“Whose health? Yours?” I remembered Carmela’s story. Could he be sick and not telling me?
“We can talk about all this on Sunday, once your parents leave. After that, it will be up to you.”
“What will be up to me?”
“Whether we stay together or not.”
“Rhys, if what you have to tell me is that bad, I’d rather know it now.”
“Bad or not will depend entirely on you.” He gave me one last kiss. “If I get my wish, it won’t be bad at all.”
THE HALLWAY ON THE SECOND floor was brightly lit, almost eerie as I walked toward the Rockwell Suite, still in disbelief, afraid that this would turn out to be a bad practical joke or hallucination. Finally I reached the door. Knocked. Waited a few seconds, then used the key and walked in—
And there they were, both of them. Incredible as it was to see my parents in a hotel room at Princeton, Rhys had made it happen.
CHAPTER 11
From Afar
THE UNAPOLOGETIC, DELIRIOUS red of Carnegie’s main hall erupted from the floors, from the seats, and bled along the crescents of the white balconies as if a giant creature had just opened its veins, ready to absorb the music.
Seconds earlier, my name had been called. Someone had held the side door to let me pass. Then the audience had caught sight of a girl and burst out in applause—for a hundredth time that night, welcoming one more teen prodigy to the legendary stage.
Now from that same stage, as I played, a different legend was already taking shape. The soft maple floor had blistered up into a cobbled town square. Red roofs were popping all around. Houses stacked their pale façades on top of one another. Balconies exploded with geraniums. Neighbors peeked out, behind white-laced curtains. It was noon. A chandeliered sun had perched itself in the middle of the sky. And under it, baked in the summer heat, rows of seats had coiled around café tables. People chatted. Glasses clinked. The air buzzed with the anticipation of a spectacle. A death? Affair? Quarrel? Any pinch of gossip before the day’s siesta. Finally, a girl begins to cross the square. All in black, sweeping the ground with the ruffles of her dress. Her walk has the rhythm of a dance, while far across, hidden in the shadow of the darkest wall, a man’s eyes flash their fire, follow her every move, watch . . .
The applause came even before the last sounds had died off. A sea of hands clapping, people rising up in waves. Somewhere in the audience, Mom and Dad were probably beyond themselves. Donnelly and Wylie too, savoring their overdue tour de force. But that dark figure watching me from the back—it was no longer there.
Then I saw him. Right in front of me, in the first row where he must have been the entire time. He dropped a white flower at my feet. Or was I imagining this too, just as I had imagined Spain?
“Tesh, that was terrific!” Rita and Dev rushed over as soon as they saw me come out from backstage. The crowds had already left, and those with special invites had stayed behind for a cocktail reception in Carnegie’s famous marble-colonnade lobby. “No wonder they saved you for last. Although why didn’t you tell me Rhys would be here?”
“Because he isn’t.”
“The balcony is high, but not that high. I saw him leave the flower for you. And front row too—well done!”
The same mistake. I wondered if a single person (except maybe their own mother) had ever known them both without confusing one for the other at least once.
“The flower is not from him, Rita.”
“No? But if Rhys isn’t the guy dropping roses onstage, then . . . Oh, I see!” She had noticed something behind me and, for a moment, looked transfixed. “I have to say, the clone is just as perfect!”
“Can I join the Thea fan club?” Jake had finally found us and either hadn’t heard that last comment or was too polite to acknowledge it. “With a performance like this, you’d think she has Spanish blood.”
Rita couldn’t help herself: “And with a performance like the one in September, you’d also think she has Polish blood, right?”
He met her eyes, calmly. “Chopin is amazing. Hers, especially. But what she played tonight is often considered impossible to pull off.”
“Which is why she had to practice so much. From what I hear, the entire fall break was spent on technique. Day and night.”
I was mortified. He smiled—a perfectly controlled smile that almost fooled even me.
“However fall break was spent must have been worth it. Now, before Thea passes out on us, we’d better find her something to eat. Would you like to join us?”
They wished they could, but Dev had to be back at Princeton by eleven. Next we talked to Wylie and Donnelly, then two other professors from the music department, then a few students—everyone came and went, stopping by to congratulate me. Everyone, except the two people I wanted to see the most.
“Jake, I need to find my parents. I’ve no idea where they are.”
“Sure, let’s go look for them and then I’ll take the three of you out to dinner.”
“Weren’t you and Rhys supposed to keep your distance? From my family, I mean. He didn’t want to complicate things.”
“Rhys can decide for himself. I have no reason to keep my distance from anybody.”
My heart sank a little, as it did each time I was reminded that Jake might have been the guy for me. Tonight more than ever. We weren’t even together, yet he acted more like a boyfriend than Rhys ever had.
Luckily, a man wearing a familiar tweed jacket interrupted my thoughts:
“I don’t know who Rhys is, but he certainly missed out. Your performance was truly magnificent.”
“Thank you, Professor Giles! I am so glad you came.”
“How could I not, after such a thoughtful invitation? And signed in Greek, no less! But just out of curiosity, that piece you were playing—did you choose it yourself?” He seemed surprised when I told him I hadn’t. “It’s quite astounding, then. I suppose coincidences do happen.”
“What coincidences?”
“I suggest you peruse this—” He handed me his playbill. “Once things cool down, of course. You might find the note on Asturias most . . . beguiling.”
At that moment I didn’t care about historical notations, beguiling or not. My parents were coming through the lobby, and although they both looked happy, I could tell my mother had been crying.
“There you are! We didn’t think you’d be out so quickly.” Dad squeezed me into his signature extra-tight hug that meant he was proud of me.
“Where did you guys go? I was getting worried.”
He mumbled something about the restrooms being hard to find, while Mom took her turn for a hug with the biggest smile I had seen on her. I introduced everyone. My parents seemed more nervous than usual, probably because their English wasn’t perfect and made them feel out of place. Jake was impeccably polite, charming them both. But when I mentioned Giles’s name and that he was my professor, Dad’s smile froze in the middle of the handshake.
“So . . . Greek Art? The one class Thea doesn’t talk much about.”
Actually, it was the class I never talked about. Careful not to evoke in their minds any parallels with Elza, I had been referring to it vaguely as “my art history class.” Yet if my father knew exactly what Giles was teaching, this meant he still remembered not only Elza’s classes but even her professors by name.
“Your daughter is one of my best students,” Giles volunteered readily, unaware that my father’s heavy accent had just camouflaged a subtle hostility. “Yet I am sure that, when she calls home, she has more pressing things to talk about than the myths of a world many believe to be long gone.”
To my relief, the subject of Elza never came up. Giles left eventually, and there was still enough time for my parents to meet everyone before the reception was over. When Jake offered to take us out to dinner afterward, Dad shook his head.
“You kids go celebrate. We’ll head back and try to beat the jet lag, so that Thea can show us the campus tomorrow.”
I tried to convince them to stay, but they looked overwhelmed and tired. On the way out, Dad pulled me aside and his eyes welled up.
“You were fantastic tonight. We’ve never heard you play like this.”
“Like what?”
“As if you’ve suddenly . . . grown up, you know?”
“This is college, Dad. One grows up just by breathing the campus air.”
“That may be, it may very well be. But try not to grow up too fast, all right? Even though, I must say, this Jake does seem like a great fellow.”
I wondered what he might have said if the “fellow” with us that night had been Rhys.
THE HONKING CITY SWEPT US into its lunacy. Limousines and yellow cabs feuded for access outside Carnegie’s main entrance, while next to them, on the sidewalk, people elbowed their way through—frantic pins in a box that someone wouldn’t stop shaking.
“What kind of a place are you in the mood for?” He looked calm; the pin box didn’t seem to bother him at all.
“Something peaceful would be nice.”
“How about Asian food?”
“Take me anywhere you want. It’s your city.”
The restaurant he had in mind turned out to be anything but peaceful: the line started outside, by a heavy wooden door over which a single word—TAO—loomed on a red awning. Just as it had done at Tapeo, the name Estlin worked its instant magic, and a man who looked like he worked for the Secret Service (black suit, shaven head, and an earpiece) came to show us to our table.
Jake took my hand. “Don’t let me lose you.”
We walked by the bar—an area so crowded we could barely pass through—and, for a few seconds, I had the illusion of being his. His girl. Following him, hand in hand, on one of many Friday nights, our date just beginning.
(“What kind of a place are you in the mood for?”
“I just want to walk with you. On the longest, most crowded street in the city . . .”)
We were escorted up to the second level, to a table separated from the others at the end of a long glass bridge. Next to it, an enormous stone Buddha presided over the ritual of food, exuding indifference to anything except his own inner peace.
I glanced at the menu but closed it right away, clueless about most of the words on it.
“Is it not what you wanted?” Jake slid to the edge of his seat, ready to leave if I asked him to. “We can go somewhere else. The thing is, though, New York doesn’t get much more peaceful than this.”
“No, it’s perfect. The nicest restaurant I’ve been to, actually.”
“This one?” He looked uncomfortable already—either for my lack of dining experience, or because he had inadvertently outdone Rhys. “Let’s get you some food.”
“Would you mind ordering for me?”
“Sure. How about sushi?”
“I’ve never had it.”
His eyes widened with disbelief. “Never?”
“It’s not that popular in Bulgaria. And I haven’t seen it in the cafeteria either, at least not in Forbes.”
“Even better, then. You’re in for a treat.”
I watched him say the strange name of each item to the waitress—without hurry, projecting serenity and the disarming warmth with which he did everything else. The food arrived quickly. Miniature tree trunks of rice and seaweed, arranged on narrow rectangular plates.
I looked for utensils but there were none.
“Have you eaten with chopsticks before? It’s easy. Just keep the lower one in place with the thumb, like this—” He helped me adjust my fingers. “And the upper one here, like a pen, so you can use it to lift your food.”
The sticks fell on the plate as soon as he let go of my hand. We both laughed.
“Try once more. It’s not as hard as it seems.”
It was much harder than it seemed. My pulse raced from his touch and I would have dropped anything, even a simple fork.
When the waitress came back to check on us, he pointed at the rose that I had left on the table.
“Could we also get a vase for this?”
She obliged right away.
“Jake, I’ve been meaning to ask you . . . Why exactly this of all flowers?”
“Because . . .” He stopped himself. Maybe I shouldn’t have asked, now that we were under a friendship pact. But it was his fault too—giving me the same flower yet again, in an exact repeat of Alexander Hall. “I figured it might be your favorite.”
“Based on what? You didn’t know anything about me, back when you and I . . . when we first met.”
He tilted his head in disagreement. “I had seen your concert flyers.”
The flyers. They had mentioned Bulgaria. And it took just a quick Google search to find out that Bulgaria was famous for its roses—entire valleys of them, feeding the world’s perfume industry with rose oil extract. Basically, the rose was a gift of geographical trivia.
“So . . . is it?”
“Sorry, is what it?” I tried to focus back on the conversation.
“Is it your favorite flower?”
“No, not really. But it’s beautiful nonetheless.”
“Well, there was one more reason . . .” His eyes were still fixed on the vase and the stem in it. “Watching you play that night had reminded me of something.”
“Of what?”
“A poem I’ve loved ever since I read it.”
So he was into poetry too? Probably handwriting his own lines in books. With red ink, directly over the printed text.
“Which poem?”
He wouldn’t tell me.
“Jake, come on. I want to know.”
“Maybe you will, one day.”
“One day? Meaning never?”
“No. Meaning . . . when it becomes safe to talk about it.”
“How is giving me that flower any safer than talking about it?”
“It’s not, you’re right. I overstepped my bounds. And I shouldn’t have.”
The obligatory reminder. As if I could forget that this wasn’t a date. That he was spending the evening with me only as a favor to his brother.
The drive back to Forbes was just as awkward—sitting next to him in the dark car, mostly in silence. It was a black Range Rover (the exterior, the leather seats, everything black), looking brand new, as if before that night it had never been driven in the busiest city on earth.
“Isn’t it a hassle to have such a big SUV in Manhattan?”
“It’s not mine. This is the family car and it usually stays at Princeton.”
From what I had seen, “family” included just the two of them. “Do you even need a car here?”
“No. I have a bike.”
“It’s a bit difficult to picture you on a bicycle down Fifth Avenue.”
He laughed. “Not a bicycle. A motorcycle.”
“I really don’t get it. Rhys is the bad boy, yet you are the one living this wild New York life and riding a motorcycle. What do you do with it, meet the other gang members?”
“It’s a gang of one, for the moment.” His eyes flashed at me, then returned to the road. “Rhys had an accident with his, years ago.”
“What happened?”
“Nasty luck. Somebody got hurt and my brother blamed himself. Now he won’t come near anything that has only two wheels.”
“And he doesn’t mind you driving one?”
“He does; he used to go insane with worry. Then the fight turned ugly and he gave up.”
I couldn’t see Rhys losing a fight, even one against his brother. “You know he’s right, though. Motorcycles are too dangerous.”
“Not really.” He smiled—not to me, not even to himself, but to something in the darkness ahead of us. “The same lightning doesn’t strike twice in the same family.”
His voice was starting to sound reckless and I looked for a safe change of subject. But there seemed to be no safe subjects between me and Jake—so I said nothing else.
When we reached Forbes, he parked past the main entra
nce and walked with me down the side road that led to my window.
“I had a great time tonight, Jake.”
“Me too.”
A huge moon dispersed the darkness enough to let me see that he wasn’t smiling. We said good-bye with a hug—a brief one—and I hurried to pull the window open, hoping that its sound would sober me up from the urge to run after him, to be in his arms again.
“You forgot something.”
I turned around. He was back. For a moment, I had the craziest thought: that he would kiss me.
“What did I forget?”
But he was no longer looking at me. His eyes were fixed on something behind me, in the room. Something I hadn’t seen yet, whose unexpected presence had reminded him not to overstep his bounds again.
“What did I forget, Jake?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
I wanted to tell him that it did. That few things mattered more and that I didn’t want him to leave.
Except he was already gone.
I realized what I had forgotten in the car: his rose. Now in my room, left while I was out, waited a vase of red poppies. In the moonlight, they looked almost black.
Did you feel me kissing the Albéniz out of you
from across the hall?
The note had been folded in two and dropped right in the middle of the bursting petals. With just a few words, it confirmed what my mind refused to believe: that silhouette in the back of the Spanish square had been real. Despite letting me spend the entire evening with his brother, Rhys had come to the concert, after all.
I WOKE UP WISHING IT were Sunday. And dreading it. Rhys had promised me answers, but the questions kept piling up. Sending Jake to New York with me, only to then sneak into Carnegie and watch from a distance—who did that sort of thing? Maybe it was a test of his brother’s loyalty? Or mine? Not to mention those flowers. How did one go about finding poppies in November?
I tried not to dwell on this and to focus on something I had been dreaming about for months: showing my parents Princeton. They wanted to see everything—my dorm, the classrooms, the libraries, and, of course, Alexander Hall. We even went to the art museum, but I steered clear of the Greek galleries and took them through the main floor instead, where my mother fell in love with Monet’s melting Giverny meadows, and my father kept returning to Modigliani’s portrait of Jean Cocteau.
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