The automatic locks clicked. I tried to think of something else, to act as if I hadn’t just driven off with a guy I barely knew. Rita and all her talk about stalking! This was Princeton, everyone knew the place was safer than a police station. Besides, if I wanted a safe and sheltered life, what was I doing in a foreign country, all by myself?
We passed through several streets whose crooked old trees closed a tunnel over our heads. He drove as effortlessly as he walked, each move calculated to deliver exactly the effect he aimed for. I watched his hands on the wheel—the nails bitten down, strikingly flawed against his otherwise perfect looks—and realized that he probably had bad days too. Stress. Letdowns. Things that bothered him or didn’t go his way.
Before I noticed, the houses had given way to woods. Smudged green, racing us on both sides of the road.
“Where are you taking me?”
A smile—slow and sure of its impact. For a moment or two, while my heart pounded its panic through my chest, I had mental flashes of what could happen next. Things this guy might do to me. Stuff I had seen only in movies.
He stepped on the brakes and swerved into the grass. I looked in the side mirror—the road was completely empty.
Was there any chance that pain hurt less if inflicted by someone beautiful?
A key turned, choking the engine off—
Then everything became absolutely quiet.
THE GRASSES SWAYED DREAMILY IN the morning wind. Tall. Thick. Reaching almost to my waist as he led me through them.
I was still embarrassed after what had happened by the car. He had held my door open, in disbelief that I refused to come out.
“No?” A glance at the trees behind him, then another one back at me. “What exactly do you think I’ll do to you?”
As if what I thought mattered. We were alone, in the middle of nowhere.
“If you really suspect I’m a serial killer, you’d be much safer outside my car than in it.”
I didn’t find any of this funny. “Why did you bring me here?”
He walked over to the trunk, opened it, and came back with a blanket and a picnic basket.
“Breakfast. Do you believe me now?”
I slipped out of the seat. “Sorry, my imagination is too vivid.”
“Vivid is good. But don’t freeze up on me like that.” He shut the door and, with the same assured smile, blocked my way until I leaned back against the car. “I don’t cook for a woman just to drag her into the woods and torture her. Not against her will, anyway. So I need you to relax for me. Just relax. Can you do that?” His voice had the opposite effect on me. “I’m not going to do anything to you unless you want it.”
There was something hypnotic about him, something that made any thought of resistance seem absurd. Even just hearing him talk about doing things to me made me want them, badly, whatever those things might be. And this scared me, more than any scenario I had imagined back in the car.
Our mystery destination turned out to be a field surrounded by trees, a place so secluded that the forest had to be crazy not to hide all its secrets there. The keeper—an old willow—dozed in the middle, crown drooping to the ground, long ago succumbed to gravity.
He parted the branches and spread the blanket in their scattered shade, waiting for me to sit down first. “This is my hideaway. I don’t show it to anyone.”
“Never?”
“Never. I come here when I want to be alone.”
“Why make an exception now?”
His eyes traced every spot where the sun touched my skin. “Maybe it’s a lucky aberration—”
He said the last word directly into my lips, opening them, tasting them—a deep, greedy, luscious kiss that could wipe out any instinct for self-preservation.
“What’s wrong?” His lips still touched mine, even as he spoke.
“Nothing, I just . . . I felt dizzy for a second.”
“Being with you gets me carried away. I should know better.”
I don’t want you to know better. “Maybe it’s because I haven’t slept much.”
“Or because you haven’t eaten much?”
He took out a bowl and a plate of matching porcelain, tore the plastic wrap, and placed them on the blanket. The bowl was full of blackberries and the plate had four crepes, rolled up in tubes.
“This should help.” He lifted one of the crepes to my mouth.
I took a bite, trying not to make a mess all over his fingers. He fed me like a child, amused by it, by how I stole glances at him, my eyes already hooked:
Boots. Black and angular. Baring each crease of their thick leather. Dark jeans, loose on the hips despite the belt. His stomach, its muscles almost visible under the soft white fabric that covered them. And that T-shirt—the most striking one I had seen on a guy. It fit him perfectly, a cut so tight it forced you to imagine the rub of his skin against cotton when he moved, the V-neck deep and wide, exposing his chest all the way down the rib cage.
“Have these too.” He pointed at the bowl of blackberries.
“I will, on one condition.”
“Shoot.”
“Tell me who you are. I don’t know anything about you.”
He leaned back on his elbows. “What do you want to know?”
“Where you live, what you do, what you like . . .”
His eyes got lost in the willow, narrowed by a smile (unless it was the sun falling into them). “How would knowing change anything?”
“Maybe it won’t. But it will leave less to my vivid imagination.”
He said nothing for a while, then reached for my hand.
“Come.”
I followed him out into the field. After a few steps, he turned around and gave me a flower. It must have been caught in the green web surrounding it, hidden, invisible until now. The delicate petals were saturated with red, trembling at the slightest touch of air.
“I didn’t realize poppies grew here in New Jersey.”
“Nobody does. It’s a secret.”
At each step, as he opened the grasses to make way for us, I saw more poppies. All of them in wild bloom. Astonishing. Surreal.
Finally he stopped and turned to me:
“Knowing always changes everything. Be with me this way.”
He remained still, mouth pressed to my ear, waiting. There was so much about him I wanted to know, and the way he evaded my questions promised nothing good. But at that moment, none of it mattered. All I could think of was his breath, fast and warm against my skin.
Be with me. . .
I kissed him—over the collarbone, where the shoulder curved into the neck. He absorbed my answer. Savored its meaning. Then poured over me as if I was about to slip away any second. I felt his kisses everywhere, through the clothes, as he kneeled on the grass and pulled me with him.
It was too sudden and I tried to slow him down. That didn’t work, only electrified him more.
“Wait, I can’t—”
“You can’t what?” His hand went up my leg, I could feel its heat through the jeans. “Don’t be afraid of me.”
“I’m not.”
“Then let me.” He pulled the zipper open and my entire stomach turned, as if someone had twisted it inside me.
I caught his wrist. “Don’t.”
“Why not?”
“It’s too soon. I’ve barely just met you.”
His weight lifted off me. I thought he would be angry, but he took my hand and kissed it.
“Technically, you haven’t met me yet. I’m Rhys. And you?”
“Thea. Your name means ‘lynx’ in my country.”
“That explains why you’re so afraid of me. And which country are you from, Thea?”
“Bulgaria.”
His smile froze, as if he had sensed a predator approaching through the forest. “Of course you are.”
“Why ‘of course’?”
Just a shrug, no answer.
“How much do you know about Bulgaria?”
“
Not as much as I should, apparently. But maybe we can fix this?”
He started asking about my home, the piano, and how I had ended up all the way in America. I skipped only the Elza part—the part I wasn’t sure I would ever reveal to anyone. We lay like that for a long time, hidden inside the grasses, talking. Around us the forest was at peace, except for the occasional flap of a bird or swish of wind coiffing the branches. When I felt his hand on mine again, I realized I had been asleep for hours. The sun had started to set, and shadows of trees now stretched across the entire field.
“Why did you let me sleep all this time?”
“Because you needed it.” He helped me stand up. “We have an entire evening ahead of us. Or at least I hope we do. If you don’t have to be back yet, I’m taking you to dinner.”
The restaurant was a small wooden house somewhere on the New Jersey shore. An old sign by the door had just one word: LOUISA’S. There were four tables, all of them empty, and a woman at the counter (probably Louisa herself) grinned at him before flipping the Open sign to Closed, so that no one would disturb her special visitor.
“Have Barnaby play for us,” he told her quietly on the way to our table.
A few moments later, she placed two dishes in front of us while Rhys poured the wine.
“Sorry, I forgot to ask. Do you like seafood?”
“Yes.”
“It’s their specialty. But that’s not the reason I brought you here. Look—”
An old man had appeared through a side door and was heading to a table with all kinds of glasses on it. He poured water into all of them, then his wet fingers touched the rims. Hushed, delicate sounds filled the room with a haunting fragility I had never heard in music. Each tone drifted up and died in the air almost instantly, leaving behind a silence that made one’s heart fold in on itself with aching.
“I knew you’d love this.” His voice had turned soft again, the way he had spoken to me by the Greek vases. “Have you listened to water harp before?”
“No. It reminds me of Chopin.”
“The melancholy Pole? Are you sure that’s a good thing?”
Something about his tone bothered me, but before I could figure it out he had moved his chair closer to mine and was asking the man to play another piece.
By the time he finally dropped me off at Forbes, it was almost midnight.
“When can I see you tomorrow?” Quick and straightforward, like all his questions that day.
“I have class all morning, then I’m free until five.”
“Meet me at one. Same place as today.”
He drove off without letting me say anything else. As the car muted its roar into the distance, I realized that his beautiful, strange name was still the only thing I knew about him.
CHAPTER 5
The Two Deaths of Orpheus
THE NEWS HAD hit Wylie’s in-box first thing Friday morning, and he had e-mailed me right away: Come by ASAP! Forget about school!
But by the time I was done with class and saw his message, it was already noon. When I finally made it to his office, the itch to tell me had flushed his entire face.
“Where have you been? You’ve just won the lottery!”
Propped up on the floor next to him, an electric guitar made a ticking sound. It turned out to be a clock: quarter past twelve. Unless he kept our meeting short, I was going to be late for my date with Rhys at one.
“What lottery have I won?”
“The ultimate jackpot.” He dragged the mystery out for a few extra seconds. “Carnegie.”
A glossy booklet flew across his desk and I managed to catch it just in time. The cover had a picture of the most famous concert hall in America.
“Subscriber’s guide to the current season. Page six. Bottom left.”
I followed his instructions, too shocked to think. Page six had a calendar. One of its boxes was circled in red.
“November 23. You think you can swing it?”
“What exactly am I supposed to swing?”
Donnelly had warned me: Wylie loved to see his students succeed and was now pulling strings to get me into New York. But Carnegie, of all places?! She had called it “far from a sure thing.” Apparently, when this man played puppeteer, things became sure in a matter of days.
“It’s the annual ‘Twenty Under Twenty’ concert. Twenty students, all in their tragic teens—you get the idea. It used to be just Juilliard, but lately they’ve started to break the mold. This year the list includes two kids from Columbia, one from Stanford, and you.”
And me. Once again, it had been decided—whether I felt up to it or not.
“What will I be playing?”
“On this I’ve got bad news and bad news. Which do you want first?”
It was a joke to him. I said nothing, just waited.
“The first bad news is, you don’t get to choose this time. The concert is part of their European series, so the program has been set for months.”
I looked at the circled box and the heading in it:
Tribute to Modern Europe: The Pulse of Spain
“And the other bad news?”
“Right. The other bad news is that the piece will kill you. Skinned, roasted, and eaten alive.”
He handed me a few sheets of music. Dense clusters of notes raced down the front page.
“Have you played Albéniz?”
“No. I’ve heard of him, but I’m not too familiar with his music.”
“Think of him as Chopin, born a Spaniard: took folk themes and turned them into salon music. Not my type of show. Still a genius, though, hands-down.”
The title was a Spanish word, Asturias, and seemed to be part of something called Suite Española.
“Actually, it was your Chopin that sealed the deal.”
“What does Chopin have to do with it?”
“One of the big kahunas came to your concert. Was absolutely blown away, especially by the études. Kept referring to you as ‘The Maelstrom.’ You know what that means?”
“A whirlpool?”
“Yes, but on steroids. A vortex so powerful it destroys everything in its way. Now this guy is convinced you’re the only one who can manage the Albéniz. If it can be managed.”
If.
For once, Wylie wasn’t joking. He walked over to a stereo, pressed a button—and the music swept the room. Frightening. A flurry of sound. Faster than anything I might have imagined.
“All yours.” He pulled the CD out and handed it to me. “Listen to it until it makes you sick. Drink it, eat it, breathe it—I don’t care. But nail it!”
“What if it can’t be nailed?”
“Then the failure would be mine as much as yours. And I don’t fail.” A quick pause, to make sure I understood. “Now let’s agree on a strategy.”
“Agree” simply meant that he laid it out for me while I listened:
I had to practice every day, from now until the concert. By midterm exams, I was expected to know the entire piece by heart because, as he put it, “all sheet music would fly out the window.” Donnelly was going to be my first checkpoint, Wylie—my last. And for the next two months, starting immediately, I could forget about having a life.
By the time he let me go, I could also forget about meeting Rhys. The guitar-shaped clock was already striking the hour with a few deftly chosen chords, Wylie style: “One” by U2.
I RAN OUT OF THE music building, caught the next campus shuttle, and, miraculously, arrived at the Graduate College only ten minutes late. He was there but didn’t kiss me. Didn’t even smile. My apology for being late barely registered on his face.
“I thought you were blowing me off. Glad I was wrong.”
“Why would I blow you off?”
“I don’t know, that’s the problem. You keep your distance and I still can’t figure out why.”
“Rhys, I’ve been looking forward to this all morning. But one of my professors held me up after class, and another one wants to meet at five.”
&n
bsp; “I’ll have you back by then.”
We started walking—first on Springdale, then left on Mercer where large houses lined the road. Farther down, a cluster of trees threw a thick shade over the sidewalk and he finally took my hand:
“Let’s cut through here.”
“Are we supposed to?”
“Are we . . . what?” He sounded distracted, preoccupied with something. “It’s fine. Come.”
I pulled my hand out of his but he continued walking.
“Thea, come on.”
One of the first things I had learned at Princeton was that there were no fences, not even around private houses, yet this didn’t mean you could pass through. Only two days earlier, while looking for Procter Hall on my way to work, I had mistakenly walked into the garden of Wyman House, the home used by the acting dean and his family. A woman had asked me sternly not to trespass and I had no intention of being scolded again.
“Are you coming or should I carry you?”
He smiled as he said this, waiting for me in the middle of a lawn surrounded by trees on all sides. All except one—the one across from us, where an enormous stone mansion dwarfed everything in sight. When I didn’t answer, he headed back in my direction.
“What’s wrong?”
“This is someone’s house.”
“So?”
“So . . . why can’t we just take the road?”
My worry fascinated him, and the bad mood began to lift from his face. “It’s fine, I promise. Just come with me. We’re almost there.”
I looked at the mansion: no signs of life. “Almost where?”
“Do I scare you this much?”
What could I say? I wasn’t scared of him anymore. But maybe I should have been.
“How can I make you trust me?” He backed me up against the closest tree and leaned his hands on it, trapping me in between. “We don’t have to go anywhere. In fact, the plan just changed—you win.”
Winning against him was impossible. His lips were already down my neck and the words didn’t matter.
“Rhys, wait . . .”
“Are you sure you want me to wait? I don’t think you are.” His hands left the bark and slipped under my clothes, over my bare skin—back, stomach, chest. “I don’t want to wait either. I imagined you the entire night!”
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