Sight Reading (26 page)

Downstairs he pulled on his parka and hat, knotted his scarf, and grabbed the container of leftovers for lunch. “I'm off.”

“Look at you!” Remy had said, laughing. “You look like an immigrant.” She was standing in the kitchen wearing her long flannel shirt and the woolly slippers that had been a birthday gift from Jessica.

“Well, I am an immigrant, my dear.” He leaned over to kiss her.

“I mean the way your pockets are bulging—like you've crammed them full of your worldly possessions. It's like you're about to step onto a boat and head off to some completely new place.”

“It's these gloves Jess gave me for Christmas. They're enormous.” Nicholas plucked one from a pocket of his parka. “Boxing gloves.”

“They're for skiing.” Remy laughed. “Put them on, it's freezing out.” She gave him another kiss, and he stepped out into the frigid day, closing the door quickly to keep out the cold. The frozen snow crunched underfoot, a wincing sound. Nicholas pulled his scarf a bit higher; he was recovering from strep throat, still a bit infirm.

He tried to adopt a sense of recovery as he went through the motions of the day. He still loved his work, continued to teach his one class per semester with genuine enthusiasm. The conservatory's administration prized him. He was that rare creature, an artist both critically revered and publicly embraced. Not only had his
Elegy
won the Pulitzer, but it had figured prominently in the soundtrack of a Hollywood movie about Afghanistan. The movie had broken box office records, and then came all sorts of Oscar nominations. Since then Nicholas had enjoyed the luxury of eminence, could afford to be affable and generous in a slightly aloof way, to forget people's names, to doze briefly as he sat stage-side awaiting this or that award. (He had dozed through the Afghanistan movie, too.) Bashful students asked him to autograph their copies of his music, from which royalties reliably came rolling in.

And yet none of this could prevent a more troubling development of late. Fear was what it was—that he would never complete his finest work. This was the big piece for orchestra that he knew in his heart might be better than anything he had yet composed. Better than the
Elegy,
better than his
“Millennium” Chorus
. It mattered to him terribly, for he knew deep down that his newest works weren't as good as earlier ones, and that audiences and critics, too, must know it, though no one had dared say so. Instead his premieres were reliably greeted with the gently fawning reviews reserved for those artists thought to be unassailable. Only when Nicholas went online and Googled himself (in private, while Remy was at work) did he find anything critical. A blog by someone at the Royal Academy of Music described his
Aubade
as “more of the same,” while a review on a Web site Nicholas had never heard of called his latest chamber work “very similar to his
Music for Two Pianos,
though lacking the energy and playfulness of that earlier piece.” Well, it was true, Nicholas supposed—but that's what happens, he wanted to explain, when the commissions keep coming, and with them the unspoken assumption that the commissioned work will be in the same vein of previous pieces. That was the price of popularity.

Despite his usual rhythmic experimentation, Elko seems too comfortable working within the stricter rules of musical construction. Fans call him a neo-Romanticist, and it's true that his musical daring has always fallen within safely recognizable borders. But with few real risks taken, there can be no great payoff.

And then there was some insane person in an online chat room railing about how all of Nicholas's work was overrated, “facile,” and part of a larger conspiracy to keep truly original composers out of the fore.

Well, his symphony would change all that. It was almost done, finally—twenty years in the making. For a long time he hadn't even thought of it as a symphony per se, just that it was expansive and still taking shape. But it was indeed a symphony, his only one. He comforted himself with the knowledge that he was in good company, thought of Brahms, his hero, who had spent twenty-one years completing his first symphony.

But the piece was a big unruly thing that just kept growing. He wanted to say something about the fragility of life, its tenuous magic . . . but the thing wasn't yet cohering. What had begun in his mind as sound and vision was now a pattern of dots along horizontal lines, and while it always surprised Nicholas that such conversion ever succeeded, in this case the piece still wasn't quite there.

And so he had worked for hours that day—that cold, bright day in February—until, desperate for some sense of accomplishment, he decided he might as well take the car, which was badly in need of servicing, to the auto repair place.

This was in a neighborhood outside of Boston; it was cheaper and the service better, but it was also a bother because of the location. Remy would be pleased at his taking care of this task.

The sun was still out, and Nicholas had to squint against the glare of hardened snow; he had no sunglasses. He dropped off the car and, facing a long wait, walked to the shopping plaza next door, to a store called Sunglass Hut; he thought he might buy himself a pair.

There was a girl there, at the big tree of sunglasses. She looked familiar, in her midtwenties or perhaps older, tanned skin and long dark hair, briskly trying out various styles. Nicholas took his place across from her, where the men's styles were.

“Hopefully the men's ones are better than these,” the girl said. She had a slight accent, something Hispanic. “I can't find anything half decent.”

Nicholas told her he had never owned a pair.

“Really? Never?” Her tone made this fact sound fascinating. Nicholas began to ask lots of questions about sunglasses, in case there was something he ought to know. The next thing he knew, the girl was next to him, guiding him through his many choices. Nicholas heard himself keeping up a continuous, diffident commentary, as though he had never before undertaken such an overwhelming task: “Well, now, these are like mirrors, aren't they? Might be a bit troublesome, people trying to get a glimpse of themselves. These, though—well, why
not
look like a fighter pilot?”

The girl was standing close, her brown eyes laughing at him, her straight dark hair gleaming. “Or you could just go retro,” she said of the pair he now put on. “Do the Buddy Holly thing.”

She made encouraging comments when Nicholas modeled a wire-rimmed pair. As he went back and forth between a darker and lighter version, the girl hummed along with the dance song on the stereo.

“I like this music,” Nicholas said. “What is it?”

“You don't know Joe Arroyo?” She said it with exaggerated disbelief, teasing but also serious.

“Should I know him?”

“He's one of the biggest names in salsa.”

The music was jubilant, and the girl did a few steps, singing along. “Do you dance?” she asked, and did a few more steps.

“Not salsa,” he said, and then, “Not anything, really.” The tag on the sunglasses was hanging down over his nose. For fun, he began to mimic her steps.

“Not bad,” she told him. “You catch on quick.”

He told her that he was a musician and had no excuse for rhythmic ineptitude. Then he stopped dancing and removed the sunglasses he had chosen. “Well, thank you,” he said, for her help as much as for the compliment. “And I suppose this store should thank you, too.”

The girl told him, “They suit you.”

“What about you?” he asked. “Didn't you find any?”

“Oh, I'll stick to my same old pair. I always take a peek at new ones, thinking I'll come up with some new look, you know? But in the end I just stay the same.”

Nicholas took a good look at her then, as the girl reached into her bag for something. For a moment it seemed she might be about to offer him her telephone number, and Nicholas's heart gave a small, terrified lurch. But then he saw that she was writing on the back of a business card, in thick, sparkling green pen:
Joe Arroyo y la Verdad
. “The band that's playing,” she said, handing him the card. She looked away, as if suddenly embarrassed. “Since you said you like it.”

Nicholas said, “I like it very much.” He glanced at the other side of the business card—thin, from one of those template machines—to see her name. “Paula,” he said aloud, and told her his. Also on the card were the words
HANDMADE TEXTILES
, and below that,
WEAVINGS, KNITS, & CROCHETED DESIGNS
.

“I made them before I'd ever even sold anything,” Paula told him, “because you know what they say, you have to be ready.” A woman on the T had complimented her bag, she explained; when Paula told her she had made it herself, the woman asked Paula to make her one. “My first commission. And the next thing I knew, all her artsy South End friends wanted one.”

Nicholas glanced at her bag, a square woven thing in orange, pink, and red. “So, you're a businesswoman, too.”

“Well, I always make sure to have my card on me. You never know who you might meet. I have luck with people like that—outside my circle, you know? Like you.”

Nicholas put the card in his coat pocket.

“There's dancing tonight,” Paula told him, as if just remembering. “You can come along, if you like.”

To take up an invitation was always a pleasure. And Remy would be at work, another evening of just Nicholas home alone. Dancing might be just the thing he needed to pull himself out of this winter funk. “That sounds like fun.”

And indeed it was lightly thrilling when, later that evening, Nicholas accompanied Paula in her dented Kia with rosary beads hanging from the rearview mirror. Her hair, long and gleaming, smelled of something floral, as though it were summer and not the coldest month of the year.

“I thought we could go to Nestor's,” she told him. “I usually only go there on Saturdays, with Philomena.”

“Philomena,” Nicholas said.

“My best friend,” Paula said. “We go dancing every weekend. I sometimes go on Thursdays, too. The only problem is we might run into José.”

“José,” Nicholas repeated, this time darkly, comically.

“He's this Colombian guy I sometimes dance with. Apparently he's decided he's going to marry me.”

“But surely you can dance with someone else?”

“Yeah, that's the way it usually is. Everyone dances with everybody else. But José . . . I don't know why he's so possessive. He barely knows me.” She seemed to be reflecting on this. “Let's go to Nestor's, anyway,” she said. “It'll be a little more quiet on a Thursday. And people there dance New York style. It's more difficult, but it's more fun to watch.”

Nestor's was small, just one square room with huge inflated beer cans depending from the ceiling. The place was full of young, glowing people—different from the hopefuls at the conservatory. Paula and Nicholas ate snacks at the bar as the lesson began. A man with a long, sleek ponytail was telling a small group of couples that Latin dance was a mating ritual, and that the best dancers never even looked at each other. “In fact, the really good ones manage to look completely bored. But they always, always, know exactly where their partner is. They feel the other person's energy, that's how.”

As they ate their buffalo wings and celery and cucumbers with dip, Paula told Nicholas about her work. Her grandmother had taught her how to knit when she was still a little girl, and later how to weave. She had a loom at home—the one that had belonged to her grandmother—and wove her own fabrics, which she sewed into bags and pillowcases of her own design. A store in Brookline had started purchasing her knit skirts and sweaters, which apparently were a big hit with the Orthodox women. And a gift shop in Wellesley had recently picked up her weavings. When she saved up enough money, she would buy a bigger loom and open up a workshop of her own, with a few employees to help her increase her output. That was the plan, at least.

“Sounds like a good one,” Nicholas said, trying to wipe the last of the hot sauce off of his fingers. The man with the ponytail was motioning to them to join the class, but Nicholas wouldn't have minded just sitting there at the bar hearing about Paula's hopes and dreams.

“Are you ready to dance?” she asked, and took him by the hand, leading him off the barstool and onto the floor.

To his surprise, Nicholas found that he was a fast learner. He was proud when the other couples looked to him and Paula as an example, while the instructor yelled at them over the music: “Maintain your distance! When he approaches, she retreats! When she approaches, he backs away!”

Nicholas was conscious of the fact that he was having a new experience, and that it had been a very long time since he had had such a thing. He felt joyful, and though at first he supposed this was due to the syncopated rhythms and the strangers all around him, soon the truth of it dawned on him: it was the freedom of becoming a beginner again.

He could make mistakes, try and fail, and it didn't matter. Because no one here thought of him one way or another; no one respected him in that obliging manner. No one knew him at all—or thought they knew him, who he was, “pleasing melodies threaded through with texture-building atonalities” . . . “signature patterns of augmented chords and appealing lyrical repetitions that gradually merge to create a denser, if now familiar, field of sound.”

Rhythmically complex yet lyrically accessible
. . .
Playful musical puzzles, at times self-consciously clever . . .
What a crime, the way these critics reduce one's body of work to a mere phrase, as if “pleasing melodies” were simply out there for the taking, as if “appealing lyrical repetitions” just happened out of thin air.

Nicholas forced these thoughts away and focused on the dance steps. This one was a cha-cha, the next one a salsa. It wasn't until an hour or so later, when the dance floor filled with boys who were all young and women who were all ages, that Paula apparently saw someone she knew: a boy named Danny, in baggy pants and leather sneakers, with a baseball cap on sideways. Paula danced with him briefly before Danny went off with someone else. “Danny's the type who likes to dance with every woman in the place,” Paula explained. “You should have been here a few Saturdays ago, when Carlos came out of the men's room and found him with Liz.”