“We’ll be stuck there for hours,” Lucy whispers in Toby’s ear, seeing alarm cross his face. He’s got to get back to the dorm and practise. Time presses in.
Lucy swings her purse over one shoulder and says crisply, “I’m afraid we must dash back to the university.” She touches Toby’s arm in a wifely way.
The man seems hurt. “You must be interested in seeing these precious items — letters in his own hand to famous artists, original manuscripts, concert programs … and many personal articles.”
“I’m very sorry,” Lucy says.
“Perhaps we can come back,” Toby says brightly.
“Yes!” Lucy chimes in. “We’ll return once this is all over.”
The man’s shoulders sink, and when he speaks, it is in a resigned voice. “Yes, when it is over.”
Toby feels Lucy’s sharp tug on his sleeve. “Time to fly,” she says, foot planted on the top stair.
“Go then,” the man says, flattening himself against the wall. “A woman must never be kept waiting.”
It is the same heavy-handed courtliness that Klaus employs with what he terms “the fair sex.” Suddenly, Toby can’t get out of there fast enough. He pushes past both of them, hastening down the stairs and out the door to the bustling sidewalk where it is midday and women clip down the busy street in high heels, chattering into their cellphones.
What would Dr. Hirsch make of this new generation of urban sounds? No doubt he would incorporate the ring tones, gypsy violin, even the pneumatic drill upending pavement across the street into some aural tapestry that would first cause laughter from his puzzled audience, then worship.
“Were we very rude?” Lucy asks, joining him on the sidewalk. “I knew he’d suck us into an archival tunnel, make us examine every shoelace and grocery list.”
“Imagine reading his letters …” Toby says.
She looks at him sharply. “You read German?”
He doesn’t. Klaus tried to implant the language in his sons’ minds, but they resisted, scorning his marzipan rewards for the correct conjugations of verbs. All that remains are a few common words and a handful of nursery rhymes.
They glance up as a shadow passes: a blimp coasts across the sky, trailing a banner that advertises a common analgesic tablet. At the same time a taxi blares its horn, mimicking the opening of Beethoven’s Fifth while a kid strides past, earphones leaking hip-hop beats.
Lucy squints at him, using her hand as a visor. “Toby Hausner,” she says, “you’ve fallen for that piffle about the Receptive Cone.”
The dorm foyer buzzes with a fresh batch of conventioneers. The army cadets have disappeared, replaced by members of an international human rights organization. Delegates in jeans, saris, and suits line up before the gowned table to receive their registration kits. With jet-lagged ardour they pump hands and clap one another on the back while Lucy threads through the crowd, muttering apologies.
When she reaches the elevator that will whisk her up into the women’s wing, she calls back to Toby, “Come by at six for cocktails.”
He lifts an arm to protest. Cocktails! He must work until the sun sets and until his hands plead for mercy.
Moments later he slips into his cell. The guitar case lies across the cot, lid propped open. Somewhere far below the Metro rumbles.
Toby begins playing the trio with his fretting hand planted in seventh position, when of course he should have begun back in second, allowing for the cathedral-bell chime and a smooth transition. He worked this out months ago. Seventh position, he quickly discovers, leads to instant crisis and an open string thunking — so much for the cathedral chime.
He 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
