The Ann Ireland Library. Ann Ireland

on the crowded bed, tunes his instrument. No one pays attention when he starts playing. Instead they keep yammering in varied accents about the finalists and judges (“Javier, he holds back until the finals …” “Portia, I play for her in Aspen. She loves dramatic phrasing …”). But one by one voices drop off as Tex launches into the simple “Pavana” by Luis de Milán, the Renaissance composer. He plays with fluid accuracy, each chord hovering before dipping into the next. Any musician in the room could play this piece in his sleep, but for them the race is over and finally they can listen without fear or dismay.

      As Tex crunches the final chord, Marcus reaches for his own instrument and points to his backup parked in the corner. “She’s yours,” he tells Lucy.

      Her mind scrambles as she unhitches the case and flips open the lid — what might she play? The Bosnian eyes her and performs another of his enigmatic nods. After a quick tune-up, she rolls into good old “Malagueña” — soulful and redolent of Andalusian cafés, not that she’d know, having never visited Spain. Mark keeps saying they’ll go, and last year she even booked a flight, then Mike was sent home for tagging the cafeteria wall and they decided it was unwise to leave the boys on their own for a week, even with Mark’s mother in charge.

      This backup guitar has a fatter fretboard than she’s used to and the entire instrument feels boomy, aching to sprint ahead. Lucy plays while sitting cross-legged on the floor, not the most brilliant position as the instrument rocks on her lap, but something lovely and unexpected happens as she enters the middle section. Tex joins in, improvising a harmonic line, then Marcus adds bass, padding out the sound. Competition nerves melt away as they sprawl on bed and floor. This is why they come to international events — to play together when the day is done and nothing is at stake. This is where joyous music happens, not on the stage where they are pierced by light and judges’ stares.

      Someone passes around a bowl of chips, and nimble hands dive in. Lucy feels the music rise inside her, untethered and sentimental, almost lustful. She half shuts her eyes and slows down the phrase, feeling the other musicians follow.

      Tex passes his guitar to Armand who, without missing a note, continues the harmony, but with a sharper tone. They could be gypsies hunched around a roaring fire, caravans looming in the shadows. The joint comes around again, and the baby-face Quebecker slips it between Lucy’s lips.

      If the twins could see her now, as she is, really is, not their mama.

      It’s past midnight when Lucy reaches the women’s pod. She coasts down the hallway, slightly stoned, a sensation that makes her feel detached from her body. Is this how the twins feel when they smoke up? Small wonder they sneer at her warnings to quit.

      Despite the late hour, Trace’s light is on and she’s going over the same phrase again and again, a tortured renegotiation of every detail. It must have hit her that she has to appear onstage tomorrow, the world’s eyes bearing down.

      Such a relief to be free from that stress, Lucy decides. Yet a tiny voice nips at the edge of her mind: If only it was me stepping out there, audience filling the hushed auditorium …

      She pauses outside the girl’s room, and the music stops. There is a light clank of instrument being propped against the chair, then the door opens and Trace stands before her, wearing boxer shorts and a man’s undershirt, showing thin, bare limbs.

      “You should be sleeping,” Lucy says, aware of a thickness in her voice.

      “I can’t.” Trace grips her own elbows, collarbone shooting forward under the loose top. “Every time I lie down I start to freak out.”

      “You’re bound to be on edge.”

      “What if mess up tomorrow? Everyone will say I’m too young, that I shouldn’t have made it this far. Do you think I’m too young?” Without waiting for an answer, Trace keeps chattering. “So I got thinking that I’ve been playing the rondo all wrong, putting in those sforzandos because I thought they were cool, but they’re not cool. They’re stupid, and it interferes with the rhythm, which is what my teacher told me, but I thought I’d be all dramatic and everything —”

      Lucy steps forward and wraps her arms around the girl. She feels the brittle cushion of her body, that shaved head tentatively pressing into her shoulder. So different from the twins who dive into her arms like Spitfires — and that’s when they’re feeling friendly.

      “I’m fucking scared,” the girl says. Her breathing is off kilter, too shallow and fast.

      Lucy rubs the girl’s prickly head. The boys, as newborns, chirped like fuzzy chicks, the thumb-sized depression of fontanel pulsing in their soft skulls. You kiss the most vulnerable part; it beckons, needing your most tender care.

      Twenty-Three

      Miranda and Jill from upstairs should deal with this pyramid of dog shit. Jasper scoops the feces into a plastic bag and ties a knot, then notices the rat, or what’s left of it, that their yappy pooch, Polly, attacked a day earlier. That makes two rodents spotted in twenty-four hours. He hopes this doesn’t signal an infestation. The corpse lies prone, nearly hidden in the crabgrass in front of the row house. Crouching over its remains, Jasper prods delicately with the trowel. Its skull is intact, eyes opaque, teeth bared. The abdomen is torn open, and a trace of entrails lies like a dried umbilical cord. Brownish fur, underside a light colour. The Norway rat will creep through any space bigger than half an inch — smaller than the width of your baby finger. Cellars here are porous, as crumbling masonry competes with the shifting sands of lake soil. He glares at the clinic’s rear door where graffiti blazes despite earnest removal attempts. Their dumpster is shut, as per regulations, but rodents have advanced olfactory skills. Jasper suspects a scary birth rate, lured by medical waste. He pushes the tip of his fedora back, remembering not to touch his eyes.

      Abruptly, the back door of the clinic springs open and three men and one woman step into the sun. Working their cellphones, they hasten toward a red SUV parked illegally in the laneway.

      “An obvious gap in screening protocol,” one of the men says in a self-important tone that Jasper immediately recognizes.

      Luke.

      Pull the cap over brow, but not in time.

      “Jasper!” The man stops in his tracks and sings out the name: long lost friend.

      Jasper must look like a retiree, yard work in the middle of the day, and he uses the trowel to hoist himself up out of a crouch. These khaki shorts aren’t exactly flattering, nor is the Bacardi Rum souvenir T-shirt.