“You headed home soon?” Lucy asks in a carefully neutral voice, waiting before darting into a cubicle. Everyone knows how Nina wept through her performance.
The girl glances up, brown eyes pooling water. “I am so sad,” she says, sighing tragically. “My boyfriend is angry. He pays for my flight, for food, for everything.” She goes back to dabbing her nails with the tiny brush.
Lucy places her hand on the girl’s shoulder. “I’m sure he’ll forgive you.” She hopes that’s true.
The girl finishes off one nail and proceeds to the next. “His mother and father are professors, very intellectual family,” she says. “I thought if I do well here, maybe —” she turns to look Lucy in the eye “— they will respect me.”
Lucy feels sorry for the girl, but this is quickly overtaken by a lick of euphoria, for what really stirs her is her own success. She enters the cubicle and dangles her purse from the hook, feeling her heart kick. It’s all she can manage to calm down enough to practise for the next round, fending off a crazy fantasy where she’s wearing a sparkly top and a long drapey skirt, peering out from behind the curtain as the concert hall fills with admirers. It’s the finals, and Goran has flown in to witness the historic occasion.
“Do you believe you will win?” the girl calls from the other side of the door.
“Of course not,” Lucy assures her.
Later Lucy perches naked on the rim of a steaming pool while women of all shapes and sizes tiptoe across the tiled floor. The spa smells hygienically clean. Nearby an ancient Korean woman crouches on a low bench and, using a pail, sluices water over her mottled shoulders.
Lucy starts to slip into the bath, but the old woman waves at her urgently.
“You help me,” she orders, thrusting the empty pail toward Lucy. This is followed by a crusty loofah sponge.
“What do I do?” Lucy asks, lifting her legs out of the skin-puckering water.
The woman points at the empty pail and the sponge, then makes scrubbing motions. On the other side of the pillar another much younger woman is scrubbing a girl’s back with a rough sponge. A film of steam covers flesh and hair, blurring the edges. Mimicking what she sees, Lucy scoops up a load of water and coasts the wiry loofah across the old woman’s back in small, tentative strokes. The crepey skin seems translucent, as if it might easily shred.
The woman cries, “No good! Harder!” and shakes her shoulders in obvious frustration. The loose flesh of her back sinks to broad hips and a soft flat bottom, pleating like drapery.
Lucy obeys as soapy water flows down the gutter into the drain.
A young woman wearing a sparkling white bra and underpants appears on the pool deck and calls Lucy’s name: it is time for her massage.
This luxury was Mark’s idea. “Treat yourself,” he said, hearing the clang of nerves in her voice. He was racing off to work where he was in charge of security for the Treasures of the Silk Route exhibit.
A naked Lucy follows the girl into a windowless room where she hoists herself onto the table, fitting her chin into the pocket. Scented oil squirts onto her back and is worked into her skin by small, firm hands.
“Shoulders very tense,” the Korean girl informs her.
“Yes,” Lucy murmurs, feeling a pair of sturdy thumbs burrow toward her brain stem.
Uncle Philip trots down the noisy street toward a back road lined with shops offering sweets and knick-knacks. He leaps over a ditch, gracefully landing on the other side. He’s become a sort of dragonfly, and everyone smiles at him, this old white guy wearing neat shorts and a polo shirt. At the edge of this colony a pair of brothers lives, ages thirteen and fourteen, with excellent teeth. Uncle Philip understands this indicates superior heath. His step is light, his heart a reliable drum.
Lucy moans.
“Too hard?” the girl asks, but doesn’t let up the pressure.
A silver disc rises inside her head.
Uncle Philip hears the whistle and stops in front of a small wooden house. A girl is selling cigarettes in the doorway, and behind her a portly woman beckons him in. Suddenly, he’s swept past a beaded curtain and experiences a flash of panic: is this how it’s going to end? Fear jazzes him up, and he notices everything, the jars of unknown substances laid neatly on a shelf, pots and pans nailed to a slab of plywood, and a peeling poster of the Backstreet Boys.
The woman speaks quickly, holding out her hand. Uncle Philip digs into the pocket of his shorts and finds his wallet. He can hardly breathe.
Lucy touches her forearm with the tip of a finger and shivers with pleasure. Basted with fragrant oils, she could almost taste herself.
Thirteen
Nothing is green in the windowless green room. Instead,
its walls are painted a soft rose. A bouquet of irises decorates the ledge — a gift to competitors from one of the small army of volunteers.
The first round took place in closed studios, but the semifinals are real performances. Toby flexes his hands, then each finger in turn, special attention paid to the one damaged in his baseball-playing mishap. The hall’s plush seats and concrete-clad walls will create bright acoustics, and this early in the day the audience will be tiny. Breakfast was a banana and a glass of water: banana for its hit of soothing potassium and water to keep hydrated. He ducked into the shower long enough to wash the sleep out of his eyes but not so long that his skin dried out. Such calibrations come easily after all these years.
He chips the tuning fork against his knee and sets its stem on the soundboard of his guitar to resonate: pointless to overtune, since stage lights will ramp up the pitch within seconds. Toby is old school about tuning, using his ears rather than electronics. He straightens, rolls his shoulders, and inhales deeply. Control the mind, banish distractions. He squeezes a millimetre of Vaseline onto his finger and dabs it in the crease of the instrument where neck meets body. During pauses in performance, he’ll smear his fingers to keep them moist. The thumbnail of his right hand is bevelled from practising so much, though not worn enough to justify gluing on a falsie. Too much flesh creates a soft, undifferentiated bass sound. He’ll make a slight adjustment with the angle of his wrist.
Breathe. Focus. This is what he tells members of Guitar Choir when they titter nervously backstage, wiping slimy palms on their dress-up clothes.
Five minutes until showtime.
He grins, feeling the surge of elation that precedes performance, but it too must be tamed.
Setting the guitar back in its case, he tugs off his shoes and, using the wall for leverage, teeters up into a headstand. Blood soars, filling his scalp and ears, flushing out the Eustachian tubes. Broadloom presses into the top of his head — eau de nylon and stale cigarettes. In the hallway he hears a door swing open and the barking voice of Manuel Juerta demanding sugar for his coffee.
A volunteer taps tentatively on the door. “Toby Hausner?”
“Yup,” Toby grunts, lowering himself vertebra by vertebra, feeling the rush of blood disappear from his head. Bits of carpet fluff cling to the knees of his dress pants, and he brushes them off before tucking in the tails of his shirt. He gives his shoes a once-over with his sleeve, not a recommended method, and glances at himself in the full-length mirror. Jasper’s right — he’s going squinty, a sort of Mongol thing happening with his eyes.
“One minute,” the volunteer cries.
Create your own courage, insist on it. Toby grabs his instrument and begins the march down the corridor. The volunteer leads the way as they sweep past framed photographs of little-known musicians.
“My magic hands will leave them breathless,” Toby intones, a recitation geared to