Heart and Soul (23 page)

T
hat day was the beginning of a new musical life for me. I didn't realize it at first. I was too busy worrying about feeling sexed up. But the next time Mr. Balaboo called to tell me someone wanted me to perform, I didn't go into cardiac arrest.

“Bess-dahlink? You there?”

“Yeah. I'm thinking,” I said.

“You are?” He couldn't believe it.

“What's the gig?” I asked.

“The Copland Concerto for Clarinet and String Orchestra. With the Muhlenberg Orchestra.”

“When?”

“The end of next month.”

“Hm.” The Copland was interesting because it didn't totally qualify as a solo, at least not in my head. There would be other instrumentalists onstage. The pianist plays, the clarinet plays, there's a conversation going on. “I'd be doing an Argerich,” I said, referring to Martha Argerich's dislike for solo work. “It's not much time, but then nobody's around the end of July. It'd be low-key.”

“Ah, yes, that's probably true,” Mr. Balaboo agreed, but there was something in his voice.

“Did you cook this up, Mr. Balaboo?”

“Perhaps Harold Stein and I gave it some thought.”

I imagined the two old guys sitting in a cloud of the professor's cigar smoke, plotting which piece in the vast solo repertoire would be the least likely to scare the crap out of me.

“Let me think about it.”

“Certainly. Take all the time you need. I don't have to tell them until Wednesday.”

That was two days away. “Gee, thanks.”

We hung up and I poured myself a cup of chamomile, which I figured might calm me down. Bourbon would have worked better. I sat on the bed, hugged my pillow, and tried to imagine myself onstage. Without David. I knew one of the violinists in the Muhlenberg. He often got drunk at our postconcert jam sessions and played jazz riffs until somebody kicked him out. I liked him and he was a good solid musician. But I hadn't practiced since my injury, which was almost seven months ago. I stretched my fingers out and studied them.

“Think you could handle it?” I asked them. Then I called the concierge at David's apartment and told him I needed access right away.

I hadn't been in there since David died except to clear my stuff out—which Mr. Balaboo mostly took care of anyway. I stood outside the door with my heart doing a tap dance, pretty much the way it had that first time I came to audition with the
Scaramouche.

“Fuck it,” I said to myself, and went in. Everything looked exactly the same. The lawyers in charge of David's trust had told Mr. Balaboo that the apartment would sell more easily if it was furnished, especially given David's fame. Somebody had gone to contract on it but had been turned down by the co-op board because he only had a mere twenty gazillion dollars. A married couple passed the board but wound up getting divorced instead of moving in. Since then, there'd been a few nibbles but nobody really serious. So here I was, back in a time warp, staring at dust motes instead of David. I figured, Okay, I've gotten this far. Might as well truly torture myself. I went into the bedroom and sat down on David's side of the mattress. I couldn't feel him there, the way you can where somebody actually lives. The place seemed hollow, as if it was some historical site and we should hang velvet ropes around the rooms. But then my heel caught on something under the dust ruffle. I leaned over and pulled out a white T-shirt. The first thing I thought was, great housekeeping. Then I buried my face in it. David. I could feel him then all right. I could taste him and smell him, that lemon smell. I'd read an article that a person's odor can sometimes reflect extreme changes in body chemistry. Anxiety has a smell and so does depression. All I knew was that suddenly that familiar lemon scent made David seem real and so the loss did, too. Once I started crying, I didn't think it was ever going to end. I curled up on the bed with David's T-shirt, which seemed to be all I had left of him.

Fortunately, I'd drunk about a gallon of tea before I got there, so pretty soon I had to go to the john. I forced myself to shove the T-shirt back under the bed where I felt it should rest in peace, peed, washed my face and went to the piano. I spent half an hour doing warm-ups. It was discouraging to say the least. Everything I asked my fingers to do, they said, “Huh?” like it was all news to them, those exercises they'd done a couple million times. But after an hour, I could feel them limbering up. Then I started working through some music, getting reacquainted with old buddies like the Bach Partitas and a Schubert Sonata. By the time I quit, my spine was ready to crack in half, but now I couldn't wait to play again. I sat for a long time and watched the day fade over Central Park. “Okay, David,” I said. “I'm gonna try.”

Mr. Balaboo somehow kept the media off me. I didn't want the added pressure of them making a huge deal out of this concert, as in “Grieving Bess Stallone Returns to Concert Stage All Alone.” As it was, the closer we got to the date, the more I started to think about how I hadn't performed solo since I teamed up with David, and we all know how pathetic those earlier gigs turned out. I tried to take deep breaths and focus on the music.

I chose the same dress from my first appearance with David at Weill. It had to be taken in here and there, but it seemed like a lucky charm. I'd insisted on being slated before intermission instead of at the end of the program. As it was, I had to warm my icy hands in the sink while the orchestra played the
Festive
Overture by Shostakovich. Then it was my turn. When I walked out onstage, there was this huge sound from the audience, a roar that went on and on. It got me choked up and instead of the old terror and loneliness, I felt embraced out there, at home. Music was what I did, what I loved.

I hit a clinker toward the end of the first movement. Everybody does it. There's no such thing as a perfect performance. For a few scary seconds, I saw sparkles in front of my eyes. But then I thought, Oh hell, if I go down, I'll just pick myself up and start playing where we left off. It made me feel free, and it made me grateful all over again for David. And for the first time since he died, I was almost happy.

They don't usually allow anybody backstage during intermission when there's a soloist performing, but Mr. Balaboo had got them to make an exception. It was a rowdy bunch. Corny, in a truly outrageous yellow suit, brought me flowers and told me he'd never been so proud of me. Vernon was there, speechless but with liquid eyes reading poems of adoration. Mrs. Edelmeyer came all alone for once. She took my hands and said, “You've brought me so much joy, Bess. Thank you for coming back. Thank you.” I put my arms around her and we had a good long squeeze. But then Jake and Pauline and Angie and her adorable and brilliant boyfriend Ben showed up. Ben was grinning from ear to ear—first of all, just being with Angie tended to make him do that, but second, he'd never been backstage before. And Pauline was overcome. “It was so beautiful, Bess,” she said, “but I can hear the heartache in every note.”

Jake laid his hand on my cheek for a second. “Good going, Stallone,” he said. I felt that little tingle again, and thought, Oh shit, what sickness is this? I remembered him twisting the brush out of the soil in one quick motion. As strong as he was, I also knew how gentle he could be.

The musicians were there, too, David's friends. The sight of them made me feel his absence like a slug in the gut. They asked me to join them in their box for the rest of the concert, but I had to get out of there. I needed to be alone with my memories of David, all the best ones, and we'd have this night together. It really was his triumph, too.

So now I was in demand as a soloist. I didn't rush into it. After all, I'd been playing two-piano stuff exclusively for almost two years so I had plenty of brushing up to do. Professor Stein wasn't teaching anymore, but offered to give me his impressions after I'd worked through a piece.

Mainly, he was too busy with his new girlfriend, a cellist, no surprise there. Robin didn't give a shit about the cigars and even let him stink up the bedroom. If you didn't have asthma before you stuck your nose in his place, you were wheezing by the time you left. But Harold Stein was one happy old dude.

I felt myself sinking deeper and deeper into the music. I practiced six hours a day, which is huge for any musician, and I started playing all over the world. If you look at my CDs from that period, the live in-concert ones, it's like Around the World with Bess Stallone—Bess in London, Bess in Amsterdam, Bess in Berlin, Bess in Madrid, Bess in fucking Sri Lanka. I'd got rid of that old cell of an apartment on West 78th and bought a one-bedroom in David's building. I told myself I was doing it to be close to Carnegie Hall, and if you believe that one, you'd better stay away from used-car salesmen.

But I'd made it through the first miserable year without David. God, those firsts were brutal. The first my birthday, the first his birthday, the first goddamn New York City Marathon that David and I had seen approximately three minutes of on our way to a rehearsal. Everything was an anniversary. But even on an ordinary day, I could be walking down Madison Avenue looking in a store window and suddenly I'd feel like somebody suddenly jammed a baseball bat into my stomach. I'd double over and groan, the missing him was so intense. Those moments became less frequent as time passed, but on the anniversary of his death in November, I locked myself in the apartment and went to bed. It was strictly fetal position for twenty-four hours. Then once that was behind me, there was a sense of relief. I'd never have to go through those firsts again.

So I racked up the frequent-flyer miles and got richer from giving concerts and cutting CDs and making appearances all over the world. I got to see myself on the front cover of a lot of magazines in funny-looking languages. I'm not quite sure why, but I got to go to the Academy Awards. What I didn't get was laid. When you're famous, your sex life becomes everybody's business … well, duh, just ask Bill Clinton. There were some pretty attractive candidates—you'd laugh if I told you some of them—especially the rock stars and the movie actors, but they're still alive, sometimes just barely (as in drug abuse), so I won't go into it. But hard as it might be to believe, given my prior history, I steered clear. I figured that life had finally beaten those overactive hormones into submission.

But then I got a surprise. A biggie. Goddamn it, but life is one strange ride. I was minding my own business, attending a combination New Year's Day and engagement party for Angie and Ben at a funky joint on the Lower East Side. All their friends were there—wearing black, of course, because the management throws you out of those downtown joints if you've got color anywhere on your person. I'd just gotten back from a trip to Tokyo so I was pretty spaced out. At the particular moment Jake and Pauline came over to say hello, I was hovering somewhere over the Pacific. I took one look at Jake from thirty thousand feet up and realized,
Uh
oh, I'm into this man. A guy I've known my entire life, who's practically a brother—well, okay, setting aside one-and-a-half rolls in the sack in the distant past—and someone who is totally committed to my oldest girlfriend. Thank God it was dark in there because I felt myself turning pink as a smoked salmon. It was simply too ridiculous. When Jake hugged me, my blood started pumping overtime. I squirmed out of his arms in a big hurry, pretending I couldn't wait one more second to snag a passing cracker with caviar on it. The place was kind of a dive—Angie's choice—but since I was paying for the party, I figured we might as well have great food.

I tossed back some champagne and started chattering away like a nutcase. I couldn't admit even to myself these scary feelings for Jake. The consequences were too scary and sad. No more best friends—I'd lose him and Pauline at one crack. I was petrified of Pauline's ESP. She was giving me one of her brain-drilling looks, excavating for my deepest thoughts. My only recourse was to start going through every bloody note of Beethoven's
Tempest
Sonata in my head so maybe I could throw her off the track. Last movement, tadadaDAH, tadadaDAH, tadadaDAH, tadadaDUM. Down, Bess. Down, girl.

When I got home, I stayed up the entire night practicing on my silent keyboard that has earphones so I don't torture the neighbors. And it wasn't just on account of jet lag.

I startled Mr. Balaboo the next morning by calling to tell him I'd take the gig in London.

“But you said you were worn out from traveling.”

“That was yesterday. I got a good night's sleep,” I lied.

“You were complaining that you were just in London last month.”

“Not a complaint. An observation. I'd like to go. Do you think they still want me?”

“Of course they want you, but Bess-dahlink, should I be worrying about this? I think I'm worrying.”

But he booked me and off I went to Europe for another month, hoping I was suffering from temporary insanity and that when I came home again, I'd remember that Jake was my co-best friend and nothing more.

It turned out, however, that Pauline's spooky vibes were transatlantic. The day I got back, she called to say that we were going to have a girl's lunch—command performance, not a request. She'd already made a reservation at Ricky's, a couple of blocks from my apartment. I was feeling queasy about the whole thing because the fantasies I'd been having about Jake were not suitable for her radar screen.

Pauline was sitting in a booth when I showed up. I only got my butt halfway down toward the seat when she said, “You're in love with Jake, aren't you?” She was pouring me a glass of bottled water at the time. I wished with all my heart that it was vodka. “Don't look away, Bess,” she said. “I want to see your eyes.”

I sat all the way down and obeyed. To my disgust, I could feel tears starting up. “Nope, nope,” she said. “Bess, it's okay. I was only borrowing him anyway.”