scrambles in his suitcase to find sheet music he hasn’t looked at in weeks; mistakes pop up at surprising times, when memory is most confident.
Never play a mistake twice, for it will burn new neural channels. Play it correctly five or six times before pressing on. That’s how you compose new memory, the one you want to live with.
The bully boys have won, and it’s a dark day for the institute.
President Luke lets out his belt a notch and can’t stop himself from smirking. He has the nerve, once the board meeting is over, to walk Jasper to the door, slip that hairless arm around his waist, and say, “We’re counting on you, as ever.”
That Jasper will hand in his official resignation by Monday.
Just twenty minutes earlier Jasper presented an itemized list of Luke’s activities to the executive while they stared fixedly at their agenda sheets.
“The office can’t continue to function like this,” he explained. “I’m afraid it’s Luke or me. You must decide.”
And so they decided.
And still they won’t look at him, for Jasper has become contaminated, like those poor souls in D Wing across the street, breathing through thrice-filtered air.
Twenty-One
Lucy, dressed in a wraparound skirt made from some gauzy Indian cotton, peers at Toby’s right hand, while he stares down at the crown of her head. She flips the hand over and examines his palm, making small noises of discovery. “I’ve seen this before,” she says, and he catches the perturbation in her voice. She looks up at him, steady gaze. “Have you been told what it means?”
“That I’m part ape,” he cracks. He knows he has a weird right palm — two deep lines instead of the usual heart, head, and life.
She doesn’t smile, and suddenly he’s on edge. Last thing he needs is Lucy deciding to predict his future. It’s an old fear, people looking at him with concerned eyes, seeing something scary he doesn’t see himself.
They perch on her bed in a dorm room like his, yellow spread crumpled beneath.
“Where’s the drink you promised?” he asks.
With reluctance she drops his hand and pads off barefoot to the kitchen. He hears the crack of ice cubes and soon she returns holding two tumblers of Scotch. Taking one, he settles against the pillows at the head of the bed as she heaves herself beside him. There’s nowhere else to sit in the cluttered room, the solo chair being piled with clothes and sheet music. Someone across the hall is strumming chords that sound jazz-inflected and improvisatory.
“Trace doesn’t exactly practise,” Lucy says. “She doesn’t want her program to get stale.”
They exchange smiles. No one is so good that she can leap from one recital to the next without practising a great deal. Some of the tension leaves Toby’s body — one less competitor to worry about. Slugging back the Scotch, he gasps as it attacks the back of his throat.
“Of course, the moment I leave the pod, she’s hard at it,” Lucy adds.
The bed is unmade, which shocks Toby slightly — so like his mother’s distracted housekeeping and unlike Jasper who plucks micro-fluffs off the carpet and tut-tuts over wall smudges. The window ledge is littered with cosmetics and a toothbrush, inadequately rinsed.
You are in this woman’s bedroom, Toby.
The warning is noted, a pesky voice that some might call conscience.
“Give me your palm again,” she says.
Amber liquid fires up his mouth and throat and chest. It’s not just an instrument that creates sound; it’s the entire realm of sympathetic vibrations, the edgeless world.
Lucy reaches out, and his hand slides like a fish onto hers. She touches the flesh firmly. “Your palm is nearly square,” she says, tracing its edges. “And the fingers are surprisingly short for a guitarist. A classic fire hand.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning, my dear —” she arches her eyebrows “— that you are excitable and highly creative.” She holds his palm to eye level and examines it for several seconds before saying, “Most unusual.”
“Why?” He can’t disguise his curiosity.
“Twinned with the simian line …”
“The what?”
“You see it in primates, these two deep creases.” She strokes skin around the contours of flesh and bone. “I would guess that you live intensely, perhaps with an undercurrent of fear.”
He starts to pull away again, but she grips firmly.
“You have enormous gifts, but of course you know that.” She frowns. “Such gifts are often wedded with shadows.”
The room feels tiny, a shoebox to set a pet mouse in.
“I don’t mean to frighten you,” she says.
“Just tell me if I’m going to win.”
“I’m no soothsayer.” She hesitates. “But I’d put my money on you.”
He inhales sharply.
“When you play, it feels dangerous, and I want nothing less from music.”
He drains his glass, feels his insides burn. Her hand curls over his and lifts it to her cheek. He feels her excitement. She wants to be part of the ride.
Across the hall, Trace switches on the hourly news in French. Spatter of gunfire and sirens — the rest of the world screams from inside a radio no bigger than a slice of bread.
Lucy tilts her head so he won’t notice the beginnings of a double chin. Women try to protect him from signs of age; they don’t want to frighten him or incite pity. Women like Lucy run through fire to rescue their boys. His own mother disappeared when the saucepan erupted with flames, and Felix found her huddled in a corner of the yard, pointing a fire extinguisher toward the compost.
She touches her lips to his fingers, then slips one into her mouth and bites down gently. “You’ve been eating potato chips,” she observes.
“What are you doing?” He jolts upright in the bed.
“Don’t worry.” She reaches to turn off the lamp, and the room snaps into sepia. She is aware of light and shadow and he is the camera.
“What are you doing?” he repeats.
She ignores the question.
In the museum’s nursery she lifted the child’s mirror and stared at herself. Each glance offered an opportunity for self-improvement.
Without danger there is no beauty — isn’t that what she meant? Without danger there is only the earnest plucking of amateurs — and he has never been an amateur.
“I can’t do this,” he says, beginning to swing his legs over the side of the bed.
“You have all of tomorrow to prepare for the final.”
“There’s still a couple of spots I’m not sure about.” He knows this sounds lame.
She looks at him with arched eyebrows.
“I messed up the Villa-Lobos this afternoon,” he says, which is true. “Something I played perfectly for a month.” He lifts his arms dramatically. “Vanished.”
“You’ve worn the thing down to a nub.”
It’s possible to play a piece so much that it stops making sense. He slips into his sneakers, discreetly wiping his finger on the sheet. “I have to get it right before the day is over.”
She smiles. “Of course you do.”
He’s