deck and calls Lucy’s name: it is time for her massage.
This luxury was Mark’s idea. “Treat yourself,” he said, hearing the clang of nerves in her voice. He was racing off to work where he was in charge of security for the Treasures of the Silk Route exhibit.
A naked Lucy follows the girl into a windowless room where she hoists herself onto the table, fitting her chin into the pocket. Scented oil squirts onto her back and is worked into her skin by small, firm hands.
“Shoulders very tense,” the Korean girl informs her.
“Yes,” Lucy murmurs, feeling a pair of sturdy thumbs burrow toward her brain stem.
Uncle Philip trots down the noisy street toward a back road lined with shops offering sweets and knick-knacks. He leaps over a ditch, gracefully landing on the other side. He’s become a sort of dragonfly, and everyone smiles at him, this old white guy wearing neat shorts and a polo shirt. At the edge of this colony a pair of brothers lives, ages thirteen and fourteen, with excellent teeth. Uncle Philip understands this indicates superior heath. His step is light, his heart a reliable drum.
Lucy moans.
“Too hard?” the girl asks, but doesn’t let up the pressure.
A silver disc rises inside her head.
Uncle Philip hears the whistle and stops in front of a small wooden house. A girl is selling cigarettes in the doorway, and behind her a portly woman beckons him in. Suddenly, he’s swept past a beaded curtain and experiences a flash of panic: is this how it’s going to end? Fear jazzes him up, and he notices everything, the jars of unknown substances laid neatly on a shelf, pots and pans nailed to a slab of plywood, and a peeling poster of the Backstreet Boys.
The woman speaks quickly, holding out her hand. Uncle Philip digs into the pocket of his shorts and finds his wallet. He can hardly breathe.
Lucy touches her forearm with the tip of a finger and shivers with pleasure. Basted with fragrant oils, she could almost taste herself.
Thirteen
Nothing is green in the windowless green room. Instead,
its walls are painted a soft rose. A bouquet of irises decorates the ledge — a gift to competitors from one of the small army of volunteers.
The first round took place in closed studios, but the semifinals are real performances. Toby flexes his hands, then each finger in turn, special attention paid to the one damaged in his baseball-playing mishap. The hall’s plush seats and concrete-clad walls will create bright acoustics, and this early in the day the audience will be tiny. Breakfast was a banana and a glass of water: banana for its hit of soothing potassium and water to keep hydrated. He ducked into the shower long enough to wash the sleep out of his eyes but not so long that his skin dried out. Such calibrations come easily after all these years.
He chips the tuning fork against his knee and sets its stem on the soundboard of his guitar to resonate: pointless to overtune, since stage lights will ramp up the pitch within seconds. Toby is old school about tuning, using his ears rather than electronics. He straightens, rolls his shoulders, and inhales deeply. Control the mind, banish distractions. He squeezes a millimetre of Vaseline onto his finger and dabs it in the crease of the instrument where neck meets body. During pauses in performance, he’ll smear his fingers to keep them moist. The thumbnail of his right hand is bevelled from practising so much, though not worn enough to justify gluing on a falsie. Too much flesh creates a soft, undifferentiated bass sound. He’ll make a slight adjustment with the angle of his wrist.
Breathe. Focus. This is what he tells members of Guitar Choir when they titter nervously backstage, wiping slimy palms on their dress-up clothes.
Five minutes until showtime.
He grins, feeling the surge of elation that precedes performance, but it too must be tamed.
Setting the guitar back in its case, he tugs off his shoes and, using the wall for leverage, teeters up into a headstand. Blood soars, filling his scalp and ears, flushing out the Eustachian tubes. Broadloom presses into the top of his head — eau de nylon and stale cigarettes. In the hallway he hears a door swing open and the barking voice of Manuel Juerta demanding sugar for his coffee.
A volunteer taps tentatively on the door. “Toby Hausner?”
“Yup,” Toby grunts, lowering himself vertebra by vertebra, feeling the rush of blood disappear from his head. Bits of carpet fluff cling to the knees of his dress pants, and he brushes them off before tucking in the tails of his shirt. He gives his shoes a once-over with his sleeve, not a recommended method, and glances at himself in the full-length mirror. Jasper’s right — he’s going squinty, a sort of Mongol thing happening with his eyes.
“One minute,” the volunteer cries.
Create your own courage, insist on it. Toby grabs his instrument and begins the march down the corridor. The volunteer leads the way as they sweep past framed photographs of little-known musicians.
“My magic hands will leave them breathless,” Toby intones, a recitation geared to deflect any last-minute panic, the hound of doubt that may seek a final lunge.
The girl pulls back the curtain.
His buttocks clench as he strides onto the stage.
Trickle of applause from the sparse audience.
Doused with light, he leaves the cool forest to emerge into a sun-drenched meadow. The wooden floor feels springy underfoot, and when he spots the padded bench waiting downstage, his heart jumps, a sci-fi horror that threatens to burst out of his chest.
Jasper stands next to the window of client room B on the upper floor of the institute. A teenage girl called Moxie tips back and forth on her chair and refuses to talk. She’s been sent over from Eating Disorders for a life-skills orientation. Her hair is dyed albino — think of the ammonia leaking into her porous young scalp. Moxie’s days revolve around not eating, and one of Jasper’s tasks is to help structure her time so that a range of activities will offer the promise of a full and interesting life.
Jasper gazes down at the city boulevard with its hot dog stands, groomed civic gardens, and a godawful sculpture of one of the province’s founding fathers perched on a concrete plinth. It is possible, Jasper knows, even inevitable, to be two places at once, his world and Toby’s, which is both blessing and curse. At this moment Jasper has no choice but to imagine his lover as he approaches the bench in Montreal, sweat soaking through his laundered shirt.
“You okay?” Moxie finally asks.
The comment startles Jasper. “I am quite all right.” She must have spotted the flush of excitement on his cheek. He wishes he could say that it isn’t every day you play your heart out for a team of international judges — you with your twig limbs and sunken chest can’t know about the ecstasy of the artist. But perhaps Jasper is mistaken. Moxie is a devoted and tireless sculptor of her own body, and there is elation as well as fear in those overly bright eyes. The artist is never understood by conventional citizens.
Toby reaches the bench where, clutching the neck of the guitar, he bends deeply from the waist toward the unseen audience. At the back of the hall a door clicks open, letting in a sleeve of light — Lucy, with two other competitors have come to watch.
Toby adjusts
