The Ann Ireland Library. Ann Ireland
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is up in arms, barrelling through the office like a banana republic generalissimo. He’s convinced that the board of directors is staging a mutiny, which is partially true, if Jasper has his way. The man’s nattering on about “strategic information” that should be in his hands by now. Jasper hides a smile. At this point the best ammunition is secrecy. As Luke dances through the office, lifting file folders willy-nilly, Jasper keeps his focus on his work, while Rachel, an intern from a community college, fixes her gaze on her monitor and taps randomly at computer keys.
Luke plants himself in front of Jasper’s desk. “I demand full accountability.” Thin blond hair is glued to his scalp, and his suit looks a size too small, the current fashion.
Jasper glances up. “If you can’t get hold of yourself, then I must ask you to leave.”
Rachel’s mouth drops open.
“What?” Luke hisses.
“I’m asking you to leave. Now.”
No one says this to Luke, chairman of the board, and it catches the man off guard. His face pinkens several degrees, then suddenly he is gone, shiny loafers clacking down the hall.
Rachel tells Jasper he is God.
Possibly, but Jasper is shaking so hard he can’t speak.
The church smells of melted candles and damp boots. A pigeon roosts high in the rafters, and with luck it won’t wake up once the concert gets underway. Is it true that pigeons can’t shit midair? The small audience files in, buying tickets at a table set up at the entrance, presided over by Tess, vice-chair of the Toronto Guitar Society. She doesn’t recognize Toby — it’s been too long. It was Tess who arranged his first recital in this same church when he was a pipsqueak carrying a borrowed concert-grade guitar.
Squinting into the rows of pews, light filtered through stained glass, Toby wonders which of the more grizzled audience members were present then. He’d ripped through Villa-Lobos, Bach, and Albéniz, not a groundbreaking program, but he was barely eleven years old. When he finished the recital, grinning his head off, he saw his parents and Felix in the front row clapping like maniacs, yet it was Tess who led the standing ovation, tears streaming down her face. In those days her skin was pale, her hair red and bushy.
Toby hesitates at the door of the church, reluctant to stride into his own storied past. Yet this evening it is not Toby who will step onto the liturgical stage, and this audience is scarcely two dozen, given the viral scare. He buys his ticket, and Tess barely lifts her eyes as she slides it across the table. This is a relief and at the same time a disappointment. He finds a seat at the end of a pew close to the front. Its shelf is crammed with prayer books and hymnals, a reminder that music is only the building’s hobby. He flips open the program and reads off the list of composers — all Italian and he’s only heard of half of them. Most were born in the 1970s or later.
It’s been years since he’s made his way to a guitar concert. He used to go to everything and they’d often wave him in for free, understanding that such a talent needed to be exposed to a range of performance styles. He’d pretend to ignore the nods and whispers, the discreet finger pointings. Not many like Toby popped up in a generation. He’d angle a spot near the front of the hall, aware of being watched, and this watching never seemed strange or intrusive. He knew from the beginning that he would be good, very good.
Tonight he might as well be invisible. A new crop of students files into the front pew where they’ll get an unobstructed view of the artist’s hands and face. These hands belong to Antonio Conti who, just a year older than Toby, saunters onto the chancel, guitar tucked under one arm while enthusiastic applause erupts from the small crowd. Without fuss Conti sits on the low chair, tunes, pushes back his cuffs, and begins.
He plays with a scrumptious tone, a Mediterranean bel canto full of glissandos and arpeggios that lift the man half out of his seat. Toby feels his own shoulders relax, his breathing grow deep. Conti manages to be romantic as hell, hovering on the high notes, unrolling rubatos that make Toby smile at their succulent corniness, yet there is also perfect control, no buzzes, no unruly snaps.
This is my drug, he thinks, the opposite of grim Teutonic passion. He may be his father’s son, but he’s never going to list the socks in his drawer, never going to stack tuna fish cans for recycling. The sound fills him with a depth charge of emotion, and he’s startled to find himself close to weeping. Conti’s mouth drops open, then squeezes shut as the phrase lifts and falls. Toby’s program drifts to the ground. He knows now he will perform at Conti’s master class the following day, that this man must hear what he can do. At the same moment he decides he will not tell Jasper.
During intermission, Tess barely glances at him as he slides another twenty bucks across the table in return for a copy of Conti’s latest CD. Sprung from silence, the small audience is boisterous, pressing open the heavy church doors for smokes and a hit of unconsecrated air.
“Put me down for the master class,” Toby says.
“We’re full up,” Tess replies, slipping the bill into a cigar box. “You may attend as observer but not to perform.”
Toby rolls his shoulders back; it is these young men shooting past in their skinny jeans who are the cause of this fullness. “Can you make room?”
“No, I cannot.” Annoyed, she finally looks at him, thinking, he’s familiar, some crank she’s had to deal with in the past.
Toby waits for her to put it together: he’d stayed with Tess’s family for two weeks while his mother made the transition to Lakeview. They gave him a hook on the back of a door for his clothes and the hide-a-bed to sleep on. Tess’s daughter used to practise trumpet while the son smoked pot in the cellar and offered Toby his first hit of Ecstasy, the drug that is. Their freezer was stocked with ice-cream bars and Hungry Man Dinners.
“I know you,” she says, brow furrowing.
He smiles. “Toby.” Waits a beat. “Hausner.”
Her reaction is instant: she bounds to her feet, leaving the cash box unattended, and grabs his ears. “Toby Hausner! Look at you!”
He flushes with pleasure, then steels himself for the flurry of questions — where have you been all these years? what have you been doing? — but she just keeps looking at him with a broad grin and yanks his ears until he fears they’ll snap off.
“Of course you’ll play for us tomorrow,” she announces. She’s been around musicians so long that her speech is oddly cadenced, filtered through a dozen mimicked accents. Tonight it is faintly Italianate.
“Un-believable!” she says, stretching out the word. Toby beams under the warmth of her gaze. Her lean face has weathered well. “It is the Second Coming,” she adds with a fresh burst of enthusiasm, then scrambles for a pen to add his name to the list.
“Hardly that,” Toby says, but he smiles. Something is returning, his old world, and he doesn’t know whether to flee or celebrate.
“Where is my dear Angus?” She looks around the dark church and finally beckons to a burly man who huddles in the corner talking to a pair of older audience members.
Angus is her husband, the founder of the Society, and ex-officio everything, having taken a turn as president, secretary, videographer, and fundraiser. Seeing her wave, he lumbers over, and Toby notes there is considerably more grey in his beard now.
Fixing his eyes on Toby, he says in a booming voice, “Is this who I think it is?”
Toby races home before intermission is over, too revved up to hang around for the second half of the program. He can manage a couple of hours of intense practice before Jasper returns from his board meeting.
Jasper rolled out of bed this morning, ranting before his feet hit the floor: “The board orders me to balance the budget while they spend months labouring over mission statements and strategic plans. They’re supposed to fundraise, a fact they conveniently forget.” Moments later, in the middle of shaving, he poked his head out of the bathroom and announced, “It’s Luke or me,