“We need you to dance,” I told Natasha between pieces, looking at the measly collection of loose change in the hat. “Last time you danced, we doubled our take.”
“Too cooollld,” said Natasha sweetly. She didn’t look cold. She was snuggled in between Darrell’s legs as they sat on a blanket, both of them wrapped up in coats, hats and scarves and drinking steaming hot chocolates. I gave her a glower, even though they looked adorable.
“What about you?” I asked Clarissa. She was leaning against a tree, flanked by Neil and Connor and there was a very noticeable gap between her and Neil. The two hadn’t exchanged a word since they’d arrived. She shook her head mutely and pointed to her four-inch leather pumps.
“Fine.” I launched into some Vivaldi in the hope that thoughts of summer sun would thaw us out a little. The spring weather suited my mood pretty well—the row with my father, by far the biggest I’d ever had, had left me numb and frozen. I would have felt completely lost, if not for my friends. But looking at how happy Natasha and Darrell were, looking at Clarissa and Neil—even if they weren’t speaking to each other—looking at Dan and especially at Connor…I felt things starting to thaw, just a little. I’d lost contact with the only family I had, but I had my own little family right there.
Connor gave me a grin as he chatted away to Neil and I felt my heart swell to twice its size. I was cold and damp and my hands were aching, but everything was great.
And then Ruth showed up.
She sauntered down the path in her super-tight black jeans as if she’d just happened to come across us (I guessed that Connor had mentioned what we were doing). I watched as she touched Connor on the arm in greeting (I felt my hand clench on the bow) and then ruffled his hair as he made a joke (I missed two notes in a row). I saw Connor make the introductions and everyone nod pleasantly to her, although Clarissa and Natasha both gave me sympathetic looks.
“How’s it going?” asked Ruth when we finished our next piece. Somehow she managed to sound friendly, concerned and incredibly patronizing at the same time.
“Not great,” I told her tightly. Then, because I felt like I should, “Thanks for helping Connor with the essay. Sorry I couldn’t be there.”
“Don’t you worry about that. I’ll always take care of him.” It sounded innocent enough, but in mind there were myriad undertones. I’ve known him much longer than you have. I had him before you. I’m from his country. His body bears my name.
“Great,” I said, feeling sick. “Thanks.” There was an awkward silence. “It’s normally better than this,” I said, nodding at the nearly-empty hat. For some reason, I felt I had to justify it. “But there aren’t enough people. What we really need is for Natasha and Clarissa to dance. People go nuts for that.”
Ruth beamed. “Oh, but I could dance. With Connor.”
I opened and closed my mouth a few times.
“That’s a brilliant idea, Karen,” she told me, as if I was a favored daughter. “Connor, come over here!” She turned to the rest of the quartet. “Can you play something we can dance to?”
Before I could say no, Greg said, “Yep.” I wanted to poke him in the eye with my bow.
Connor walked over and Ruth put a hand on his shoulder. “We’re going to dance. To help them raise money,” she told him.
Connor looked at me, worried, but Ruth put a hand on his cheek and turned him back to face her. “It was Karen’s idea,” she told him.
I wanted to say, No, it wasn’t! I wanted to tell her that I didn’t want her dancing with my boyfriend, but wouldn’t that make me look evil and possessive? It was all for charity, after all….
Nausea churning inside me, I started to play.
It started innocently enough, Ruth and Connor doing a slow, formal dance that had them barely touching fingertips. Ruth was annoyingly good—not anywhere near the standard of the dancers at Fenbrook, but she’d obviously had lessons. What amazed me, though, was Connor—he was surprisingly adept and it hit me far too late that they must have had lessons together. I’d probably reawakened a whole host of memories of happy evenings spent in some dance club. I gritted my teeth.
The dance become closer, the two of them turning and twisting together, and I didn’t miss the way Ruth molded her body to Connor’s, her breasts—much bigger than mine—squashed against his chest. The worst part was that it worked—passers-by stopped and looked and we started to get more money in the hat. And so when the piece finally ended I had to look at the woman who’d just been writhing against my boyfriend and say, “Thank you.”
“No problem,” Ruth told me, still wound around Connor. She made no obvious move to disentangle herself. And then she kissed him. Just a peck on the cheek, meant in fun and certainly nothing I could sensibly yell about. But it lasted just a fraction of a second too long, and the look she gave him as she moved her head back was anything but jokey.
***
Ruth left after a while but it didn’t do much to lift my mood. Was she really trying to get her claws back into him, or was I just being paranoid? The knowledge that she was still sleeping in Connor’s apartment didn’t make things any easier. I had complete faith in his word that he was sleeping on the floor…but in Connor’s tiny apartment that put him just a few feet from her bed.
We finally hit the fifty bucks—thanks, I had to admit, mainly to Ruth and Connor’s dancing—and were packing our instruments away when it happened.
“We can fly coach if it makes you feel better!” Clarissa’s voice. The tail end of a conversation that had been conducted in angry murmurs, rising in volume as she got angry.
“It’s not about how we fly,” said Neil, his voice almost a growl. “You’re not paying.”
All of us suddenly found very important things to do with our instruments. Seconds later, Clarissa stomped up to us; it’s difficult to stomp in four-inch heels, but she’d had a lot of practice. “Are we going, or what?” she asked.
I hefted my cello case onto my back and nodded, watching Neil stalk off in the other direction.
***
In a Starbucks, with my numb fingers wrapped around an Americano, I huddled close to the girls and Natasha and I gave Clarissa the same questioning look. Connor had wisely withdrawn to a separate table with Darrell.
Clarissa had gone for some complex creation that seemed to be at least eighty percent cream and syrup—not a good sign. She used a wooden stirrer as a spoon, taking bites between sentences.
“I want him to come with me when I visit my folks. He says it’s about the money—he can’t afford to fly and he doesn’t want me to pay for him. But I don’t think that’s it.”
“You think he doesn’t want to meet your folks?” I asked carefully.
“I think he doesn’t know how to do any of that…relationship stuff. He knows sex,”—her eyes glazed over for a moment—“God, does he know sex…but he never wants to talk about the future. He closes down or turns away. I mean, it’s stupid. He loves me.” She swallowed, and her voice caught a little. “I mean, he does love me, right?”
Natasha and I each put a hand on her arm. “Of course he does,” said Nat. “He’s just being a biker.”
“It was always going to be complicated,” I said, “given the sex thing.”
Clarissa hacked off a big lump of cream and syrup and sat back, holding it precariously above her doubtless several hundred dollar dress. “Sometimes I wonder if I should just accept it for what it is. Maybe it’s always going to be just a sex thing.” She sighed.
I’m a geek. Or a dwarf. I don’t do people. But the weird thing is, just sometimes, I can see stuff. Maybe it’s because I don’t understand all the surface layers: all the lies and flirting and doubletalk. Most of the time that cripples me—it’s what kept me single for so long—but occasionally, it clears my view and lets me see what’s going on underneath.
I could see Neil as a machine—a big, loud, pounding machine made entirely of iron and fire, like his bike. He’d seen a delicate fairy flitting
around in his headlights and had thundered after it the only way he knew how and, for a while, his simple, brutish approach had been intoxicating. But he was still going full speed and the roar of the engine was now just drowning out everything else.
Putting him in a room with Clarissa’s parents was going to be like dropping a brick wall in front of him and I had a horrible feeling it would be the end of their relationship. What Neil needed was for someone to talk to him, to make him throttle back and shift gear. To pursue Clarissa in a different, gentler way.
Who, though? Me? Talk to Neil?
Just as it had with Jasmine, the fear of being wrong paralyzed me. Clarissa was one of the few friends I had. If I ruined her relationship, what then?
“Maybe you should just go ahead and buy the tickets,” said Natasha. “I’m sure Neil will come round.”
No! I thought. That won’t work! But I just nodded and smiled, and felt like the lamest friend in the world.
“How’s Darrell?” I asked, to cover the silence.
Natasha pressed her lips tight together and I realized she was trying not to look too happy after hearing all of Clarissa’s problems. “Really good,” she said at last, looking across at where he was talking animatedly with Connor. “He’s actually sleeping at night. And yesterday he came home and whisked all the dustsheets off in the workshop. He hasn’t actually started to build anything yet, but he’s thinking about it. The gym’s freed him up, you know? It’s given him an outlet for the anger, so he doesn’t have to funnel it into his work anymore. He can build whatever he wants.”
“So is the sex back on track?” asked Clarissa.
Natasha looked shocked.
“What? Throw me a fricking bone, here! I need cheering up,” said Clarissa, unabashed.
Natasha slowly smiled. “In the hot tub, last night. And then on the lawn, under the stars.”
“You must have frozen your butts off,” said Clarissa with a gasp.
“Didn’t seem to bother us at the time,” said Natasha, smirking. It was good to see her smiling again. For a second, buoyed by my success, I almost thought about intervening with Clarissa and Neil…but then held back. It wasn’t just that I was scared of being wrong…it was that I knew my place in the group. I was the geeky shy one, looked after by my more experienced sisters. It was my job to take advice, not to give it.
With the private stuff over, we pushed the tables together so Darrell and Connor could join us. I snuggled in beside Connor. Darrell sat Natasha on his lap. It was perfect…apart from the absence of one person.
“Neil seems nice,” Connor said to Clarissa, a little tentatively.
Clarissa sniffed, but nodded.
“We were talking about the garage the motorcycle club own. He was saying I should stop in there and work on some stuff with him, maybe make a little extra money—I know a bit about bikes.”
Clarissa leaned over to me. “Don’t let him get mixed up in all that,” she told me with a groan.
I pulled Connor tight into me. “Don’t worry. I’m keeping him close,” I told her. And I meant it. I’d sacrificed my relationship with my father, maybe even both our futures to be with Connor. I wasn’t going to let anything come between us.
Chapter 27
Two days later, Doctor Geisler dropped the bombshell.
We were all packing up to leave when he clapped his hands together and addressed the lecture theater. “So! One more thing before I let you go. There’s been some concern in the department that the generous deadlines we normally give you….”—he paused for sarcastic laughter from the back—“are allowing some of you to get a little help with your papers.”
My stomach knotted. Were they talking about Connor, and the sudden rise in his grades? Had my helping him been too obvious?
“My colleagues in contemporary music have already hit their students with a next-day deadline essay, just to shake things up a little,” Geisler told us. It was about Connor. That’s why they’d sprung that essay on him and the others. If only I’d been there that night, I would have been able to help him to a good grade, even with such short notice. But with only Ruth assisting him…I groaned inwardly.
“Now of course, it’s only fair that since they suffered, you suffer a little too,” Geisler told us. I heard a few people grumble, but I perked up. Essays were my strongest area after performances, and it would be a chance to raise my grade average a little—and maybe take the pressure off when it came to the recital.
“Don’t panic, though,” said Geisler. “I have no intention of burdening your already overworked brains with another essay. Instead, I want an oral presentation to the rest of the classical music department on a piece of your choice. Tomorrow.”
***
“That—That—”—sometimes, I really wished I cursed—“That idiot! One more F and I’ll flunk, even if we ace the recital!” I was pacing as much as Connor’s tiny apartment allowed. When he’d answered the door, he’d taken one look at my face and sent Ruth out for the evening.
“You’ll have to do the presentation, then,” he told me quietly.
I let out a kind of hysterical laugh. I could feel the panic rising in me, just as it had when Harman had first told me I couldn’t perform solo. Just like then, the knowledge that I was going to flunk was closing in on me from all sides, crushing the air out of me. I heard Connor say my name once, twice, but I couldn’t stop pacing—
He stepped in front of me and grabbed my upper arms, lifting me off the floor. “Karen!”
I focused on him, though I still didn’t seem to be breathing.
“It’s okay,” he told me. “We’ll figure it out.”
I was buried in the freezing ice of raw fear and his words were nothing more than a gentle wind blowing on the outside of my tomb. But slowly, as he kept speaking to me in that soft, gentle voice, the words started to melt through to me. The ice shrank back, giving me air, and I took a long, shuddering gasp.
“It’s okay,” he said again, and I started to believe that maybe it could be.
Connor put me carefully down on the edge of the bed and I thought for a moment that that was his plan—to push away the fear with sex. But he crouched down in front of me, staring into my eyes, and I realized he was matching his breathing to mine, leading me to safety.
When I was calm, the embarrassment settled in. Together with a kind of tiredness, as I accepted my fate. I’d been crazy to even try to fight it. I should have given up as soon as Dan broke his arm, and I could have avoided all the stress and heartache of the last few months.
And then you’d never have gotten together with Connor, a little voice reminded me.
“Sorry,” I told him.
“It’s fine. But do you get them a lot—the panic attacks?”
“Only a few times before.” I thought back to Boston. “Usually when….” I sighed. “Usually when I have to talk to a lot of people. That’s why I don’t do presentations.”
He nodded. And then he said, “You have to.”
“I can’t.”
“If you don’t, you won’t graduate.”
“I can’t,” and this time I said it differently. Not belligerent or angry or hysterical, just…sad. Because the one thing I knew was that my fear was immutable.
He nodded. “Yes you can.” And he kissed me. Not a kiss of passion, meant to distract me. A heartfelt, warm kiss of love that took me by surprise and filled me with strength. He believed in me, just as I’d believed in him. However scared I was, I had to try to live up to that faith, just as he’d lived up to mine.
I let out a long sigh, closing my eyes. When I opened them again, I looked into his eyes. “How?” I asked levelly.
***
He took me to a tiny bar and bought me a beer. “Now,” he told me. “Close your eyes, and tell me what goes through your head when you’re about to do one of these things.”
I didn’t understand why he’d hauled me out of the apartment. Couldn’t we have done this there? “Umm…that eve
ryone’s going to laugh at me?” I tried.
“Okay. Go on.”
“That they’re going to heckle and shout stuff out and ask me stuff I can’t answer.”
“Okay.”
“That I’ll forget what to say and just dry up.”
“Open your eyes.”
I did. He was leaning back in his chair, sipping his beer. “Do you know what all those fears are called?”
“Terrifying?”
“Normal.”
I looked at him doubtfully. “If everyone gets them, no one would ever do a presentation, or a speech, or anything.”
“The only difference between you and everyone else is that you’re a control freak.”
“Thanks.”
He looked at me seriously. “Think of it as a play. The audience are there to play a part too. You’re trying to control them and you can’t. Forget about them laughing or heckling. You play your part and trust them to play theirs. If they’re nice, you’ll be fine. If they’re not nice, they’ll look like arseholes, not you.” He took a long slug of beer. “That leaves forgetting your lines, for which we have a napkin.” He took a napkin from the bar and pulled out a pen, then thrust both into my hand. “Choose a piece of music.”
“Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet,” I said.
“Why should someone listen to it?”
“It’s incredible—it tells an entire Shakespearian tragedy without words.”
“So write down the parts of the story it describes.”
I did, stripping it down to the five key moments.
“It can’t be that easy,” I said, staring at the napkin.
“Finish your beer,” he told me, “and let’s find out.”
***
In Harmony Page 25