And the Next Thing You Know . . .

by Chase Taylor Hackett

  Literally.

  Tommy sat behind a table covered with a vast field of name tags, and I pounced on the chance to shift the attention.

  “Hey, Tommy, how are you holding up?”

  “Hey! I’m good!” he said, his eyes really wide, with a totally fake welcoming smile sort of rigor-mortised on his face. “Thank God for Red Bull, but I’m okay.”

  “Do you know my sister Rebecca?”

  “We’ve met, I think,” said Rebecca. “It’s Tommy?”

  “Tommy Radford. You’re Rebecca, friend of Jeffrey Bornic, and I’m Roger Prescott’s best friend, we met very briefly at Roger’s once. Small world, isn’t it?”

  “Funny, isn’t it?” I said, completing a line from a musical. Of course nobody got it. That was maybe the one thing about Madison. Mads got all my music theatre references.

  Tommy fished our name tags out of the ems.

  “And now you’re working for Mr. Kaminsky,” said Becca. “I’m so sorry.”

  “He’s not that bad. Sort of.”

  “You’re a better man than I am.”

  “Hey,” said Tommy to me, tapping Jeff’s name tag. “Did you talk to Jeffrey?”

  “Um yeah, lots of times,” I said, sort of dodging. Okay, straight-up dodging.

  “Talk to him about what?” said Rebecca, suddenly the suspicious big sister.

  “You promised!”

  “Not technically.”

  “What?” said Rebecca, suddenly the scolding big sister.

  “Nothing!” I said and instinctively took a step backward. I knew the swatting big sister was not far behind.

  “Roger’s here,” said Tommy, ratting me out.

  Rebecca turned to him.

  “The music?” she said gesturing to the double doors and the strains of Haydn straining through. Tommy nodded. “Fletch?”

  “Where Roger goes…”

  “Oh God.” She spun back to me. “And you were supposed to warn Jeffrey, so he could stay away?”

  “Ehhhhhh, something like that,” I said crinkling my face.

  “Is Jeffrey here yet?” she asked Tommy.

  “Actually—he’s right behind you. Hi, Jeffrey.”

  “I am, in point of fact, here,” he said, reaching over me to get his name tag from Tommy, “thank you for asking.” He accidentally bonked me on the side of the head with his elbow as he reached, which—with the instincts of a lifelong little brother—I knew was no accident. I stepped casually back onto his toe and ground my heel for a bit, as effectively as I could with my sneakers.

  “Hi Jeffrey,” said Rebecca, oblivious, kissing him on the cheek while Jeffrey winced the tiniest bit as I shifted my weight on his shoe.

  “And…” Jeff said, giving me a firm little push forward off his foot. “What are we talking about?”

  “You,” I said. “We know how you like to be the center of attention.”

  “Look who’s talking!” said my dear sister, my dear, traitorous sister.

  “Theo has something to tell you, Jeffrey,” said Tommy. “Don’t you, Theo?”

  Jeff looked down his impossibly straight nose at me, one of his most arrogant looks. Bet you won’t be so smug when I tell you who’s here, I thought. I looked back up at him. Why did he have to be so damned tall? It was really irritating.

  “Okay, fine,” I said. Rebecca stood by expectantly. “Stand back, Buenos Aires,” I shooed her a little. “I got this, okay?”

  “Okay, I’ll see you inside.” And she went in. A swell of Haydn washed out as she opened the ballroom door. I pulled Jeff off to one side of the lobby so Tommy could get on with it.

  “Uh-oh—look out,” said Jeff.

  “What?”

  “It’s your boyfriend.”

  Madison? I looked around. OMG it was Allen, walking directly toward us. Okay, I figured this was Jeff’s deal, and I may have let myself slip behind Jeff as Allen got closer.

  “Hi, Allen,” said Jeff. Brazen. Jeff could be brazen.

  Allen, for his part, went right past us without so much as turning an eyeball in our direction.

  “You realize,” said Jeff, reaching around to pull me out of hiding, “that Allen went out of his way just to walk past us and not say anything. Think he’s still mad?”

  “I think he hates you, Jeff.”

  “Me? I wouldn’t stand too close to the edge of a subway platform if I were you. So—you had something to tell me.”

  “Ehhhhhh, yeah.” I had hoped he’d forgotten. “It’s actually a really funny story if you look at it the right way. You’ll laugh when I tell you. Or someday maybe.”

  “What.”

  “The thing is, you hear that music? It’s Haydn, I’m pretty sure.”

  “Like Haydn-seek?” Jeff smiled at his own little joke.

  “Ha. Funny. Yeah, kinda. You could say that that’s the You’ll-Never-Guess-Who’s-Haydn-in-Here String—Quartet.” I emphasized the last two words, hoping he’d catch on. After all, how many string quartets did he know?

  The light bulb over his head started to glimmer, and his smile began to dim.

  “Noooooo…it’s not—”

  “Ye-ah, it…sort of is. I understand the new b.f. is here too.”

  “Fletch?”

  “Ye-ah. That guy.”

  “You knew this before, and you weren’t going to tell me. You were just going to blindside me with it.”

  “That was pretty much the original plan, yeah—you know, catch you off-guard, watch you squirm uncomfortably, that sort of thing.”

  “You really are a little shit, aren’t you?”

  “Apparently. I admit it looks a little shabby just now, even to me.”

  “But—you know—it’s okay.” He pulled back his shoulders, ran a hand through his dark blond hair and took a breath. “It’s not a big deal. I’m glad I got this much warning, but I’ll be okay. C’mon. I’ll show you my ex-boyfriend.”

  And he led the way in. I gave a thumbs-up to Tommy as we went by.

  I’ll admit I was impressed by Jeff’s composure. He just wasn’t intimidated by things. Brazen.

  They were playing a waltz, Strauss, “Blue Danube,” but people were completely ignoring the music. They were milling about, lining up at the bar, eating, drinking, talking, talking.

  “They’re very good,” I whispered to Jeff—although no one else was bothering to whisper. I was speaking of the quartet, of course. Not these hateful people.

  “I once told them they sounded like complaining cats.”

  “His quartet? And he dumped you anyway?” I said. “Imagine that.” He got a point for composure, and lost two for music appreciation.

  “Okay, I realize I made some mistakes with Roger.”

  “Can we sit?” I asked when they’d reached the end of the Danube. I clapped, but only a few others took the hint. “I hate looking up at you all the time.”

  There were little round tables with tall stools. I pulled him toward one and happily climbed up on the stool. They started a new piece, some campy Latin thing called “Tico Tico.”

  There were two guys in the quartet, and I had a feeling the thirty-something guy on the cello had probably never been Jeff’s boyfriend, so the ex I was looking for had to be the first violin. Nice looking, for sure, about Jeff’s age, really pretty complexion, gigantic brown eyes, with a big shock of brown curls that fell over his forehead.

  I listened for a bit.

  “So which one is Roger’s new boyfriend?”

  “Over there,” he gestured with a nod. “Fletch. Fletcher Andrews. The languorous beauty leaning against the wall.”

  “You’re kidding. That one?” There, leaning against the wall with a quiet smile and listening to the Ticos, was the single sexiest person I had ever seen ever. Even taller than Jeff. Blond, piercing
blue eyes, gorgeous lips, perfect skin. “You serious? The model?”

  “That’s what everybody says.”

  “Whoa. You know, Jeff, you shouldn’t feel bad about losing out to that. He’s gorgeous!”

  “Thanks, Theo. That makes me feel so much better.”

  The Latin piece was over. Scores were switched out from the music stands, tuning was checked, and Roger looked up.

  It was impossible to miss the moment he saw Jeff.

  Roger looked like one of those guys who always had some pink in his cheeks, but he went an even darker shade of red. I looked at Jeff. He raised a hand in a small acknowledgment to Roger, and gave an infinitesimal lift of the head. He didn’t give anything away, but, from where I was, perched on the stool next to him, I could see his jaw muscles clenching.

  The woman on second violin picked up her bow and played the opening solo from Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue—if you don’t know it from anything else, you know it from the airline commercials. I glanced at the program and saw it was a whole Gershwin medley. And Jeff’s old boyfriend had done the arrangement. Impressive.

  The opening is written for a solo clarinet, but it sat fine on the violin. It started with a trill toward the bottom of the range and then went up through this bluesy slide about two-and-a-half-octaves before she knocked out the famous theme from that piece. The other three were the rest of the orchestra. After a few minutes of the “Rhapsody,” they moved into “Fascinating Rhythm,” led now by the viola. And then it was Roger, playing the ballad “You Can’t Take That Away from Me.”

  I gotta tell you, this incredibly cool thing happened while Roger was playing. Slowly, this room full of self-important lawyer-assholes (yeah, I know that’s redundant), one by one these baboons stopped talking and turned their heads—because the music was that beautiful, that compelling. Not just because it was this Gershwin tune that most people knew, but because of how this guy played it. Like he had listened to every broken heart in the world, and he’d given them voice through those strings. This Roger-guy was no slouch. At the end, he did this little run of eighth-note triplets with a delicate ritard, ending on a G way way up there, a note he held and held and let fade, and then—it was gone.

  And there was a pause—you could feel the whole room suspended in that silence—and the cello thumped in with “Strike Up the Band.” Roger’s arrangement was brilliant. Their earlier numbers had gotten a little applause here and there, mostly from me. At the end of “Strike Up the Band” the room erupted into a spontaneous ovation.

  It was fantastic. It was an affirmation of everything I believed about music and songs, and the power they can have in a room, no amplification, just the real sound, real music, so that even a bunch of tone-deaf, philistine lawyers had to shut up and listen.

  I was so glad I’d invited myself to their silly-ass party.

  The quartet took a quick bow, and began to collect their things, and everyone returned to their schmoozing and boozing like nothing had happened.

  Troglodytes.

  “Your boyfriend can really play,” I said.

  “Not my boyfriend.” He nodded toward the tall blond. “His boyfriend.”

  “And it’s fantastic that Roger does the arrangements.”

  “He does?”

  “How could you not know that?” He just shrugged. “So, will you introduce me to this other guy’s boyfriend?”

  “To Roger? As what? My hide-a-bed buddy?”

  “If you want. Or you could just introduce me as Theo, dwarfbrain.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Fine.” I hopped off my stool and headed toward Roger, who was wiping down his bow. I got the reaction I knew I would: the hand of God came down on my shoulder—or at least the hand of Bornic.

  “Stop,” he said.

  I smiled up at him sideways, giving him a load of the cherubic dimples.

  “Just give up, Jeff. Resistance is futile.”

  He heaved a mighty sigh.

  “Okay, c’mon then,” and he ushered me off toward the musicians. “Hey Roger,” he said as we approached.

  “Jeff,” said Roger looking up, shoving this mass of curls back from his forehead. “I saw you out there. I’m really glad you heard us play.”

  “Yeah, me too.”

  “Hi,” I said. Jeff might want to ignore me, but that was never going to happen.

  “Hi,” said Roger.

  “I almost forgot,” said Jeff. “This is Theo. Theo Dwarfbrain.”

  I made a face.

  “You had to do that, didn’t you.”

  “I did.”

  “Theo McPherson,” I said, turning back to Roger.

  “Hi Theo,” said Roger, looking from me to Jeff and back. We shook hands. “Roger Prescott.”

  “Your quartet is fantastic. It was a real thrill to hear you guys.”

  “Wow. Thanks,” said Roger.

  “And you do the arrangements? I mean not the Haydn, obviously—”

  “Yeah, Haydn did his own charts. But some of the others.”

  “I am seriously impressed.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Jeff. Say something nice.”

  “It was good. Roger, you know—I don’t know anything. But it was good, I thought.”

  “You were way too good for this crowd,” I said. “Bunch of idiot lawyers.”

  “Jeff and I are both idiot lawyers, you know, as are the viola and second violin.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “Theo plays piano,” Jeff volunteered.

  “Really? Bob—the cellist?—and I have been talking about finding someone to play some trios, just messing around. Any interest?”

  “You mean like Brahms, Schubert?”

  “We were thinking Ravel to start, actually, but yeah.”

  “I don’t have chops like that. I’m actually a songwriter,” I said.

  “Oh really?” he said, interested, not at all snarky about it.

  “Well, struggling.”

  “Aren’t we all?” said Roger.

  “Theo had a couple songs in a showcase recently,” said Jeff. “They were really good!”

  Wow, I hadn’t expected that.

  “You—actually went?” asked Roger, surprised.

  “I did!” said Jeff, smiling. “I know, hard to believe, right?”

  I know that back at Don’t Tell Mama I maybe wasn’t exactly gracious about Jeff’s turning up, but all of a sudden I was pretty stoked about it. Jeff Bornic had come to hear my songs, and he’d liked them! Of course it didn’t really mean anything, because Jeff was an idiot. But yeah, somehow it meant something.

  “I was pretty surprised, too,” I confirmed.

  “Really. Now I’m the one who’s impressed,” said Roger.

  “So did you guys change your name?” asked Jeff, looking at the program. “Weren’t you the Goodkin Quartet or something?”

  “Goodkin Berdann, yeah, but I left the firm—”

  “Tommy told me.”

  “And I thought we shouldn’t be that tied to Goodkin Berdann & Dunkel. And since it was already GBD…”

  “I didn’t think of that,” I said, looking at the program. “You’re the G-Major Quartet!”

  “A little obvious,” said Roger, “but it was the name we could all agree on.”

  “G-major?” Jeff was lost

  “GBD,” said Roger.

  “If you say GBD to a musician,” I explained, “that’s G-major.”

  “Every pitch has a letter-name assigned to it,” Roger tried. “A through G. But—you know—I’m sorry, never mind. I know this stuff doesn’t interest you.”

  “Let’s try this,” I said. “Roger, hum a G.” He did. “I knew your pitch would be better than mine. String players have amazing pitch,” I explained t
o Jeff. “Now listen. Geeeee. Now you sing that.”

  Roger laughed, and Jeff balked.

  “What? Here?”

  “Yeah. Why not? Sing—Geeeeeeeeeee.”

  Jeff—unbelievably—did what he was told.

  “Geeee,” he sang. Softly, and looking over his shoulder, but he sang it.

  “Perfect. Now do that again and this time hold it and we’ll join you, don’t freak. Go ahead, sing the G.”

  “Geeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee,” Jeff sang.

  I came in right after him a third higher.

  “Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee,” I sang.

  I raised my eyebrows at Roger, who obligingly finished out the triad.

  “Deeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.”

  Okay, this would all be incredibly stupid—not to mention the weirdest bit of cocktail chatter of all time—but for the look on Jeff Bornic’s face while he was singing. His befuddled expression became a smile that spread involuntarily. The recognition in his eyes, all the while holding the G, looking at me, at Roger, at me again, that was worth it. Jeff Bornic was really hearing music probably for the first time in his life.

  All around us heads had turned, but I didn’t care. I gave the boys a cutoff, and Jeff just grinned.

  “And that,” said Roger, “is a G-major chord.”

  “That was—so—cool!!!” said Jeff.

  “And you were the tonic,” I said. “The fundamental of a major chord.”

  “Wow. Now I sort of see why you guys do this. It was actually awesome to be in there, a part of that.”

  “Now he gets it!” said Roger.

  “You boys starting a doo-wop group?” It was the second violinist, a big blowsy blonde woman, almost as tall as Jeff. “Jeffrey, how have you been?”

  “Hi Katrina,” said Jeff back in schmooze-mode.

  “Lot of rumors around town about you and a partnership over there, and I’m sure they’re all true.”

  “Yeah, we’ll see. Fingers crossed.”

  “Are you on the Hiromi case?”

  “Maybe, don’t know yet.”

  “Well—good luck!”

  “Thanks.”

  “We haven’t met,” she said to me suddenly. The way she towered over me, I thought she was going to eat me. “Katrina.” She extended her hand.