Solo (Symphony Hall)

by Lauren E. Rico

  Danny nods. “I guessed, yeah. Why didn’t she audition for me this year?”

  Russell looks uncomfortable all of a sudden. “Well, it’s not really my place—”

  “He doesn’t want to embarrass me by telling you that I didn’t have the money for the application fee,” comes Katherine’s voice from behind us. All eyes swing to her. But she doesn’t look embarrassed at all. In fact, she looks radiantly happy.

  “He offered to lend it to me, but I wouldn’t accept. I decided I’d come and conduct for you later this year after I’ve graduated from here and had some time to squirrel away a little cash. I was hoping to try for early admission,” she explains.

  “And you would be Kate,” Danny says, taking one of her hands in both of his. “What a pleasure to meet you. Your conducting is”—he pauses, seeming to search for the right word—“a revelation.”

  She blushes from below her neckline all the way up to her forehead.

  “Uh, well, thank you,” she murmurs, suddenly bashful “It was quite an honor—and a surprise—to conduct for you.”

  “Miss Brenner,” I say, turning on my coolest tone, “Dr. Gillies and I went to school together. He was visiting the area and asked to sit in on a rehearsal. I think you’ve made quite an impression on him.”

  Katherine looks at me and back at Danny before putting an arm on Russell’s shoulder.

  “I didn’t realize you and Dr. Markham knew one another, but you should know that Russell has mentioned you many, many times.”

  Russ looks pleased to be back in the loop again.

  “Well, Kate, I was very impressed by what I saw this evening. Both in your handling of a difficult situation and in your conducting. You can be sure I won’t be forgetting your name once I get back home to New York and back to work at the conservatory. Now, if you’ll excuse us, my old roommate here owes me a dinner before I head back down the mountain.”

  “I wish you’d just stay at my house,” I mutter.

  “Sorry, Drew. My mother’s pancakes wait for no man. If I’m not there in the morning, I forfeit my stack. Russ, please give me a call when you’re headed up to New York again, okay?”

  “I will,” Russell assures him with a smile. “It was good to see you, Danny. Drew,” he acknowledges me with a curt nod. “Come, Kate. Let’s go back to my office so I can give you some notes.”

  Katherine gives me a quick glance back over her shoulder as she follows him out of the concert hall, leaving me alone with my friend.

  “Oh, Drew,” Danny groans softly, shaking his head. “You are so fucked, man.”

  “I know, I told you. I just can’t stay away from her. And my God, the way she conducts…”

  Danny’s shaking his head. “Not her, man. Him. Russell.”

  “Oh, he’s just being a dick, as usual. He’s like that all the time since Casey.”

  “Christ, Drew, get your head out of your ass! Russell was almost your father-in-law. You know him better than that. Dude, he knows you better than that.”

  My heart skips a beat. He’s right. I can feel the horror etched on my face. It’s reflected in the piteous way my old friend is looking at me.

  “Drew, man, you do not have the luxury of thinking Russell Atherton is stupid. Or blind. He knows about you and Katherine Brenner. It’s just a matter of time before he realizes that he knows.”

  And just like that, I hear the ticking of the time bomb as it starts its countdown toward inevitable destruction.

  …

  Wednesday April 26th 9:22 p.m.

  K: OMGOMGOMG! That was SO amazing! I can’t believe you invited Danny Gillies to come and see me conduct! You sneaky bastard, you! I hope you boys are having some fun tonight. Please thank him again for me. I have to go back to Russell’s office now so we can go over the video he took of me conducting and give me some notes before the next rehearsal. MY rehearsal! SQUEE!!!!! In less than a month I’m going to conduct in front of my biggest audience ever! You’d better be planning on coming, Dr. D! May 10th—the Wed before orals. Xoxo K.

  Chapter Forty

  Kate

  It’s ten thirty by the time I get home from my post-rehearsal postmortem with Russell, and all the spots close to the apartment building are gone. But I don’t mind. Between the conducting, Danny Gillies, and my toasty new blue parka, I’m lost in my own swirly, dreamy, happy place. I look up at the stars in the black sky and smile. I’m happy. And that’s something I haven’t been for a very long time.

  I’m so caught up in my reverie, that I don’t notice the shadowy figure ahead of me until I’ve walked right into him. Before I can recoil, he’s locked his hands onto my upper arms, squeezing tightly. I can just make out the blue-green color of his eyes, though they don’t look as bright in the dark.

  “Kate, Kate, Katie Kate,” Stalkerazzi Kevin sings cheerfully. “So nice to see you again! It’s been awhile since our last date.”

  “Let go of me!” I spit at him, but he just sneers down at me.

  “Oh, don’t be like that, Kate. C’mon! I just thought I’d pay you a visit. Why don’t you invite me up to your apartment? I was going to surprise you there, but for some reason my key doesn’t work anymore. Did we change the locks, Katie?”

  I force myself past the initial jolt of fear and try to pull away from him. But he’s bigger and stronger and he just tightens his grip.

  “Help!” I yell.

  He pulls me close to him in an airtight embrace, putting his mouth to my ear when he speaks.

  “Now, Kate, you don’t want to cause a scene, do you? What would the papers say about a fleet of police cruisers in your parking lot? Come on, why don’t we go on up to your apartment and have a chat? I’d just love to hear some of your personal thoughts on your father and his political views.”

  He lets go of me without warning and I’m so off-balance that I fall to the ground with a thud. I’m not hurt, just stunned. And really, really pissed.

  “Did you just put your hands on me and—and push me?” I growl up at him incredulously.

  “Nah, I think you’re just clumsy.” He grins. “But hey, look at you with a new winter coat. I’m sure it softened your landing. What happened? Did Daddy feel guilty when he saw you shivering outside of the restaurant last week?”

  “I thought we agreed you weren’t going to follow me anymore, you son of a bitch!”

  “No, no, no, Katie! After our little encounter, I was even more intrigued by you. You’re a tough cookie. I like tough, Kate. I like it very much,” he says with a self-satisfied grin.

  Son of a bitch. Time to wipe it right off his face. I lunge forward toward his shins and he falls backward, substantially harder than I did. I crawl out of his reach and scramble to my feet, already fishing for my cell phone. But it’s not in my pocket.

  “Looking for this?” he asks, producing the phone from his pocket.

  Damn! He must have grabbed it when he was holding onto me just now.

  “You’re insane! You think you can just show up outside my building and threaten me? And for what? A sound bite?”

  He sits up slowly, wincing with the effort. “Fuck! I think you fractured a vertebra!” he whines as he lumbers back up onto his feet.

  “That’s not all I’m going to fracture if you don’t give me my phone back and get the hell out of here!”

  “Yeah, right, Katie…”

  Before he can finish his obnoxious thought, I move to kick him in the ribs. My mistake. He’s totally expecting that. When he grabs my sneaker and pulls, I go down again, this time flat on my back. I hit the frozen ground with a grunt, even as he’s getting up again. We’ve switched positions now, which might have been a bad thing, except for the fact that I can see what’s behind him…and he can’t.

  “I reckon you might wanna rethink that,” Clinton says, baseball bat leaning against his shoulder.

  Kevin spins to the side and I see several expressions pass over his face. First, his mouth forms a surprised O. After that, his brows draw
into an angry V. Finally, his mouth twists into a perfect U as he smiles at the old man standing there. I’m wondering what other letters he might be able to imitate when he swings around to face Clinton, who doesn’t move so much as an inch. That is, until Stalkerazzi pulls back his arm to punch him. Apparently Clinton doesn’t like that idea too much, because the bat shoots straight out like a bayonet, nailing Kevin in the chest. Hard. He doubles over and drops to his knees on the icy asphalt, the phone flying out of his hands.

  “Katie, your phone fell over there on the sidewalk,” Clinton says with a nod. “I’ll keep an eye on this sombitch, you call the police.”

  Stunned by everything that’s just transpired, I scramble up onto my feet again and retrieve my phone so I can dial nine-one-one on this creep. Again. Once that’s done, I make the other call. The one I’m afraid to make because I know if I do, he’ll freak. The one I’m afraid not to make, because I know if I don’t, I’ll freak.

  Chapter Forty-One

  Drew

  She’s waiting for me just inside the front door of her building when I pull up. She comes out and hops into the cab of my truck with a small gym bag over her shoulder. I pull the truck into an empty space, throw it into park, and pull her across the bench seat into my arms.

  “Are you okay?”

  She nods into my chest without looking up at me.

  “Did he hurt you?”

  I struggle to keep my voice even as I ask that question. She shakes her head no and snakes her arms around my waist to pull me closer. I rest my chin on top of her head.

  “It’s okay, Katherine. It’s going to be okay.”

  When she finally looks up, her eyes are glittering with the tears she’s fighting back.

  “He ripped my new coat,” she says in a miserable whisper. “I’m so sorry.”

  I smile and kiss her forehead.

  “Not to worry. We’ll get you another one. And we’ll add Destruction of Property to the charges against the asshole.”

  This makes her smile, too.

  “I see you packed a bag this time. Does that mean you don’t want to sleep in my shirt?”

  A hint of pink colors her cheeks.

  “Funny,” she says, “I seem to have forgotten to pack my pajamas…”

  …

  The fire is warm, the pillow is soft, and the music of Bach is filling my dreams. But somewhere from deep inside my slumber is the nagging sense in the back of my mind that I need to get up and check on Katherine. My eyes flutter open and I’m peering into the familiar glow of my fireplace. I’m wide awake now, I’m certain of it. And yet, somehow, the Bach from my dreams has spilled over into my reality.

  Because I’m not dreaming it, I realize suddenly. I get off the couch where I seem to recall being with Katherine before we both passed out from exhaustion. When I turn around, I see her. But she doesn’t seem to notice me as I move slowly in Bach’s direction until I’m standing behind Katherine as she plays the piano. I don’t let on that I’m there, I just stand in silence, in the shadows, where I can see her hands on the keyboard.

  There’s a famous scene in the old movie, The Miracle Worker in which teacher Anne Sullivan tries, with unrelenting persistence, to reach into the dark, silent world of Helen Keller. In one iconic scene, Anne spells the word “water,” with her fingers, into Helen’s hand. As she does this, she puts Helen’s hand under the water, trying to get her to make the connection between it and the word being spelled into her hand over and over again. Those five letters cause an epiphany, an instant of understanding so explosive that it blows a hole through the previously-impenetrable wall of darkness and silence, bringing color to Helen’s blind eyes and music to Helen’s deaf ears.

  As I stand here my mind recalls this image so clearly, with such potency, that it nearly knocks me off my feet. And I watch. Katherine is seated on the bench, eyes closed and head tilted back rapturously. The fingers of her left hand walk the easy distance between the bass notes while, on the right, they actually spell out a trill, a line, a slowly unraveling melody. Her wrists arch slightly, delicately as she lifts and relocates them again and again. The gentle motion across the octaves belies the strength and commitment of her fingers as they spell out the Aria from Bach’s Goldberg Variations from memory.

  In a single, earth-shattering beat, it’s as if my world explodes, suddenly filled with the richest of sounds and the most vibrant of colors. Katherine Brenner has broken through a wall I hadn’t even realized I’d erected. When her hands come to rest at the end of the Aria, she stops. As if sensing my gaze upon her, she opens her eyes to find me shocked and dazzled all at once.

  I see the puzzlement in her eyes and she opens her mouth to speak, but I am sitting beside her on the bench before the words can slip free. Before I can stop myself from putting her face in my hands and drawing her lips to mine. She doesn’t fight me. Instead, her arms wrap under my arms and up my back to my shoulders, pulling my chest so close to hers that I can feel her heart beating underneath the white cotton shirt that she’s wearing. My shirt.

  She tastes soft and sweet, her mouth opening hungrily to mine. I hear a soft whimper from her and I pull back just enough to get a good look at her face. Her eyes are half closed, her lips cherry red and glistening from our contact.

  “Do you…do you want me to stop?” I ask in a whisper.

  She shakes her head. “No. Please, don’t,” she says, leaning forward to find my lips again. I don’t make her lean too far, pressing myself down to her while I reach behind and pull her closer.

  Before I know what I’m doing, I’m on my feet and taking her with me. We’re stuck together in a tangled, stumbling embrace as we somehow move from one end of the large room to the other. I grunt when my hip hits the sharp edge of an end table, and her wayward elbow knocks over a book that’s balancing on the edge of a shelf.

  “Oh, to hell with this,” I mutter, suddenly bending down and scooping her up in my arms, the same way that I did when I carried her in from her car. But this time she’s not fighting me. This time, she throws her head back and kicks her feet in joy.

  …

  “This is SO not how I imagined this night would turn out,” I grumble while I search the closet for the comforter. I find it on the top shelf, all tucked away in its zip-up bag, where my mother put it on their visit last year.

  “Hey, I love to be swept off my feet and carried up to bed as much as the next girl, but we’ve got to stick to the plan. See, not so much work,” she adds, as we each take a side of the blue-and-white striped cover and snap it up into the air so it wafts down into place on the bed.

  “I know it wasn’t much work. I was just saying it would have been a lot less work if you’d sleep in my bed instead of in here,” I reply grumpily.

  Katherine stops and puts her hands on her incredibly sexy hips.

  “Hey,” she clucks at me. “What did I just say? You know the rules, Dr. Markham. No more hanky-panky till I’ve got that diploma in my hot little hand.”

  “I can think of a few other things I’d like to put in your hot little hand,” I mutter and am rewarded with the thwap! of a pillow to the head. I give her a sheepish grin. “Can’t blame a guy for trying.”

  I’m relieved to see her like this, decompressing instead of deconstructing. I was afraid her run-in with that creep journalist—not that he even deserves that title—would leave her a mess. And maybe she is a little shaken, but she seems to feel safe here with me. And I like that. A lot.

  She sits down on the edge of the bed and surveys her surroundings.

  “This is a really nice room.”

  “Thanks. It doesn’t get used very often.”

  “I was surprised Danny Gillies wouldn’t be using it tonight. Didn’t you invite him to stay when you asked him to come and watch me conduct?” she asks pointedly.

  Oh. So, I guess we’re doing this now.

  “I did offer. But you heard him, he has breakfast plans in the morning.”

  “Why did
you ask him to come, Drew?”

  The question isn’t an accusation, so much as a curiosity and I’m relieved by that. I’ve been afraid she’d be angry that I took the liberty of asking my friend to come without consulting her first.

  “You know why,” I say quietly, holding her icy-blue gaze with my own. When she doesn’t reply, I sit next to her on the mattress.

  “He’s a nice guy,” she says at last.

  “He is. And he was very taken with you.”

  “You mean because we’re…together,” she deduces. Incorrectly.

  “No. Not because ‘we’re together.’ Not because we’re anything. You blew him away with your conducting. Hell, Katherine, you blew me away with your conducting.”

  She looks at me out of the corner of her eye.

  “Really? You swear?”

  I wrap an arm around her and pull her to me, resting my chin atop her silky dark hair. It smells like lilacs today.

  “I swear it. And I’m sorry, I should have asked you first. Honestly, I wasn’t even going to tell you he was there. But you were struggling. I wasn’t sure if knowing he was there would make things better or worse, but I rolled the dice. And it seems to have paid off.”

  She nods underneath my head and then, with absolutely no warning, Katherine hurls herself at me, knocking me flat on my back on the bed.

  “Hey, what’s up with that?” I laugh.

  She climbs on top of my waist and straddles me, looking down with those enormous blue eyes and perfect porcelain skin. Her lashes must be more than an inch long.

  She reaches down and puts a hand to my cheek.

  “Thank you for tonight—for Danny. And thank you for coming to get me, Drew. I was really scared.”

  “I know. And you don’t have to thank me. I’m just so relieved that the bastard didn’t hurt you.”

  I feel my heart rate quicken with the thought of him touching her.

  “I think he might have, if he’d had the chance,” she admits quietly and I see now how scared she was.

  “Katherine, why didn’t you report him the first time, when he locked you in his car?”