Virtuosity (16 page)

“Sorry,” he said. “I’m just stressed out.” Then he gave a half shrug/half grin. “Let’s just have fun tonight.”

“Sure.”

We crossed the street and climbed the stairs to the train platform where a crowd of wound-up White Sox fans had gathered, shaking big foam fingers, already smelling like beer in their pinstripe jerseys. Poor Clark. I pictured him at a table with a bunch of symphony lovers trying to nod his way through dinner without falling asleep.

Jeremy looked around at the people on the platform. “I can’t believe I’m finally going to my first baseball match.”

“Yeah, we call them games here.”

“Whatever. To be honest, I’m not even a hundred percent on all the rules.”

“It’s pretty simple,” I said, but then wondered if it was, or if I’d just always known the rules of baseball. “So, do baseball fans look like soccer fans?” I asked.

“More or less,” he said. “Except we call it football there, and I’m not afraid for my life, like I would be in a crowd of Manchester United fans.”

“That wild?”

“In a crazy, lawless, we’ll-kill-you-and-eat-you-for-sport-if-you’re-cheering-for-the-wrong-team sort of a way. Who are the White Sox playing, by the way?”

“Minnesota Twins.”

“Twins? That seems like a really lame name for a sports team.”

“I agree. The fact that you recognize that means you’re going to be a great White Sox fan.”

When the train came the whole crowd packed into the cars, and I found myself wedged between Jeremy’s body and a greasy window. We were too close to talk, what with my head being a full foot below his, but that was kind of a relief. The nearest pole was too far away to hold onto, so when the train lurched forward, I fell into him, my face landing in his chest. He laughed and caught me, then helped me regain my balance, but left his hand resting on my lower back. His shirt smelled fresh and sweet like detergent.

We arrived in time to see the end of batting practice, which Clark was always adamant about. That and staying until the last out. None of that leaving-early-to-beat-the-crowds crap.

“Who’s throwing the opening pitch?” Jeremy asked.

“A fellow Brit, I believe. And a musician too.”

“Should I guess?”

“Yeah.”

“Um, Elton John?”

“No. Younger and less pudgy,” I said.

“Amy Winehouse? Or is she in a treatment facility somewhere?”

“Let’s hope so, and it isn’t her.”

“I hope you don’t think Madonna is actually British.”

“Nope, but I think
she
thinks she’s British. It isn’t her anyway.”

“I give up,” he said.

“Victoria Beckham.”

“Of course. Our nation’s greatest asset. I don’t know if I’d actually consider her a musician.”

“Me neither. How about an actress? I think the Spice Girls may have made a movie.”

Just then she tottered out with five-inch heel/running shoe hybrids on her feet, looking like an anorexic bird on stilts. She gave the crowd the peace sign, and tossed the ball a couple of feet. Everyone, including Jeremy and me, went crazy.

The game started, and in the mayhem of the screaming fans, we slipped back into what we had been at the jazz club. We watched the game, or pretended to watch the game, but really just watched each other, and talked, and felt the spaces between us shrink.

At the top of the third he went to get food and came back from concessions with two sausage dogs covered in grilled onions and peppers so hot my lips burned. We ate them while making fun of the of the Kissing Cam victims, cheering especially hard for the holdouts when they finally gave in and kissed.

Between the third and fourth he helped me compose a haiku about the Minnesota Twins (Ball-dropping fat dudes/ Your mothers have moustaches/Girl Scouts run faster). When we scored our only run in the seventh, I spilled my
soda all over his pants, but he just laughed and bought me another one.

All in all, it was perfect.

“This feeling crosses the cultural divide,” Jeremy said as we watched the final pitches being hurled. “It doesn’t even matter that I’ve only been a Sox fan for a few hours. I want to throw a peanut at that idiot in the Twins jersey over there who won’t shut up.”

“Agreed.”

“You think I should do it?”

“I was agreeing with the feeling. I’d rather you didn’t get us thrown out of the game.”

“For you,” he said and rolled over the top of the paper bag of peanuts, then put it on my lap.

Losing the game didn’t even feel all that bad. There was an understanding among the fans that it was more noble to love a team with heart than a blood-sucking soulless franchise like the Twins.

Clark would be checking the score and swearing into his cocktail.

The entire stadium seemed to stand and push toward the exits simultaneously, but we sat still, neither of us ready for it to be over.

“Should we go?” Jeremy asked finally. People in the aisles were still just inching toward the bottle-necked exit.

“Let’s wait.”

“I guess it’s not like they’re going anywhere fast.”

“Nope,” I said. “Your jeans still wet?”

He pressed his hand to his thigh where I’d spilled the Coke. “Yeah.”

“Sorry.”

“You don’t need to apologize again. I probably deserved it.”

“For what?”

“I don’t know. The last obnoxious thing I said?”

I thought for a moment. “You haven’t really said anything obnoxious since we got here.” He hadn’t said a word about violin either. Not one.

He laughed. “You sound surprised.”

“I guess I am. Would you like me to count it against one of the obnoxious things you said when I first met you?”

“That would be great.” He looked like he wanted to say more, like he wanted to apologize for that ugly competitive streak he’d let show. But neither of us wanted that. We were in a perfect bubble of baseball and drunk Sox fans and mindless banter. No need to ruin it now.

He stood and offered me his hand. I took it and he pulled me up, then turned and led me out of the stadium.

“What time do you have to be home by?” he asked as we stepped away from the doors and into the dark. A stream of people flowed past us to the train platform.

“I’m not going home. I’m spending the night at a friend’s, but I’m supposed to be back there at midnight.” For all I knew, Diana was already waiting for me on Heidi’s couch. But I wasn’t going back yet. She was going to kill me whether I saw her in ten minutes or in ten hours.

“Hmmm.” Jeremy looked down at me and smiled with one corner of his mouth. “Staying at a friend’s? So that’s how you’re dealing with the leash?”

“Don’t judge me. Your parents let you go halfway across the world by yourself and stay there for weeks on end. I’m not allowed to go to the bathroom without permission. Trust me, you’d lie too.”

“It’s not as wonderful as you think it is,” he said. “Being on my own, I mean. My mom has to stay at home with my brother. He’s disabled and it’s tricky to work out care for anything longer than a couple of days. And my dad. He’s … high stress. I’m on my own because I have to be if I want to do violin.”

“Sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry,” he said. “You obviously don’t have it easy either.”

A wind blew into us and through Heidi’s thin jacket. I shivered.

“I’d offer you a jacket, but I don’t have one,” he said.

“And I’m already wearing one.”

“That too. Not to mention the fact that you still have the sweater I gave you on Sunday.”

“Oops. I was going to bring that.” That was a complete lie. I didn’t ever want to have to part with that sweater.

He paused and ran a hand through his hair. His expression changed as he clenched his jaw, and his fingers tapped nervously against his jeans. He was mulling over something. “I’ve got something I want to show you.”

“Sure, go ahead.”

“No, it’s not here. It’s back at the hotel.”

“What is it?”

“I can’t tell you. You just have to see it.”

Possibilities. I looked back toward the stadium. The artificial lights had given everything a Hollywood glow; there’d been warmth in the rich colors. But we’d left. Out here, things were real again.

“All right,” I said.

The trip back was nothing like the first ride. We got seats and he stared out the window at the murky outlines as they flew by in the dark. I listened to two older men a couple of rows up blame the loss on a fourth inning call the umpire had screwed up. In their drunken opinions, that had been the turning point.

“Why didn’t you come hear me on Saturday?” The question was out before I remembered we weren’t talking about violin.

He looked uncomfortable. “I …”

“No. You don’t have to answer.”

“Yes, I do. I couldn’t.” He folded his arms over his chest. “It’s too close to the Guarneri. I can’t listen to other violinists and not go a little crazy. I don’t need to hear how amazing your Tchaikovsky is right now.”

“But you don’t know it’s amazing.”

He smirked. “I’m sure. The competitions, the recordings, the Grammy—that’s all just hype? I have to make a conscious effort not to think about you already when I’m performing. I don’t need more stress added to it.”

“But you seem so in love with your
own
music on stage.” I didn’t say
in love with yourself
, but it hung in the air between us.

“You’re dancing around calling me a narcissist onstage, but nobody wants to see a self-conscious violinist out there. Especially not a guy.”

“I don’t see what gender has to do with it.”

“
You
can go out and be shy or nervous, and you’re beautiful so the audience thinks you’re sweet and lovely and whatever else. If I pulled that, the review in the paper would describe me as tense or incompetent. That doesn’t sell tickets.”

“So much for not talking about violin.”

“I guess that’s impossible,” he said, his voice resolved and a little sad. He took my hand again, this time lacing his
fingers through mine. “I’m sorry I didn’t go to your concert.”

“Don’t be sorry. I kind of wish I hadn’t gone to yours, except for all the stuff that happened afterward.”

“So why did you come?” he asked.

“Um …” Why didn’t I have a simple answer to that question? Enough people had asked me—Heidi, Diana, now Jeremy. “Because …” I looked around the train at the people laughing and shouting. They looked like they’d forgotten we’d lost.

“You look like you’re hoping someone will give you the right answer.”

“I wish. There is no right answer.”

“Try the truth.”

“I came because you didn’t make any sense to me,” I said.

He waited for more.

“From everything I’d read, you were
me
. A British, male version of
me
. And then when I saw you that day from the Rhapsody patio …”

“When you were spying.”

“Can we call it researching, please? When I saw you, the curiosity just got bigger. I’ve always felt like, I don’t know, like the only one of my species, I guess. But then there you were, a version of me, and I wanted to see how you did it, if you knew how to age out of being a child prodigy. I’m kind of botching it at the moment.”

He was silent.

Was I making any sense at all? Probably not, but I babbled on anyway. “I’m just pissing off my teacher, pissing off my mom, pissing off myself…. I miss performing and being happy with it, not having to be mad at myself about every little thing that didn’t go perfectly.”

“So, now that you know me, does it look like I’m doing it right?”

“What do you mean?”

“From your vantage point, am I leaving child-prodigy-land properly, or am I botching it too?”

I looked into his eyes. “I guess I can’t tell. But I was wrong. We aren’t the same. You’re isolated. I hate being smothered and pressured, but I’m not alone. You are.”

He flinched.

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”

“No, you’re right.”

And then there were the differences I couldn’t say aloud. I was insecure, but he had a cockiness to him that took hours to wear down. And he didn’t have the Inderal problem. I wasn’t fooling myself about Inderal. One performance without it didn’t equate to complete independence. It was what it was—one tiny victory. Just the beginning.

“I don’t know,” I said. “We’re too different to compare.”

He nodded.

“So now that we’ve smashed through the no-violintalk rule, what’s the Menuhin school like?” I already knew it was incredibly competitive and arguably the best music high school in the world, for violinists especially. I would’ve loved to have gone there, but Diana would never have let me go to a boarding school, especially not on the other side of the world. I still didn’t know what she was going to do when I went to Juilliard in the fall. Move to New York, probably. It was weird that she hadn’t brought it up, but maybe she was counting on winning the Guarneri and having me defer for a year.

Jeremy stretched his arms over his head. “School is …” He stopped to think. “Intense. It’s kind of nice being away from it all for a while. I’m learning a lot there, but just walking down the practice room hall, you can feel the pressure. It’s everywhere. There’s just this insane amount of talent and ambition in the air, which means everyone is always on edge, you know? It makes me a bit frantic, actually. And we all know that it only takes one day of not playing your best and there are twenty other violinists snapping at your heels, ready to take your chair in orchestra, or your scholarship, or whatever. And since it’s a boarding school, there’s no forgetting it, no escaping to your family, or at least not for me. Mine live in Leeds, which is a good three and a half hours north of Surrey.”

“Do you miss them?”

“I don’t think about it. I spend some weekends with my grandma at her house down south. She lives right on the beach, in a cottage on the English Channel.”

“That sounds nice.”

He smiled. “It is. Charminster. That’s the name of the town Gigi lives near.”

“Gigi? That’s a cute nickname for a grandma.”

“Her real name is Georgianna. Anyway, so I’m not
entirely
alone …”

“I shouldn’t have said that. It’s not really what I meant. I—”