or intrusive. He knew from the beginning that he would be good, very good.
Tonight he might as well be invisible. A new crop of students files into the front pew where they’ll get an unobstructed view of the artist’s hands and face. These hands belong to Antonio Conti who, just a year older than Toby, saunters onto the chancel, guitar tucked under one arm while enthusiastic applause erupts from the small crowd. Without fuss Conti sits on the low chair, tunes, pushes back his cuffs, and begins.
He plays with a scrumptious tone, a Mediterranean bel canto full of glissandos and arpeggios that lift the man half out of his seat. Toby feels his own shoulders relax, his breathing grow deep. Conti manages to be romantic as hell, hovering on the high notes, unrolling rubatos that make Toby smile at their succulent corniness, yet there is also perfect control, no buzzes, no unruly snaps.
This is my drug, he thinks, the opposite of grim Teutonic passion. He may be his father’s son, but he’s never going to list the socks in his drawer, never going to stack tuna fish cans for recycling. The sound fills him with a depth charge of emotion, and he’s startled to find himself close to weeping. Conti’s mouth drops open, then squeezes shut as the phrase lifts and falls. Toby’s program drifts to the ground. He knows now he will perform at Conti’s master class the following day, that this man must hear what he can do. At the same moment he decides he will not tell Jasper.
During intermission, Tess barely glances at him as he slides another twenty bucks across the table in return for a copy of Conti’s latest CD. Sprung from silence, the small audience is boisterous, pressing open the heavy church doors for smokes and a hit of unconsecrated air.
“Put me down for the master class,” Toby says.
“We’re full up,” Tess replies, slipping the bill into a cigar box. “You may attend as observer but not to perform.”
Toby rolls his shoulders back; it is these young men shooting past in their skinny jeans who are the cause of this fullness. “Can you make room?”
“No, I cannot.” Annoyed, she finally looks at him, thinking, he’s familiar, some crank she’s had to deal with in the past.
Toby waits for her to put it together: he’d stayed with Tess’s family for two weeks while his mother made the transition to Lakeview. They gave him a hook on the back of a door for his clothes and the hide-a-bed to sleep on. Tess’s daughter used to practise trumpet while the son smoked pot in the cellar and offered Toby his first hit of Ecstasy, the drug that is. Their freezer was stocked with ice-cream bars and Hungry Man Dinners.
“I know you,” she says, brow furrowing.
He smiles. “Toby.” Waits a beat. “Hausner.”
Her reaction is instant: she bounds to her feet, leaving the cash box unattended, and grabs his ears. “Toby Hausner! Look at you!”
He flushes with pleasure, then steels himself for the flurry of questions — where have you been all these years? what have you been doing? — but she just keeps looking at him with a broad grin and yanks his ears until he fears they’ll snap off.
“Of course you’ll play for us tomorrow,” she announces. She’s been around musicians so long that her speech is oddly cadenced, filtered through a dozen mimicked accents. Tonight it is faintly Italianate.
“Un-believable!” she says, stretching out the word. Toby beams under the warmth of her gaze. Her lean face has weathered well. “It is the Second Coming,” she adds with a fresh burst of enthusiasm, then scrambles for a pen to add his name to the list.
“Hardly that,” Toby says, but he smiles. Something is returning, his old world, and he doesn’t know whether to flee or celebrate.
“Where is my dear Angus?” She looks around the dark church and finally beckons to a burly man who huddles in the corner talking to a pair of older audience members.
Angus is her husband, the founder of the Society, and ex-officio everything, having taken a turn as president, secretary, videographer, and fundraiser. Seeing her wave, he lumbers over, and Toby notes there is considerably more grey in his beard now.
Fixing his eyes on Toby, he says in a booming voice, “Is this who I think it is?”
Toby races home before intermission is over, too revved up to hang around for the second half of the program. He can manage a couple of hours of intense practice before Jasper returns from his board meeting.
Jasper rolled out of bed this morning, ranting before his feet hit the floor: “The board orders me to balance the budget while they spend months labouring over mission statements and strategic plans. They’re supposed to fundraise, a fact they conveniently forget.” Moments later, in the middle of shaving, he poked his head out of the bathroom and announced, “It’s Luke or me, something they must understand.”
When Toby dared to ask, “Is the man really so bad?” Jazz glared at him as if he was nuts. Had he not been listening these past months? Did he not understand the concept of the Gathering Storm?
Returning to the empty flat, Toby decides he’ll work on a bravura Paganini sonata for tomorrow’s performance: why not charge fearlessly into Conti’s home territory — la bella Italia? No one accuses Paganini of being a great composer, but he’s a riot to play. Stepping off the streetcar and veering into the familiar lane, Toby sees that the clinic is dark except for a single light that blinks to life as he passes. One of the iron street lamps is dead, its bulb shattered by a rock. An angry patient has been turned away: no OxyContin for your headache, Jack.
Jasper’s switched on the porch light so that Toby might easily fit key into lock: Jasper the Anticipator.
Play the same passage many times, changing tiny elements. Accent the second beat, then the first, diminuendo just before pickup to the new phrase. Dampen the bass note. Do it all backward.
Eat me, the mushroom demands, placid little fungus.
But I’m only practising, Toby insists, keeping an eye on the clock and the hour of Jasper’s return — hardly entering some cyclone that will require rescue.
To memorize is not a mysterious process: stuff a sock in the sound hole so the strings make dull clinks. Don’t depend on notation, the visualized map of marks on a page. He pencils in fingerings so the score becomes even more of a hatch work. He played this same piece in master class a dozen years ago, dazzling the guest artist who’d flown up from Savannah. Gabrielle Someone, a young woman with huge hands. The episode is shaky in his mind: didn’t they snort a line in her hotel room afterward, view of the CN Tower lit up at night?
Upstairs, Polly the bull terrier thwacks her tail against a wall. She’s apt to take a bite out of somebody one day and slurp gratitude the next. Jasper says the girls need to bear in mind that Polly is animal, not human, and must set limits, advice they happily ignore.
Toby left the window open a crack so he’ll have warning when Jasper comes waltzing up the path, giddy with post-meeting wine.
Grab an apple and a Sprite for fortification. The fridge stinks from something hidden under a layer of foil. Toby’s taste buds function; the nose hasn’t gone AWOL.
Right-hand fingers sink into the strings: place, pressure, release.
Jasper and his crew are drinking wine and eating tapas at the usual place near the institute. The joint is otherwise empty, so the solo waitress hovers,
