Second Fiddle (18 page)

“So what do you think?”

It was the artist again. “Um, well.” I tried to think of what Annalies had said about colors and hopefulness, but I couldn’t remember, so I blurted out, “I like these lightbulbs.” What a stupid thing to say!

The artist laughed and said, “Yes, I like them, too.” She pointed to the spotlight above the painting. “See, they put a yellow film over the light because this was painted outside in Spain in the fall, so you see the light must match for the proper effect.”

I looked at the light and then turned around to look at the other lights in the gallery. “Hey! That one over the dolls is blue.”

“I make the dolls indoors,” Isabella said. “In the dark of winter.”

“I can tell.”

“You are an artist.” Isabella nodded toward my violin case. “Do you find the music is different when you play outdoors?”

“Yeah,” I said. “I played outside a lot today, and I learned that it’s easier to make your music heard over the sound of water in a fountain than the sound of people talking. And I learned we sound best when there is a doorway behind us. I think the sound bounces out to people better.”

“Sí,”
the artist said enthusiastically. “Reflection is everything in art. Do you agree?”

She leaned a little closer and said, “Make sure you eat something before you play, or these vultures won’t leave anything for you.” The man in the violet shirt walked up, and she reached out both her hands to him. “Here you are!” she said. “I’ve met your musician—she is quite charming.”

“This is not the musician,” he said.

“No?”

“I have engaged the services of the Montoyo family—flamenco artists
magnifiques
! Unfortunately, not punctual. I deeply regret this.”

“Oh,” Isabella said. “But silence is not good for my paintings. What do you and your friends play?” She turned to me.

“This is ridiculous,” the gallery owner said with a dismissive wave of his hand. “They are unproven. I have no references. Where are they from?”

“What do you play?” the artist asked again.

I straightened my shoulders and looked the gallery
owner in the eye like Giselle would. “Monsieur,” I said, copying the way Vivian would pronounce it, “we are music students.” I decided that telling part of the truth was best. “You haven’t heard of us because we are from Berlin. Our mentor is Herr Müller of the Berlin Philharmonic. We can’t play an entire evening of classics, but we can play seven songs in popular classical repertoire. That’s about a half hour of music. That would take care of your silence problem, right?” I turned to Isabella. “And a half hour is long enough for your other musicians to show up, or you could call someone else.”

The gallery owner frowned, but I could tell he was thinking about it.

“We would charge only three hundred francs,” I said firmly. “That’s a fair price for all three of us, and we could be ready in two minutes. What do you think?”

Isabella smiled. She looked expectantly at the gallery owner.

“Agreed,” he said, still frowning. He reached out and shook my hand.

Wow! I’d gotten us our first paying gig! I started grinning like an idiot. “Super! This is going to be so fun!” Then I remembered I was supposed to be a grown-up, so I added, “Miss Johnson will require a chair to play the cello, but Miss Armstrong and I will stand.”

“Very well,” the gallery owner said, and left.

I turned to Isabella and said, “Thank you so much.
You don’t even know what it means to us to have a job tonight!”

She gave my arm a squeeze. “We artists must stick together,” she said.

I gave her a little hug because I knew exactly what she meant. I was never going to walk past a street musician again without leaving a whole dollar. I skipped over to the snack table.

“Guess what, guys? We have a paying gig!” I grabbed a handful of the cheese pastry things and told Giselle and Vivi all the details. I totally talked with my mouth full.

“Oh my gosh!” Vivi said. “Three hundred francs? That’s enough to get us home.” She gave me a hopping-up-and-down hug.

Giselle hugged us both and lifted us an inch off the ground. “Jody, you’re my hero!” she said.

“Come on!” I gulped down one more pastry and brushed off my hands. “I want to play better than we ever have so Isabella will sell lots of paintings.”

We went to an alcove on one side of the gallery, where the owner had cleared some space and set up a chair. It was a different feeling to play indoors, for money, in front of people who probably knew a thing or two about classical music. I let go of all the things I was worried about: the money and Arvo and getting home. I put my whole heart into our playing. People didn’t stop to listen in the gallery, which was just
like the street. But I didn’t mind. They weren’t supposed to be
my
audience; they were supposed to be buying paintings. When I saw the gallery owner put a sold sign on one of Isabella’s dolls, I felt as proud as a mom.

We were into our fifth song when a family of six walked in. There was a mom and dad, two kids, an uncle, and a grandma. They had a guitar and a violin with them, so I guessed they were the Montoyo family.

The gallery owner hustled over. “Where have you been?” he demanded in a quiet growl.

The man with the guitar shrugged and smiled. “We have been arriving.”

“We did not engage a babysitter for your children,” the gallery owner went on, still sounding angry.

“This is a family,” the guitar man said mildly. “If you do not allow children to sing and dance with their parents, then my mother must perform for you alone.” The man smiled kindly enough, but everyone else took a step closer to the grandma, even the little girl in the blue polka-dot dress. It was pretty clear nobody was going to mess with this family.

“Very well, you will play in five minutes,” the gallery owner said. He walked away just as we came to the end of our piece.

“I’m sorry,” I said to the guitar man. “I think he’s grouchy with everybody.”

“So long as the tiger pays me, he can growl all he likes,” the guitar man said. “Please finish your set.”

We ended with Pachelbel’s Canon and played it better than we ever had before. If I’d known then that it was the last note we’d ever play together, I think I would have cried, but that night I was happy to pretend that this would be my future, playing concert halls and galleries all over Europe with my string trio—my best friends.

The Montoyo family came out and took the stage. They’d left their jackets and cases in the back room. The men wore white shirts with no tie, and the women wore red flowers in their hair and long full skirts. The gallery owner motioned for us to come to the back room. We followed him in, and he handed me three one-hundred-franc notes. I’d never held a bill with a hundred of any country’s money before. I tucked them in my pocket and felt like a millionaire.

“Oh my gosh!” Giselle whispered as we went out. “We did it! We actually did it! I’m going to take all my vacations with you guys now. This is so much better than any Mom-and-Dad trip I’ve ever taken.”

“Yes!” Vivi said. “We are rock stars!” She threw her head back and made a few twirls across the floor.

“Vivi, stop! You’re going to break something.” I grabbed her violin case before it knocked over the table with the art brochures. “Come on, let’s find Isabella and tell her thanks.”

I started across the room to find her, and the Montoyo family began to play. At first it was just the four adults clapping in rhythm. The grandmother and mom did a slower rhythm, and then the men did a fancier rhythm, one with
claps and the other beating time on the tall wooden box he was sitting on. Then the mom switched to clapping double time, and the dad started to play guitar. After a while the mom joined in on violin. I was mesmerized. The tune was faster and more elaborate than anything I’d ever tried to play. I got so caught up in watching her fingering and bow work, I forgot all about Isabella.

The songs never quite ended but shifted from one to the next. After a few songs the uncle stood up and sang a solo. Then the boy got up and danced. At first I thought it was kind of mean to make a boy dance in front of strangers. My brothers loved it when I gave them twirls in the kitchen when we were listening to the radio, but they’d die if they thought anyone was watching. This boy looked like he was nine or ten. He was taller than Tyler and stick-skinny. He held his body very stiff and straight and drummed his heels on the wooden floor in time to the song. He never moved very far. The whole dance could have fit on your average coffee table, and he never smiled. Still, I could tell by the lift of his head and the way he was concentrating that he loved to dance like I loved to play. Watching him made me want to get out my violin and practice, practice, practice.

Giselle was into the music, too. She was tapping on her cello case in time to the clapping, and after a while she started to improvise her own rhythms. Vivian had danced the Spanish Coffee role in
The Nutcracker
last year, so she was doing a bit of her dance part with the little girl, who was
only three or four. They twirled their skirts and took turns with the little girl’s red and black silk fan. She taught Vivi how to move her hands for flamenco dance. Before we knew it, Isabella was shaking hands with people going out the door, and the caterers were putting away the empty trays.

“You girls are aficionados?” the grandmother said while the others were packing up their instruments. “You should come with us and hear what real flamenco music sounds like.”

“Really?” I said. “Where?”

“Let’s go!” Giselle said. “We don’t have to be home until midnight.”

“Bibi! Bibi!” The little girl tugged at Vivi’s hand and looked up at her grandma, all big brown eyes.

The grandma smiled. “Did you make a friend?”

“Then we should feed them a better meal than this,” the dad said, coming back with his guitar in hand. “This way, please.”

We followed him out of the gallery and down a block to one of those tiny cars we’d seen zipping all over Paris. The uncle got in front and the little girl dragged Vivian into the backseat with the mom and grandma. I guessed that Giselle and I would follow in a different car, but then the dad popped open the trunk and the boy hopped in like this was a daily occurrence. I looked at Giselle and shrugged and followed the boy into the trunk, holding my violin in my lap. Meanwhile, the dad tied his guitar case to the rack on the roof and did the same with the cello.

“Lord help us!” Giselle muttered as she climbed in, gathering up her long legs and wedging herself between me and the side of the trunk. “We are all going to die in a wreck!”

I tried not to think about what my dad might say about all this—safety was very big with him. “We’ll be fine,” I said. “He’s driving around his own family. I’m sure he’ll be very careful.”

car sputtered twice. When it started up, it belched out as much diesel smoke as an entire convoy of Humvees. We lurched into traffic so fast, I would have popped out of the trunk completely if I hadn’t been wedged in too tight for breathing. Since we were directly above the tailpipe, breathing probably wasn’t a good idea. I glanced at the boy. He was calmly taking in the sights and not looking at me. He must have been shy. Giselle gritted her teeth. She had the edge of the trunk in a death grip. I tried to keep track of the streets so we could find our way back to the bookstore, but street signs were not well lit. And they were not on every street corner. And I realized that there was no comfortable position to sit on a tire iron. And I was beginning to think we were being taken to dinner in Spain.

But then we swerved onto a less busy street that was packed with taxis in every parking space on both sides. We putted along slowly. When a taxi driver got into his cab, the dad leaned out the driver’s window and shouted something
to him. The cabby waved his arm in a way that made me wonder if it was the French way to flip someone off, but then the uncle laughed and waved his arm in exactly the same way, right in front of his family, so maybe I was wrong about that. I resolved to do nothing at all with my arms until I figured out how not to flip someone off in French. Maybe they were just waving hello in Spanish. Hard to tell. The cabby left his parking space, and we took it. The boy jumped out of the trunk as soon as we stopped. My legs were kind of tingly from sitting on the tire iron, so I was way less graceful getting out of the car.