Maestro (2 page)

If ever there were an emergency, Maestro's condition was it.

She'd have to send him an email message, asking him to call her as soon as possible. It was the only way for now. Matt, a computer nerd if not a mobile phone nerd, would be much more likely to go to his computer, anyhow.

At least during the dialysis procedure, Maestro was getting some much-needed rest. Finally. She couldn't imagine how he must have suffered, sitting there slumped in his house, unable to lie down, unable to sit straight up or to lie back. Her heart wrenched at the thought of his loneliness, his isolation, when he could have called her any time and she would have rushed to his side to help him. But could anything have helped him, really? When Annasophia had left the hospital, he had been lying in the hospital bed in intensive care. His face had been gray as an overcast sky. Gray like death.

A loud sob escaped her, but there was nobody in her apartment to hear. She went to her computer, which sat on a desk in her living room, and opened her email program, but her hands were shaking too badly to type. Instead, she used them to cover her face. It didn't banish the image of Maestro's suffering face from her mind.

Heaving a ragged sigh, she started to click on
Compose Message
, but while she had been sitting with her face covered, her email program had pulled in a message. She wiped her eyes and peered at the return email address:
lostintime (at) nexcomm.net
. Nobody she recognized. It could be spam, or some asshole spreading a computer virus. She ought to delete it.

What was that subject, though?
Picture of you and Wilhelm... It's Gotta Be
. Had a fan taken a picture of her and Maestro at a show? He sometimes joined her backstage after shows, and it seemed that, a few weeks back, a fan had taken a picture of her and Maestro together before getting Maestro to take a picture of her and the fan together. Yes, she would check it out, if only to see Maestro's face when he had been feeling a bit better.

She clicked on the message. Whoever had sent the message had written:
This picture was taken in 1973
. Annasophia blinked, then read the message again. Ridiculous. How could it be a picture of her with Maestro? She hadn't even been born yet. In 1973, she wouldn't be born for seventeen more years. Someone must be crazy. Either that, or a joker. And damn, if this
lost in time
person thought that she, at 26, looked old enough to be pushing forty, they needed glasses.

Scowling, Annasophia scrolled down to view the picture. For a moment, she forgot how to breathe. There, in a place that looked like it could be backstage after one of his concerts – yes, he had been working as a concert pianist back in 1973, hadn't he? – stood Maestro, young and breathtakingly, ruggedly handsome at thirty-five years old. She'd known how handsome Maestro had been when he was young by looking at his old photo albums and also by searching for information about his former career on the web. He was a very handsome older man now. But it wasn't Maestro, as hot as he looked in the picture, who made her breath catch. It was the young woman, smiling so widely that she looked as though she were laughing, her face pressed up close against the chest of the tall, stately Maestro, who held her in the circle of his arms. The young woman wore a dark, floor-length dress that clung in all the right places, and she had tousled dark hair, aquiline features, and a slender build like a wood elf. Except for that fancy-pants dress, she could easily be Annasophia's twin.

But Annasophia didn't have a twin.

Me?
she thought.
Could it be?

She peered more closely.

The picture looked as though it had been scanned, maybe from a magazine. In white space next to the picture was written in an odd, spiky hand the same phrase the sender had typed as the subject line for the email:
You and Wilhelm... It's Gotta Be
. The picture didn't look grainy, as though it had come from a newspaper. Both Maestro's and the woman's features were clear. And the expression on the woman's face – well, sure, two people could look very much alike. Could they share the same expression, the same gleam in the eye, the same quirky, devil-may-care grin?

Except for one major difference. This woman seemed to glow with being in love. Even from a magazine picture taken in the seventies, her emotion – conveyed through her face and her body language – seemed to shine out of Annasophia's computer.

Annasophia had never been in love.

In lust? Sure. Her male groupies were smoking hot. She'd started on birth control pills at sixteen, when she'd started playing gigs, though she'd never told Maestro because she didn't want him to be ashamed of her. He always left the shows pretty early, and after he did, she had her fun. Sex? She couldn't get enough of it. Music and sex made her feel alive. She would probably have a man in bed with her tonight if she hadn't been so worried about Maestro.

But love? Well, if anyone had told her she could look – no,
glow
– like she was doing in that picture, she would have said they were on crack.

Wait just a freaking minute. That woman couldn't be her. There was no way. If that woman was her, that meant time travel was possible and that at some point, she'd go back in time and she and Maestro would fall in love, and that meant...

Annasophia's temples throbbed. She rubbed them gently with her fingertips. Okay. She would print out the picture and keep studying it after she emailed Matt about his dad. Surely, she was only seeing what she wanted to see. Wanted to see? Well, in a weird way, it made sense. She'd never thought of Maestro in that way, but ever since she'd been six years old, he'd been her teacher, mentor, and anchor. Her soulmate, really. Just in a different way from a lover.

She looked at the picture again.

Well, maybe not
.

Pancreatic cancer. Stage four. Metastatic.

Maybe she didn't have to lose Maestro after all. If that woman was her, though, then how the hell had she figured out how to travel back through time?

###

Annasophia heard Matt's knock at exactly eight o'clock the next morning. Right on time. At least she'd managed to get a couple hours sleep. She let him in. His face looked as though he'd been punched in the gut, and she put a hand over her mouth to hold in her sobs.

“Oh, Matt, I'm so sorry,” she said.

He stood awkwardly, his big hands dangling at his sides. In his build, he resembled his dad, and there was something about his face, too, which carried ghosts of Maestro.
No,
she thought. Don't think about ghosts. Funny, she and Matt had never been attracted to each other sexually – it would have been natural for her to fall in love with the son of her mentor, but it had never happened, on either side. She and Matt had always liked each other, though, and as he had started doing sound for Annasophia, they had become good friends.

“Well, I'm not surprised,” he said. “Not deep down. I've known something wasn't right with Dad. But he told me he was seeing a doctor, and for me not to worry about it.”

She nodded. “Pretty much what he told me.”

Matt was a good friend and the best sound man she could ask for, but he always kept himself at an emotional distance. Annasophia didn't take it personally. It was just how Matt operated. He didn't have many close friends and preferred to keep to himself. And he was the only man remotely near her age who hadn't come on to her. That, in itself, was kind of weird. He knew about her post-show trysts, but he'd never tried to get in on any of that, and as far as she knew, he'd never said a word to his dad. And for that, she was grateful. Goodness knew, he was the very essence of laid-back. At thirty-six, the only thing he'd ever cared about doing was working sound for different local bands, and when Annasophia had got going with her shows ten years ago, Matt had become her right hand man. Sometimes she asked him why he never moved away, to try his talents in a bigger pond and work with bigger fish. He would never answer and would always ask her the same thing.
Touché
. It wasn't as if she didn't want that, though. Unlike Matt, she was ambitious. She wanted to wind up in New York or California someday, working with a big studio and touring all over the world.

Ambition, though, would have to wait a little while. Maestro needed her. So did Matt.

Maestro had told Annasophia last night that he wanted to talk to her and Matt as soon as possible this morning. She couldn't guess what he wanted to talk to them about. Part of her wanted to confide in Matt about how confused and lost she was feeling, but he would probably only offer monosyllabic responses. He didn't much like to talk. It was okay. They didn't need to talk. They'd be there for each other, and most importantly, they'd be there for Maestro.

Annasophia tried not to think about the picture she'd printed out, the one which had been attached to the email from the person supposedly
lost in time
, but she had tucked it in her purse. She wanted to discuss the picture with Maestro, but she didn't want to do it while Matt was around. He was so incredibly down to earth. He would probably think she was crazy or that she had faked the picture using a graphics editing program. That was something she'd considered, too. People could do all kinds of crazy things on graphics programs. It was certainly the most logical explanation, but that didn't convince her gut, which told her that in this case the most logical explanation wasn't necessarily the right explanation. Yeah, somebody could find a picture of Maestro back from his heyday as a concert pianist in some old magazine. Somebody could splice it together with a picture of her. Somebody could even change her clothing for the picture, if they were good enough at digital editing.

But that glow of love on her face. Annasophia had never seen it, had never felt it, but she knew with everything in her that's exactly how she would look if she were apeshit in love with a man. How could a graphics whiz, no matter how gifted, have faked something like that?

“Annasophia?” Matt said. “Are you ready to go?”

Her thoughts had carried her away, off to where – when? – she'd stood cuddled up against a much younger Maestro's broad chest. His face – young and healthy and shining with love – rode front and center in her mind like the brilliant full moon on a clear night. A beacon. In what way, she couldn't possibly know, but she'd do everything she could to find out. If what the picture spoke of were true – that somehow, she'd traveled back in time – then Maestro had to know about it. Even given everything she'd known about him since the age of six, she might only be at the beginning, even if he was, right now, dying.

A heartening thought, that.

Resolutely, she lifted her chin. “Yes, Matt. I'm ready.”

* * * ~~~ * * *

Chapter Two

Annasophia and Matt arrived promptly for morning visitation at the Intensive Care Unit, though they had to see Maestro one at a time. That was excellent; she would have a chance to show Maestro the picture. Matt went in first to visit his dad, and when he came back, his eyes were filled with tears. She patted his shoulder, and he opened his mouth as though to speak. Instead, he turned abruptly and went to the men's room.

What had he been about to say? Fear wrapped long, icy fingers around Annasophia's heart.

She walked into Maestro's room, expecting to see him ashen and immobile, but to her surprise, he was awake. Though he still looked desperately ill, he did look a little better than he had last night, though that was likely due to the dialysis flushing the toxins from his body. What a relief to see him lying down, though the head of his bed was elevated. Annasophia glanced at the numerous bags of IV solutions suspended beside his bed. One of those medicines must be for pain. Tears welled in her eyes and she put her hand over his. Why hadn't he told her about this? She could at least have been there for him. She wanted to cry at the thought of Maestro dealing with this for a month, all alone.

His gaze lit up, and he gave her a little smile. “Hi, Anna.”

She took his hand. “Hi, Maestro.” Her voice broke a little, but she held his gaze. She would stay strong for him, no matter what. He had been her anchor for so many years – an anchor in joy, a refuge in hope – and now, it was her turn to be his anchor. No, she wouldn't give up hope. As long as he was alive, she had reason to hope.

A drop of water landed on the back of her hand, and she started. One of her tears. With her other hand, she wiped her eyes.

“They're going to move me out of here,” Maestro said.

She blinked in surprise, and hope flared like a supernova in her chest. Perhaps he wasn't too far gone for them to start chemotherapy or radiation treatments to give him a fighting chance. “Oh, wow, I'm so glad to hear...” She trailed off, remembering Matt's face as he'd left his dad's room. The flare of hope fizzled like a dying match flame.

Maestro had been watching her, and he slowly turned his hand over to grasp hers. “It's not good news, dear. This morning, the doctor told me it's...” He paused. “Complete liver failure. He said I could have another dialysis treatment, but because my liver is no longer working, it would only postpone the inevitable. And it's too late for any other kinds of treatments.”

Annasophia gripped the sides of Maestro's bed. “You mean there's not a thing in the world anybody can do?”

Shaking his head, he put his other hand over hers.

“How long do you have?”

“Maybe a few days.”

And probably not even that
, she thought. He was shutting down. She saw it in his eyes, where their light was slowly fading, and she felt it in the texture of his skin. Even his skin felt tired and worn out by illness, not quite like skin anymore. She had cried nearly all last night, so she'd thought she was out of tears and sobs; yet she had to breathe deeply to keep from breaking down. No, she wouldn't break down. She'd be his anchor through this. She and Matt would both be his anchors. Their strength would be their gift of love to him. But oh, a life without Maestro – she couldn't even imagine it. For twenty years, he'd been the deepest part of her inspiration. For twenty years, he'd been her best friend. For twenty years, they had shared a bond of an affection that truly went beyond family or friendship.