Concerto in dead flat, p.11
Concerto in Dead Flat, page 11
“Allison Star?” I said, when alongside of her.
She took one look at me and doubled her pace. My size had frightened her. It wasn’t the first time I had had this happen. It’s strange to have people look at you as if you’re some kind of monster, when inside you feel so differently.
I kept up with her.
“Don’t,” she said. “Go away.” She continued to walk at a frantic pace, forcing me to dodge other students or risk knocking them over.
“Don’t follow you? Or don’t go away?” I asked. “I’m Chris Klick. I’m a mystery writer. I’m on a research fellowship at Wadham.”
She stopped abruptly. Her chest was heaving. Nice chest at that, now that I was closer. Her face was scarlet. She looked at me once, but then gazed down at her shoes. “That’s original.”
“It’s true.”
“She sent you, didn’t she?”
“Who?”
“Oh, come on! Just leave me alone. Please. I don’t know where he is.”
“Who?” I repeated.
“What are you, an owl or something?” She snorted her discontent.
“You’re Allison Star the cellist, aren’t you? I heard you perform in Italy with the youth orchestra.” One of the problems with being a good liar was that I learned to really hate myself now and then. The huge sense of relief I saw in her eyes—the flattered touch of conceit—made me feel like a schmuck. But I had a job to do, I reminded myself—and somehow, as always when Lyel was involved, I was quickly getting away from it.
“What?” she asked.
“The youth orchestra.”
She studied me then, head to foot. It wasn’t a sexual examination, but that was how my hormones mistook it. She sized me up, shook her head in disbelief and said, “No.”
“No, what?”
“I don’t know. Just no. You have ‘no’ written all over you.”
“Are you flirting with me?” I tossed this out there because I wanted to catch her on the side of the head with something completely unexpected. It was my only hope of dislodging her suspicions. She had good instincts, this woman, and my job was to dismantle them.
She coughed up a laugh. “Don’t flatter yourself.” We were back into our foot race, though with my long strides it was no contest. Perhaps she was flirting. What a heady thought that was. I stopped walking. She went right on going. I waited. When she glanced over her shoulder at me—just to check—I knew I had her interest.
I caught back up to her at a run. “Coffee. I know this is your first day. I know a lot about you.” Flattery, I hoped, might get me somewhere. This had to be one lonely, frightened woman. “Have you been to the Nose Bag.”
She laughed. “The what?”
“Best cheap food in the city.”
“The Nose Bag?”
“Exactly. What they lacked in naming the place, they made up for in their desserts.”
“Desserts?”
“Chocolate cake?”
“No kidding?”
“And I’m buying.”
“Why should I?” she asked.
“Because it’s good cake.”
“I don’t think so,” she said, clearly reconsidering. “Besides,” she added, stopping at a door. “This is my lecture.” She pulled the door open. The room was teeming with students and noise.
“What if I wait?”
“Tell her I don’t know where he is.”
“Who?”
“There you go again.”
She disappeared inside. The door closed behind her.
I headed to the Nose Bag. I knew that look in a woman’s eye: This one had a real relationship going with chocolate. Me—she could care less about.
Chapter 21
I was four cups of coffee into my buzz when she entered the second story restaurant. New to university, she came alone, having not yet established a social set. She had bought the cake and coffee before she ever saw me, and when she did, she headed straight to my table. “Are you following me?” she asked.
“I was about to ask you the same thing.” I pointed to my crumb-littered plate. “This is my fourth cup.” I nudged a chair with my foot. “Join me?”
She looked at me skeptically. Her jaw fell open slightly and she shook her head. “No.”
As she walked away I said, “You keep saying that.”
There were no empty tables in the place. All told, the Nose Bag held about ten tables. Four of them were large clear-finished picnic tables and were used as family dining, strangers sitting alongside strangers. The smaller tables were shared as well, but only at peak hours. As it was, she was going to have to ingratiate herself into a table of complete strangers or accept my offer. Men were staring. She made two full laps before surrendering.
She took her seat, saying nothing to me, and went to work on the cake. She cut her pieces delicately, keeping them small, stretching out the experience. “This is really good,” she allowed about five minutes into it. She glanced up at me occasionally, as suspicious and skeptical as ever. She said, “You’re too old for a fellowship.”
“Thanks.”
She smiled and wiped chocolate off her lips. “You’re staring at my hands.”
“They’re nice hands.”
“No one has ever stared at my hands before.”
“Don’t kid yourself. You just never caught them at it.”
She shot me one quick, hot glance. I felt it down in my knees.
“Nice eyes, too,” I said.
She blushed. “I don’t even know you.”
“And we’re already having coffee together.” I added, “What do you think of Elgar?”
“He’s never done anything wonderful for the cello.”
“How about Barber?”
“Melts me. Absolutely melts me. Physical. He’s extremely physical and passionate. It’s very hard to play the ones that affect you physically. I tend to overplay Barber, which is bad. Every now and then there’s a composer like that—you know? Lights you up like a Christmas tree.”
“Like Stephan Shultz?” I asked. She didn’t like that. “More coffee?”
“Sure.”
I grabbed her mug and refilled both of ours.
“Why did you say that?” she asked when I returned. “Who are you?”
“There’s a rumor going around Wadham that you’re going to play the Holywell and that Stephan Shultz might conduct. He conducted you in Italy. Even an old man like me can do simple math.”
“It’s not so simple,” she said.
“It’s no coincidence, is it? Italy and then here? You and Shultz.”
She stabbed at the chocolate cake. After all the care she had taken with it, it seemed to be a kind of violation. “No coincidence.”
“So there is going to be a concert?”
“I’m scheduled into the Holywell. Yes. I have no idea if Stephan Shultz will conduct.”
“And the program?”
“The rumor line didn’t know?”
“Know what?”
“You’ve heard about the Mozart, haven’t you?”
“The Mozart?”
“The missing manuscript page? The page that was found. From the Liebespaar cello concerto.”
“They found the missing Liebespaar?”
“Christ Church is verifying the work. I’m to be the first cello player in two hundred years to play the concerto in its entirety,” she said, radiant with pride. “Scholars have been arguing about that page for the better part of this century. The Holywell is significant because as a child Mozart played there. Did you know that? He wrote the Liebespaar not long after that, while still here in England. It’s a very significant find.”
“I know the Liebespaar very well,” I exaggerated. Lyel would know all about it. Lyel knew everything about classical music, opera, and ballet.
“Dozens of scholars have written that missing page—for the sake of performance. Now, finally, we will all see the original.”
“You haven’t seen it then?”
“Oh, no. It’s not been published. It has to be authenticated first. I’ll see it in rehearsal. Then the world will hear.”
“I can see why Stephan Shultz would be anxious to conduct something as important as that.”
“He was born here in England. Did you know that? That is about his only hope of being part of this. They would never let a full-blooded American conduct. Not the premiere.”
“But you are American, and they’re asking you to perform.”
“True, but I think that is because my competition for such a performance, in terms of cello, would be a Japanese and the Japanese have enough clout and influence here at Oxford already without giving them something like this. It’s a very difficult piece.”
“The Lover,” I translated. “It had better be difficult. Relationships are certainly tough enough.”
She nodded, suddenly sad. I imagined she was in the midst of one of the most difficult relationships possible. Twenty-some years younger than her lover. He, an international celebrity. Stolen monies. Lawsuits. Investigators. I felt myself growing sympathetic to her problems and softening in a way I couldn’t allow myself. I would have to watch her now, and hope she led me to Stephan Shultz. The sooner the better. If I stayed around much longer in Oxford, the Aiden Sinclair mess was going to trap me—I could feel it. I was getting sucked into that. Lyel wasn’t helping matters any, running around the country trying to find Sinclair. The more effort he put into this, the harder it was going to be for me to quit.
I finished my coffee. “Well,” I said, unable to think of what to say. It was her hands doing that to me. I couldn’t keep my eyes off them. “If you’re going to be giving a recital—anything like that—I hope you’ll let me know. Chris Klick at Wadham.”
“I remember,” she said. Did she want to me stay a while longer? Was that what I saw in her eyes?
“If the Fellows invited you to perform—you know, informally—maybe a string quartet, something like that, would you do it? Could you put something like that together?”
“Does that play into your mystery?”
“Pardon me?”
“Your mystery—the one you’re writing.”
“Oh, yeah. Sure. The mystery. Fits right in,” I acknowledged.
“Is dinner involved?”
“At the college, or with me?”
“Both?”
“High Table?”
“Do you have dining privileges?”
“Absolutely.”
“I would love to do a High Table.”
“We’ll do it up,” I told her.
“Will we?” she asked dreamily. She was young; I had allowed myself to overlook this, but now there was no mistaking it.
“The Fellows drink like fish. It helps make up for the food.”
“Perfect. But I better perform first.” She grinned.
“Be careful. I’m going to set this up.”
I was standing, looking down at the way her fingers curled around the warm cup.
“I hope you will,” she said, looking me in the eye. Yes, nice eyes.
I decided right there and then I didn’t like Stephan Shultz. I didn’t like him at all. I didn’t like myself much either. Misleading a young, confused woman, all in the hopes of getting my job done. Or was that all of it? Maybe the smart thing to do was not give Shultz the chance at the royalty money. Leave him to work out his sordid life without my help.
Then again, I wasn’t known for doing the smart thing.
Chapter 22
I move through life from error to error, victory to victory. I tend to forget those times in between—and the in-between occupy the largest portion of my life. But it is the mountain tops and the river bottoms that I remember, that I cling to for dear life, treasuring every second, not the long, strenuous hike up or down. Life, it is said, is not the destination, but the journey there. For me it is a series of stops along the way, a series of stellar moments that have little relationship to either the journey or the destination except that these moments exist on that same fragile time line.
One such moment occurred that afternoon as I cleared the final squeaking stair and turned to face the trapezoidal door to my Wadham office.
Nicole was sitting in a formed fiberglass chair waiting for me.
I laughed. Laughed aloud. One quick, sharp, nervous peal of unconfined emotional release. To my eyes, she looked as lovely, as peaceful—she was as welcome—as any person on earth.
She smiled.
I said, “All the pain, all the hurt I have endured since Paris is small payment to enjoy even one of your smiles.”
“Keep talking,” she encouraged as I approached my office door, not knowing if she would allow me to take her into my arms. I fumbled with the key and opened the door.
I said, “The joy of this moment, the lightness of my heart, is something I will always treasure, always remember. Even if you’ve come here to get rid of me—which is itself an impossibility—my only regret would be how long it was between your smiles.”
“That’s not why I’m here. I’m here because I’m a sucker for your purple prose, your quiet eyes, and the sound of your voice. I’m here because I reacted wrong in Paris and because even a brief amount of time with you—which is somehow all we ever get—is among the best times. I’m not here to forget or to remember, though I wish we could do both. I’m just here, I guess.”
“I have an electric fire in my office.”
“You always were a romantic.”
“When it really gets cooking, it smells like a toaster on the fritz.” I smiled. I couldn’t help but smile around her.
“Any coffee?”
“Tea. There’s coffee in the Common Room.”
“Tea’s fine.”
“Are you going to come in?” I asked.
“My legs won’t move.”
“I could serve you out here.” I added, “Or I would gladly carry you inside.”
She stood and took a tentative step toward me.
I dropped the keys and pulled her into my arms with enough strength to squeeze the air out of her. She hugged me back, her face turned into my chest, her hair scented like fresh cut flowers. She began to shake—she was either crying or laughing. I didn’t care which. I was crying; I knew that much—watering the flowers in her hair.
Laughing and crying, it’s the same release. Joni Mitchell. More lyrics. Music swimming in my head. Big orchestral stuff. Butterflies in my stomach.
“Who’s your carpenter?” she asked, noticing the peculiar slant to the door.
“The place has settled some over the centuries.”
“Haven’t we all,” she added nervously.
We made it inside. I switched on the electric fire. She peeled off her coat, rubbed her hands together and studied the place as I went about filling my electric kettle from the hideaway sink. “Interesting reading,” she commented.
“The man is on sabbatical. He’s a chemical engineer or something like that.”
She had reached the windows. “Fantastic views,” she said.
“It’s a great location,” I agreed.
She drew each of the drapes after inspecting the view. She headed back to the door, and for a moment I thought I was to lose her again, but she depressed a button on the lock and the springed latch sprang into place, locking us inside. By this point the electric fire was in full blaze. Put another log on the fire. She pushed the two awkward chairs out of the way, clearing a space on the floor in front of the wall toaster. My pulse was somewhere around one-sixty. My heart was lodged just below my Adam’s apple. Our brief physical relationship in Idaho, several years earlier, had ended in front of a fire. Were we to pick up where we had left off?
She removed an afghan throw from the back of one of the chairs, shook it and spread it in this cleared space. Then she knelt down onto her knees facing me and began to unbutton her blouse. She said, “I know we should probably do a lot of talking, a lot of catching up. Right? Talk until two in the morning? But what if we say things we don’t mean? What if we hear things we don’t want to hear? Somehow I think that in our case, it’s not the right approach at all.” She unbuttoned the last button. Her blouse remained closed, but open. She unfastened her belt, unbuttoned the waist of her dark pants and unzipped the fly. The kettle whistled. I was frozen. “That will have to steep, won’t it?”
“There’s a bed,” I pointed to the other room.
“No. Beds are for later. This is where we left off—in front of the fire.” She had clearly treasured that moment as much as I had—realizing this meant the world to me.
I poured the water and capped the tea pot, sliding a cozy over it. I took a cautious step toward her—this was her choreography, not mine. I didn’t want to misstep. “This thing hardly qualifies as a fire.”
“It’s quite warm,” she said, parting her blouse.
I had no memory of losing my clothes, although I did remember removing hers. I drank in the smell of her skin where her neck met her shoulders. I absorbed the quiet cooing sound she made as my fingers roamed her skin. I treasured the purring deep in her throat when I kissed away one of her tears; the taste of her lips; the shifting color in her eyes, altered slightly by the orange glow of the electric fire as she squinted in pleasure. Her nails raised goose bumps as they raced down my spine. She welcomed me lusciously in a smooth pocket of warmth and tenderness, locking onto me, holding us immovable for several long, wondrous minutes before we began even the slightest of movements. Then it was all an expression of what I felt inside: adoration, empathy, forgiveness, gratitude. It was Us, not me, not her. I had everything at that moment. Take my wallet, my experiences, even my music. This surpassed passion, the tactile realm, the physical plane. It was instead, all-encompassing. The ultimate connection, the surrender of one’s soul. This was the summit—a view from the highest mountain.
