Nocturne (30 page)

I elbowed Nathan and whispered, “Hey, there’s Tim Flannigan!” My cheeks heated as I pointed out the principal flute for Chicago. Not only was he currently my favorite flutist, he was shockingly easy on the eyes.

“Blush much?” Nathan teased, rolling his eyes.

Tim was tall, just like Nathan, but much more filled out. His broad back and narrow waist had him looking like a percussionist for a marching band.

I’d followed his career since I was old enough to care about such things, and his rise to the first chair with the Chicago Symphony was remarkable. The son of Irish immigrants, he’d come to this country when he was ten, though he started playing the flute a year prior. His parents couldn’t afford to send him to a conservatory, so he studied music at his local college. Practicing every spare hour he could, he auditioned half a dozen times before getting in. Since his acceptance, he traveled the world doing solo performances before sold out crowds during the symphony’s off-season.

He was only ten or twelve years older than me, but his skill made him sound like he’d been playing for a hundred years. His hair was completely salt and pepper, which did wonderful things for his green eyes. As he sat, he turned toward Nathan and me, extending his hand, which Nathan accepted.

“Tim, I’d like to introduce you to my friend—”

“Savannah Marshall.” Tim leaned past Nathan and gently took my hand in his.

“Yes …” I trailed off, shaking my head in confusion.

Tim chuckled softly as he let go of my hand and ran his over his tightly cropped hair. “I’m a friend of Madeline White. She told me you’d be joining us this summer. She’s talked a lot about you over the years, and I’m glad to finally meet you. That piece you played in your junior year flute ensemble was stunning. Well done, really.”

“Were you there?” I asked, tucking a strand of hair behind my ear.

“No. Madeline sent me the video. She was showcasing the two of you.” Tim pointed his finger between Nathan and me. “She was giving all of us a heads up on who to look out for over the next few years.”

“Oh … wow.” I exhaled softly as someone tapped Tim on the shoulder, calling his attention away from us.

“You okay?” Nathan asked, trying to follow my stare at the floor.

“I feel like I may have let Madeline down a bit.”

Nathan rolled his eyes. “You just spent a year playing for Bolshoi. You’re far from a disappointment.”

I smiled and leaned my shoulder into his before going through our music selection. Apart from playing
The Stars and Stripes Forever
at the end of each performance, we would be rotating through a breathtakingly beautiful selection of music. On the order for today’s rehearsal was Beethoven’s
Leonore Overture No. 73, Theme from Schindler’s List,
which I could rarely play without tearing up, and Mendelssohn’s
Symphony No. 4 in A Major
. There were more. Generations had lived and died under this music, and I was getting chills at the prospect of making the music come alive.

“Here come the bees,” Nathan mumbled, tilting his chin toward the front of the stage, where a majority of the strings swarmed to their seats.

I laughed, thinking about my summers as a student at Tanglewood with Nathan, when he first pointed out to me that the strings huddled together and always took their seats together, looking and sounding like bees as they settled into their seats and began tuning.

“Oh, excellent,” I whispered, “Zoey’s here!” I caught the eye of one of our conservatory friends who’d gone on to Cleveland, and waved. She smiled and waved back.

My smile quickly vanished as the cellos made their way on stage. It didn’t occur to me that Gregory Fitzgerald would want to participate in something like this, given his two best friends weren’t participating, and loads of travel crammed into an eight-week, twenty-city tour didn’t seem to be his cup of Earl Grey.

“
Nathan,
” I snipped.

“Yeah, doll—oh, for Christ’s sake,” he grumbled as he looked to where I was pointing.

“Did you know?”

“
Yeah
,” he spit out sarcastically, “I thought it would be a fucking blast to sucker you into spending two months with him on the road. I’m sorry, Savannah.” Nathan leaned back in his chair, running a hand through his loose curls.

I shook my head, mocking Gregory’s signature dismissive wave. “Don’t be sorry. It’s way old news. A heads up would have been spectacular, but, whatever … let’s look over this piece.”

Nathan and I got out our pencils, marking sections that we would each have to pay extra attention to in order to not make total fools out of ourselves. Every few seconds, my eyes would flicker to Gregory, and I found myself wondering what had him in a seemingly extra sour mood.

His eyes seemed ashen, bags under them that weren’t there a couple of weeks ago at James and Madeline’s wedding. His usually well-groomed goatee looked about a day or two past its scheduled maintenance, and he seemed to speak in clipped sentences to his section mates. Despite his usually gruff attitude toward the rest of the world, from what I’d seen, Gregory was always pleasant with his fellow cellists.

My stomach flipped as I waited for him to relax the muscles between his eyebrows. He didn’t. Something was wrong, and wrong enough for him to let it show all over his face and body. I’m not sure what concerned me more, that something was definitely unsettled in his meticulously polished life, or that I cared.

And I wanted to make him feel better.

Gregory

I don’t understand why you won’t agree to have children with her.

The voice of my mother grated in my ears every time I thought about it. After days of a cold standoff between Karin and me, I’d received an unexpected phone call. My mother, who barely left her home these days due to a host of ailments, most of them imaginary, wanted to meet for lunch. And
catch up
. That was her code for interfering in my life. I could have rehearsed her lines for her in advance; they were so predictable.

That lunch resulted in a shouting match later between Karin and me. How dare she involve my family in this discussion? The last two days our attempt at a silent argument over whether or not to have children had erupted into open warfare, and I’d left this morning in a rage.

All the same arguments kept running through my head as I carried my cello into the rehearsal hall. I’d told her more than once, many times really, that I had no desire for children. Did she think that was going to change after we got married? Did she think she could change it for me?
Did she want to change who I was?

I didn’t speak to the other cellists as I opened my case and very carefully took out the instrument. I frowned as I saw a tiny mark near one of the f-holes. Very carefully, I wiped it with a polishing cloth then breathed a sigh of relief. Whatever had caused the mark, it wasn’t permanent.

Finally I looked up at my section.

They were all prominent, first rate musicians. Colleagues. Looking at them, I was disoriented for a second. For my entire career, I’d been the youngest cellist. But of course, years had passed. Years in which I was one of the preeminent cellists in America, but also years in which I was aging. Some of the men and women in my section were much younger. I looked at them, and without a word signaled them to gather and began to issue instructions.

Normally I’m considerably more deft with people, but after the last several days of fights, of continual emotional battles with Karin, I had nothing left. For anyone. I kept my instructions terse, cold and functional. Then I turned my back on them and began to set up and tune my instrument. The tuning on the Montagnana is always delicate, in particular the G string, which tended to slip and loosen occasionally, sometimes even while in the middle of a performance. I always kept a close ear on it, a constant ongoing background tension, which kept me poised, alert, and responsive. In some ways, that constant tension was far better than having the pegs adjusted so they didn’t slip.

But nothing today was going smoothly. From the moment I woke up and she started harping at me about the nonexistent
baby
before I’d had my first cup of tea, to the tearful scene at the front door …
nothing
had gone smoothly. And so, of course, this would be the one day the G string
refused
to tune properly. I sat there, in front of six younger cellists from other orchestras, looking like a rank amateur, as the frown on my face grew deeper and deeper. Finally, I got it right.

I closed my eyes. I leaned back in my seat, my right hand slowly moving over the body of the instrument. I opened my eyes.

And staring back at me, just ahead and to the right, was Savannah Marshall, her eyes wide and alarmed. She was sitting next to Nathan, of course. When she saw me looking at her, her eyes darted away. She leaned close to Nathan and whispered something. And I felt a sudden, reckless urge to stand up, walk to her and grab her arm. To say ...
something.
I had no idea what.

Of course Savannah was here. Why hadn’t I thought of it? I'd seen Vita Carruli around Boston, and knew the Bolshoi was on break for the season. Savannah had become one of the premier musicians in the world, and everyone knew it.

She was certainly as good as anyone else in this group.

Now she met my eyes with an almost dismissive look. Was she annoyed? Irritated to find me here? Was she angry? Did she even feel anything at all about me? And why the hell did it matter? I had a wife at home, after all. A wife I’d chosen to marry three years ago. A wife I’d married in spite of Savannah. A wife I’d married because … because she wouldn’t complicate things. Because it made her happy and she wouldn’t interfere with my life.

But now?

Now she wanted
children.

The thought of Karin swept through my head like a migraine, and consequently, I was the first to look away from my unofficial little staring contest with Savannah. And I decided then and there I wouldn’t look again. I wouldn’t meet her eyes. I wouldn’t talk with her before or after rehearsal, I wouldn’t seek her out, I wouldn’t discuss her, or, worst of all,
think
about her.

So I sat up straight in my seat. I looked at the conductor. I took a deep breath. And I tried to ignore that in my peripheral vision just to my right, Savannah sat in the flute section. I tried to ignore the fact that for the next eight weeks, this little traveling road show would be performing on stages large and small all over the United States.

And she would be a row away from me the entire time.

Savannah

T
im Flannigan threw his head back
and let out a full-throated laugh and Nathan grinned. I smiled in response. I’d been telling the two of them yet another story of Sasha Nikulina, the Bolshoi’s Prima Ballerina and a slightly crazy, waifish woman who had attacked her boyfriend with knitting needles midway through last season.

“You may think it’s funny,” I said, “but Boris didn’t. He was in the hospital for two weeks. Knitting needles are serious weapons.”

I tried to keep a straight face. I really did. But their laughter got to me. First one corner of my mouth quirked up, then the other, and then I was laughing along with Tim.

“All right. What happened to the young ballerina?” Tim asked.

I shrugged. “The police escorted her to the performance, waited, and then picked her up afterward to take her back to jail. Every night for the rest of the season.”

“No way,” Nathan said, staring at me incredulously.

I nodded. “Russians are serious about their ballet.” What I didn’t say was that Sasha’s story wasn’t even the weirdest. The politics and backstabbing at the Bolshoi were legendary, and even if I went back in the fall, I had the feeling I wouldn’t stay much longer.

Tim gave me a quirky grin and said, “And that, my friends, is why I’ve never dated a ballerina.”

Nathan laughed, but I just raised an eyebrow and said, in as droll a voice as I could manage, “You’re assuming one would have you?”

He winked at me in response, and I felt a small thrill. But seconds later, Nathan’s grin disappeared and he sat up, a clouded expression on his face. Tim raised an eyebrow.

I twisted around in my seat. Of course, that explained the sudden transition from laughter to sobriety. Mr. Personal Rain Cloud himself had walked into the room, trailing Joseph McIntosh, our conductor. For a change, Gregory wore light grey pants instead of black. How original, he seemed to be branching out. I had to force myself to not roll my eyes.

Tim stood up just as Joseph and Gregory reached him.

“Hey guys,” Tim said.

Joseph spoke for the dour pair. “Tim, listen, we’ve got an interesting opportunity … and a strange one. The Tonight Show is looking to do a segment on the tour.”

I raised an eyebrow. That
was
a surprise.

The tour was intended to raise interest across the country in symphony music. In simpler terms, it was an attempt to pull the collective asses of classical musicians out of the fire. In the wake of economic recession and war, symphonies were seeing subscription drops all over the country. Some had closed; others were laying off musicians and shortening their seasons, not to mention cutting pensions for those who’d been members longer than I’d been alive. This tour was an attempt to generate real interest in our music and included a lot of unusual venues: town centers in cities with no symphony, television shows, and malls.