Free The Facades: A Novel by Eric Lundgren

simulation, so oddly calming, that made her loss impossible for me to conceive. Four months had passed since
     her disappearance, and I was still on my feet, clapping and calling “bravo.” Only I was now alone in the auditorium, the curtain
     had closed, and the stage crew had long since gone home, switching the lights off behind them—I alone waited for her encore.
    Her last interview had been granted, four days before her disappearance, to Martin Breeze. It would be too easy to say that
     he was a windy man, though he did wear loose berets and scarves, ruffled shirts that billowed. He had the cloudy, hopeful
     gaze of a man who’d lost the plot. His cummerbunds were crooked. He was pigeon-toed. His comb-over concealed a swelled skull.
     Still, it was Breeze who had blown the air into my wife’s reputation and made her seem
larger than life
, and she’d reminded me to be civil to him before our outings to premieres at the Opera House. At after parties we would stand
     near each other, as Molly fluttered masterfully from group to group, chewing hors d’oeuvres over our little plates as I listened
     to the first draft of Breeze’s columns.
    BREEZE : You are now not only the preeminent mezzo, but arguably the preeminent opera singer in Trude.
    NORBERG : But I’m getting old. [
Laughs
.] I’ll give up some of the limelight to younger performers. I think people are ready for new faces.
    BREEZE : I could not disagree with you more.
    NORBERG : As you know, the repertoire for us [mezzo-sopranos] is limited. There are only so many nurses and witches you can do. You’ve
     sung Carmen a hundred times, you’ve sung Rosina. There are limits for a woman with a certain voice range. Once you reach that
     point, you can either rest on your laurels or go in a different direction. I don’t want to be singing Carmen when I’m fifty
     and three hundred pounds. [
Laughs
.]
    BREEZE : That is hard to imagine. To change the subject, you have developed a certain cult following here in Trude. Is it strange
     to run into your admirers?
    NORBERG : I am incredibly grateful that people like my voice. I’ve made a living doing the only thing I really love, and how many
     people can say that? It is strange sometimes, though. I have my days. Those days when you’re sick of yourself and wish you
     were someone else.
    I couldn’t really understand why my wife would ever have wanted to be someone else. But I’d never had her gift for self-transformation.
     Her peculiar magic was transitive. Even at our closest, there was a part of me who remained her spectator. She could become
     other people—how it dazzled my watching self and held him in naive awe. On those evenings when it was just the two of us,
     she made a special Molly just for me. Sweatpants-cladwith her makeup off and her hair in a bun, her lips around a milkshake straw or a furtive cigarette of mine. “They’ll never
     recognize me,” she said, because this version of Molly loved subterfuge as much as any hooky-playing high schooler, even if
     her fans always found her in the end, wherever we went: the grocery store, the hardware store, the pizza parlor with its dusty
     red lampshades. She waited for the blushing, inarticulate praise to tumble from their mouths, then reacted with a look of
     surprise and gratitude. Molly claimed to be a second-rate actress but she did that look quite well. The moment they left,
     she returned to my Molly-on-her-day-off, the part she played when she didn’t have to play a part.
    Despite the fact that it was Molly who took my crumpled phone number on Halloween and called me for a date, despite the word
     she’d whispered in my ear by the pavilion, it was difficult for me to maintain belief. I never quite understood what she saw
     in me. Even after Kyle was born, when she looked into my eyes and said, “I’m never going to leave you, Iceberg” (she called
     me that when my feet were cold), there was a part of me that refused to accept my good