Chapter Text
It is the nature of life that there are those who needn’t do a day’s work, and those who must toil ceaselessly. There are the well-off flâneurs who idle at parks without want or worry, and those that must labor to support that lifestyle. There are those who can return to their hôtels privés and retire to a splendid bed in a well-furnished chamber, but there are also those who have no other choice but to sleep under the roof without even a furnace.
This is a universal truth.
However, there are also those who balance on the delicate line between the great disparity: between those two types of people. You considered yourself to be one such person.
Life as a performer provided a comfortable sum of money to live off of, and little else. That is, life as a chorus girl in a respectable theatre company (you were quite sure that the bigger hits needn’t want for a thing) provided a respectable earning.
Indeed, your line of work provided you a decent apartment not too near the roof with comfortable enough furnishings and a carpet. It provided you with a good supply of food and wood for the fire, and that was good enough for you. After all, financial security was a luxury.
But you knew hardships, you knew struggle, and you knew it well; you were once one such person that labored fruitlessly. Growing up in an era of great strife and political unrest, in a time of conflict and turmoil, you knew there was worse than what you faced.
Surely, nothing could be worse than mother and father coming home nearly empty-handed (their pay being suspended). Nothing could be worse than the hopelessness etched in your parents’ faces as they searched for the better job they could not find.
Nothing could be worse than those days in the mill. Nothing could be worse than the stench of everyone’s business reeking from the one shared water closet. Nothing could be worse than the pain and humiliation of getting the rod. Nothing could be worse than the grind of the noisy machines. Nothing could be worse the slippery floors, slick with oil and water, against your bare feet. Nothing could be the worse than the sound of the girl next to you getting caught on the machine. Nothing could be worse than the sound that made, and it happened so quick, she couldn’t even scream…
That was all behind you though. Now you had a glorious new life in the performance, and at the best time too. With the revived interest among the wealthy in the arts, there never was a better time to be right at the center of it. Life was looking rosier than it had ever been before.
Rehearsals often began in the morning and ended at nightfall. They were plenty exhausting and left you sore, and practice was even more demanding in the proximity of a show. But you got a decent pay and the work was enjoyable.
At the end of the day, nothing was so pleasurable as to imagine your little apartment.
You would climb the staircase up past the shops, past the apartments of the well-to-do families, past the decently affluent families, until your apartment was finally within reach. Sometimes the air would be full with the smell of a neighbor’s cooking: no smells and noises were private, much to everyone’s chagrin.
The night was late, and imagining your routine encouraged you to walk faster. It was a perfectly ordinary night in all aspects of the word: the night stars shined brightly in the sky, the gas lamps were lit, and all was still (or as still as it could be in Paris). Yes, everything was perfectly ordinary. Well, everything except for the cloaked shadow of a man that was huddled over the edge of the river.
That was a bit unordinary.