“I only know what I hear.”
Jon clears his throat. “Of course, I trust you implicitly. If anyone’s got sharp ears, it’s Manuel Juerta.”
Manuel acknowledges this flattery with a nod. Jon isn’t the least bit convinced, of course, and so the deal-making begins.
An hour and a half later they’ve whittled the list down to twelve, and the two weary judges have polished off another round along with a platter of tourtière, the tasty minced beef pie native to the province. The bar has filled with office workers: women in short skirts and high heels, men sheathed in skinny pants with open-collared shirts.
Smyth chips away at the last of the meat pie. “We’ll get you down to my college to teach a master class. Interested?”
“Certainly,” Manuel says.
“The dean will spring for a modest recital fee, but we can lay on extra for expenses and teaching a master class. What do you say, amigo?”
“I say yes.”
Jon slaps him on the shoulder. “Consider yourself booked.”
They are silent for several minutes, the letdown after strenuous negotiations.
Manuel got through to Lucia late last night. She’d gone to visit Eric at the detention centre, taking him sandwiches and fruit. “He was so pale,” she said over the crackly phone line. “Papa promises he’ll be out by the end of the week, but I don’t know. Papa isn’t so powerful now.”
Listening to this plaintive description, Manuel sat cross-legged on his bed on the seventh floor of the boutique hotel, eyeing a room service trolley that held two steaming platters covered with metal lids.
“Where is your college?” he asks Jon.
Jon names a state in the Southwest.
“Maybe you can create a permanent position for me at this college,” Manuel says.
Smyth peers at a handful of Canadian bills before selecting one and placing it under his glass. “Tell me you’re not serious.”
“I am always serious.”
“You don’t want to even think of such a thing, not at your stage of the game. It would absolutely mutilate your soul.”
“My soul is already mutilated.”
They walk out together into the early evening, sunlight careening off the flank of the high-rise across the street.
Jon looks around in all directions, his small head bobbing. “I’d love to have you join us. What a dream.” His long nose makes him seem like an elegant mammal, perhaps an antelope. “Your technique is brilliant, but —” He pauses to whistle in admiration as a yellow sports car roars past. “Fucking brilliant, but not precisely what we teach in our academy.” He grabs Manuel’s elbow, and they dart through two lanes of traffic to the opposite sidewalk where Jon stands, barely winded, and Manuel feels his chest tighten and wheeze.
“If we teach opposite forms, the poor creatures will be even more confused than they are now,” Jon says, waiting for Manuel to agree. When this doesn’t happen, he continues. “It’s a bloody bore being chair of the department. All these accommodations and decisions. One is more politician than musician. But you’ll come to visit us next term, yes?” He dives into his pocket to retrieve his phone and scrutinizes the tiny screen. “Interdepartmental meeting postponed,” he reads aloud. Then he adds, “One is cancelled, but another appears. Such is my life.”
“Names are posted!” Larry races past Toby’s door like the white rabbit, leaving his scarred guitar lying across his bed. The others pop out of their cells: will they be invited to join the semifinal round, or will they return home, stricken with shame and excuses?
Toby pulls out his ear buds, rolls off the bed where he was napping, and slowly buttons his shirt. So this is it. This is why he came. That sharp metallic taste in his mouth appears again. He skips the elevator, which is going crazy jumping between floors to pick up contestants, and lopes down the fire stairs.
Sixty-five members of the guitar congress mash around the bulletin board in the foyer of the Fine Arts Building. Only twelve names are posted, twelve names printed off a sheet of white paper. Urgent castings for glitches in alphabetical order are fruitless — there are no such errors.
Toby doesn’t stampede to the front. Instead he holds back a dignified distance and runs over the way he played in the preliminary round, and for the life of him, can’t imagine anyone did better.
“Dumb fucks,” someone moans. A fist slams the wall. It belongs to Marcus, a young man from London. With his cropped hair and spotty face, he looks like a soccer hooligan, not one of England’s finest young interpreters of the pre-Baroque repertoire. He didn’t make the cut. Even the best can have a bad day.
Trace appears at Toby’s side, reeking of bubble gum. “Hausner, right?”
Toby nods.
“I saw your name up there.” She waits for his response, but Toby betrays nothing, though inside the beast stirs. “You don’t look exactly thrilled.”
Trace doesn’t understand that he’s been measuring out the scene in spoonfuls. “Give me time,” he says.
She pops a bubble. The tough girl exterior can’t hide an orthodontist’s pricey work.
“What about you?” Toby remembers to ask.
“Ditto.”
He stares at her. “Ditto you made it?”
She shrugs. “I thought it would be way harder.”
The crowd begins to thin as the lucky ones head for the exit to practise like demons for round two while everyone else makes for the pub to drown their disappointment in beer.
“Fifty-three people tanked,” Trace proclaims in awe.
Toby cringes: does she have no pity for the poor devils slinking off? Many will roll back to the dorm at two or three in the morning, making plenty of racket — a tiny but satisfying revenge on the successful. He inhales the whole sweeping drama, and only when the foyer is nearly clear does he walk over and read his name in bold type. It’s like breathing snow, and he feels the back of his throat tingle.
“And now you must go fishing.”
Toby spins to face Manuel Juerta, who stands before him holding his upturned Panama hat full of bits of folded paper. Juerta gives the hat a shake, and Toby plucks a number. He’s never seen the task done in such an improvisatory way. The draw will determine playing order for round two.
Unfolding the bit of paper, Toby makes a face. “One,” he reads aloud.
Juerta makes a cooing noise, possibly sympathetic.
So he will play first. He’s barely finished the opening round and now he must dash back to the dorm to prepare for the second program, a different set of pieces. In fourteen hours he’ll be onstage again. It’s all happening so fast. After years of waiting, it’s full steam ahead.
Trace steals up, sandwich in hand, and Juerta jiggles the hat near her nose. “Determine your fate, young lady.”
She dips her greasy fingers into the hat, lifts a chit and unfolds it. Six. “Is this good?” she asks.
“Ideal,” Toby reassures her. “Centre of the pack.” He watches her face soften.
“A guy your age must be pretty relaxed about all this,” she says.
A guy my age, thinks Toby, can go days without sleep when necessary, can live off hardtack and water, can bathe his sorry fingers in saline solution.
Back in the dorm he plunges into a run-through of the new program before supper, setting the alarm to remind himself to eat.