by Kristen Mae
“So you’re not going to give me specifics? I’m reduced to hanging around downtown every day just hoping you’ll appear?” He waits, but I don’t say anything. “Or can I get your number?”
See, he did just want my number. I knew it. “I’m Malory Shoemaker. You can find me on social media.”
“I don’t do social media.”
“That’s weird.” In my peripheral vision, I see a couple from the crowd wander off. Ugh, there goes my money.
He pulls a phone out of his back pocket. “What’s your number?”
“I don’t have one.” My knee is bouncing up and down now.
“And I’m weird.” He grins, and the dimple returns. He is stupidly good-looking.
“Look, I really need to start playing again. I’m on social media, that’s how I communicate with people. If you wanna talk to me, that’s the way.” I sit up straight and put my bow on the string.
“I didn’t say I wanted to talk to you—I said I wanted to hear you play again.”
A blush heats my neck and face—equal parts embarrassed and offended. “Then I guess you’ll just have to stand around in the street and wait.”
“Malory Shoemaker, huh? Got it.” He gives me a wink and waves his phone at me before pocketing it and strolling away.
Fuck that jerk. I didn’t even get his name.
Chapter Four
Professor Yarvik has the kind of look many would call “handsome”: middle-aged and dignified, with the straightest posture I’ve ever seen. Her spine has probably petrified that way after years of perfectly upright cello playing. I adjust my own posture, stretch a little taller in my seat.
I’ve just finished the first movement of the Elgar Cello Concerto. Yarvik is sitting quietly, contemplating me, her index finger pressed against the edge of her mouth. “Just out of curiosity, Malory, where else did you audition?”
“Central Florida.”
“Nowhere else?”
I shake my head.
“Hmm.” She swivels in her chair and pulls a notebook and pen from the cluttered desk behind her. “I’m just…you know, Malory, I’m really not sure what to do with you.” Her speech still carries a hint of a Russian accent. She taps the pen on the notebook and then jots something down. Silence. The room is dim, with the overhead lights turned off and only a stand-up lamp in the corner for illumination. The large window hints at the bright day outside, but the office faces a shady, treed courtyard, so not much sunlight comes in. I don’t mind the dim; the overhead fluorescents in the rest of the building make me feel like the ceiling is trying to suffocate me.
“What do you mean,” I say, “that you don’t know what to do with me?” Am I so far behind the other cellists that they won’t even let me in the school’s orchestra? I thought I was at least decent.
“We’re a very small school. I’m sure you knew this when you applied.”
“I know you’re selective in the students you admit.” My heart is thudding; I’m in defense mode. I know her extensive experience, the training she’s received, how she’s played all over the world, taught at the best music festivals. How she went to Juilliard back when no other school compared. “I just thought maybe I could prove myself—”
She’s holding up a hand, twisted and gnarled with arthritis.
I pause and consider. “I think…I think I’m not actually sure what you’re trying to tell me.”
She smiles and looks down at her notebook, her back still ramrod straight. “You’re too advanced for me to pair you with any of the other students for chamber music, and I don’t think we have a student pianist skilled enough to play sonatas with you. I will have to talk with the other faculty and see what we can arrange.”
Advanced. Skilled enough. Talk with faculty. So she thinks I’m good. Maybe…too good? Really? My whole body is buzzing with a frenetic energy.
“In the meantime, let’s talk about goals. What are you looking to accomplish this year?”
“I have to win a fellowship to Aspen Music Festival.”
She makes a little huffing sound. “That is a lofty goal for a first year. They only give out ten per year for cello, and hundreds audition. There are other festiv—”
“It has to be Aspen. That’s the deal.”
Her eyes widen.
“Sorry, it’s—to win this cello.” I explain the story of the eccentric old man and the “deserving students.” I tell her how, after two years of playing on this cello, I couldn’t imagine giving it up. I don’t have anything else. “I have to win it. I have to.”
“Good god, child, that’s a lot of pressure.”
“I guess…but it’s a good cello, right? Can you tell?”
She nods. “Oh yes, I can tell. I suppose I thought your parents had purchased it for you.”
I chew the inside of my cheek.
“Well.” She narrows her eyes and considers me for a moment. “It would be awful for you to have to give up this cello.” Her mouth twitches into a smile. “All right then. First off, we need to give you some performance opportunities for your resume so that you have something to go along with your actual playing.” She scribbles in her notebook.
“I play in the street all the time.”
She looks up from her notes.
“You know, for money?”
“Ah. No wonder you’re such a confident performer.”
“I’m not confident.”
She stares at me hard, like she’s trying to puzzle me out. “Fair enough. But we’ll still look for other performance opportunities. And you do have a chance, albeit a slim one, of winning a fellowship.”
“Just tell me what to do, and I’ll do it.”
“Good,” she says, rolling her chair over to a filing cabinet full of music. “Put away your Elgar for now—I want you to learn Popper.”
The hardest, most virtuosic etudes for cello. My heart flies out of my chest and right up to heaven.
* * *
“Twentieth-Century Europe is not a class for the weak.” Professor Hart stands at the front of the lecture hall, his fingertips resting lightly on the wooden desktop in front of him, his head tilted down so he can peer at us from between bushy silver eyebrows and a pair of gold-rimmed glasses. Stout, gray-haired, and tweed-jacketed, he is such a stereotype that he ought to be embarrassed.
“Based on past iterations of this class,” he continues, “a number of you will tuck tail and run today. Half will drop before the semester midpoint.” His voice is gruff and craggy, like a wet pumice stone. “And, of those who remain, another half will fail and be unable to remove the F from their transcript.”
The class, a mix of all grade levels, falls into an awkward, seat-creaking silence. I’ve chosen a spot in the dead center of the stadium-style seating and have my notebook and pen at the ready. Professor Hart doesn’t intimidate me. I love a challenge.
“The reason for this tremendous tendency toward failure,” the professor says, bending to grab a heap of books off the floor and plunking them on the desk in front of him, “is these. Your assigned reading, and if you think you can skim World War II for Dummies instead and still eloquently and thoroughly answer the thought-provoking questions I put forth for the final essay, you will find yourself sorely mistaken.” He looks around the room at us students, his expression simultaneously bored and accusatory. “So this is your chance to leave. I won’t hold it against you.”
There is a brief moment of hesitation before, as the professor predicted, several students gather their things and stand to leave, their shoulders hunched in a mix of embarrassment and “fuck this shit.” The springs in the theater-style seats groan in relief as they snap back into folded position.
After the door clicks shut behind the last one, the professor looks around at his new class, now with a little gleam of excitement in his eyes. “I always like to get that mess out of the way first thing.”
Professor Hart begins his lecture with a discussion of early globalization and how it affected the grad
ual shift toward decolonization. My pen races across my notebook, my hand cramping as I fill one page after another. Hart speaks fast, much faster than my high school teachers, and for the first time in my life, I struggle to keep up.
Midway through the ninety-minute lecture, we’re excused for a break. I stand and stretch, glad for the mental respite. On my way back from the restroom, I almost collide with Creepy Elevator Guy from my dorm—the one who invited me to smoke pot with him in his room.
“Ah, sorry,” he says, and then he looks at me and his eyes brighten. “Oh, it’s you.”
“What are you doing here?” It’s a strange and rude thing to ask, mainly because I don’t mean “What are you doing here in this hallway?” What I mean is “What are you doing in my personal space? In this school? In this world?” It was unnerving, seeing him hanging out with a group of people that day after he’d been so creepy on the elevator. Why, when I had found him so immediately distasteful, did others welcome him? Is something wrong with me, or with them?
“I’m in your class, front row. You didn’t see me?”
I roll my eyes.
“Hey, what’s your problem? What did I do?” Though his words convey indignation, his expression is merely curious.
I sigh. “You really don’t know that it’s creepy to invite random girls to your room?” An image flashes through my mind: getting fucked against the wall in a stranger’s dark bedroom while my roommate wanders the crowd, drunk and alone. I squash it back down.
He holds his hands up, defensive. “Hey, I didn’t mean to creep you out.”
“Well,” I say, “you did. Now, can I get by, please?” He’s blocking the door to the lecture hall.
“You didn’t give up on the class.”
“Obviously.” I throw him a deadpan look.
“Seems hard though, doesn’t it?”
“Not if you’re smart.”
He smiles and raises his eyebrows. “I am.”
“Good for you.” We’ll see about that.
“We should study together.”
“You wish.” Other students are pushing their way past us, seating themselves for the second half of class.
I make a move to get by him too, but he sidesteps me and blocks my way again. “Wanna know why I asked you to come chill?”
I stare at him. Little prickles of anger are stirring the hairs on the back of my neck. The persistence of this guy makes me want to punch him in the nuts. And he’s about to make me late.
“Out of everyone who moved in on Sunday, you were the only one who didn’t have any family with her. Sorry if the ‘come to my room’ thing creeped you out; there was a group of us, I swear. I just thought you might feel a little lonely, like you might need a friend. I’m really not…some ghetto gangbanger or whatever you think I am.” He looks down at his baggy clothes, then back up at me. “I guess I can understand why you might jump to that conclusion, but…”
I shove my way past him then, my eyes now stinging with inexplicable tears.
Chapter Five
Wednesday afternoon, as I’m leaving orchestra rehearsal, I get a text from Water Bottle Guy on my messaging app. His name is Garrett Vines. I’m on social media now. Are you happy?
Welcome to the twenty-first century, I text back.
Pleased to be here.
Pleased to have you here.
You’re my only friend. You should feel special.
I do, actually. (It’s true. I do.)
Are you playing in the street anytime soon?
Good timing. On my way downtown now.
Except I hadn’t been.
It is a small thing, an almost indiscernible shift in agenda. I was going to practice anyway; I’ll just be practicing in public instead of private. It’s not quite the same—I won’t be able to work on the Popper etudes since they’re still so rough, and I won’t be able to drill challenging spots over and over like I would if I were by myself in a practice room. But public performing is a type of practice in a way, with how it forces me to keep going, to play through even when I stumble. At least that’s what I’m telling myself.
When I roll up with my cello he’s already there, lounging on a bench, looking modelesque with one jean-clad leg neatly crossed over the other. He’s sipping coffee from a foam cup. I can see the shape of his pectoral muscles under his shirt, and I have the obscene desire to bite them right through the fabric. I shake away the thought and find a bench a couple of shops down from him, arrange my case so people can throw in tips, and begin to play. I don’t make eye contact with him though I know he’s watching me.
It’s cooler now, with night approaching, and the breeze whipping through the treetops sounds like waves breaking on a shore. It smells like fall, or Florida’s version of it—crisp, but humid and salty. The streetlamps have come on, and the crowd is thicker now than it was the other day, with people out for the dinner rush. I am only tangentially aware of these things, though; I’m focused on my simple songs, improvising on them like I used to, inverting the melodies, contriving unusual harmonies, screwing with the tonality. Garrett’s pale eyes are on me, studying me—this I am more than tangentially aware of. It’s making my palms sweat.
I’m familiar with the sensation of being watched, after all these years, of course I am. But this is different. I remember how awful it was when I first started busking two years ago, how I’d search for melodies like a blind man stumbling through the woods, my entire body on fire with embarrassment, my hands trembling as my fingers fought to find the notes. I purchased a couple of easy song books and played them over and over until I knew the music so well I didn’t need the books anymore, and then I taught myself to improvise on the melodies. The improvisation is what made the money pile up—people had no idea the songs were so easy, that I was just fooling them.
But somehow I don’t think I’m fooling Garrett. I feel like he can read into every twist of the melody, like he can decipher my personality by observing how I rearrange a harmony. He makes me feel naked.
I play for just over an hour. It’s fully dark now, and I estimate I’ve made around forty dollars. Mostly ones and change, but a couple people threw in fives. Garrett hasn’t moved from his spot on the bench, though now he has the other leg crossed on top. He’s still looking my way, but I can’t tell if he’s looking at me or just gazing off into space.
I stand and hesitate, chewing my lip, my hand poised against the side of my cello case. My instrument’s all packed up; I’m just unsure which direction to roll it.
Garrett stands, tosses his coffee cup into a nearby trashcan, and stretches. I take a step toward him—I ought to at least say hello.
He waves in an impersonal way, a tiny flick of the fingers that’s almost like a salute, then turns and walks off, casually, like, Meh, whatever, yawn.
I flinch. I remember that passing desire to bite him through his shirt, and I want to kick myself. But shouldn’t I be thrilled? Isn’t it a compliment for someone to want to hear me play, just hear me play, without any expectations?
But still, not even one word? He could have at least come over and chitchatted for a bit. We might’ve hung out, had dinner, gone to his place and had a nice fuck. I would have, too. I have a crazy desire to stick a finger in that deep dimple of his even though I know nothing about him other than that he is frustratingly enigmatic and bears an uncanny resemblance to Superman.
I’m an idiot for caring so much. My heart hurts in an irrational, contradictory way, a fiery, sharp, stabbing feeling alongside an expanding, gaping, numbness—wildly disproportionate for a slight that wasn’t really a slight. I hate the dollars I earned while he watched me play. I want to burn them. As I stalk to my car I pass a homeless guy pushing a rickety shopping cart full of aluminum cans. Seething, I yank the fresh wad of cash out of my pocket and press it into his filthy palm. He takes it, surprise etched into his craggy, bearded face, and I walk away as fast as I can. The fire in me cools a little.
I drive back to school, lo
ck myself in a practice room, and work on my Popper etudes until well past midnight, until the middle finger of my left hand swells into a blister.
Like I should have done in the first fucking place.
* * *
“First years play first.” Professor Yarvik is standing on a low riser at the front of a long, narrow room. Fourteen cello students are crammed into chairs facing her, most of them with an instrument between their knees or lying on its side on the floor next to their chair. Yarvik looks pointedly between me and the three other first years, waiting for one of us to volunteer. Please don’t make me go first.
Beside me, a pale, heavyset girl with a tangle of strawberry blond curls raises her hand. “I’ll go.” I glance over at her and she casts me a dim smile. Her face is blooming like a pink carnation under her freckles.
Professor Yarvik steps off the riser and takes a seat just behind me. “Thank you, Bethany.”
Bethany lifts her cello off the floor and makes her way to the front of the room, nearly tripping over a protruding end pin that someone forgot to retract into the bottom of their instrument. My heart seizes as I watch her stumble, then recover, her pale neck flushed and splotchy like she’s had a tangle with poison ivy. “I’m just going to play a scale,” she says in a whispery voice, and her green eyes flick to Professor Yarvik behind me; I gather they’ve planned this ahead of time. In my early days of street performing, I would get so nervous I would sometimes drop my bow. But this girl is practically breaking out in hives.
Bethany’s performance is a tragic thing to witness. Her sound is fine, and her intonation is mostly fine, but distress radiates from her so palpably that I feel like I could grab hold of it and twist it into a knot. As she descends from the top of the scale, she misjudges a shift and the sound she produces is the auditory equivalent of a tightrope walker slipping off his line. She bites her bottom lip, trying to regain control, and my palms sweat for her.
Finally, she lands on the bottom note of the scale. I expect her to sigh with relief—I do—but her body is so bound by anxiety that I’m not sure she’s breathing at all. I catch her eye for a quick second and smile at her. Her gaze drops to the floor.