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 wasting precious time. That section, played immaculately a hundred times, capsized for no known reason. Don’t over-think what the body knows so well.
Lucy hears the door of the pod open and pictures Toby waiting impatiently for the elevator. She can still taste him on her tongue, salty sweet, remnant of barbecue chips. The radio is silenced, and she hears Trace leave her room and make her way to the kitchen.
She reaches for a comb that she drags through her hair. A glance in the mirror shows a flushed face and smeared mascara. Hard to believe that mere days ago she was preparing bagged lunches each morning, composing nutritionally rich sandwiches that the twins would let fester at the bottom of their rucksacks, and doing her best to wedge practice time between catering jobs and phone calls from ticked-off vice-principals.
That life, her so-called real life, feels like a dream.
By the time Lucy reaches the kitchen, Trace is pouring boiling water into the teapot.
“I read his palm,” Lucy says.
“Whatever.”
The girl is embarrassed, maybe even disapproving.
Lucy begins scooping crumbs off the counter into her cupped hand; someone around here has to attend to domestic chores. “What do you make of me competing against people half my age?”
Trace looks up and says, “I think you’re brave.”
“Really?” This is just what Lucy needs to hear.
Twenty-Two
Potassium slows heartbeat. Eat one banana in the morning, then another an hour before walking onstage.
Beta blockers? Your heart will still thrum, but your hands can’t shake. The drug increases concentration, but it’s a fuzzy focus at the core, a sort of tunnel vision.
One more thing: never look directly at the judges. This is hard, because they will be looking intently at you, noting the way you move — points for presentation and artistic impression.
The four finalists have been invisible all day, confined to quarters. Tomorrow they will stride onstage for the last time, but now they have gathered for supper with their colleagues.
“Last year I was one hundred percent convinced I would win,” Javier says in elegantly accented English. “But taxi crashes into an autobus on the way to the performance,
