Off Balance (Ballet Theatre Chronicles Book 1) (22 page)

Montserrat settled back in her chair. The room was silent as she took a sip of her wine.

“And so you went on to London’s Royal Academy of Music for four years and played your way to international acclaim?” Alice asked.

Montserrat paused, for the briefest of instants, before nodding.

“Hard work alone got you there, huh?”

“That’s it. Endless hours of work and practice. No glamour in that story.”

She was lying. Alice could tell.

“So, your conservatory days. Were your parents living there in London too?”

“No. They alternated between Paris and New York during those years.”

“How did you get by?”

This produced a small frown. “I was eighteen, Alice. I’d supported myself for years with my laundry business. By fourteen I was able to charge for music gigs—weddings, parties, events. I knew how to live on a tight budget; I’d done it all my life.”

Alice straightened from her relaxed position on the couch. “Did you make good friends?”

Montserrat looked uneasy. “I’m not following this. You want to know what, precisely? Yes, I had friends there. A few. But conservatory is not intended to be a social experience. You’re there to work hard, learn music and technique from world-class teachers, and perform whenever possible. What else do you want to know?”

Where did it come from, this dark, distressing urge to challenge, to take down such an artist? Was it the pinnacle of admiration or the pinnacle of envy? Or perhaps the two met, there at the very top, and there was no difference.

“Tell me about your good friends back then,” she insisted. “Your most intimate friends.”

Montserrat’s brown eyes had grown bright; color had crept into her cheeks. She’d never looked more lovely. She’d never looked more trapped and uncertain.

Good.

Montserrat rose abruptly and left the room. She returned a minute later, bringing with her the bottle of wine, pouring each of them more without speaking. Afterward she sat back and met Alice’s eyes. Gone was the trapped, afraid look. In its place was a chilliness that sent a jittery thrill down Alice’s spine.

“Let’s see. Is it Len Stevenson you want me to talk about, Alice? For whatever reason God only knows.”

“Who is he?”

“Who do you think? The intimate friend from conservatory days you seem so keen to hear about. Ah, Len. A true friend in need. Do you want to know how much he helped me? I’m thinking you do, or you wouldn’t have brought this up.”

Montserrat didn’t wait for her to reply.

“Len was the owner of the Vuillaume back then. He was a very wealthy, well-connected arts philanthropist and patron. He asked me if I’d like to test it out and borrow it. For the duration of my career. This was a pretty heady proposition for a twenty-year-old to hear. As you see it here in this room right now, you can probably guess the answer. Of course it came with a price. Let me tell you all about that price, Alice.”

Montserrat’s eyes were flashing now. Alice knew the trapped, uncertain expression was now on her own face and that Montserrat was taking equal grim pleasure in being the one to put it there.

“A young woman’s virginity carries a premium at the bargaining table. Good thing I saved mine for the right occasion. And after that? The Tourte bow, mine for the asking. Imagine having to shell up 25,000 quid for a bow on my own and yes, that would be pound sterling and not U.S. dollars. What’s a blow job or two, or six, between friends? And how to put a price on the introduction to Judith, my New York manager? Handles only the best, only by referral. Then there were the calls to some big-name conductors. Cigars and chocolates sent alongside a demo CD to presenters who pretty much control the concert circuit. You think, for a second, a nobody like myself could have made that kind of action happen?”

Alice’s mouth opened but no sound came out. She shut it, chastened. Montserrat took another gulp of wine, picked up the bottle and slopped more wine into each of their glasses.

“Len became very important the season I finished up my conservatory studies, when I was competing in the Royal International Violin Competition. That’s one of those big, prestigious, career-launching competitions, and it was held that year, right there in London. The stress of it, the pressure to excel were just unbearable. I made it to the finals. The night before my final concerto performance, after fourteen hours of practice—par for the course throughout the entire fourteen-day competition—my nerves were so fraught, I was close to a breakdown. Len took one look at me, made me set down the Vuillaume and go out with him and his wife to dinner. Drinks beforehand, drinks during, drinks after. Stupid idea, yes. That’s stress for you. Back at their home, Len dropped his bomb, telling me that unfortunately they might have to sell the Vuillaume, that they had an interested buyer offering a price they couldn’t refuse.”

Alice stared at her. “That bastard! How could he? And why?”

“In retrospect, I think he was worried that I’d outgrow him and the need for the Vuillaume, which, after all, wasn’t a Strad. Big competition winners attract lots of sponsors, who like their names and instruments affiliated with winner musicians. But, then again, Len knew how much the Vuillaume meant to me. And we both knew it was his to sell.

“As you might guess, I was pretty upset. I was also very drunk. The timing of his announcement couldn’t have been worse. But of course he knew that; he’d planned it that way.”

“Montserrat. God. What did you do?”

“I begged him to reconsider. I told him I’d do anything, anything to keep the Vuillaume safe with me.”

Prudence told her she’d heard enough, but a lurid sense of curiosity got the better of her. “How did he respond?”

Montserrat’s eyes flickered from her wine glass to Alice and back to her glass. “He invited me to show him and his wife ‘anything.’”

The insinuation became clear.

“With both of them?”

She was sounding like Lana, she realized. Montserrat rewarded her with a condescending smile.

“Yes, Alice. Both of them. Particularly useful when one of them wants a moment captured on video. Or when the other prefers girls to her hairy overweight husband. Goodness. The tricks and positions I was taught that night. Can you imagine?” She flashed Alice a look of scorn. “Silly me. Of course you can’t. Anyway. I let them play their games. And the next morning, I felt so wasted, so hung over and full of misgivings, I wanted to die. But hey, not on the agenda. Because I had to perform my concerto that night. It was the Sibelius Violin Concerto, a marathon, even on the best of days.”

Here she seemed to lose her bravado.

“That final performance was nothing short of surreal. Who knows where I pulled all that energy from? It was like pure despair. Like I’d reached the end of my rope. Which, in truth, I had. If I’d lost the competition, an open door to professional freedom would have shut in my face. But even that would have been tolerable compared to losing my Vuillaume. That would have been like having a limb cut off.”

She glanced over at Alice. “Are you familiar with the Sibelius?”

“I’ve heard it. But I don’t know it well,” she admitted.

“The second movement is so haunting, so intense. You hear the brass from the orchestra slowly building, and there you are with your violin, desperately trying to… I don’t know. Stay alive. Survive against the odds. The pain of it—I felt like a bird in the dead of winter, knowing I would die, because the cold was just too much to overcome. But you know what? I’ll bet that bird keeps singing until the instant before it dies. Because what else can you do if you were born to sing?”

She laid her head against the pillow back of the chair. Alice, sickened by the story she’d just forced out of her friend, kept quiet. Silence hung over the room, opaque and cloying, until Montserrat spoke again.

“I don’t think my body, my psyche, could handle a repeat of that night. But it won me first place. And I kept my Vuillaume.”

They both turned to look at the Vuillaume, nestled in its case on the side table, the case opened to reveal Montserrat’s bows and a few tucked-in, fading photographs.

“Does he…” Alice began, and faltered. “Does that man own it still?”

Montserrat snorted. “God, no. I’m out of that prison, thank goodness.” She reached for the wine bottle and sloshed more wine into each of their glasses. “No, the West Coast Musicians’ Guild owns it now.”

“Who is that?”

“A consortium of three investors, one of them being the team of Carter and myself. We own thirty-four percent.”

“How did this come about?”

A smile crossed Montserrat’s face, the first one in a while.

“Actually Len did himself in. He got greedy. When Carter and I got engaged, he had the nerve to try and scare me again. There was a potential buyer, a very interested buyer, he told me. Maybe he was thinking he could blackmail me. No chance of that—I’d told Carter the whole story already. Carter was so incensed by the new threat, he immediately set to taking care of things. He got Matthew on board and together they devised this little plan. Carter and I publicly made an offer to Charles Beare in London, who was conducting the transaction. Len, of course, saw our names and rejected the offer. Then another investor with an infinitely more reputable name stepped in and offered two thousand over the Vuillaume’s asking price. Since there was no real buyer to begin with, Len leapt at the offer, certain he was destroying me. Even after he found out the buyer represented the West Coast Musicians’ Guild, which planned to loan the Vuillaume to me, he thought he’d gotten the upper hand.”

Montserrat chuckled, shaking her head. “Silly, fuckwit Len.”

“Wait.” Alice sat up. “So you’re saying the Guild is composed of three investors. You and Carter teamed up, Matthew, and who else?”

Montserrat regarded her expectantly. “Oh, come on Alice. You’re an intelligent woman. A West Coast musical instrument investor with a reputable name—you mean you can’t figure that part out?”

“No,” Alice replied, mystified.

“Didn’t you ever wonder why I was performing at Andy Redgrave’s house that night? Did you think it was some nice coincidence set up to please you?”

Alice was too stunned by the implication to take in the fact that Montserrat’s words had contained a barb directed at her.

“Andy Redgrave owns part of the Vuillaume,” Alice said slowly.

Montserrat nodded. “Thirty-three percent, as does Matthew. Which makes Carter and myself the majority shareholder, with the ability to overrule any decision to ever sell the violin. And any one shareholder’s decision to sell his shares must meet with a two-thirds majority vote. Carter and Matthew are lifelong friends; Matthew won’t ever turn on us. The Vuillaume is as safe with me as it will ever be, seeing as we’d never be able to buy it outright. Not after paying for its insurance and our own mortgage. A violinist has to decide, own a house or own a prestigious violin. Only a lucky few can afford to do both.”

Alice thought back to Andy’s words at his party, the “how do you like the Vuillaume?” comment. She’d replied, certain she knew more about the Vuillaume than Andy did. Instead, she’d been preaching to its part-owner.

“I can’t believe you never told me this,” she said to Montserrat.

“Why?” Montserrat retorted. “What makes you so entitled, that you should have been privy to that information?”

This time the barb was more evident. The two of them regarded each other uneasily, aware that some shift had occurred in their friendship, an opened Pandora’s box that allowed ill feelings and hidden resentments to come creeping into the room.

Why hadn’t she seen all this coming? Why hadn’t she just let everything be?

There was a jingle of keys at the front door and a moment later Carter stepped into the entryway. Montserrat leapt up and scurried over to fling her arms around him. Carter slid his arms around her waist, puzzled but pleased.

“And to what do I owe this burst of affection?”

“I just want to show you how much I love and appreciate you,” Montserrat murmured into his neck.

“Um, have you ladies been consuming a little too much wine, perhaps?”

Montserrat and Alice both laughed, a little too loudly, too cheerfully, as if to convince each other that they were done with the heavy stuff, that life was about laughter and good company and good wine.

Alice rose from her seat. “I should get going.”

“No, no, don’t leave yet. But let me go get Carter a glass so he can join us.” Montserrat hurried off to the kitchen. Carter remained standing in the living room, shuffling through the day’s mail. He smiled over at her.

“How’s it going?”

“Not bad,” she lied. “How about you?”

“Good, good.”

She knew she should steer away from the subject, but like a semi-reformed alcoholic who’d accidentally stumbled into a bar, the temptation proved too great.

“Niles in country still?” she inquired lightly, to which Carter shook his head.

“He left yesterday afternoon for Taiwan.”

“Did you see him before he left?”

“For a few minutes on Monday evening, when I brought over my adapter kit. It was late, he was still working.”

The questions flew through her head.
Was he happy? Did he look tired? Did he mention my name? Did I blow it with him?
She wanted to reach out and pluck at Carter’s sleeve, touch his arm, as if that somehow might impart the essence of the missing member of their party of four.

“Did he say anything?”

“Like what?” Carter looked puzzled, then guarded. “Should I have been trying to find out something?”

“No, no. Of course not. Don’t be silly. It’s just, oh, nothing.”

“He was in that zone of his,” Carter said by way of explanation.

“Oh, sure. That’s why I told him the two of us should just hold off on things, as well.”

“Good call.”

The red wine in her stomach gave a great lurch. Before she could speculate about the possible meanings behind Carter’s two-word reply, Montserrat returned, bearing a glass and a plate of cheese and crackers.

Montserrat was in a good mood now, her high spirits infectious. She persuaded Carter to sit with them, and for Alice to have one more glass of wine. Conversation grew light, entertaining, as they argued about what constituted a good beef bourguignon and whether it was truly necessary, as Montserrat was insisting, to boil beef bones for eight hours to produce a good stock.