Shades of Blue (Part Two of The Loudest Silence)

by Olivia Janae

  Kate was horrified. “I’m not—”

  “What I don’t understand is if you love her and she loves you, then why are neither of you doing anything about it? Why are you not with her?”

  “It’s, uh,” Kate awkwardly ran her hands through her hair, “complicated. She doesn’t want to be with me.”

  “Bullshit. You’re just afraid to go after her.”

  “I am not!” Kate cried, offended.

  “I’m straight, and I’m swimming in lesbian drama. I’m so tired of it! You want her. Stop sitting around and bitching, stop refusing to sign, and do something! Why won’t you fucking sign in front of her? She saw you do it, and now she thinks, ugh, I don’t even blame her because you won’t sign to her!”

  Kate felt her skin go cold. Vivian had seen her signing earlier. That’s what that look had been about. “I—” Why was she so afraid to sign to Vivian?

  “I need to go,” Charlie snapped.

  “Wait, are you leaving?”

  “My best friend just said some seriously nasty things to me, and I can’t – I just can’t be in the same room with you two anymore.”

  Kate just nodded, feeling stupid and small. She watched Charlie until she was gone.

  “Everyone, I have just been informed that dinner is ready.”

  Kate hadn’t left the corner, the wheels in her head turning.

  She couldn’t believe that she had made such an ass out of herself. No one likes to be put in the middle, and she had been doing that to Charlie without even realizing it. She felt horrible. She felt confused.

  Dinner was good, as Kate had expected it to be. Jacqueline would have insisted on hiring the best. Still, despite the exquisite food and the top-shelf wine, she didn’t enjoy a second of it.

  The table was long and crowded, and being Jacqueline’s project, Kate was placed close to its head. This meant that Vivian and her date were seated across from her. Kate was sure Jacqueline had done this on purpose, and yet whatever her evil scheme, it hadn’t worked. Vivian spared her only one look, one to point out that the seat beside her was suddenly empty.

  Dessert was served and then small discussions started up and down the table, people grouping off into twos and threes to talk over their port.

  A few tried to pull Kate in, but her mind was occupied by Vivian. She only gave the barest of responses.

  “If you’ll excuse me,” Vivian quietly announced after her second glass of the dessert wine and rose from the table.

  Kate watched her go, the clicking of her heels grating of her nerves.

  She didn’t give herself permission, and yet suddenly she was up and following. She caught up with Vivian just before she entered the restroom.

  “Hey. Can we talk?”

  “I’m busy.” Vivian turned to go, but Kate stepped between her and the door.

  “Five minutes.”

  “I do not have five minutes, so if you will excuse me.”

  “Okay, then tell me why you cared.”

  “What?”

  “Tell me why it bothered you so much that I was here with Charlie. Is it really because she isn’t supposed to talk to me? She was so freaking hurt, Viv.”

  “Ms. Flynn, I have more important things—”

  “You might as well answer, Vivian. I’m not going to drop it. I want to know. Come on, Vivian, we used to be friends, not just girlfriends! This is—”

  “Tell you what,” she said, her voice like stone. “Why don’t you go and spend some more time with my best friend. I’m sure that will distract you plenty. But oh!” Vivian’s mouth popped open, horror on her face. “I guess she left, didn’t she? Couldn’t even keep her here.”

  Vivian stepped around her, the door locking with a resounding click.

  Kate had absolutely no idea how to get Vivian to talk to her. Over the next day she became more and more convinced that Charlie was right. She needed to talk to her. Charlie had made it sound like Vivian had been doing the same thing, but in reverse. She had to know what that meant.

  Vivian didn’t make her job easy, though.

  Kate showed up at her office the next morning, a bagel in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other.

  Charlie met her before she could force her way in, though, and after a moment of speaking through Vivian’s door, Charlie apologized and said she wouldn’t see her.

  Kate just nodded and gave the food to Charlie along with another apology.

  That night at rehearsal Kate tried again, and once again failed.

  On her train ride home, she sent another text insisting she just wanted to talk.

  The response she got was scathing: ‘You forfeited your right to speak with me the moment we broke up. Stop harassing me or there will be reprisals.’

  Kate didn’t know what else to do, so she gave up.

  There was nothing she could do. So Kate turned her mind to things she could hopefully control. Things like her looming audition.

  Kate had planned on waking the next morning calm, cool, and ready but her stomach had other plans. She woke from a vicious stress dream to find it in knots, cramping, and curdling. In the dream, she had been playing and playing, trying to force the beautiful melody from her cello, but the only sounds that came were awkward squawks and groans. The judges had run from the room screaming, their hands pressed firmly over their bleeding ears, while Vivian and Jacqueline stood in the audience crowing that she was not good enough.

  Kate groaned into her pillow, wrapping her arms around her middle.

  The audition was tomorrow. She knew that was what this was about. She moaned again, deciding that she wouldn’t allow herself to spend the day sick—before she was up and dashing to the bathroom to be, in fact, violently sick.

  Max came around the corner, a box of dry cereal clutched to his chest, his eyes and lips a perfect O. “You sick, Mommy?”

  “No, buddy.” Kate smiled weakly. “I’ll be okay. Go watch cartoons and I’ll come join you in a minute.”

  She washed her face and brushed her teeth then pulled on her most comfortable I-don’t-feel-good sweater.

  She just had to keep her mind off of it. She knew that.

  She tried to settle into cartoons with Max, but all of the negative thoughts kept kicking her hard in the soft spot of her temple. She paced the length of the living room and imagined herself stepping onstage, but instead of sitting as she was supposed to, she tripped and fell flat on her cello, ruining her chance at the audition and ending her career in one fell swoop. She imagined getting halfway through the first piece and forgetting everything that followed. She saw herself beginning, playing better than she ever had in her life until suddenly the strings sliced all of her fingers open to the bone. She imagined every version of possible and unlikely failures over and over, tormenting herself.

  She rushed to the bathroom and was sick again.

  She would have thought that at some point in the day she would have been drained, her fear eliminated or at least reaching its highest peak, but it never seemed to happen. She had never taken an audition this big, where the odds were stacked so perfectly against her while also so evenly in her favor. Therein lay the problem. If she was taking this audition with no hope that she could win, then her nerves wouldn’t be there. Only, she was in the best playing shape of her life. There was actually a chance.

  She rushed to the bathroom yet again.

  The only time she stopped getting nervously sick was when she spent Max’s nap time trying out John’s meditation. It worked well, soothing her thoughts and her nerves, until Mary called to sweetly wish her luck and inadvertently reminded her of just how big a deal the situation was.

  As the afternoon wore on, she couldn’t help but think about the plans she and Vivian had previously made for this day. They had agreed that distraction was the best way to go, a day trip maybe, or perhaps an afternoon on the lake shore.

  Around dusk, she heard someone knock forcefully on the door. Her sweaty hair was pulled back in a messy bun, her cheek
s were sallow; she was on her fourth Smart Water of the day.

  John stood behind the door carrying a take-out bag and looking stunned as she fidgeted from one foot to the other, “Wow, you look like shit, Flynn.”

  “Thanks, John.”

  He scooped up Max who giggled at the man’s scratchy beard. “You all right?”

  “Mama throwed up.”

  “What? You sick? Man, that’s the worst luck ever!”

  “No. Not sick.”

  “Ahhh. Worried about tomorrow?”

  “No,” she choked and rushed back to the bathroom.

  “Don’t do this to yourself!”

  “Shut up, John!”

  She had planned on kicking him out, but his unannounced appearance was actually a blessing in disguise. He made her laugh. He forced her to eat some Chinese food and then kept her giggling so she would keep it down. Then, after helping to put Max to bed, he got her motivated to get ready for bed as well.

  “There is no reason to be nervous. Just see it as a growing opportunity. You got this, stop worrying.”

  Kate scoffed. “Easy for you to say.”

  12

  Kate woke up the morning of her audition for Lyric Opera feeling exactly the opposite of how she had the day before. She wasn’t sick, she wasn’t nervous or dizzy. She was slightly thirsty after the exertion of the previous day, but otherwise she was thankful to find she was calm and ready to do this.

  It was a professional habit of hers. If she lost her mind the day before, then she was usually able to pull it together when it came down to it. She was nothing if not a pro.

  She sat up in bed, her lips clamped tightly together just in case she would be sick again, but she was fine. She breathed a sigh of relief and pulled her hair up into a ponytail, happily remembering that by that time the following day, the audition, for better or for worse, would be over.

  She couldn’t think about Vivian or Charlie or any of it. Not today.

  Kate didn’t say much throughout breakfast, and Max seemed to understand. He didn’t even seem perturbed, and instead spent breakfast pushing far too many banana slices into his mouth at the same time.

  “I’ll get it!” he cried, spraying globs of banana when there was a knock at the door. She let him go, knowing it was Teresa, instead wiped up the blobs.

  Kate kissed his cheek when he returned, happy her audition time was an early one.

  “I don’t know exactly when I’ll be back today,” she told Teresa. “I’m sorry. If I don’t advance, then it will be in two or three hours. If I do, it could be all night. So I’ll call and let you know if you’re staying tonight, okay?”

  Teresa’s eyes went owlishly large. “Ooooh,” she hummed. “That’s right, today’s the—”

  “Okay!” Kate cut her off. “I’ll see you two tonight.” She kissed Max’s sloppy face and headed out the door before Teresa could say much more.

  Kate got to the legendary Civic Opera House, home of Lyric Opera, forty-five minutes before her actual audition time, which was perfect. That gave her just enough time to find where she needed to go and warm up before it was her turn.

  She pushed past the heavy doors and paused just inside of the lobby. The grand pillars, the crimson staircases, the huge space, at the moment vacant of patrons, gave her a small thrill. She loved old opera houses like this one.

  The floor was a stark white with systematically placed tan patches; the lamps on each white pillar looked like hung torches and brought out the red of the stairs and the walls. Her mind wandered a little as she stared up at the two-tiered chandelier, wondering what it would be like to come here every day for work. The thought of getting to know this building, of memorizing its scent, of the way her shoes sounded on the floor, of which coffee shop nearby was best, was exhilarating.

  She caught herself before the thoughts could run away with her, and swallowed hope down, hard. She refused to allow herself to think about it. Instead she gulped in some air and headed straight to the check-in table on the far end of the hall.

  “Name?” the woman behind the table asked without looking up from her index cards.

  “Flynn.”

  “Okay, Miss Flynn. Number forty-eight. Here is your preliminary list. You are in room 3C. Go through those doors, take the elevator up to the third floor, down the hall, and it will be the third door on the left. If you follow Andy, he will show you.”

  Kate nodded and followed the volunteer to the small greenroom just beside a series of practice and warm-up rooms.

  The noise released from the room the moment the door opened was like a physical force strong enough to knock her clean off her feet. It smacked her with a healthy set of nerves.

  Cellos were squeaking and squawking, many pounding out the preliminary list. From every corner, cellists were humming and singing as they tuned. Over the years, Kate had learned that there were two types of people at auditions. The first was the type to sit quietly, perhaps practice for a few minutes, but mostly they just tried to enjoy the experience – or tune it out entirely. They were calm and usually spent the time in their own world doing their own thing.

  The second type were, well, everyone else. These people sat in the middle of the floor, demanding attention while glaring at anyone who dared to interrupt them or, god forbid, practice the same piece they were at that moment. They spent their time practicing frantically, perhaps scratching notes in their panic, their eyes growing wilder each time a mistake was made. Kate hated the second type and did her best to stay away from them. They radiated stress, and if you stood too close, you always caught it like a bad cold.

  She recognized a number of faces in the crowd as she walked along the edge of the room, but that wasn’t surprising at all. It was typical to run into one or two people you knew at any given audition, but none of these faces were past friends so she didn’t bother to say hello.

  Kate found a corner that was a little less chaotic than the others and put her headphones in. She would practice only enough to warm her muscles and then it was time for John’s meditation.

  Her hands flowed smoothly over the hard cello strings, allowing muscle memory to take over as she listened to the loud rock and roll blaring in her ears. She hummed, her head bopping along as she tried to lose herself, earning a glare from many around her. Her plan worked perfectly, though; she was too busy listening to Joan Jett swear she didn’t give a damn about her bad reputation to care about the daggers being flung at her or the nerves that were trying to squirm their way into her belly.

  Despite her insistence on tranquility, she still couldn’t help the way her breath caught in her throat for just a second as the personnel manager appeared in the doorway. The whole room, which had been steadily blaring, froze; everyone turned to watch him, bows frozen against strings, mouths slightly agape. He didn’t seem alarmed by the sudden attention at all. He just squared his shoulders and began to summon the first few people into their private practice rooms before their auditions. The room held a collective breath, waiting to see if it was their turn and then released, returning to their activities, when their numbers were not called.

  Kate’s nerves only flared their ugly head once, surfacing despite her best efforts when the tall, balding man appeared in the doorway and called, “Twenty-two, forty-eight, seventeen, and sixty-three, please.”

  Her stomach and her head swam as one, and she stumbled to her feet, worried about the need to be sick again.

  She grit her teeth. She would not do that. She would not. She swallowed back the feeling with difficulty and followed the man to her individual practice room, doing her best not to let her shoulders slump or her face look too worried.

  “Okay. Made it this far. I got this,” Kate whispered to the bare white walls. Her hands were shaking, but she played quickly through the music the audition committee would most likely ask for. She didn’t critique herself or think in any way, she simply let the music happen. When she was done, she closed her eyes, put in her headphones, and hit pl
ay on the meditation track. The tinkling of chimes and the moan of a sound bowl filled her ears, and, though she wasn’t a big believer in this type of thing, it was easier than she would have thought to sit in the small, white box of a room and focus on taking long, deep breaths.

  The knock on the door roused her from her semi-conscious state just as the willowy voice was asking her to reabsorb her energy back into her body.

  “We’re on the person ahead of you.”

  “Right.” She blinked a few times to clear away the fog in her mind. “Yeah, okay.”

  She packed up her belongings and continued her deep breathing, mind zeroing in on the task ahead with a nervous tremor.

  She could do this.

  She was a badass.

  Max had always insisted she was a rock star, and right now she needed to believe it.

  Her mind was roaring a tribal war cry as she bounced on the balls of her feet, pumping herself up until the personnel manager appeared at her door with a professionally blank smile and led her to the stage door. Again, her nerves fought to free themselves from the cage she had shoved them in, but she had locked them away too well. They were her prisoner.

  She had this.

  “Number forty-eight?” a small woman just inside the stage door asked. She wasn’t surprised to see the union rep standing there. This was common practice, to be sure the audition was run fairly and without any bias.

  She shook her hand but was distracted from polite conversation by the typical audition setup. A large white scrim was hanging down, cutting the gigantic, bare stage off before the apron. On her side of the partition was a small stand for her music, a single chair to sit in, and a series of mats leading from where she stood to where she had to sit. This was typical. The world of classical music had been far behind the feminist movement and therefore, to avoid any bias or judgments of anything other than skill, most auditions were behind partitions or screens until the final round; just like the mat was there to cancel out the telltale sound of high heels or flats.