The Ann Ireland Library. Ann Ireland
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hasn’t made the cut. “They do not like my style — too romantic,” he says, sighing. “Also, maybe I have a small problem with the repeat.” He’s donned a Greek fisherman’s cap and looks pale.
“What was your free choice?” Toby asks.
“Third cello suite, first two movements.”
Bach is dicey, especially the cello suites. Every student plays them, and there are so many transcriptions, all contentious.
“I was sure I would convince them with my interpretation,” Armand says, but he sounds discouraged.
The statement cranks everyone into an animated discussion of different versions of the suites. Do you listen to cellists? If so, which bowings do you prefer? No one wants to deal directly with Armand’s disappointment. He is thirty-five years old and has never made it to a competition final. Does he have a family back home? No point in checking for a wedding ring, for his fingers are bare. Think of swimmers with shaved heads, no extra weight, no drag.
“Bach is supreme king!” Hiro cries and everyone agrees with this indisputable fact. Having made the cut, Hiro is regarded with new interest.
It turns out that Javier has also made the cut. He’s the silent Argentine who sits at the end of the cluster of tables. Since day one, he’s held himself apart from competition fever and gossip. And there have been rumours about another guy, possibly from Winnipeg, who hides in his room, practising and sleeping, only stealing out after dark for food.
Texas Larry bites down on a vegetable burger, glancing neither to the left nor the right. Was his name posted? Toby can’t remember.
“I still can’t believe it.” Lucy pulls her chair next to Toby’s, and he gets a whiff of tea-rose fragrance.
“Believe what?” he obliges.
“I’m so amazed and honoured.” She touches his wrist. “Am I shaking? Have I entered a state of delusion? If so, please give me a sharp kick. I need to know.”
Her head tilts against his shoulder, and he feels the heat of her, the pulsing flank of a small, nervous dog.
“You made the semis?” he asks.
She seems hurt: he should know this. “Unless there was a typo.”
Armand reaches into his pocket and removes a pewter flask. “Next I will enter the Barcelona competition,” he advises the group. “World-class judges, huge audience, such aficionados you can’t believe.” He drinks quickly and wipes his lips. “If you make it in Barcelona, you establish an instant career. You know Stanley Blake?”
Everyone nods. Of course, they know Stanley, or rather, they know of him.
“Barcelona, grand prize, 2003.” Armand smiles, point proven, and takes another pull of whisky.
“Larry ran aground,” Lucy whispers in Toby’s ear.
Toby swings to face her. “What happened?”
“He was playing during some breakdown with the ventilation system, and Smyth actually jumped up in the middle of the Loesser first movement to fiddle with the thermostat. So Larry stopped playing, thinking he was meant to — and they wouldn’t let him start over.”
Toby glances at the Texan, who is peeling the label of a bottle of mineral water.
“Remember the year Christophe Poulin walked off with the Miami prize?” Armand is getting excited. “In 2001 I was in exactly the same competition.”
“Who’s Poulin?” Hiro asks. He sits on the edge of his seat, wearing a flaming orange singlet.
“Nobody! The guy played like shit, but his teacher was related to one of the judges, ja?”
Toby nods. He is perhaps the only one here who remembers the scandal.
“At the gala the jury didn’t arrive for two hours,” Armand goes on, becoming even more animated. “Because they were hauled on the rug by the organizers for total incompetence. Everyone knew the best players didn’t make it past round two.”
Hiro scrambles to his feet and excuses himself. “I run,” he says, and escapes into the night, trotting into the crowded sidewalks in his shorts and singlet.
The institute is driving Jasper stark raving mad. Toby pretends to listen to the phone rant, but Jasper feels his lover’s patience wear thin.
“Okay, not mad,” he corrects himself, for it isn’t a word one should toss about. “The institute is a thing of beauty, but Luke must go.”
“Of course,” Toby agrees with a yawn.
“He’s brought back an ex-officio president, and the two of them are attempting to hijack the place.” Toby still doesn’t get it: not only is Jasper’s job on the line but the future of the institute. “They’re plotting to get rid of me. It’s a strategic ouster.”
This snaps Toby to attention. “Can they do that?”
“Luke is omnipotent.”
Toby doesn’t believe a word of this, for it is Jasper who is omnipotent.
With his free hand Jasper throws the boy’s dirty socks into the laundry hamper. Before tossing his jeans into the same pile, he slides an empty box of Smarties from the rear pocket. Not quite empty: a solo red bead sticks to the bottom. When Toby arrived at the halfway house all those years ago in the middle of winter, he pulled his guitar out of its battered case and launched into the mournful Sarabande while snow melted in his hair. Jasper stood in the doorway holding the discharge file while residents trickled in and out of the room, oblivious to the divine sound that had entered their realm. The boy was achingly thin after his hospital stay, a frail bird waiting for Jasper to rescue him.
“How do your colleagues sound?” Jasper asks.
“I avoid listening.”
“You don’t want to be influenced?”
“I don’t want to be scared.” Toby gives a crackly laugh.
“Are you eating well?” Jasper probes.
“Like a field hand.”
Jasper feels the boy holding back information. This is not a good sign: his secrets are such a burden to him.
“I’m perfectly all right,” Mrs. Ivy Cronin assures Jasper. “It was just a nasty bout of the flu.”
Jasper nods in an encouraging way but says nothing.
“Monkey flu,” she says. “It jumped species. Don’t you find that interesting?” She stops for a moment to marvel. “I was on a ventilator for ten days, but you know all that.”
“You’ve had a rough time.”
“And look at me now,” she says, spreading her arms wide.
What Jasper sees is a handsome but gaunt woman with coifed hair whose voice, still hoarse from the ventilator tube, is bravely chipper.
“Let’s start with a few questions,” he says, pen poised over the clipboard. They’re sitting in the lounge area of the institute overlooking the boulevard many floors below.
Mrs. Cronin hasn’t touched her coffee or the bowl of nuts, but then neither has Jasper. It strikes him that she might have difficulty swallowing, and he makes a mental note to offer yogourt from the staff fridge. Choking disorders aren’t uncommon in these cases. New Age, vaguely Indonesian music, a mistake to his mind, wafts from overhead speakers. Luke cites research on its tranquilizing properties.
“Ivy, do you know what day of the week it is?”
His client smiles evenly. “Do I care?”
Jasper presses on, used to such evasion. “Let’s just say that I do.”
“Is this a trap?”
“By