her throat, then stops, mortified, as Jasper’s administrative assistant drops a napkin over her salad, anticipating particulate matter. An early indicator of the virus is a neck flush. Victims display it when they’re feeling fine, then note, appalled, as it spreads from pulse point to pulse point: wrists, temples, the crease behind the knees. Easy to dismiss: who wants to believe that a blush is prelude to neurological chaos? Jasper gets patients after they’ve been sprung from hospital and the first stint of rehab, which means they are the lucky survivors. Time to get their brains up and running, add memory where it has been scoured clean.
Toby sets his instrument down when he hears the four quick steps up the stairs to the front door. He snaps off the light and dashes into the bathroom. The bed is carefully mussed, as if he’d just left it to take a whiz. He’s punched a dent in the pillow, head size.
Five
Fashion masks are the latest things. Girls glue plastic butterflies and dollar store insects onto theirs; boys add superhero stickers. Toby left his at home, wrapped over the gooseneck lamp: forget breathing through gauze. The epidemic has spiked: orange alert due to a rogue infector who jaunted about asymptomatic but is now known to be sixteen years old, female. She swept through the transit system coating handrails with viral sweat and is now quarantined at East General, surrounded by medics decked out in chemical suit regalia, busy draining fluid off her brain. It’s a horror, Jasper says, but we must keep things in perspective. This is nothing compared to the polio outbreaks of the 1950s.
Toby shows up at the Conservatory for his master class, striding past a warning sign posted on the front door (do not enter if you suffer from any of the following symptoms …), marches down the corridor feeling a prickly dryness in his eyes. It’s a massive Victorian building, solid but creaky with age. A second poster curled at the edges diagrams the progress of fundraising for the reno — stuck, it seems, at two and a half million. An open door reveals a class of students working at electronic keyboards with headphones clamped to their ears. Everyone seems better dressed than they used to be in the old days.
Toby used to practically live in this place and knew all the office staff by name. He speeds past the glass doors, not in a mood to be recognized. Retaining focus before a performance is crucial; what used to come so naturally now takes a studied effort.
Master class runs in room 108, and he spots Tess hovering at its entrance, directing traffic and checking names off the list. Her glasses are set low over her nose, and she waves at Toby. “You’re up third,” she tells him. “Make it snappy. We’re ready to roll.”
She’s always been bossy, and he slips by her, ignoring the pump of disinfectant lotion sitting on a table. Last thing he needs is to slime up his hands and watch them pucker dry; playing requires a degree of moisture. He sits to one side of the room, guitar case tucked between his knees. Did Tess look at him with just a hint of concern? For all she knows, Toby might be out on a day pass, about to start speaking in tongues or to noodle through some incoherent improv.
He has done these things in public, or so he has been told.
Musicians make their way into the studio, nodding at each other in muted recognition. Several cast a glance at Toby, wondering who he might be.
Toby stares back with his blank game face. He spoke not a word to Jasper about this performance; he’s headed for a makeup class with Guitar Choir, story goes. A small lie to prevent a familiar anxious look from crowding his lover’s face.
He reaches to touch the crease at the side of his nose, dabbing enough sweat to moisten his fingertips. Nerves turn skin to parchment. This jittery anticipation is so familiar, something he’s missed and even craved without realizing it. He feels fully alive on this hard chair, coiled energy, all he can do not to bob his knees up and down.
A couple of dozen folding chairs contain participants and observers. Up front is a music stand plus a footstool and two more chairs — one for Conti, the other for the performer. Most, if not all the other musicians, will be senior students from the Glenn Gould Professional School or the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Music. Behind, a Steinway baby grand perches like a raven, wings aloft. Overhead ventilation ducts create a distracting racket, but if you switch them off, airs turns to gravy.
Conti isn’t immediately recognizable as he strides in, guitar case plastered with airline stickers. He seems smaller than last night and rounder, his features less distinctive. Conti hasn’t bothered to shave, which gives him a sleepy look. He removes his leather jacket and tosses it onto the piano lid, zipper skidding across its buffed surface. Tess grimaces, knowing there will be complaints, for the guitar isn’t seen as a serious instrument by certain members of the Conservatory faculty — too troubadour or folksy, hint of the coffee house or plantation. Conti makes a joke that no one understands, though they titter nervously, two dozen young men and a couple of women. Tess strolls over to confer about the program, and after a moment Conti glances up. His eyes find Toby’s and he nods.
Has he been warned, and if so — how? Others turn to look: Toby must be somebody, but who?
Focus. Don’t let them unsettle you.
Setup for a master class is simple: the student’s name is called and he performs a piece of his choosing. This is followed by a half-hour public class where the guest artist offers critique and suggestions, and, with luck, praise. Toby’s performed in many such classes. He understands that it is possible to temporarily fool the body, and that to appear outwardly calm is to invoke inner calm. He sits very still in his chair with no nervous throat clearings, no last-minute sandpapering of nails.
First up is a skinny kid wearing a shirt buttoned to the neck. He passes Conti a score, then jumps into a piece by a modern Brazilian composer without waiting for the audience to settle down. Conti perches on the edge of his chair, feet planted firmly on the floor, watching the boy’s hands intently.
There is a smattering of applause when the kid finishes, then Conti launches in, first by acknowledging the student’s phrasing and dynamic range. “But left hand is so tight, like a claw. You must be strong, yet one hundred percent flexible, like the octopus.”
He demonstrates a relaxation exercise, first clutching a ball, then letting it drop without changing position of the hand.
The next performer is built like a football player, muscles popping under his shirt. He lowers himself stiffly onto the chair as if still smarting from last night’s workout and announces that he will perform Conti’s own transcription of a Granados piano work.
The maestro smiles, enjoying this display of flattery.
The youth plays with his sausage fingers, mouth twisting into tortured expressions as he moves through the tricky piece, his body at odds with the delicate, even nuanced sounds that rise from his instrument.
Pretty damn good, Toby thinks, but not scary good. What he is — what they all are — is very young.
Conti says, “You must isolate the difficult sections.”
The performer nods his shaved head; he’s heard this advice a thousand times.
Conti gets the boy to try the opening section over and over, focusing on the syncopated rhythm while Conti taps out the beat. When the kid fouls up, the teacher reaches over and raps his muscled thigh. “Feel it in your body!”
The boy reddens, loses track of where he is, his old way of playing not yet subsumed to the new. Conti drags his chair even closer so that the two men brush knees, and then, on the seventh or eighth try, the kid nails it.
Relieved
