Virtuosity (20 page)

Chapter 16

I
ended up sitting alone waiting for the results to be announced. Diana, inexplicably, needed to use the ladies room. “Right now?” I said, not even attempting to hide my disbelief. I was starting to consider other explanations for her weirdness: Was she sick? Was she depressed? Was she losing her mind? “You’ll miss the results,” I said.

“Don’t worry, you played beautifully yesterday. You’ll make the finals,” she said, and wandered off in the wrong direction, as if she didn’t know exactly where the bathrooms in this building were.

But I wasn’t worried. As annoyed as I was with her, I just didn’t want to sit alone. When they called out the
names of the finalists, everybody would clap and I’d have to stand and smile, and people would see I was by myself. I dug my fingers into my arm, mad that I even cared. I looked around the auditorium, half-filled with all the competitors, their teachers and parents and friends gathered around them. Yuri wouldn’t come (he hates this side of competitions—no music, all shmoozing) and Clark had a meeting he couldn’t change.

The other competitors all seemed to know each other. They were all older, mostly in their twenties, and … and what? Unfriendly? Not exactly. Maybe I was the unfriendly one. Or were they afraid of me? That’s what Diana would say.

I took my cell phone out of my purse and pretended to be actively engaged in organizing my contacts.

“If I sit beside you, are you going to tell me to bugger off?”

Jeremy’s voice startled me. I moved my purse from the chair beside me. “Go ahead.”

He sat down. My insides swirled and twisted over themselves. I couldn’t help it.

“I should warn you,” I said, glancing at the door. “My mom will be back in a minute.”

“You don’t think she’d like me?” He gave me an ironic grin. “You’d be surprised. I do pretty well with mothers.”

“I’m sure you do. So how did your semifinal go?”

A smile covered his entire face. “Great.
Really
great.” I could see he wanted to say more but held back. A fine line separated postperformance glee and bragging.

“I’m sorry I missed it.”

His eyes caught mine and held them. “We waste way too much time apologizing to each other.”

I looked away.

“I heard yours was pretty spectacular too,” he continued.

“Heard?”

“Yeah, you know …” He waved a hand at the people around us. “Backstage buzz.”

I nodded, preferring he didn’t know how little backstage buzz I was in on.

“My time slot didn’t help me much. The judges probably barely remember yesterday.”

“You don’t have to pretend with me, Carmen,” he said, and shrugged disarmingly.

He was right. We both knew we were making the finals.

Suddenly the noise around us was gone, and I realized everyone was looking up at the stage. The proctor stood slightly pigeon-toed with one hand on her hip and the other tapping the microphone, wearing the same tight bun and tweed suit combination as yesterday.

“If I can have everyone’s attention,” she began. The comment was completely unnecessary. She already had
every eye in the room. A few chairs squeaked as people sat down, and then the air tightened with silence. She gave a quick nod then lifted her stack of papers up to her face and began reading a list of instructions, explanations, thank yous, and apologies. She could have been reading our horoscopes for all anyone cared. We all kept listening, leaning just slightly toward her. Beside me, Jeremy’s leg bounced up and down, the energy practically jiggling out of him. I resisted the urge to put my hand on his knee to hold it in place.

“We’d like to remind competitors that complimentary tickets to the Final Gala Concert on Friday can be retrieved at the …”

Jeremy leaned over and whispered in my ear, “My family’s flying in tomorrow afternoon. Do you want to go out to dinner with us?”

His breath tickled my neck. And the words, once I could actually think about them, made no sense. I’d just suggested that he wouldn’t want to be within ten feet of my mother, and now he was inviting me to meet his family. But besides that, tomorrow night was the night before the finals. I certainly wouldn’t be out for a night on the town, and I’d have thought Jeremy would want to be home, or in his hotel room, practicing and sleeping too.

Unless his performance prep had more to do with derailing me than getting a good night’s sleep. I clenched
my teeth and stared straight ahead. Did he think I was the most gullible idiot in the whole world? Did he think that because I’d let him sit beside me I’d forgotten he begged me to lose the competition on purpose?

The proctor rattled off a list of contributors to the Guarneri Foundation, while I imagined what Jeremy had planned. One last attempt to guilt me, or sway me, seduce me, or bully me, that’s what he wanted. I shouldn’t have let him sit down.

The bitterness in my voice was impossible to disguise. “I don’t think so.”

“Not everything I do is part of some evil master plan to destroy you, Carmen. Have you even considered the possibility that I’m not a bad person?”

I’d seen through him. That’s why he was annoyed.

Across the hall, the door swung open and Diana’s slender form entered. Our eyes met, then she noticed Jeremy and scowled.

“And finally on to the announcement you have all been waiting for.” The proctor’s voice was suddenly louder, and everyone’s focus went back to the stage. “Our three finalists for the 2012 Guarneri Competition in random order.” She shuffled her pages, pulling a green cue card to the top. “Luc Portier.”

A little shout of triumph burst from Luc’s father, who then attacked his son with a bear hug. Once free, a
grinning Luc stood and turned around to acknowledge the applause. There was backslapping from those around him and a stifled sob from his mother, while everyone else did their best to clap politely and look happy for him.

The proctor cleared her throat. “Alex Wu.”

My heart stopped.

Jeremy’s leg stopped bouncing. “What …” he whispered, but couldn’t find the words to finish. There were only three positions, and the first two belonged to Luc and Alex.

This was not supposed to happen. This had not even been a possibility. Everyone knew the competition was between me and Jeremy. Then shock became fear.

I wasn’t going to make the finals.

The fuss around Alex continued, but gradually, I felt all the eyes in the hall pulling away from him and onto me. No, not just me. Us. I looked around. Stare after stare met my gaze. People leaned toward each other and whispered, not even bothering to look away when I stared back. Who could blame them? We were the ultimate spectacle: Jeremy King and Carmen Bianchi, sitting together but apart, waiting for one career to end and the other to take off. I would have stared at us too.

Please God, let me have the last spot. I’ll start going to church and I’ll stop hating my mother and I’ll never ask for anything again.

The proctor cleared her throat, then said, “Carmen Bianchi.”

I tried to breathe, but there was no air.
Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you!
I wanted to jump out of my chair, but my legs were too shaky to lift my body.

“Stand up,” Jeremy whispered.

Jeremy. I turned to him. A good-natured smile held up his face, a perfectly composed grin beneath lifeless eyes.

“Stand up, Carmen,” he repeated, pressing gently on my shoulder blade, pushing me from my daze. I stood just as the rush of applause crested around me. They were all clapping. Jeremy was clapping. It was loud and percussive, more like a firing squad than applause, but I didn’t care.

I was going to the finals.

Instantly, Diana was by my side, hugging, kissing, crying, and Jeremy faded away into the horde.

Chapter 17

L
ive performances can’t be rewound. Listening to a concerto isn’t like reading a book where you can flip back to check on some detail, or pause the flow of music just to think. Live music has to be ingested linearly, in one sitting, understood on the musician’s terms, in the time and progression the composer ordered. Daydreaming? Miss something? Too bad.

“Focus! Focus! Focus!” Yuri said it all the time, whenever he sensed my mind might be wandering. Somehow, saying it in triplicate was supposed to make it magically easier to do.

I needed life to be less like a concerto and more like
a book. I needed to flip back several pages, maybe several chapters, and find out how things had happened. Clues had been missed. I’d been sleeping, and now everything was racing by too quickly.

We drove home in silence. I stared out the window. Diana just drove.

I had every right to be elated. I was elated. But there was something else too, something I couldn’t ignore. Guilt maybe, except that wasn’t it. I didn’t feel bad about playing my best. I felt bad for Jeremy, that plastic smile holding his face together, but that wasn’t it either.

Something wasn’t right.

“Congratulations, honey.”

I looked up. We were home. Diana turned the key and pulled it free from the ignition. “You’re almost there. Friday night is all yours—neither of those guys can hold a candle to you.” She couldn’t stop smiling. She looked happy for the first time in weeks.

I nodded and smiled too because she was right, and because seeing the real Diana again was a relief. I’d missed her. But I couldn’t ignore what had happened either. “I don’t understand how Jeremy didn’t make the finals. It doesn’t make sense.”

She sighed. “Just enjoy the good luck.”

“But he’s
phenomenal
. I know. I heard him play.”

“But Carmen, you didn’t hear him play today! He must
not have played his best, and that’s what the Guarneri is about—not how well you played last week, but how well you play in the competition.”

“I guess.”

“Let’s not ruin the night by arguing about Jeremy King. That’s over.” She gathered her purse and pulled her cell phone out of the pocket. “Let’s try Clark again. He’s going to be so proud of you.”

We walked into the house, and I took off my heels and hung up my coat while Diana left another message for Clark.

“I’m so tired,” I said, more to myself than to Diana.

She flopped down on the couch, tossing her purse beside her. “Me too. What an exhausting day.”

“I’m going to bed,” I said.

“That’s a good idea. I think I’ll do that in a few minutes too.” She got up and started to pour herself a drink.

“Good night, Mom.”

“Good night, honey.”

I had just climbed into bed when I heard her phone ring. It was probably Clark, still stuck at the office. I was too tired to talk. I’d talk to him tomorrow.

I closed my eyes and tried to sleep, but something pulled at my memory. It was the sound of Diana’s ringtone. At night. That phone call I’d overheard—how
long ago had it been? It felt like months, but it wasn’t. It was two weeks ago, the night after I’d first seen Jeremy behind Rhapsody. I couldn’t even remember what she’d said, just that it had been so bizarre and secretive. Something about money.

I changed into pajamas and crawled into bed, but as tired as I was, sleep wouldn’t come. Something about money. Something about money.
Wiring
money. She’d told someone to wire her money, but what could she need money for? Clark made plenty of money, and my record sales and competition earnings brought in a good chunk of change. As my manager she earned a fair percentage of that, and as my mother she had access to all of it. But maybe she needed a lot of money, and maybe it had to be a secret….

I heard Clark come in around midnight, rustle around in the kitchen for a few minutes, then go to bed. The house was perfectly silent. Everyone was asleep, but the more my mind ticked, the further I was from joining them.

Jeremy didn’t make the finals.
Jeremy didn’t make the finals.
I kept forgetting and then remembering, and each time the realization came with a shock. It didn’t make sense. But that one hot kernel festered and festered in my brain, and gradually, a terrible idea began to form around it, and the bigger the idea got and the more I tried to avoid thinking it, the more I
couldn’t
hide from it, because
it was too ugly and too big and it was swirling around and around, and when I couldn’t stand the vertigo for one more second, my mind started screaming it:
What if Diana had paid the judges?

Suddenly my body felt empty and cold. Drained. My head ached from exhaustion. I just wanted to sleep, to not have that thought burning behind my eyes. But I couldn’t pretend it away.

Jeremy should have made the finals. If Diana had anything to do with his elimination, I had to know. I had to have proof. I whispered the word in the dark. “Proof.” It felt like a mallet banging on my chest.

I swung my legs out of bed and let the balls of my feet and my toes rest on the cold floor. Part of me wanted to curl back up and hide under my warm covers, but this had to be done now.

Diana’s study was the logical starting point, but it wasn’t until I flipped on the light and surveyed the room that I realized I had no idea what I was looking for. The massive mahogany desk and file cabinet held too many files to sift through. I pulled on each of the drawers. Only the smallest was locked.

There was usually a reason things were locked.

But the key was not in any of the other drawers, or behind the computer, or under the keyboard. I slid my hand around the bookshelf ledges. Nothing. I pulled up
the edges of the area rug. Nothing again. I sat down in her chair and stared at the silver-framed picture on her desk. It was of me, wearing a white sundress and crouching in a field of baby’s breath, holding the Strad under my chin, eyes closed. It was one of the rejects from my last CD cover photo shoot.

This was stupid. And hopeless. I didn’t even know what I was looking for. If she’d paid the judges in cash there would be nothing to find, except maybe a bank withdrawal slip, which she would never have kept. But that was ridiculous. A briefcase full of money (I pictured tidy stacks of bills bound together with little paper belts) was straight from the movies. She wasn’t the mafia, she wasn’t a drug dealer, and she wasn’t in a movie, but how did people pay bribes in real life?