At 8:00 p.m. Toby drops his competition badge into his pocket, noting that the others don’t. They’re proud of their status. Montreal’s Gazette ran a feature on the congress, calling this gang the cream of the classical guitar world, the upcoming generation. The musicians step into downtown Montreal, aching to be together again. The waiting is a kind of torture: when will the judges make up their bloody minds? A tour bus rambles past, headed toward historic Old Town, its loudspeaker noting features in both official languages.
Hiro points to a sign over a café door: les copains.
Toby nods. Sure, he’ll go anywhere. The musicians enter the bistro and hover in the vestibule, waiting to be noticed. Everyone in the joint is earnestly talking while dance music blasts out of a cut-rate sound system.
“We better scram, Junior,” Larry says, digging him in the ribs.
“Why?” Toby asks. The place looks perfect, very Left Bank, elegant young men propped up against the bar, soft lighting, pressed tin ceiling — this is why people travel.
“Fag bar, you dumb Canuck.”
This is how they end up in a faux-Irish dive called Brasserie Molly Bloom, full of French-speaking students perfectly at home with posters of early-twentieth-century Dublin, cobblestone streets greased with rain and soot. They find a pair of empty tables at the rear of the cavernous bar and push them together.
“I’m not drinking tonight,” Toby announces when Larry and Armand try to ply him with beer.
“Come on, man, you’re celebrating a near-death experience.”
If he starts drinking, he won’t want to stop. Coldness sucks at his entrails, a thirsty creature.
“I saw his hand,” Lucy says, settling in across the table. “It was poking out of the water, very creepy, then it disappeared. So I snatched what turned out to be hair and pulled like crazy.”
Toby reaches up to touch his scalp, which is still tender.
“Such an episode underlines how meaningless this competition is,” she says, her voice seeking to be heard over The Chieftains soundtrack. “Who bloody cares about music when tragedy beckons?”
Toby stares at his fingertips, still crinkly from river water. This isn’t what any of them want to hear. The competition must matter more than anything. Once they stop believing that, their performances will wilt.
He wants a drink. Now.
It’s Armand who makes a point of switching topic. He’s tired of Toby grabbing the attention, and he leans into the rim of the table, forearms planted on its sticky surface. “The man is amazing.”
“Who?” someone asks.
“Williams.”
He’s referring to John Williams, the British guitar god.
“And I don’t mean just technically,” Armand adds.
“Too amazing by half,” Larry says, pouring himself a pint from the pitcher. “I swear he never plays at more than sixty percent. He doesn’t have to.”
Growing more animated, Armand says, “In master class in Frankfurt he remarks that my playing reminds him of Fisk.”
Eliot Fisk, that is, American guitar whiz, said to be a carrier of the Segovia torch. This boasting is routine, especially for a man who didn’t make it past the preliminary round.
“Give me the wild guys, like Käppel or Barrueco,” Larry says, hoisting his beer in salute to those who aren’t present. “They take risks.”
“I know a guy who had a tendon removed,” Armand says, holding up his fretting hand, touching the web of skin between his third and fourth fingers. “So now these fingers move independently.”
Everyone winces.
“That’s crazy,” Toby says, but he’s impressed.
The waitress brings a mountain of nachos and a platter of fried clams. Ever since he played in the semi, Toby’s been hungry in a way he recognizes as being adolescent. Lucy rises from her seat and heads off in search of the washroom.
“Did you check out that girl’s instrument?” Larry asks, sour cream oozing out the side of his mouth. He means Trace, daughter of a schoolteacher and a tugboat driver, too young to join them at the bar. “Perfect copy of a vintage Smallman, for fuck’s sake. I’d give my right testicle for one of those.”
Smallman is the Australian luthier favoured by John Williams and other top-flight players.
“Who’d she have to fuck to get that?” Armand asks, but his heart isn’t in it. Just thinking about the girl possibly going on to the final round makes him sick.
“I hate my instrument,” Larry says, his voice rising over the Irish music. “Piece of shit, late Hernandez.”
“What model?” Hiro asks.
Larry tells him.
“They are crap for thirty years,” says Hiro, his head bobbing out of an oversized collar. He plays an instrument fashioned by an obscure Belgian maker.
Larry looks glum. “You got an extra twenty grand?”
“If I win …” Toby says, grabbing a pint of ale from the cluster of glasses in the middle of the table. This after swearing off until the end of the competition. “I’ll track down a Fleta ’65, or maybe an early 1970s José Romanillos.”
“And for this you offer one testicle or two?” Armand asks.
Toby knocks back half the beer, and his body jolts. This is what counts, the camaraderie and guitar talk; this is what he lives for, what he’s been missing too damn long.
“You hear Trace play in semifinal?” Hiro asks.
“Missed it,” Toby confesses.
“She is dangerous, my friend.”
Toby keeps a game smile on his face. “She’s just a kid.”
So was he, back in the day.
“One fucking amazing kid,” Hiro adds. He’s picked up their way of talking.
“Who does she study with on her island?”
“Some guy no one’s heard of.”
They all stare into the table with its botched plates, worrying about this girl who is too young to drink with them. The poster of James Joyce with his bad eyes glares down: just when you think you’re safe again and happy, the old enemy, fear, creeps in.
Lucy returns from the washroom, wiping her hands on her slacks — the dryer was on the fritz. When she sits down, she inserts herself next to Toby, so that he has no choice but to slide over the banquette and press next to Hiro. He feels the young man stiffen. This is probably a social horror in his country, to mash next to someone you barely know.
Hiro fixes his eyes on the TV monitor, Yankees versus Red Sox.
“How’s the nail holding up?” Toby asks. He feels Lucy staring at him, searching for symptoms of delayed trauma.
Without changing the direction of his gaze, Hiro splays his mended hand on the tabletop. “You are excellent craftsman.” Before Toby has a chance to examine the perfectly glued seam, he lifts the hand and indicates the screen. “See that?” he cries, pointing. “Fantastic Japanese guy!”
The pinstriped player, Hideki Okuda, slides into third base, then rises, grabbing his batting helmet off the dirt. Yankee Stadium erupts as two men cross home plate.
Hiro is delighted. “Okuda is big star in Japan. My college is named after him. Every kid wants to be Okuda.”
“My ideal job?” Larry says from the other end