Virtuosity (17 page)

“It’s okay, Carmen.” He put his hand on mine.

“This next one is our stop,” I said, and stood up.

We walked in silence from the station to the hotel. What did he want to show me? It had to be violin related. Maybe he had some incredible new instrument or some huge Guarneri secret or … what?

Of course, there was the other option. In the movies and on TV,
come back to my hotel with me
always means sex. But it couldn’t be that. Diana would roll her eyes and say I was so naïve—not out of concern for my innocence, but because sleeping with Jeremy would make me so much more vulnerable than I already was. It would put my raw little heart in the palm of his hand.

I pumped my cold hands and folded my arms across
my chest to warm myself. I hated that she’d put that idea into my brain.

But would it be so bad if sex was what he really wanted? Couldn’t I forget that he was Jeremy King for just one night and worry about the aftermath later? It seemed like a small price for one perfect piece of normalcy—heartbreak later for happiness now. And if I acknowledged that a betrayal of some kind was probably coming, maybe that would free me to do what I wanted tonight. Maybe.

“Home, sweet home,” Jeremy said, and looked up. The Drake shone like a crystal-studded pillar, lights glittering from the windows. The doorman nodded as he opened the door for us, and Jeremy gave him a familiar, “Hey.” After weeks at the Drake, he was probably friends with the entire staff.

I’d forgotten the elegance of the entrance hall, the flowers, the chandeliers, the lagoon blue carpets. I paused at the bottom of the grand staircase that led to the lobby, a warning sounding in my head. I shouldn’t be here.

Jeremy looked back over his shoulder. “Coming?” he asked. I followed.

The cold air that clung to our bodies was gone by the time we reached the top step. We passed through the lobby, by the front desk and the concierge, past the couches where two gowned women perched beside tuxedoed men, and through to the elevators. Jeremy pressed
the up button. We waited. Why did I feel so out of breath?

He had a large corner suite on the tenth floor with the same lagoon blue carpets, a white king-size bed, mahogany desks and tables, and a stiff-looking couch. It looked gently messed—a sweater on the couch, a pile of books beside his bed, a portable metal music stand, extended to its full height and sagging under the weight of several books of music—but not a complete disaster, and not sterile and hotel-ish either. His violin and bow were out of the case, lying perpendicular on the bed, a dark cross over the bone white silk of the comforter.

“Your violin,” I said.

“What about it?”

“It’s beautiful. So different close up.” The wood was the color of black coffee, but without the stage lights its gloss was gone. The color was warmer than I’d remembered, like a layer of red ran underneath.

“It’s no Strad,” he said, tossing the key card on the credenza.

Was that an edge to his voice? Maybe not.

“The color, I mean. Mine’s quite orange. Do you mind?” I asked and walked toward the bed.

“Go ahead.”

I so rarely picked up anyone else’s instrument. Yuri didn’t take his out of the case to teach anymore. When I was little he’d had it out for every lesson, preferring to
demonstrate rather than make the translation from music to Ukrainian to English. Yuri’s violin was the color of hay, the color of Jeremy’s hair.

I picked it up by the neck and placed it on my shoulder. Everything was the same and everything was different. The wood of the neck felt smoother, and maybe a hair wider than mine. The space for my thumb between the frog and the wrap of the bow was tighter. I played a few notes, the opening phrase of my favorite Bach Partita. The tone was bright and beautiful, but not deep. I tested out the lower register, and then moved up the instrument until I was playing the high notes on the E string. He was right. It was no Strad, but the sound was sweet and the instrument was responsive.

Jeremy sat watching me from the armchair beside the TV, leaning back, arms folded.

“Nice,” I said.

He shrugged. I stared back, but he had an intensity that held his features perfectly still and I looked away first. He probably thought I’d picked it up just so I could feel better about my violin. Now a compliment would sound fake, and anything less was rude. I shouldn’t have asked to play it.

“It is nice,” he said. “My parents took out a second mortgage on their house to finance it. But it’s not … Well, you know.”

It wasn’t the kind of instrument he deserved. Again, I
thought of him on stage. No, not at all what he deserved.

“I get funding from Arts Council England, and there’s money from CD sales and competitions for travel, but not enough for what I really need. That’s why I have to win,” he said.

Of course. He needed the violin. Four years with a Guarneri violin was a long time. Long enough to make a lot of money, long enough to find a patron to set him up with another instrument.

“You look surprised,” he said.

“No. Not surprised,” I faltered, realizing too late that I was saying the wrong thing. “I just sometimes forget about that part of the prize.”

“If I had a Strad I wouldn’t be fighting to get my hands on a Guarneri either.”

I put his violin back on the bed, laying the bow beside it, and sat down on the couch across from him. It was just as stiff as it looked. I shouldn’t have come up. It seemed ridiculous now, the very idea that he’d had sex on his mind when he asked me here. Violin was clearly the only thing either of us could think about right now.

“What did you want to show me?” I asked.

“Two things. The first was my violin. The second”—he stood, walked toward the bed as he spoke—“is this picture.” He pulled a photo in a silver frame from the nightstand and passed it to me.

Three people stood posed at the edge of what looked like a farmer’s market. Crates of carrots, tomatoes, and eggplant cluttered a fruit and vegetable stand behind them, larger boxes of produce were wedged between the legs of the table on the cobblestone beneath. On the left stood a drained-looking woman, tall and thin with wispy blond hair and skin so pale you could see veins at her temples. She seemed old, but when I examined her features, I could see she wasn’t. She just looked tired.

On the far right, Jeremy leaned against the corner of the table, arms crossed, looking like a younger, hardier version of the woman. Same blond hair and slender body, but with muscle and blood under his tanned skin. The picture must have been taken recently because he was the Jeremy I recognized now, not the boy from the picture in the Carnegie Hall program.

Between them a boy sat in a wheelchair. The chair was angled away from the camera, but the boy’s head was turned and he stared directly into the lens. Reddish hair blew across his face, partially covering his eyes. He had the woman’s pale skin, but Jeremy’s jaw and his same determined glare.

“Your brother?”

“Yeah.” Jeremy said.

“And your mom?”

“Uh-huh.”

“How old is your brother?” His features looked boyish, but his limbs were long.

“Thirteen.”

“My mum has a huge garden,” he explained. “It’s a hobby, but she takes it pretty seriously. She spends every spare second in it, actually. The picture is taken at a produce market in Leeds. That’s where I live, or they live, I should say. I don’t even know where I live. Surrey, I guess.”

“And your brother, has he always been in a wheel-chair?”

“No. He was diagnosed with muscular dystrophy when he was four, but he didn’t need a wheelchair until last year.”

“That’s what happens with muscular dystrophy. Slowly. Everything gets worse.”

I stared at the boy in the picture again, and this time saw his slouch and the way his hands curled up in his lap.

“How slowly?” The second the words were out, I wished I could suck them back in.

“Do you mean, when will he die?”

I didn’t say anything, just stared at the picture: the woman’s weary expression, the boy’s defiant stare, Jeremy’s athletic frame, then back to the woman again. I looked up at Jeremy and nodded. He seemed so matter-of-fact, so casual. Arms still crossed behind his head, he was watching
the slow twirl of the ceiling fan. His voice had produced the words in the same tone that he’d ordered me another soda with just a couple of hours ago.

“The doctors don’t know or won’t say. Nobody will, or at least not to me. Robbie’s case is aggressive. That’s his name, Robbie. From what I’ve read and overheard, it’ll be within the year or so, but that’s just what I’m getting from my own random Google searches and conversations between my parents that I’m not supposed to hear. Nobody talks to me about any of it.”

“That sucks,” I said. What a lame comment. But what was I supposed to say? Maybe nothing at all.

“I have to win, Carmen.”

Out of nowhere. We sat in silence, his comment burning the space between us. My ears felt hot, my face felt hot.

“I have to win,” he repeated, “for Robbie. It’s the only big thing I can do for him. I don’t know how much longer he’s even going to be able to hear me—” His voice cracked and he looked down at his hands, spreading the fingers as wide as he could in front of him. His face had that look that people have when they are trying not to cry, nostrils wide, eyes glassy, chin pulled in. “You’re the only one who can beat me. I need you to let me win.”

I heard, but I didn’t hear. The words were too improbable to digest. But then my brain repeated them
and my stomach dropped. I felt sick. “That …”

“Carmen.
Please.
”

“That’s not fair. You can’t ask that.”

“Not fair? Fair is meaningless.” His voice was so pleading. “I think about what’s not fair every single time I look at my brother. Every time I think that in five years I’ll be in school or onstage and he won’t be
anything
or
anywhere.
Nothing is fair. Sometimes things are a little
less
unfair. That’s it. That’s as close to fair as life gets.”

“It’s not something you can ask, though.” I stopped for breath. I had to get control and think, but I felt so flustered. “This is my dream too, Jeremy. I shouldn’t have to explain what I’ve sacrificed to you of all people, and I know that sounds like nothing compared to why you need to win, compared to your brother, but …”

“But you could win the next Guarneri! Robbie doesn’t have four years!”

“I …”

“Just think about it. That’s all I’m asking, and I wouldn’t even be doing that if I didn’t think you were the kind of person who would consider it. If I didn’t …” He hesitated and pushed his hair out of his eyes, looking miserable. “I feel like I know your heart, Carmen.”

I was such an idiot. Diana had been right, or at least close enough. He wasn’t trying to break my heart, but he
certainly wasn’t falling in
love
with me. Just thinking the word, realizing how stupid it was to have believed that he felt that way made my insides hurt, made me want to melt into the couch and disappear completely. I stood up and walked over to the glass door. It opened up onto a balcony, but I didn’t go out. Instead I leaned my forehead into the glass, letting the cold flow into me.

Jeremy was trying to win my love or friendship or whatever this was, so he could
appeal
to my heart, and if it got broken in the process, that was just collateral damage. But using his dying brother to guilt me into throwing the competition—that couldn’t really be what he was doing, could it? He had to know his winning wouldn’t fix his brother. Or maybe he’d convinced himself it would.

Diana may have been only half right about Jeremy, but she was completely right about me. I was naïve. I kept my forehead to the glass and brought my fingers trembling up to press against the cool surface. My body ached for Inderal. Or was it my heart that needed numbing? Why had I flushed them all? Just one was all I needed. Just one.

Lake Michigan was black under the starlit sky.

I had to ask, but it was easier if I didn’t look at him. “Is that why you kissed me?”

The minute the words were out, I knew the answer. I hadn’t needed to ask.

The pause was a little too long. “Of course not.”

“Yes, it is.” My voice was shaking but I couldn’t steady it. “That’s why you wanted to meet me, why you played
Carmen Fantasy
for your encore, why you pretended to like me and told me I was beautiful. It was part of some big soften-Carmen-up plan so you could convince me to just give you the Guarneri competition!”

“Carmen, that’s ridiculous.”

“Really? I don’t think so.” My brain hurt as it tripped over his words again and again. Something didn’t make sense. “What makes you even think I could beat you? You
know
you’re the one who everyone is expecting to win. You’ve never even heard me play!”

“I lied,” Jeremy said softly. “I went to your concert on Saturday.”

I pulled my head from the glass and turned to him. “What? Why did you tell me you didn’t go?”

He stood slowly and took a step toward me, then stopped. “I didn’t want you to know how freaked out I was. I liked you,
still
like you. I’d just kissed you the night before—see? That was before I heard you, before I knew how … how …”

I thought back to Saturday. The horror of the anxiety without Inderal, the vomiting, the fight with Diana. I should have crumbled on stage and humiliated myself. But I hadn’t. The performance had been magical. The way
everything fit so perfectly together, every movement and emotion, it had felt so incredible.

“You were amazing,” he said. “I don’t think I can beat you.”

His shoulders sagged under the weight of his words. I had felt the same way when I heard him play.

“I shouldn’t have asked you,” he said, eyes lowered. “You’re right. It isn’t fair.” He stood frozen in the center of the room, wanting to come to me, I could tell, but not sure what I’d do. Finally, he looked up and something about those beautiful blue eyes made the humiliation explode inside of me.

I stepped back, almost tripping over my own feet. “I have to go.”