She lifts her hand and tucks her hair behind her ear. She misses a stray piece and I want — God, more than anything — I want to tuck it behind her ear for her. I don’t know where this comes from or why I want to do it, but it feels like the most important thing in the world at this particular second. She’s perfectly capable of tucking her hair behind her own ear, I don’t know why she would ever need my help. I don’t know where I get off thinking I can go around just tucking girls’ hair behind their ears for them. But then I realize my hand is reaching out, completely against my will, and getting ready to do it, and — oh, my God, don’t do it, don’t do it, she’s going to think you’re a creep — and I jam my hand in my pocket, even though there’s nothing in there.
And now she’s going to wonder why I just stuck my hand in my pocket. Maybe I should offer her some gum. Crap, I have no gum. Maybe I should offer her some anyway and hope she says no. Or I could pull this tissue out of my pocket and blow my nose — ugh, no, no girl wants to see you blowing your nose; just take your hand out of your pocket, you idiot.
“Well, I should go,” she says.
And I realize we’ve been standing in complete silence for thirty seconds. Then she’s looking down at the ground and flushing all red again and mumbling a thank you in the softest piccolo voice and walking the wrong way down the steps.
“Hey,” I yell after her. “Other side.”
She laughs at herself and waves, then turns and walks in the right direction. “Take the ‘A’ Train” blares in my head and I tap out the fingering on the fountain ledge.
* *
When I get home, there’s a note on the kitchen table from Mom telling me to order takeout (“something healthy, please — not Brooklyn Diner”) for me and Milo. He should be getting home from tennis any minute. Mom and Dad are having their monthly “Let’s Keep Our Marriage Alive” Date Night, which has seemed to work for them so far, but then again, I don’t exactly ask questions about whether they’re happy with each other.
They always go someplace really nice where it takes weeks to get a reservation. The kind of place that has a tasting menu with dessert included, but you’re way too stuffed for your tiramisu or whatever, so you take it home in a paper box with the name of the restaurant embossed in gold on the lid. When we were younger, Milo and I used to fight over who’d get to eat it the next day. Now I just let him have it. I have more important things to do.
* *
I lose hours when I’m in my room. Even with the metronome counting each second I still couldn’t tell you if I’ve been in my room for five minutes or five hours. When Milo gets home, he knocks on my door quietly. He knows not to bother me when I’m practicing, so I ignore him. But the knocking gets louder and more insistent, until I finally set my violin down on my bed, fling the door open and yell, “What?” He looks pissed off and I feel bad for yelling, and then I’m trying to save face by asking him how tennis practice was and did he win any matches, like pretending to be interested for thirty seconds will fix anything. Milo sees right through me.
“I was just going to ask what you want for dinner,” he says. “Mom told me I had to make you eat something. Like you’re six and I’m babysitting.”
“I’m fine,” I say, and grab the violin. “I ate lunch late.” I tune him out and inject tension into Kreutzer. Milo’s a freshman in high school, so technically no, he shouldn’t have to worry about his older brother. But if it were up to him, we’d be sitting on the couch watching old Seinfeld reruns together and stuffing ourselves with Doritos. I can’t let myself do that, not even for a second. Because if you do that for one night, that’s a night another violinist will spend practicing. Another violinist I’ll be up against someday.
Milo puts his hand on my strings. “I’m ordering sushi,” he says.
“That’s fine,” I say, pulling away.
He walks out and shuts the door.
Alone again, and time unravels.
* *
Claire sends me a text around eleven: Run through Kreutzer tomorrow after theory?
I bet she’s getting ready for bed — we have class at eight tomorrow. I’m still practicing the opening passage.
Cool, I write back. Will reserve practice room after my private lesson.
Cool, she writes. Wear that shirt with the green stripes. Brings out your eyes.
I don’t respond, but I smile.
I keep smiling through my string crossings, and for some reason they sound more effortless. Like somehow my fingers know I’m smiling and they transfer the energy to the violin. It’s weird, but it works.
Again. Again. Again.
“Honey …”
Mom. Of course it’s Mom. Who else would it be?
“Yeah?”
“What are you playing? Sounds like Duke Ellington.”
“No, it’s a sonata.”
“Weren’t you just playing that ‘Take the “A” Train’ song? That’s what it sounded like.”
“Oh, right.” That’s weird. I guess I was. My mind drifts back to the subway girl with the big hair and the tight jeans and the too-loose shirt.
“Okay, honey, time for bed. It’s after midnight.”
“Sorry,” I say. “Lost track of time.”
She says nothing but lays a packet of printed computer paper, stapled in the corner, in my lap. It’s a New York Times article about the importance of sleep for people they’re calling “Super Achievers.” I groan and let it slide to the floor.
“I’m fine,” I say. “I have to get this right. Do you want me to be first violin at the New York Phil, or do you want me to work in middle management at an office?”
Without a word she sets a cup of tea and a piece of toast with peanut butter next to me on the bed. She shuts the door with a click before I can say thank you.
I mean to drink the tea, but then it stops seeming important.
{5}
Dominique
I can’t go home now.
Maybe I’ll just walk this noisy, magnificent city up and down, from the tip of the Bronx to the end of the Brooklyn Bridge, over and over, forever. I’ll never need to eat or sleep again. Not with the city sustaining me.
The A train leads me to a neighborhood I’ve never seen before. The streets in the West Village have given up on the grid system that the rest of the city follows. Instead the streets collide with one another. Please let me get lost here. Let me lose my way and have to wander this maze a little longer.
It’s getting dark, but not the way it does in Trenton. The city isn’t emptying out. The sidewalks are full of people out on dates and running errands after work and hanging out by the subway station and hailing cabs on the corner and eating folded pizza on paper plates. I pass a movie theater — the marquee blazes with old round lightbulbs. It’s playing a bunch of art movies I’ve never heard of. And a midnight showing of Singin’ in the Rain — which, of course, I have.
I imagine my own story: It’s quarter to twelve, and Violin Boy is standing by the box office, waiting for me. When he sees me, he smiles exactly the way he did when I told him I knew Louis Armstrong. His eyes crinkle, so blue they’re almost black. He pulls two tickets out of his pocket, and we go in. He holds my hand the whole time and puts his arm around me when Don Lockwood gives Kathy Selden the sweetest of goodnight kisses in the rain. (Right before the most genius dance number of all time, the title number, filmed when Gene Kelly was deliriously sick with a 103-degree fever. But he was such a pro you’d never even know.)
After the movie, still holding hands, we turn the corner onto a quiet side street, illuminated with twinkling streetlamps and lined with cobblestone. We pass the brick brownstones with wrought-iron gates and blooming flower boxes in every window. A cab slows down and drops someone off across the street, then flips its Off Duty light on and drives away. An old couple on an evening stroll passes us and smiles.
Then we walk up the steps to the brownstone that’s ours, and he opens the door. We close it behind us, shutting off the rest of the world, until morning.
I’d never really noticed before, but walking in New York City is like wearing an invisibility cloak. I can dream and explore, and no one bothers me. Not like at home, where everyone’s constantly up in your business. How you have to act tough before someone else beats you to it, like Cass always says. All I can think of is how right everything feels. I know I belong here.
Now that I know where his classes are, I have to spend more time at Lincoln Center to increase the chances I’ll run into Violin Boy again. Drink in another glimpse of his wild black hair. Devour the way his hand grips the fountain with its close-clipped nails and pale skin. Not too pale. Just white and smooth and cool, like a bowl of melted French vanilla ice cream.
I have no idea why he thinks I go to NYU. I couldn’t make up a lie that amazing in a million years. I guess the dorms are near the West Fourth Street subway station, so he just assumed. Does he think I could be in college? I can’t believe he thinks I seem smart enough — or rich enough — to go to a school like NYU.
The funny thing is, I always dreamed of going to NYU, back when I thought I might be a dancer. When I was little, I’d spend hours in the living room every weekend learning routines from old musicals. Mom put me in dance lessons — jazz and tap and ballet — at the community center. Renee, my jazz teacher, had studied dance at NYU and said she might be able to write me a recommendation letter if I wanted. But then Mom bought the laundromat and started needing me to work on the weekends, and money started getting tighter, and I realized NYU was a dream that people like me don’t get to have. So I quit. I told Mom I got sick of it. That I decided I didn’t want to be a dancer after all. That the classes were boring. But I think she knows the real reason.
Anyway.
I have to tell him the truth the next time I see him. If there is a next time. I’ll go back to the city and meet him by the fountain again and tell him he misunderstood. But wait. If he thinks I go to school here, I have an excuse to be hanging around all the time. I could pretend I’m doing research for class at Lincoln Center. I think I saw a library there. I could see him every day. Okay, it’s ridiculous. There’s no way I could realistically take the train into the city every night after school. But right now, it sounds like the best idea I’ve ever had.
* *
It’s too late to walk home from the train station. My mom’s told me a billion times: “If you have to be out after ten, make sure Cass is with you.” I briefly consider calling him when the train pulls in — he’s always said he’ll walk over and get me wherever I am, no matter what time. But I don’t. Instead I grip my pepper spray in my jacket pocket and walk as fast as I can.
On my twelfth birthday, Mom bought me the tiny silver tube of pepper spray on a keychain. I’ve had to use it two-and-a-half times.
The first time: In seventh grade I was walking home from tap class and a drug addict (or at least, he looked like he was) with greasy, stringy hair threw a beer bottle at me. It shattered on the sidewalk, and glass shards rained onto my shoes.
The second time: In eighth grade a man in a gray hooded sweatshirt put his hands in the back pockets of my shorts and pressed himself against me. I screamed and he ran away before I could see his face. Mom called 911 when I got home, but I’m not sure they ever did anything. The cops have more important things to worry about.
The almost-third time: Last year Anton flashed me his cousin’s gun, in a holster under his shirt. Not to hurt me or anything. Just to show me he could protect me. Who knows whether his cousin let him borrow it or he took it without asking, but either way he shouldn’t have had it. I held the spray to his face, right near his eye, and he put the gun back inside his shirt. I never told anyone, not even Cass. That’s the type of thing a person could go to jail for, and I wouldn’t wish that on anybody. Not even Anton the Asshole. Not when he’s so close to graduating — the one thing no one ever expected him to do. I still find myself smiling when he passes a pop quiz. I don’t want him to be stuck in high school, torturing Jenkins forever.
Home safe — almost. Before I unlock the door to our building, I peek through the tiny window just to make sure no one’s hiding in the entryway.
I run up the three flights and put my key in our door. Mom’s asleep on the couch, so I use my phone as a light and try to be quiet. There’s only one bedroom, and we’re supposed to take turns sleeping in the bed. I wash my face, brush my teeth and change into my mom’s big gray T-shirt. I jump high in the air and fall backward onto the bed. My body makes a satisfying thud on the mattress.
I am electric.
* *
The next morning Cass corners me by the dryers.
“Why didn’t you call me back? What happened?”
“There’s nothing to tell. I saw him.”
“You what?” Cass collapses on the ground and pretends to faint.
“That floor hasn’t been mopped in a week.”
He jumps up. “Ew. So what’s his name?”
“Still don’t know.”
“What do you mean, you don’t know? I even typed ‘violinist Brighton dark hair’ into my phone yesterday to see if something would come up. Don’t tell me you didn’t check Facebook or anything.”
“I guess I didn’t think about it.” Oh, I’d thought about it. I’d searched for hours.
“Okay, Miss Innocent, you’re driving me nuts. What happened?”
“There’s just not much to tell. I saw him, he helped me with subway directions, and that was it.”
“Are you kidding? That’s huge! He knows who you are now. That’s the first step — now you have to go back tomorrow so he remembers you.”
“No, I need to help my mom tomorrow, especially because she gave me last night off. I’ll go next week or something.”
“By next week he’ll forget you. You’ll have to start all over. Time is of the essence, Dom, trust me. I’ve seen Casablanca forty-seven times. This is my field of expertise. I don’t question you about, like, fabric softener.”
“When have I ever said anything about fabric softener?”
“It’s just a hypothetical. Look, tomorrow is imperative to the whole plan.”
“Stop getting your hopes up. Nothing’s going to happen.” Really, I want Cass to stop getting my hopes up. Because if I go back and visit Violin Boy and nothing happens, I’m not sure I can take the disappointment.
Cass turns an empty laundry basket upside down and stands on top of it. Oh, God, he’s about to make a speech.
He clears his throat.
“Dominique Angelica Hall. When you were sick with the flu last year and I brought over Breakfast at Tiffany’s, do you think we were watching that for fun? You think I sat there sobbing through ‘Moon River’ for the seventeenth time for my own benefit? No — that movie has taught me one of the most important lessons of my life, and it’s that in New York City you can be absolutely anyone you want to be. You don’t need a lot of money or status to be glamorous and captivating and magical. So get your gorgeous, captivating, magical butt on that train, track down Violin Boy and never look back.”
Okay, fine. It was a pretty good speech.
* *
Who even does this?
Who spends two hours and $20 traveling to New York City to stand outside some random building, hoping for a two-second glimpse of someone she doesn’t even know?
You know who does this? A stalker.
He’s going to think I’m a total freak. He’s going to call the cops and get a restraining order against me, and I’m going to end up on one of those detective shows where they try to figure out what the weirdo’s motive was. The Music Conservatory Creeper. They’re going to have a police sketch of me and everything.
Mom thinks I’m studying with Cass. She alway
s lets me off if she thinks I’m doing homework. She’s a really fast folder and great at customer service and is totally capable of closing up the store by herself, but I hate to think of her getting lonely. Especially because we haven’t had as many customers the last few months. I suspect that people are starting to go to the nicer twenty-four-hour chain off Route 1 with the free dryers. But I don’t tell Mom that. I just keep saying we’re in a lull and it’s a tough season because people dry their clothes on the line outside. I try to believe it, too.
So I’m feeling like a completely terrible daughter. Instead of helping my mom like I should be, I’m spending Cass’s money and some of my birthday cash from my dad. (Every year, about three weeks after my birthday, he sends a card with a $50 bill in it, and only one word written inside: Reg. Not even Dad — just Reg. Like we’re poker buddies or something.) And I’m standing outside waiting for some guy I don’t even know, not so I can introduce myself but so I can gawk at him as he walks across the street.
I wonder if I’ll have a roommate in jail, or if they sentence stalkers to solitary confinement.
At least this time I’m armed with supplies: A few Fosse books I got out of the Trenton Public Library (I’ve decided that I’m a dance major at NYU — it’s something I actually know something about). My backpack. And a half-empty plastic water bottle like I just came from a dance class. I’m wearing black stretchy leggings and a tank top with a hot-pink sports bra. It’s an outfit I used to wear to dance all the time, but for the last few months it’s been crumpled up in the back of my drawer.
Who even does this?
I can’t breathe. I didn’t realize I’d be this nervous. I sling my backpack on one shoulder, then both, then one shoulder again, then I hold it in my hand. The insides of my wrists are getting sweaty and I feel like I have to pee, and my foot keeps tapping and twitching, and what if he doesn’t have class in this building today? Or worse, what if he sees me and immediately realizes I’m waiting for him?
Someday, Somewhere Page 4