Virtuosity (14 page)

“My mother tours with me,” I said. “We have fun, but she’s more of a museum/botanical gardens/spa treatment type of traveler. Nothing like this.” I waved my fork around. “It isn’t lonely, though?”

“Sometimes. Not now.” His eyes were smiling.

The image of how he’d looked when he walked onstage Friday—arrogant and surly and rude—flashed in my mind. It was so different from what was in front of me.
This
had to be the real Jeremy.

Didn’t it?

“Now you owe me,” he said.

“How so?”

“Well, you know something about me that almost nobody else knows—the jazz, I mean. You owe me something I can’t read in your bio or if I google you.”

“You google me?”

“I said
if
I google you. And you’re changing the subject again.”

I put my fork down on my plate. One last ravioli
remained, but I was too full. What could I tell him? Everything un-violin in my life seemed so lame. “My stepdad and I run together,” I blurted out.

He sat patiently, obviously waiting for me to go on.

“For some reason he doesn’t get that violin is the defining element in my life and is always trying to get me to branch out. So, we run six or seven miles or sometimes even ten miles a couple of times a week. We were going to run a marathon together in June, but I couldn’t train properly this spring. He’s running it without me.”

“A marathon. That’s forty-two kilometers, right?” he asked.

“Twenty-six point two miles. The marathon he’s running is in South Bend, Indiana, and the finish line is inside the Notre Dame football stadium. He went to school there and he’s a sports fanatic so that stadium is his place of worship. It’s pretty much like Mecca for him. Anyway, I’ll run one someday.”

“That’s amazing.”

I shrugged. “I don’t know if I can actually do it yet. The most I’ve ever run is twelve.”

“But, I don’t get it. It’s fun?”

I laughed. “Actually, yeah. Or it’s fun to do it with Clark. It’s kind of like violin, actually.”

“How so?”

“It’s hard. Sometimes it hurts. Some days I really have
to force myself to do it, but those are usually the days I feel the best afterward.”

“So why doesn’t your mom want you to do it?”

“She just wants me to be doing other things this summer. I know I can fit the runs in, but she doesn’t think I can train and … You know …”

The Guarneri. The winner would be on tour by then. Jeremy nodded. We couldn’t avoid it, even when we tried.

“Have you ever had time for a sport?” I asked, wishing that hard look hadn’t crept into his eyes again.

“I used to play rugby, but the insurance blokes put a stop to that.”

I resisted the urge to laugh at the word bloke and just nodded.

“Jerks, eh?” he continued. “They insure your hands and then think they have right to tell you not to let thugs in cleats jump on them.”

“Mine are insured too, but my extracurriculars don’t involve thugs in cleats so I generally don’t have a problem.”

A lull in the conversation made me realize how much time had passed. It felt like we’d just sat down, but our plates had almost emptied and a different group was onstage playing. I wanted to freeze time. Maybe then we could stay as these versions of ourselves, and Jeremy would never have to turn back into the guy I’d seen on
stage. The guy who could take everything from me.

“Why don’t you get nervous when you perform?” I asked.

“Why don’t
you
get nervous?” The edge had crept back in.

There was no acceptable answer to that question. I couldn’t tell him about Inderal, I wouldn’t admit that I did get nervous, I didn’t want to lie and tell him I didn’t … “I asked you first.”

“I
do
get nervous. Really, really nervous, as in throwing up. I spent a good year having terrible performances when I was thirteen. It just hit me all of the sudden, you know? I’d been performing my whole life, obviously, but suddenly I was aware of everything that was just automatic before. And not just the physical stuff. Aware of people’s expectations. Of my expectations.”

“But you don’t seem nervous on stage. At all.”

He gave a wry smile. “You mean my shtick?”

“I probably wouldn’t have called it that, but, yeah.”

“It gives me something to focus on. Having a role to play helps.”

“Jeremy …” I let my voice trail off without even trying to say what had to be said.

“What?”

“I don’t know.”

“Sure you do. What?”

“You’re making it impossible to hate you again.”

“But I thought we’d already decided it was okay to not hate each other.”

“I don’t know. I thought we’d decided we might have to.” I picked up my fork and pushed the remaining ravioli around, making patterns in the sauce.

He sighed. “So you don’t get nervous then. What’s your secret?”

“No secret.”

“Lucky.”

I shrugged. All the lines I’d been fed by Diana and Dr. Wright about Inderal turned magically into what they had always been. Dust. Stories. It was cheating. Maybe I’d always known, but it didn’t matter now, because I wasn’t taking it ever again. I’d survived last night without it, hadn’t I? The Guarneri would be scary as hell without it, but that was the way it had to be. Jeremy’s description of performing had shaken something loose, something I’d always known but forgotten. Nerves were normal. Real musicians learned how to deal with them.

I turned to the stage where the music had stopped. The singer was getting ready to saunter off, but first gave her two fingers a kiss and tossed it to the crowd.

The lightness I’d felt all night was gone. It had deserted me somewhere between jazz combos and performance talks. I needed more. I needed to put my head on Jeremy’s
chest and for him hold me and tell me that the next week wasn’t going to end in disaster.

Our waitress came and cleared our plates and refilled our drinks. “Dessert?” she asked and left a dessert menu with our choices before we could say no.

“Want to split the tiramisu?” he asked.

“I don’t know. What time is it?”

Jeremy checked his watch. “One-thirty.”

“I need to get home.”

Jeremy nodded but didn’t look at me. He felt it too. Something had changed.

“They look so free,” I said, gesturing toward the musicians onstage.

“I know.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t realize it was so late. Will your parents be mad?”

I shook my head.

He paid for our meal and we pushed our way through the crowd to the door.

I hadn’t realized how warming the smoke and jazz were until Jeremy opened the door to the street and the icy wind cut into me.

Before I could open my mouth to complain, Jeremy was taking off his sweater.

“You’ll be cold …” I started to say, but it sounded unconvincing, so I let my words trail off. Wearing just a
black T-shirt, he hailed a cab, while I pulled his sweater over my head.

“What’s the matter?” he asked once we were settled in the cab, pulling me close. His body felt warm against mine and my shivering melted away. “Did I say something wrong?”

“No. I’m just sad. I think I want more than I can have.”

He stared silently out the window, his eyes following the lights of buildings we passed.

This time when we pulled up in front of the house the windows were exactly as they should be—black as the night sky. Diana and Clark were either asleep or still out.

It was time to get out, but Jeremy didn’t let go.

“Don’t be sad,” he whispered in my ear. “Look at me.”

I obeyed.

“You’re too used to sacrificing for music,” he said. “But we both want this, right?”

I gave him my best smile.
We can’t have both!
I wanted to scream.
We can’t both win!
Instead, I leaned forward and put my lips on his. This kiss was different from the first. Less startling. More aching. Less dreamlike. More desperate.

And when I left the cab this time, he was the one out of breath.

Chapter 12

I
told Heidi you’d be taking the next two weeks off,” Diana informed me Monday morning when I came down to the kitchen table, French textbook in hand.

“What? Why?”

My question wasn’t dignified with a response, unless a raised eyebrow over a sip of coffee counts. Diana had an unwritten
ask a stupid question, answer it yourself
policy.

I tossed my textbook on the counter. I needed to see Heidi, to talk her into being my alibi for Wednesday night.

Diana turned to the next page of the travel section of the
Tribune
and gestured to the stack of blueberry
pancakes on the counter. “Clark was feeling domestic this morning.”

I ignored the pancakes and poured myself a glass of orange juice. “But I might get behind …” I started feebly and then stopped.

“Carmen, are you kidding?”

It
was
a lame excuse. “I don’t know. I guess.”

“Let me remind you that you’ve got a full scholarship to Juilliard for this fall,” she said, “which you’ll hopefully be deferring. And besides, you’ve already completed your required courses. I’m glad you’re enjoying physics and French, but you don’t need them.”

“What do you mean, deferring?”

She looked up over the rims of her reading glasses. “You know if you win the Guarneri you’ll have performance obligations for the year. That’s worth more than the prize money.”

“Well, yeah,” I said, unable to keep the annoyance out of my voice. “But I just assumed I’d be able to do both.”

Diana sighed. “Life at Juilliard won’t be like it is now. No Heidi, no days off. You’ll have to go to classes.”

“I know I’ll have to go to classes. I’m not an idiot.”

It had been like this since Saturday, with every interaction escalating from fine to furious in seconds.
The pile of things we were sitting on but not talking about—Inderal, Jeremy, her scary apology—was getting uncomfortable.

“You can see Heidi as soon as the Guarneri is over.”

“But Heidi invited me to spend the night on Wednesday,” I lied. Diana leaned back, folded her arms, and stared at me. Heidi’s trendy Wicker Park apartment was slightly larger than a walk-in closet. And not only was it small, she had a roommate.

But it wasn’t totally implausible. I’d spent a weekend sleeping on the floor, crammed between Heidi’s bed and the bathroom door, last summer when Clark and Diana had gone to Montreal for their tenth anniversary. “Jenna’s going out of town,” I added. That wasn’t unlikely either. Jenna, the roommate, was always traveling for work.

Diana opened her mouth, then hesitated. She was dying to say no, but couldn’t. It was too much. I could see it in the way she had her arms folded and tucked around her, like they were holding her body together, and in the uneasiness around her eyes. I worried her. Good.

She shrugged. “That’s fine. That’s the night of the CSO function, so we won’t be here anyway.”

The fake indifference was stupid, but I didn’t need to call her on it. I had to phone Heidi immediately. I picked
up my French book and turned back to the stairs. “I’m going to go practice, I guess.”

She didn’t answer.

Heidi was surprisingly easy to convince. I’d expected her to turn responsible adult–like on me. We were only five years apart, but Diana’s signature on her paycheck made her a slave to the grown-up code. Agreeing to be my alibi was a definite breach of that, but I’d underestimated her romantic side.

“Wait, wait, wait, tell it again,” she’d said after I’d recounted the events of Friday night and then Sunday night, and then she screamed into the phone at the end of the story’s second telling, just like she had on the first go round. “Of course you can spend the night!” she squealed. “But what are you going to wear?”

“I hadn’t thought about it,” I said, kicking off my shoes and climbing onto my bed.

“What is
wrong
with you? You haven’t thought about it? Carmen, I’ve seen everything in your closet. You can’t wear flannel pajama bottoms and a tank top to a Sox game with a guy,” she said. “Or a performance gown.”

She was right. There was a huge gap in my wardrobe between black tie and pajamas. It had almost killed me to put together something to wear on Sunday. I had jeans and T-shirts, but nothing especially cute.

“Don’t worry. You can borrow something from me. When and where are you meeting him?”

“Five-thirty at the Drake,” I said. “Or at Lavazza, actually.”

“Lavazza?”

“It’s an Italian coffee house beside the Drake, or under it. I’m not sure.”

“Be at my place at two. I’ll be your fairy godmother.”

“Isn’t that a little early?”

“Date prep takes time. Trust me.”

“She’ll probably call to check up on me,” I warned.

“It’s okay. I can lie.”

“But what if she catches us?”

There was a pause on the other end of the phone. “She’ll probably fire me.”

I stopped. This wasn’t fair. I shouldn’t have asked her.

“It’s okay, Carmen,” she said softly. “It’s almost over anyway. Juilliard in the fall, remember?”

I leaned back into my pillows and closed my eyes. I hadn’t thought much about Juilliard—it was just the next logical career step—but then Diana had talked about deferring as if I’d already known and I’d wanted to throw my French textbook at her head.

“So you’ll be here at two o’clock on Wednesday?” she asked.

“You’re the best. Thanks.”

“Don’t thank me,” she said. “Do you have any idea how long I’ve been waiting to give you a makeover?”

“I don’t think that’s a compliment. Should I be worried?”

“No, you should be excited.”

I looked out the window, down to the street where the cab had pulled over and Jeremy had kissed me. And then where I’d kissed him. “I am.”

I hung up and took a long look in the mirror. She’d been dying to give me a makeover?

I lifted my dark curly hair and twisted it up into a clip. I had Diana’s eyes, grass green and almond shaped, but my nose was a little too big and my chin was a little too pointy. A makeover couldn’t change that.