“What?” I said stupidly.
Harman grinned. “I said that’s an A for both of you. Well done.”
In my mind, the scales that represented my future suddenly lurched from one side to the other as Harman heaved a breezeblock-sized weight onto the positive side. I’d just graduated. I’d just graduated well.
The applause finally started to die away. Connor squeezed my hand and I smiled at him, blinking back tears. And then, after a second, I squeezed back, harder.
It wasn’t over. We’d saved me, but now we needed to save him.
Chapter 35
There was only one other group crazy enough to enter the improvisation challenge—a harpist named Lucita, who was as placid and spiritual as her instrument suggested, and her partner on the violin, a very serious guy named Cho. Both of them already had more than enough credit to graduate, and I suspected the challenge meant different things to them. Pure fun, for Lucita, and a chance to impress his parents, for Cho. From the few times I’d spoken to him, I got the impression that his folks were even pushier than my father.
We watched them listen to the melody they’d have to work with—we’d be given a different one, so we couldn’t gain any advantage. Then the two of them hurried off to a practice room and the clock started. The audience milled about and drank free wine. For us, the thirty minutes seemed to drag on forever. For the two musicians, it was no doubt gone in a flash.
Lucita and Cho hurried back in. Lucita looked vaguely unsettled, but Cho looked downright terrified. They took their seats on the stage, glanced at one another and started to play.
At first, I couldn’t see what they were worried about. They’d come up with an inventive, elaborate piece that wound around the melody, approaching it from a few different angles. But then the harp separated from the violin for a solo and, as it handed back to the violin, I could see Cho panic as he came in too early. His own solo didn’t match—it was note-perfect, but the style didn’t gel with Lucita’s at all.
I knew exactly what had happened, because we’d done the same thing in our early trials. They’d worked out the first part together and then, running out of time, agreed to compose separate solos, with no idea of what the other one would do. We’d found out the hard way that that didn’t work.
When they joined again for the rest of the piece, they were both shaken and clumsy. Lucita would make a mistake and Cho would amplify it, and that in turn would make Lucita more nervous. They were both incredibly skilled, but there was no trust.
When they finished, we applauded harder than anyone else because I knew exactly what they’d just gone through. When Harman announced their grade—a D—they took it well, but I felt my stomach sink through the floor. Lucita and Cho were two of the best in the department and if they couldn’t pull it off, what chance did we have? After the D Connor got for the essay Ruth “helped” him with, he needed a B to graduate.
We took our places on stage. I closed my eyes as the melody we’d have to work with came over the speakers. It was simple and almost featureless—frustratingly so, like a minimalist house with a white couch on a white rug in a white room. It gave us no help with tone or style and part of me swore that it was a tougher piece than Lucita and Cho had been given…although deep down, I knew it was probably no worse.
We stood, and I saw Harman look at the clock on the wall. I half expected him to say, game-show-host style, “And your time starts…now!” But he just nodded to us and smiled—after all, the recital was done. This was just a friendly challenge—a bit of fun. And for him and everyone else—even me—that was true. For Connor—a band clenched tight around my heart—for Connor, this was make or break time.
The same sophomore who’d showed us onto the stage led us up to a practice room—the same one we’d used for our very first rehearsal. I wished we were allowed to do it on Connor’s roof, or even in my apartment. The tiny space only added to my rising panic.
“Do you have any idea what to do?” I asked as soon as the door was closed. “I have no idea what to do.”
“Karen,” Connor said firmly. “Chill. You’ve graduated.”
“But you haven’t.” My breathing was getting faster now. They’d given us a room with a clock, of course, a ticking clock and with every tick it seemed to be speeding up, eating away our precious time and all the oxygen in the room. “It’s all on this—it’s totally unfair, that melody is ridiculous and if we screw this up you’re not going to graduate and I don’t even know where to start and we only have twenty-eight minutes left and—”
“Karen.” His warm palms settled gently on my shoulders.
I stopped.
“We can do this. But I can’t do it without you. I need you with me. Take a deep breath.”
He was right. Connor was great at turning ideas into music, but in our improvisation practice we’d found that the initial spark of inspiration, the angle we took, usually came from me. I took a long, shuddering breath and managed to suck in some air.
“Now help me,” he said. “What comes to mind when you hear the melody?”
“Nothing!” I looked at the clock. Twenty-seven minutes left.
“Close your eyes. Stop looking at the clock. Come on, Karen. There has to be something.”
I sighed and shook my head. “It’s just neutral. Soulless. Mechanical.”
“Mechanical?”
I considered. “Like machines in a factory. Industrial.” Without opening my eyes, I grabbed my bow and tried something. It sounded awful, but the glow of the idea held back the freezing fear. “Not that. More like….” I tried again, and this time inspiration came—a short, jerky riff, repeated over and over. “There. Like that.”
“What if I….” Connor adjusted the distortion on his pedal and played a couple of chords, adding another layer to my driving backbeat. “And then….” He continued and I joined him. Within seconds, anyone watching would have been unable to follow our conversation. It was all nods and signals and half-finished sentences that made perfect sense to us. We hadn’t just connected—we’d blended, the best parts of both of us fusing together and becoming something more. It was the exact opposite of what I’d used to feel each morning, trudging through the snow to Fenbrook. I wasn’t alone anymore.
We lost ourselves to it, playing and stopping and scratching down hurried notes and then playing again. There was a knock on the door and I let out a huge sigh of exasperation at being interrupted after just a few minutes.
“It’s time,” said the sophomore, putting his head round the door.
I looked at the clock. Our thirty minutes were up. What?!
“It’s good,” said Connor. “We’re ready.”
“Ready? We’re not ready!” I could feel the panic surging up in me again. “We’ve barely begun, we’ve just—”
He kissed me. Deep and hard, sweeping me up in his arms and devouring me, my body crushed to his. The panic stalled, right in my chest. Then Connor’s hand was on my breast, stroking the nipple through my dress, and the panic was pushed back down by something much stronger.
“Er—” said the sophomore, who was still standing in the doorway.
Connor released me. “Better?”
I panted and nodded. When I looked at the sophomore, for once I didn’t blush. I was proud.
“Um…this way,” the sophomore told us, rapidly turning red.
I took Connor’s hand and we walked down the stairs together.
***
Sitting there on the stage, I felt like we were gazing at two possible futures. In one of them, Connor graduated and found work, stayed in New York and by my side. In the other….
My fingers tightened on the bow. In the other, if I graduated and he didn’t, I’d damn well go to Ireland with him, or help him find some way to stay in America. I’d fought for him. I wasn’t going to lose him now.
“You may begin,” Harman told us, leaning forward.
We hadn’t rehearsed—most of what we’d worked out, we’d only playe
d once, while the other one listened. There was only a single sketchy lead sheet to jog our memories. The whole point of the exercise was for us to improvise, piecing together the ideas we’d come up with, combining our sounds. My cello began the piece with a dry, jerky riff, like a machine warming up, gradually building in intensity until it became a driving beat rebounding back to us from the walls and filling the space. Then the guitar, harsh and powerful as a jackhammer, carving up the cello’s melody and shaping it into something new.
With no conductor to meld us together, we had to rely on signals from each other to keep time, to know when to shift to the next section. Our eyes were locked on each other’s, quick little nods as we shifted the pace, the bow rising and plunging on the strings, Connor’s hands quick and savage as he made the guitar howl. Adrenaline coursed through my veins, the whole world narrowing down to just Connor’s face as I focused like I’d never focused before.
Two bars of the driving mechanical riff, like a question. A flurry of chromatic scales from Connor—his response. Back in with the riff, this time extended and truly improvised. I kept holding my breath and had to force myself to breathe, my bow just a blur as we went into the final section.
Connor broke off with a flourish and slapped the guitar’s wood, and I filled with a flurry of notes. Seconds later, he did it again, faster and more violent than before, and I filled again, the bow an extension of me. He did it one final time, a hard slap that reverberated around the hall, and I gave it everything I had, coaxing notes from the cello faster than I could think about them, operating on instinct alone. Connor came back in for the final bar, cello and guitar winding around each other like lovers, hard and soft embracing, and we were done.
We sat there in complete silence and stared at each other. He was giving me one of those grins, and panting as hard as I was, and I knew that whatever happened I was going to be with this man for the rest of my life.
The room erupted into applause. I grudgingly wrenched my eyes away from Connor to see the first few people stand up, and the rest of the room follow their lead.
Connor twisted around to look at Harman and the other judges. Just months ago, graduation hadn’t been part of his plan—he’d done the bare minimum necessary to stay at Fenbrook and keep partying. But now I could see the concern on his face, the breathlessness as he dared to hope….
Harman gave him a long look…and then nodded and announced our improvisation grade: an A. As Connor beamed, Harman gave me a different sort of nod. One of respect, and admission that he’d been wrong.
***
It was only when we climbed down off the stage and my body finally started to release some of its tension that I became aware of things. The ache in my shoulders from the relentless playing; the pain in my jaw from grinding my teeth. My legs felt like they might buckle under me at any moment. Connor seemed to sense it and slid an arm around my waist, holding me up even as he blinked and stumbled himself, walking half his usual speed. We were both in shock, unable to grasp that somehow, against all odds, we’d won.
Natasha hurled herself into me from one side in a body hug, and I would have gone sprawling if it wasn’t for Clarissa doing the same thing from the other side. Then Jasmine jumped on my front and only Connor’s arm let me maintain balance.
“That was incredible!” said Natasha. “You didn’t see Harman’s face when you did that fast bit at the end. His jaw was on the table.”
Neil and Darrell joined the crush. They also slapped Connor on the back, which would have knocked over a smaller man. And then my friends all moved back a little to make way for someone. I couldn’t see who it was at first, and then, as Jasmine’s auburn curls moved out of the way—
“Karen,” said my father. “That was…extraordinary.” He stopped and stared at Connor. “Both of you.”
And then he stepped closer to me, which almost made me laugh because if I hadn’t known him better I would have thought he was going to hug me. Then his arms were sliding around my back and—wait, what was he—
He hugged me, his head on my shoulder, my body enveloped in his warmth, and I felt hot tears flood my eyes.
When he eventually stepped back, something was different. Staring at him, I finally figured out what it was—it was the expression on his face as he looked at me. He was seeing me as an adult for the first time.
A tall man was standing beside him, and as I blinked my tears away it took a second for me to register who he was.
“Karen?” he said gently, his voice deep and melodious and not matching his gaunt appearance at all, “I’m Walter Koss, with the New York Philharmonic.”
So much had happened in my life that I swear part of my brain asked “The who?”
“That was some of the finest, tightest ensemble playing I’ve seen in a long time. How would you feel about a trial with us?”
I must have looked weirdly calm and collected for a few seconds, until my brain finally caught up. And then a decade and a half of preparation: every rehearsal, every performance, every hour of solo practice, slammed into me, reducing me to the gaping, spluttering mess he was expecting. “That…would be great,” I managed, before I lost the ability to speak altogether.
Connor pulled me to him and drew me into a long kiss—about the only thing that had the capability to unfreeze my brain. I let the room fade out and lost myself in the feeling of his lips, of his body under my hands. When we finally broke the kiss, there was a woman waiting patiently beside us, an amused expression on her face. The record label rep who’d sat with the judging panel.
“Rachel Liebermann,” she told us. “From TTX Records. That was quite something—not like anything I’ve heard before.”
“You want Connor to record a track?” I asked breathlessly.
She looked at the two of us closely. “Actually, I was hoping the two of you might want to do one together.”
Connor pulled me to him again, laughing, and suddenly I was laughing, too. I felt something settle into place, deep in my mind, warm and comforting and utterly right, and I knew that it wasn’t graduating, or the New York Phil, or a record deal. It was him, making me complete.
Chapter 36
One Month Later
“This is ridiculous,” said Jasmine. “This is meant to be the part where you have to move your stuff aside to make closet space for him. It’s symbolic. But you don’t have any stuff. You could move, like, five guys in here and they could have a drawer each.”
“Good to know, if I ever find myself in that kind of a relationship,” I told her. I moved a few more of my things aside. There. Connor now had a complete closet to himself, and a couple of drawers. I stared at the empty space. “You going to be okay on your own, at Connor’s place? It’s not a great neighborhood.”
“Better than my old one, though,” said Jasmine. “And rent free, up until the end of the month.” Connor had had to give a month’s notice when I’d asked him to move in with me a few days before, and we’d all agreed there was no point in an apartment going empty. “Seriously, Karen, with the money I’ve saved crashing on your couch and another month without rent, I’ll have enough for a deposit on a new place. I’ll be fine. Besides, no way am I sleeping on the couch of a newly-moved-in couple. I need some sleep.”
I punched her on the arm. She was right. She’d be fine.
Natasha came in with a box of sheet music from the lounge. “Where do you want this?”
“Slide it under the bed for now,” I told her. Then, “Wait!”
But it was too late. She’d already knocked it against the other box under my bed, the one packed full of bodice-rippers. “What’s this?!” she asked, part shocked and part delighted. “’The Countess’s Dark Temptation’?”
I snatched the book out of her hand. “Nothing!”
Jasmine was already digging through the box, perilously close to where I kept the dildo. “Oh, wait, getting better: ‘Bound by the Pirate King’?”
I flushed and crammed the box back under the be
d before she could dig any deeper. “Yes. Well. Anyway.”
Natasha shook her head. “You need to get with the program and get yourself a Kindle. Easier to read with the lights out.”
Jasmine frowned at her. “You turn the lights out when you—”
“Enough!” I pleaded.
“Come on,” said Natasha, dragging Jasmine away. “I hear Clarissa.”
I heard it too: the thump of a two-stroke engine. Clarissa had volunteered to go out and get groceries for the party we were throwing that night—a combined boyfriend-moving-in and housewarming party. I’d been in the apartment for three years, but this was the first time it was in my name. I’d be paying the rent and bills, now—another, slightly less romantic reason to ask Connor to move in with me.
In the week after the recital, when I’d had a long, serious talk with my father and he’d agreed that it was time for him to back off, I’d spent a lot of sleepless nights worrying about operating without a safety net. Then I’d convinced myself that Nat, Clarissa and Jasmine had all managed jobs, bills and rent just fine their entire time at Fenbrook. Well, maybe not Jasmine. I’d leapfrogged them, going from having my life run for me straight to being out there on my own in the workplace, but it helped that it was the tight-knit and reassuringly kooky workplace of an orchestra. Musicians, it turned out, were musicians wherever you found them, and I was settling in with the rest of the dwarves already. And I realized that I did have a safety net; I’d always had one—I’d just never relied on it until these last few months. People don’t have to be related to you to be family.
As we stood there waiting for Clarissa and Neil to arrive, I pulled Natasha close. “Thanks,” I told her.
“I should be thanking you. You and Connor. Darrell’s like a different person—the happiest I’ve ever seen him. He’s had maybe one nightmare in a month and when he works it’s like…regular work, you know? I mean, I still have to drag him out of the workshop at 3am sometimes, but he’s doing it because he loves it, not because he feels he has to.”
In Harmony Page 30