The Ann Ireland Library. Ann Ireland
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She was quiet, then said, “Not exactly.”
That was when he rolled off and lay staring at the ceiling in the dark hotel room.
“I have,” she said quickly, “but not very often.”
He ran a hand over her bare belly, the calluses on his fingertips pebbling her flesh, making her gasp.
“This is not the scene I compose for you,” he said. “It would be a disappointment.”
Round cheeks, snub nose, curly reddish hair, not what you’d call handsome, but his eyes were beautiful, fringed by long lashes.
“I have a better idea,” he said, looking at her with what might have been amusement. “Play for me.”
“Now?” She sucked in a breath.
“Certainly now. Tomorrow we might all be dead.”
“But I didn’t bring my instrument.”
“So you must use mine.”
She slipped out of bed and pulled on her shirt, not her pants, and unsnapped the locks on his case. The guitar was heavier than hers and beat-up after twenty years on the road. Sweat marks stained the fingerboard, and there was an obvious repair on the back. This was a guitar that had seen the world, had played in every concert hall she’d imagined and more. She stroked it as if it were a cat, a creature with a beating heart.
Manuel propped himself on the pillows, then clasped his hands behind his head. “It won’t bite. Please begin.”
Scooping up a chair, she started to play.
“Ah,” he sighed as she swung into the opening bars. “The partita. So beautiful.”
Later, as she lay beside him while he slept on the bed, he slipped a hand between her legs. He’s dreaming I’m his wife, Lucia, Trace thought.
Entering her monk’s cell this morning, Trace plucks her guitar from its case and perches on the edge of her cot, feeling cool wood press against her thigh and forearm. The instrument smells of abandonment. Without her it’s a dead thing, pieces of wood glued together, but the moment she touches the fingerboard and rolls her thumb across the strings, the beast stirs back to life.
Eighteen
Toby’s semi-drunk when a knock on the door rouses him. Peek at the clock: just midnight, but it feels as if he’s been awake for hours, cursing the greasy pub food and beer. Since everyone else in the dorm is dead to the world, he rises groggily, wraps a sheet around his midsection, and heads out of his room to investigate.
Lucy looks as if she hasn’t slept, either. She’s wearing the same clothes she wore at the bar and waves him into the foyer with an urgent gesture.
“What?” Toby rubs his mouth. His breath must be Middle Earth.
“They posted names.”
He feels a shudder of anticipation. “The finalists?”
She nods. “I don’t dare look on my own.”
Toby tugs at his hastily assembled toga. “Let me change.”
“You’ll be fine. Let’s go.”
They ride the creaky elevator to the ground floor, then step into the deserted foyer, Toby clutching the improvised garment to his chest.
Lucy points to the daily board where someone has pinned a sheet of white paper containing a daunting short list. “I don’t know if I’m more scared to be left off or to make the cut,” she says in a pinched voice.
Toby approaches the board, chin high. With each step the print grows larger until he can read the eighteen-point caps at the top: finalists.
Rise of sour puke to the throat — blame nachos and the second round of Guinness.
“Seems like you’re one of the chosen few,” Lucy says. She’s crept up beside him.
He stares at his name. Cascading euphoria, a wild sensation that roars through his body, and he has to close his eyes for a moment, then just as suddenly, joy’s boxcar arrives — doubt.
There’s been a mistake. He’s some lunatic who thinks he’s the pope or Napoleon.
“Congratulations,” Lucy says. “Well deserved. I thought you played beautifully.”
“Thank you.” His voice echoes inside his head.
“Might as well head back to my room and sleep,” she says, and he hears footsteps disappear behind him, the elevator door swing shut.
Four names appear in clear type.
His own.
Trace.
Javier the Argentine.
And Hiro.
Salvatore, Mr. Bel Canto, has been dropped.
No sign of Lucy. He looks around, but she’s gone.
She may sleep, but he will work.
Toby soaked his battered fingers in a bowl of salt water. This took place in the room he’d rented, first home away from the childhood home. Eighteen years old, practically a genius, people were saying. Yes, the word was used. He was training full-time for the Paris competition. He’d been playing so long without a break that his calluses cracked, hence the blood and stinging saltwater bath. In the early hours of a marathon session, he was on edge, too much energy; his nervous system was his enemy. He’d discovered the solution: subdue the animal via repeated exercises while watching himself in the mirror. As time crept by, he seemed to enter a state of bliss where the rest of the world fell away. He’d been reading documents by certain Christian and Eastern mystics, so the sensation was not unexpected.
What did it feel like and how exactly did it come upon him? This is what he’s been trying to remember all these years. Was he playing better back then, more poetically — not a word he would normally use — or did it just seem like that?
How could he ever know for sure, since nothing was recorded and all he knew then was that he wanted to stay divine, so he removed his bloodied hands from the water and went back to work.
Brief pauses to sip cold tea and eat biscuits until both ran out. Did he sleep? He had no memory of it.
The next stage slunk in like a troll, bringing a drenching fatigue. His mind seized up and was unable to look upon itself, to reflect. Sleep was death; food was death; water was liquid kryptonite.
This lasted how long? He wasn’t sure, because he continued to play, hardly knowing what he was doing, until one evening the fatigue lifted and he found himself performing the most difficult piece of the looming Paris competition flawlessly, not a hint of tension in his body.
If this was ecstasy, then he wanted more of it.
Rapture and genius were twinned, though this was no place to linger, more like a hot stove touched and escaped from.
Jasper’s opinion was that he’d been deceiving himself in a hypoglycemic trance.
Brother Felix found him slumped over a chair, passed out, and hauled him down to Emergency. The object was to re-hydrate, re-salinate, orchestrate potassium, electrolytes, and urine production. He’d lost his way, everyone seemed to agree, because he’d forgotten the basics: eat, drink, sleep. It came from being a young man living alone.
Ten days later Toby clambered aboard the airplane to Paris — wild horses couldn’t stop him. The so-called breakdown, he figured, was a minor setback. He barely glanced at the City of Light as he set to work, and very soon the judges were scared and excited by him.
On that June evening of the final recital, he crossed the stage in front of six hundred people, sat down on the quilted stool, lowered his right wrist, still scarred from the IV, and began the variations.
Then