Strange Sweet Song (36 page)

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Sing, Jenny, and Marta cross the quad toward the Woolly, feet crunching the snow in and out of the circles of lamplight. Although Sing’s body would rather sleep, her mind wants stimulation. Or distraction. They are too late to hear the finals of the Gloria Stewart competition, but the after-party promises to be good.

Sing is secretly glad she won’t have to listen to Ryan play, though she can tell the others would have liked to go. Marta rattles off the names of the finalists in each category. Sing barely listens, her nostrils tingling with the cold, her woolen hat itchy against her forehead.

“Wait,” she says, and Marta pauses. “Who was that last one? Keppler?”

“Yeah,” Jenny says, a little out of breath from keeping up with them. “Amateurs Over Sixteen. Gave Ryan a run for his money, I’ll tell you that. My money’s on him to take it all.”

“He was
amazing,
” Marta says.

“Not—” Sing isn’t sure how to phrase it. “Not
Maestro
Keppler?”

“Um, no.” Jenny’s voice is flat. “Maestro Keppler, besides not being an amateur, is dead. As of yesterday. You do remember that, right?”

Sing remembers. But just for a moment, she wondered. She has been thinking about that last golden wave of light that Tamino sent out from himself. It felt as though the world changed with it, but she doesn’t know how. “Yes,” she says. “Sorry.”

“Sing means Apprentice Keppler,” Marta says. “Yeah, it was him.”

“
Apprentice
Keppler?”

Jenny sighs. “Um, yeah. Your voice coach? Maestro Keppler’s nephew, or grandnephew, or whatever? You really have had a bad day, haven’t you?” They reach the broad steps of the Woolly. The light from the theater’s large windows deepens the darkness outside. Jenny pauses at the door. “Are you sure you’re up for this party? Did you hit your head?”

Sing puts her mittened hand against one of the pillars that frame the theater’s entrance.
Your voice coach.
She doesn’t remember any voice coach other than—

No. She can’t get her hopes up. When Nathan was erased from history, of course things had to be filled in. She had a voice coach this year. Apprentice Keppler. Maestro Keppler’s grandnephew. She will probably “remember” him when she sees him, if that’s how these things work.

Her head aches. She sees herself scrabbling at swirling black feathers. Part of her wishes her memories had changed with everything else, but it seems she clutched them too closely, and nothing could take them from her. It is a strange comfort.

The competition is over and the party has begun. There are a few people gathered in the lobby, talking and sipping champagne. Sing, Marta, and Jenny slide off their puffy winter jackets and make their way to a set of white leather double doors. Jenny tugs at her tight navy dress with silver sequins and leads the way up a marble staircase. Laughter and the sound of a solo cello drift down from the upstairs lounge as they ascend.

Halfway up the stairs, Sing hears a familiar voice. Two familiar voices. Jenny and Marta seem to recognize them, too, because they exchange looks. A moment later, Ryan and Lori come into view, his arm around her waist.

“Oh,” he says, pausing. “Hey, Sing.”

Sing stops. “Hey.”

“Taking off?” Jenny says innocently.

Ryan shrugs. “Win some, lose some.” His voice is easy, but his eyes are dull. “That Apprentice Keppler, well…”

“He’s no big deal,” Lori says.

Ryan laughs mirthlessly. “Lori,” he says, “he’s a big deal.”

“Nice job today, Lori,” Marta says. Lori doesn’t say anything. She seems preoccupied with the fringe on her slinky white dress.

For the first time Sing can remember, Ryan seems at a loss for words. He flashes a smile, but it appears hollow. He looks at Sing for a long moment that gets more awkward as time passes. Eventually, he attempts to speak, but Sing interrupts.

“See you around, Ryan.” And she starts up the stairs again. Jenny and Marta follow. She hears Ryan and Lori continue down the stairs, but she doesn’t look back.

“So Keppler did win,” Marta says. “I knew he would. That’s him playing now, I bet.” The solo cello beyond the doors has stopped, and now someone is playing the piano.

They reach the doors to the lounge.
“Well,”
Jenny says.

Marta and Sing hang their coats on a rack. “Well what?” Marta asks.

“It looks like
somebody
didn’t get offered the Fire Lake vacancy after all.” Jenny’s smug expression makes Sing laugh.

“You don’t know that,” Sing says.

“Oh, you’re right,” Jenny says. “I’m sure Lori was just being polite. There’s no way she would have wanted to rub something like that in your face.”

Could it be true? Maybe Harland Griss wasn’t impressed with Lori after all.

No. Sing pushes the thought from her mind and steps through the doorway.

At the sight of so many beads and brooches, she is glad Jenny persuaded her to wear her black formal dress. Marta looks customarily out of place, but in a more elegant way; her strange, flowing garments flow with a little more style.

“Ooh, boys in tuxes,” Jenny says. “Let’s mingle.”

Sing smiles but doesn’t feel it. “I’m hungry. I’ll catch up.” She heads to a long table set with platters of tiny food, but when she reaches it, she just stands there.
Nothing would be worse than being alone with your thoughts right now,
she tells herself. Still, she wonders how she will endure this exercise in decorum when the rift in her heart threatens to swallow every word and every smile. She takes a miniquiche. The swirling red-and-gold-leaf pattern of the carpet makes her dizzy.

The music comforts her a little, at least, a tasteful piano-cello duet. The piece is nothing extraordinary, but they are excellent musicians. For a moment, she almost makes herself believe it is Nathan himself playing, and she looks to the piano. But the crowd pressing in on the performers hides them from view. She glimpses the cellist, a shriveled faculty member with curly yellow hair. Then the crowd parts for just a moment to reveal the pianist, but he has his back to her.

It doesn’t matter, though. He may have Nathan’s black hair, cut short instead of long, but his shoulders don’t look right. And no ivy tattoo winds down his left arm from his rolled shirtsleeve.

“Miss da Navelli, there you are!” A voice from another lifetime draws her attention.

“Mr. Griss. How are you?” The party mask she adopts now seems so foreign, a gaudy weight she must hold up on a stick rather than a silken chameleon skin. “I hope you’ve enjoyed the Autumn Festival.”

“Very much.” Griss’s fleshy face is unusually animated. “Though I was disappointed not to hear your Angelique in performance. Especially after that excellent sneak preview. Your father tells me you were ill; I’m glad to see you’re feeling better.”

Sing clings to her fake smile. She still can’t believe she embarrassed herself like that, showing off in the theater lobby. And for what? For Nathan, who is gone? Who, now, wasn’t even
there
?

No more,
she decides, and lets the mask dissolve. Maybe Griss doesn’t even notice, but Sing’s body relaxes. Now that Barbara da Navelli has released her, there is no need to try to be like her anymore. “I wasn’t sick, sir. I decided not to go on. I—I had kind of stolen Lori’s role.” She doesn’t meet Griss’s eyes. “I wanted a shot at the New Artist vacancy. More than that, I just wanted to sing the role. But it wasn’t right for me to go through with it.”

Now she dares venture a glance at Griss’s face. He nods, businesslike. “Well,” he says. “There are two things you should know about Fire Lake, then. One is that we frown on that sort of infighting.”

“Yes, sir.” She looks around the glittering room. People talk and eat, clinking glasses onto plates.

Griss goes on. “And the other is that we are exceptionally ruthless when it comes to casting. There are no dues to be paid, no ladders to climb. It doesn’t matter if someone has been doing roles for one year or twenty. You sing what we want to hear you sing, when we think you’re ready to sing it.”

“Yes, s—” Sing stops, her mind frothing. Can he possibly be saying what she thinks he’s saying?

“
Carina,
Harland has found you, I see.” Ernesto da Navelli strolls over to them, shedding admirers as he comes. Sing follows his funny, fastidious steps, examines the fall of the designer suit over his round shoulders and rounder midsection, and something in her warms.

“Well,” Griss says good-naturedly, “I was just getting to the part where we offer Miss da Navelli the New Artist spot.”

Sing feels her eyes widen and her jaw drop, like a cartoon character. She never knew people’s faces actually reacted like this, but she can’t help it. She can sense people on the periphery of their conversation speaking in low voices and trying not to look.

“I know this is a bit unusual,” Griss says. “But I think you are an excellent choice. And I feel that my stipulation that the candidate must have taken on at least one leading role has been fulfilled, despite the fact that you didn’t sing the final performance. You may argue this if you’d like, but I would advise against it.”

Her father gives her a crinkly-eyed smile. “You were not expecting this, eh? What do you say, my girl?”

She looks at her father, then at Griss. “But you haven’t heard me!”
More politics, more puppetry. How many deserving young singers are being passed over right now?

“I heard all I needed to,” Griss says. “I heard a Pamina who broke my heart.”

Sing can’t seem to control her breathing. Her father puts his hands on her shoulders. His face is serious. “You are the
best choice,
Sing. I have always told you you sing like an angel, but you do not believe me. Believe me now,
carina.
”

His smile is wide. He is so proud. She wants to be worthy of his pride—it’s a new feeling for her. She inhales,
sì
poised on her tongue.

The first three notes of a melody capture her attention. The pianist in the corner has started to play Brahms, opus 118, Intermezzo in A Major.

Just as her music drew the million broken pieces of Tamino together again into one shining whole, the sounds from the piano seem to gather the shards of her shattered heart. And without the party mask, there is nothing preventing her from throwing her arms around her father and saying, “Papà.”

Her father chuckles, but when she pulls away, she sees a cloudiness in his eyes. “What is it,
farfallina
? Are you all right?” She has pulled every drop of his focus away from Griss and the soiree happening around them.

She smiles.
“Sì.”
The music expands in her ears like foam. Then she looks at Griss and says, “I would be honored to accept the New Artist position.”

“Wonderful!” Her father extends his hand, and Griss shakes it heartily. The murmuring around them grows in intensity, but all Sing cares about is Brahms.

“When I graduate from DC,” she finishes.

“That’s not how it works.” Griss’s calm voice reminds Sing of her mother’s lawyer. “We fill the openings as they arise. New Artists only tend to stay for a year or two. So you’ll be settling in as soon as you can. As soon as this term ends.”

Sing takes a breath. For a long moment, she doesn’t know what to say.

“What is the matter, Sing?” her father asks.

All her life, she has never really been sure she’s in the right place. Certainly not that first evening at DC, when she stepped out of her father’s Mercedes into the shadow of the cold mountain. Would Fire Lake be the right place now? She imagines missing this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and shivers of nausea course through her. But is she ready? Her father was right about DC, but is he right now?

Maybe DC is where she belongs, now, for the first time. She thinks of Jenny’s voice and Marta’s gaudy necklaces, of Professor Needleman’s pristine robes and Mr. Bernard’s ugly sweatpants. She thinks of President Martin’s baby grand piano. She remembers the songs of crows.

She smiles at her father. “Thank you for helping me, Papà.” Now she turns. “Mr. Griss, this is an amazing opportunity. But I’d like to finish my studies here before coming to Fire Lake. Often your New Artists are in their twenties or early thirties—I don’t think nineteen will be too old.”

Her father clears his throat. “It is not your place to make demands of Mr. Griss, Sing. Accept the position and be grateful, or do not.”

But she holds Griss’s gaze. “I am grateful. Incredibly, mind-bogglingly grateful. But it’s not charity you’re offering me—I can give Fire Lake something back. You want something from me. You believe in me. All I’m asking is for you to keep believing in me until I’ve graduated.” She takes a deep breath. “At first, I wasn’t sure I belonged here at DC, but—I do.”

Silence falls over the room as the Brahms intermezzo ends—or did the pianist cut it off in the middle?

Griss crosses his arms. Sing can tell he is unused to hearing anything he doesn’t like, and she finds the speed at which his face goes from friendly to calculating unnerving. She knows she may be throwing away something irretrievable, and it makes her light-headed. Her father says nothing.

After a moment, Griss gives a curt nod. “Okay.”

Sixty-eight

A
FIRM HANDSHAKE
. We’ll be interested in your progress here, Miss da Navelli.

A hug. I’ll see you soon,
farfallina.
Break is coming up. Do you want me to get tickets to the new production of— Oh? Well … well, that would be nice, wouldn’t it? We haven’t been to the beach house since you were little. I’ll have them open it up.

*   *   *

Sing steps back from the mirror on her dresser. “What do you think, Woolly? Diamonds or hoops?” She squints at the reflection of her ears. “You’re right. Neither. Maybe Marta has something I can borrow.”

Mr. Bernard’s private screening of his favorite movie musical will not be a formal affair, but Sing thinks earrings are appropriate. After getting up early to say good-bye to her father and Harland Griss, she welcomes any accessory that will draw attention from her baggy eyes. It felt like the Autumn Festival was nothing but receptions and after-parties, and now she has to drag herself to a final Opera Workshop get-together. At least there are no classes today.