Wildalone (30 page)

She sighed and caressed my shoulder, almost motherly. “I think you ought to see a counselor, dear. The pressure of Carnegie always takes its toll, but in your case I'm afraid it has gone too far. You are in complete denial.”

In denial or not, I didn't need another therapy session at McCosh. Instead, I decided to take the rest of Friday off and have dinner with my RCA group. But when I walked into the dining hall, Rita was suspiciously thrilled to see me. And suspiciously alone.

“Where is everyone?”

“Two people canceled, so we had to reschedule. It worked out great, actually, because I've been dying to talk to you.”

“About what?”

“All the juicy details from fall break. I think I deserve them.”

This time she didn't sound worried, only curious. Which meant that in his second encounter with her, Rhys had managed to be pleasant.

“We went to Martha's Vineyard. He has a house there.” I wasn't sure if this qualified as juicy, but judging by her smirk—it did.

“And?”

“We had a nice time; I saw most of the island. The rest was piano practice.”

“Tesh, do I have to fish every word out of your mouth? What is he like?”

“You've seen him. Mysterious. Charming. And a bit of a control freak.”

“A bit?” Her laughter echoed through the dining hall and a few heads turned. She lowered her voice: “You haven't had any issues with his temper, have you?”

“No, quite the opposite. He can be surprisingly . . . soulful, once you get to know him.”

“Being soulful doesn't mean he won't act out of line. So I'd feel much better if I knew his vital stats.”

“Vital what?”

“Statistics. Not literally—just who he is, what he does.”

“I don't think he has a job. Family money.”

“Yeah, I figured.” That last detail didn't seem to be the kind of vital stats she liked. “It certainly explains a lot. Although I don't see you as the timid little girlfriend.”

I didn't see myself as the timid little girlfriend either. Yet Rhys stood for everything that intimidated me about Princeton: the elitist traditions, the sense of entitlement, the wealth. To earn my place in his world, I felt compelled to agree with him (or at least to pretend I did). But Rita was right—why would I want to enter that world if the price of admission was my tacit obedience?

Later that night he came to my room and just stood at the door, waiting.

“Rhys, what's the matter? Why won't you come in?”

“Because we're not staying here. I want to take you home with me this weekend.”

He had thought of everything: I could do my schoolwork at his house, practice on either of the two pianos, or better yet—do nothing, if I felt like it. All I needed was a change of clothes.

While packing, I showed him a book I had checked out of the library earlier. Finding it had been a challenge, with the poetry stacks two levels belowground, in an obscure corner of the building. From among several shelves dedicated to Lorca, one title—
Gypsy Ballads
—had promised exactly what I wanted: a glimpse into the man Rhys had called “the voice and heart of Andalucía.”

He gave it a cursory look. “You picked one of his best, the flamenco is all over it. By the way, that's exactly your type of guy.”

“I have a type?”

“Before he started writing poetry, Lorca was a pianist. Absolute Chopin addict. Wrote essays about the nocturnes and waltzes.”

My type of guy.
The thought of Jake began to creep up from the back of my mind where I had managed to bury it.

“If this is my type, then I'm out of luck. Last time I checked, you thought Chopin was all sugar.”

“Then let's prove me wrong! Bring your scores and play for me tonight.”

“You don't have Chopin at your house?”

“We did, but Jake took every last one to New York with him.”

The blood rushed to my face. What was I thinking? As if I could play Chopin for Rhys and not imagine his brother . . . But since I didn't have an excuse on the spot, I pulled the stack of music sheets out of the suitcase and threw them in my bag.

When we arrived at the house, its heavy door opened and this time Ferry's inscrutable smile readily invited me in.

“You look tired all of a sudden.” Rhys touched his lips to my forehead, as if checking for fever. “Would you rather go to bed?”

To bed. With him. In one more house that Jake had been forced to leave because of me.

I dropped the scores on one of the pianos. “Play for me first.”

He turned off the light, grabbed a pillow, and had me lie down on the sofa. “Any requests?”

“Up to you. Whatever you'd play if you were alone.”

I assumed he would show off with something difficult. But I realized how little I knew him—in this as in everything else. The sounds were breathtakingly simple: Liszt's third
Consolation
. It was astonishing music, music whose texture dissipated almost instantly, as if a shy moon had spilled its sporadic web of secrets from the ceiling.

“Now it's really time for sleep.”

I hadn't heard him get up. My mind was still absorbed in the last notes, and in something I had been meaning to ask him for a long time: “Rhys, I want you to come to Carnegie with me.”

He pulled me up from the sofa. “Glad you finally asked, I was starting to wonder. And the magic date is when?”

“Two weeks from today.”

I felt his breath stop. His head fell back, dragged down by an invisible weight behind his shoulders. Then he forced himself to look up again.

“Let's go to bed.”

Before I could process what had just happened, he took my hand and headed upstairs.

IT HAD TO BE HIS
room, but he didn't turn on the light. As we undressed, I felt the cold floor. A low bed. Sheets, softer than any I had ever touched. He pressed a switch and faint ochre glimmers peeked down on us through the openings of a carved headboard—lavish wooden patterns, an intricate lace of foliage—but he was already kissing me and I forgot about the bed and the room and everything else . . .

When he finally pulled the covers over us, they felt soothing—snow that cooled the skin without melting from its heat.

“It's nice being here, Rhys.”

He made sure I was fully tucked in, and into him. “Get used to being here.”

One more press on the switch—and the ochre glimmers disappeared.

I WOKE UP NOT KNOWING
what time it was. A ray of sun had sneaked through a cleft between the closed curtains, and in its diffuse light I saw his room for the first time.

White marble floor, absolutely bare. Dark mahogany bed. No nightstands. On each side, a trio of cast-iron lanterns hung from the ceiling, cascading down a metal chain until the last globe dropped almost to knee level. A floor mirror leaned against the opposite wall, in the same carved mahogany as the headboard. But it was something else—a painting—that infused a spell into the room.

Wild, ravening flowers burst against the sharp burgundy of a late sunset. Lush blooms, caught in thick patches of paint whose edges cut against one another like shards of glass broken by a careless hand and left in chaos. At the center, alone in this explosion of color, was a devastatingly beautiful man. He sat in the falling darkness—knees drawn to his chest, arms hung over the rich blue of the pants, chiseled, every muscle set aglow by the slipping sun. His neck was strained forward, as if he still couldn't let go of something or someone vanishing away, and a black mane of curls spilled from the touch of an invisible wind. Under those curls, lost in impenetrable desolation, was his face: Rhys's eyes, Rhys's cheeks, Rhys's lips . . . and their silence.

I went downstairs. The house seemed abandoned. Not a sound, just the unnerving echo of my steps. Next to the living room was a library from which I walked out on a terrace overlooking a meticulously landscaped garden.

Rhys was sitting on the steps with his back to me, and I couldn't tell if he had heard me or not.

“I like you with very long hair.”

He turned abruptly. “What are you talking about?”

“The painting in your room.”

“Ah, that . . .” The alarm began to clear from his eyes, restoring them to their deep aquamarine. “You think we look alike?”

“Very much.”

“I'll take the compliment. But it isn't a portrait, certainly not of me. Have you heard of Vrubel?”

I hadn't.

“A Russian painter. Siberian, actually. They keep the canvas at the Tretyakov.” He said it with regret, as if the canvas belonged elsewhere.

“I had no idea this was a copy.”

“Strictly speaking, it's not. It's much better than the original.”

“How can a copy be better than the original?”

“Trust me, it is.” He rose from the steps, smiling for the first time since I had come down. “Did you sleep well, by the way? Breakfast has been getting cold.”

What turned cold, right at that moment, was the blood in my veins. A table was set for three, in the far corner of the terrace.

“Are you expecting someone?”

“My brother. He should have been here by now, but maybe traffic is bad.”

I tried to stay calm. If traffic had been good, I would have found both of them waiting to have breakfast with me.

“Don't look so disappointed. You'll love Jake, once you get to know him better.”

It's exactly what I'm afraid of.
“I thought you and I would be alone.”

“That was the plan.”

“What changed it?”

He wouldn't tell me. Whatever it was, it had happened overnight.

“What changed the plan, Rhys? Your brother just . . . decided to come join us?”

“It wasn't his idea. I asked him to come, so he could spend the weekend with us.”

The answer surprised me, but it shouldn't have. Naturally, Rhys wanted the three of us to get along.

“Come on, what's the big deal? We'll hang out with Jake for a day or two. I don't see the problem.”

“The problem is that you simply inform me of these things, and it doesn't occur to you that I should have a say in them.”

“I didn't think you'd mind.”

“And what if I do? Unlike you, I can't spend my weekends just having fun and being social. So when you set aside some time for just the two of us, I'll do the same.”

“It's not about being social, Thea. The thing is . . .” His hand slipped around my waist and wavered. “I can't be at the concert. Jake has to go in my place.”

“You mean . . . you aren't coming?”

“Believe me, I wish I could. But there is nothing I can do. Not that weekend.”

“No, of course not.” I had been such a fool. Inviting him, imagining him there. “And what's the occasion this time?”

“Occasion?”

“It must be something—or someone—very special, if you are ready to leave me on one of the most important nights of my life.”

A vein went mad inside his cheek. Still—no answer.

“Rhys, I can't be with you unless you tell me the truth.”

Silence. It was ripping out my heart. The way he looked at me, saying nothing.

“You know what, then? Have a nice time with your brother. And please tell him that he's welcome to come to Carnegie. Having at least one Estlin in the audience would certainly be lovely.”

While he stood on the terrace, shocked from the turn of events that had ruined his beautifully mapped out weekend, I ran back through the library, grabbed the bag I had dropped in the hallway the night before, and left.

IT WAS A PERFECT NOVEMBER
morning. Gold leaves everywhere—a saturated, red-flushed yellow as if the sun had decided to show me there was still a world out there, a beautiful world, regardless of whether Rhys showed up at Carnegie or not.

“Whoever saddens a nymph has cut a flower and planted it in the desert.”

I looked in the direction of the voice and saw the janitor who had once unlocked Procter Hall for me. The ground at his feet was covered with twigs. He had been snipping away at one of the pine trees by Cleveland Tower, a pair of shears still ready in his hand.

“Silen . . . how have you been?”

“In harmony with the universe, thank you.” He seemed pleased that I remembered his name. “And you? Is college life all you expected it to be?”

“Mostly. Although sometimes it does feel like a desert.”

“Then may I offer to be water?” He pulled the same dining hall key out of his pocket.

“Thank you, but I don't need it today.”

“No?” His eyebrows furrowed. “Be careful. The desert might become worse if you turn your back on music.”

I wasn't turning my back on anything—now I had my own key to Procter Hall. Strange that the keykeeper wouldn't know about it.

“I will play again, for sure. When the night demands its music.”

He smiled, recognizing his own words.

“By the way, why do you keep calling me a nymph?”

“Because nymphs have an ethereal beauty. Yours reminds me of a . . .”

“Dandelion?” It just slipped out. The man in Tsarevo had described my sister that way.

“Dandelion—possibly, yes. The flower of dreams that may or may not come true. But tell me, who saddened you?”

“Someone I should forget.”

“That bad?” He shook his head. “Those who sadden you this much are rarely worth your sadness.”

I had been telling myself the same thing. The trick, though, was to start believing it.

“So what did this someone do?”

“He keeps secrets from me.”

“Ah, secrets. One is always besieged by secrets. And you think forgetting him is easier than living in a secret's shadow?”

I imagined the dandelion seeds—blown off on their tiny parachutes, one by one:
Maybe. Maybe not.