without waiting for more. He took Wystan’s hand. Together they escaped into the gallery.

Wystan didn’t speak until they had turned a corner.

“Thank you.”

“I shouldn’t have tried the second one.”

“You didn’t have to try either.”

The singer leaned against the wall. He was still catching his breath.

“No,” he said. “But I did want to know what it sounded like.”

Wystan looked away towards the dancers below. From here their movements were intricate and easy. He could see the place near the supper table where they had stood, and had the ridiculous sensation of wanting to go back an hour and be that man again, the one who hadn’t yet failed in front of a room.

“I should’ve let the button fall.”

“Why?”

“Because I was telling a story.”

“You can do two things.”

“Apparently not.”

The singer laughed softly. Wystan didn’t join him.

After a moment the man said, “Come on. There’s got to be somewhere in this house that isn’t listening.”

They tried the small drawing room first. Two queens were kissing on the sofa. In the next room, a poisoner was asleep beneath a portrait. The conservatory contained a vigorous argument about orchids which seemed likely to last until spring.

The last door on the gallery had no light showing beneath it.

Wystan knocked. Nothing answered.

Inside was a little music room, lit by the streetlamp outside. A piano stood along one wall, its closed lid crowded with paper decorations not yet hung. There were three chairs, a rolled carpet and a narrow sofa with one cushion slipping forwards. The window was open at the top. Cool air moved over Wystan’s face.

“Oh, thank goodness,” said the singer.

He found the lamp beside the piano and turned it on. Its shade made a warm pool on the wall. Beyond the door the ball sounded distant, almost like a party in another house.

Wystan sat on the sofa. It sagged beneath him.

“Webbing’s gone,” he said.

“Will it survive me?”

“Probably. Sit near the end.”

The singer sat. His thigh touched Wystan’s, briefly, before he moved away. Wystan wished he hadn’t moved. He was tired of having wishes which looked from the outside exactly like not wanting anything.

“What’s your name?” he asked.

The man touched the edge of the peacock mask. “My actual one?”

“Yes.”

“Lazlo.”

“I’m Wystan.”

“Hello, Wystan.”

The name sounded different in his voice. Wystan wanted to hear it again.

“I mend furniture,” he said. “That’s why the button. I wasn’t trying to make a point.”

“I didn’t think you were.”

“Sometimes I do it in restaurants. Look at the chairs instead of the person. I’m working on that.”

Lazlo’s smile deepened. “I teach swimming. Mostly adults. And I run the early session at the municipal pool, where everybody thinks the lane belongs to them personally.”

“Is that why you chose the voice?”

“I spend half my life shouting to be heard. I thought I’d try being listened to.” He looked at Wystan. “You?”

Wystan rubbed a thumb along the seam of his trousers.

“I wanted to be someone who had things to talk about.”

There was a burst of cheering downstairs. One of the glass birds drifted past their window, gold light moving over Lazlo’s face.

“I haven’t been anywhere,” Wystan said. “Not the southern ice. Not even the northern ice. I once got stuck overnight at a bus station, but nobody gave me a medal.”

“Did you deserve one?”

“I shared a sandwich.”

“With the blue fox?”

“With a man who said he was allergic to bread.”

Lazlo laughed, and Wystan looked up.

“There,” Lazlo said. “I’d have stayed for that story.”

He reached behind his head and loosened the mask. The gold moustache came away with it. Underneath, his face was broad and tired around the eyes, with a deep crease beside his mouth and a small flattened patch of hair above one ear. He was more handsome without the peacock. Wystan felt it with a suddenness that left him quiet.

Lazlo rubbed his upper lip. “I’ve been wanting to scratch that for two hours.”

Wystan removed his own mask. The mountain, set beside the peacock on the piano, continued gently snowing onto a paper star.

“Do I look very different?” Lazlo asked.

“Yes.”

“Ah.”

“Come back here.”

Lazlo had risen to set down the mask. He stayed beside the piano for a moment, watching him, then crossed the room.

Wystan stood as he approached. Without the explorer’s borrowed fluency he had to find the words himself, but there weren’t many of them.

“Can I kiss you?”

“Yes,” Lazlo said. “Please.”

The first kiss was awkward at the start. Wystan tilted the wrong way; Lazlo smiled against his mouth, and they paused, close enough for Wystan to feel the warmth of his breath. Then Lazlo put a hand at the back of his neck and kissed him again.

Wystan caught the velvet at his waist. The coat was soft under his fingers, the man inside it warm and solid. He had imagined kissing people at parties before. In the imagining there was never a radiator nudging his calf, or a loose hair caught against his lip, or the extraordinary small sound another person made when he was pleased.

They sat down without quite letting go of each other. This time Lazlo stayed close. Wystan touched the crease beside his mouth, and Lazlo turned and kissed the inside of his wrist.

“Better without the moustache,” Wystan said.

“I’d hoped so.”

For a while neither of them said anything useful. Lazlo’s hand rested beneath the open edge of Wystan’s coat. Wystan could feel each finger separately through his shirt. Outside, a late tram rattled round the corner. He thought briefly of his empty kitchen, the cup he’d left beside the sink, the ordinary shape of the morning ahead. It seemed possible that he might tell this man about it and not bore him.

“I’ve got work at eight,” Lazlo murmured.

“Tomorrow?”

“Yes. Cruelly.”

Wystan drew back a little. “You should go.”

“I didn’t say now.”

“No. Sorry.”

Lazlo kept hold of his hand. “I meant I can’t disappear for three days with an explorer.”

“Two?”

“One breakfast. On my next day off.”

Wystan smiled. “I’d like that.”

They exchanged numbers while sitting knee to knee. Lazlo took out his phone, then had to search his coat for his glasses. They were in the first pocket he’d tried. Wystan sent him a message containing only his own name. A moment later Lazlo’s pocket chimed.

“There,” Lazlo said. “Now I can find you without climbing anything.”

From downstairs came the first of the midnight bells.

On the piano, the golden moustache loosened into a length of plain ribbon. The mountain sank through its own snow, leaving a damp little peak of felt. Wystan waited for a sense of loss, for the bright harbour to vanish somewhere inside him. But the harbour had been gone since he took the mask off. He was looking at Lazlo’s bare hand on his knee.

The last bell sounded. People cheered, chairs scraped, and the orchestra began another dance.

Lazlo glanced towards the door.

“Shall we go back?”

Wystan pictured the Blue Salon, the polite applause, the pearl button in the stranger’s hand. Then he pictured the cloakroom downstairs, the queue for the stairs, the chilly street beyond. He didn’t want to hurry past the rest of the evening because of six uncomfortable minutes.

“In a moment.”

He stood and offered his hand.

Lazlo looked around the crowded little room. “Here?”

“The feet have reached a decision.”

They moved the lightest chair against the wall. Lazlo nudged the rolled carpet aside with his shoe, and Wystan rescued the sliding cushion before either of them could trip over it. They left the door ajar to hear the music.

There wasn’t room for a proper turn. They tried one anyway, laughing, and had to stop with Lazlo’s back against the piano. A few loose paper stars slipped from its lid. Wystan felt one brush his ankle.

“Again,” said Lazlo.

So Wystan put his hand at his waist, drew him away from the piano, and tried a smaller step.