I slowly lifted my head. He was grinning down at me, his jacket slung over his shoulder, and as he leaned in close his thick bicep was only a foot from my face. I found myself focusing on the tattoo there, to avoid having to look him in the eye. A name, picked out in elaborate lettering. Ruth.
I knew that talking to him was a mistake, but I couldn’t help myself. “You’re drunk,” I told him.
“And you’re beautiful. But in the morning—No, wait. I got that wrong.”
I ignored the jibe and shook my head. “It’s only eight o’clock. When did you start: six?”
“Four!” he said, sounding almost offended.
I sighed and shook my head. He’d been out partying all afternoon while I’d been stuck in a practice room. Didn’t he have practice to do?
“Rock n’ roll,” he said, with an extravagant gesture. “That’s Connor Locke. Too wild for you?”
“You could use a little taming, Connor Locke,” I said without thinking.
He leaned over me. “You going to be the one to tame me?”
I flushed, unable to think of a comeback, and cursed myself for talking to him. Then it got worse.
“Have you recovered from this morning?” he asked.
I blushed, which wasn’t the signal I wanted to send at all.
“What happened this morning?” asked Jasmine with forced casualness.
“I had Karen flat on her back,” Connor told them.
“That’s not….” I trailed off, unsure how to explain, and feeling myself going redder by the second.
“Don’t you remember?” asked Connor. “At one point, we were like this.” And he squatted down right in front of me, his face about an inch from mine. I didn’t have a choice—I had to focus on his eyes, those beautiful, blue-gray jewels. They were….
There was no other word for it. They were twinkling at me. I’d have known he was grinning even if the rest of his face was hidden. There was an openness there, an honesty I’d never seen in anyone. Everything for Connor was simple and easy. He didn’t have a care in the world.
The opposite of me, I thought bitterly.
I opened my mouth to deliver a witty putdown. My mouth actually formed the first vowel, but I didn’t seem to have any breath. I just stared at him for another second, and a wave of heat rushed through me. I’m too angry, I reasoned. He’s got me too angry to even speak.
Connor straightened up. “Nothing? Really?” He clapped a hand to his chest. “She doesn’t call, she doesn’t send me flowers….”
Natasha, Clarissa and Jasmine all giggled. The traitors.
“I’ll see you in class,” Connor told me. Then he pointed at me theatrically. “Be careful! I might not be there to save you, next time!”
I hadn’t thought I could blush any more than I already was, but I felt it happen. Half the bar was looking at us. Then Connor clapped an arm around one of his drinking buddies and they stumbled off across the room.
I could feel the other girls all looking at me, and took a long drink of my Pretty Woman to buy some time.
“I fell over,” I said. “He caught me. It was sort of his fault anyway. That’s it.”
Jasmine glanced at Natasha. “Natasha fell off a stage, once, and that worked out.”
“He’s not—are you kidding?” I stared at her. “He’s an idiot! He’s drunk half the time, he’s loud, he’s arrogant….”
“He has those eyes,” countered Natasha quietly.
“You’re taken,” Jasmine told her.
“And that voice. I love that accent,” said Clarissa.
“You too,” said Jasmine.
“He’s about to flunk out! He doesn’t even bother coming to class most of the time!” I told them.
Jasmine pretended to catch her breath. “Oh no! And I pick my boyfriends by their GPA!”
“He’s completely squandered his opportunity! They gave him a scholarship and he’s just wasted it on…on…girls and booze!”
Jasmine frowned. “For a guy you hardly know, you seem very knowledgeable about him.”
I realized the others were all staring at me. She’s right. What do I care?
I swallowed. “No, I just—”
Jasmine snapped her fingers. “When we were at your place, you were in the shower for like three years. Were you thinking about him?”
“No!” I almost shouted. How could she know? How could she possibly know?!
Jasmine was beaming, delighted. “You were! I was sitting out there waiting for you—well, and making a sandwich—and you were in there flicking the bean—”
“No!”
“—thinking about Connor Locke!”
“No! Really!”
Jasmine collapsed into giggles. “Relax! I know you weren’t.” She shook her head. “You’re so easy to wind up, sometimes.”
Everyone laughed, and I let my breath out, smiling nervously. OK, fine. She hadn’t guessed. Not that there was anything to guess. I mean, I’d been thinking about him in the shower, but not in that way.
“How’s Neil?” I asked Clarissa, to throw some of the heat off me.
“Great.” Only she said it too quickly, and in a not-great way. We all turned towards her. “No, seriously, it’s fine. Better than fine. It’s just—”
“He wants a threesome?” asked Jasmine.
“He—WHAT?!”
“He wants another woman to join you. Or—God, another man? Is it a biker?” Jasmine clutched Natasha’s arm. “Is it Darrell?”
“No! Where did you get threesome from? No, nothing like that. He’s just…Neil.”
We waited.
Clarissa stared at her drink. “It’s just…when it started, it just sort of…worked. I mean, I don’t know why it worked, exactly, but it did. He had this…hold over me.”
“And now he doesn’t?” asked Natasha quietly.
“Oh, no, God, he does,” said Clarissa. “That hasn’t changed. He just has to say something in my ear and—” She reddened. “That works fine. But I keep wondering if that’s all we have. I mean…”—she looked around at us—“…we’re very different.”
“Opposites attract,” I said carefully.
“Yes, but do they stick?” Clarissa asked.
***
I’d said I’d only stay for one drink, but it was two before I persuaded Jasmine that I was serious about going. I wanted to put her in a cab back to her place—I figured I could quietly pay the cabbie in advance.
Jasmine, Dan and I left Clarissa and Natasha choosing drinks and braved the freezing wind outside. It was blasting straight down the long street that Flicker was on, numbing our exposed faces, so it was a relief when we turned into an alley. We planned to cut through to a busier street where we’d be more likely to find a cab. Dan was lagging some way behind Jasmine and me because he had his wallet out, trying to figure out if he had enough money left for his cab fare. There wasn’t a lot of light in the alley, and he was using his iPhone to count the bills, the screen glow lighting up his face.
“You think they’ll be okay?” asked Jasmine.
“Clarissa and Neil?”
“Mmm. It has always been about sex, with them.”
I thought about it. A relationship based entirely on sex was about as far from my personal experience as it was possible to get. I glanced around while I thought—it was that sort of alley. “I don’t know. I—Where’s Dan?”
He wasn’t behind us. He wasn’t anywhere. Then I saw a flicker of light—the glowing screen of his phone, reflecting off the brickwork in a side alley near where I’d last seen him.
Jasmine and I looked at each other, and then Jasmine ran towards the side alley. My eyes nearly bugged out of my head, and I grabbed for her hand but just missed it. I hesitated for a split second and then ran after her.
She stopped at the mouth of the side alley and I managed to grab her arm to stop her going any further. Dan was halfway down, backed up against a wall by a bigger guy who was holding something against his throat. It was o
nly when it caught the light that I realized it was a knife.
“Shit,” whispered Jasmine. We both hovered there, unsure of what to do. Scream? Try to help? Would that stop him stabbing Dan, or make him do it?
“Hey!” yelled Jasmine, her voice breaking as she said it. The guy didn’t even look round. Dan handed over his phone and wallet and started to take off his watch.
I pulled my own phone out and dialed 911. My brain kept freezing and I had to think about each digit.
Dan almost dropped his watch as he handed it over. The guy grabbed his shirt and ran him towards the opposite wall, pushing him hard when he was halfway across. I winced as I saw Dan bounce off the bricks. It looked like he managed to slow himself a little by putting his arm out, but he still whacked his forehead and folded to the ground.
I screamed his name and ran into the side alley, only to realize the mugger was running straight towards me. I screwed my eyes shut as we passed, waiting to feel the knife slide between my ribs, or feel myself hurled into the brickwork—
But he ran straight past and was gone. I knelt beside Dan. He had his eyes open but looked groggy, blood trickling from his forehead.
A voice from my phone asked what my emergency was and, in a small, scared voice, I told it.
***
About five minutes later, the police arrived. We had Dan sitting up against the wall—he’d thrown up, but otherwise seemed okay. Jasmine had called Clarissa and Natasha and they’d raced over from Flicker. We were all standing around offering words of support to make up for the fact that we were essentially useless.
Blue and red lights filled the alley and we heard car doors slamming. Two cops strode in: the first was in his fifties, with gray eyebrows fatter than my finger; the other looked no older than us—he could have been one of Fenbrook’s actors, in a borrowed police uniform.
“Paramedics are right behind us,” the young one said. “Who was here? Who saw it?” He stopped beside Clarissa and Natasha. “Were you here?”
“No,” they both said in unison.
“I was here,” said Jasmine.
The young cop looked at her and froze for a moment. In itself, that wasn’t unusual—Jasmine had that effect on men. But this seemed like something more, like he was entranced. At last, he nodded. “Okay. I have a couple of questions, while it’s still fresh in your mind.”
I figured I should step forward and say that I was a witness too, but as I did I saw the look Jasmine was giving the officer. I recognized that look. And it dawned on me that the cop was quite well built, and good looking, if you went for the clean-cut look. Oh! She wanted to give him her statement…and probably her phone number.
As they talked, the paramedics arrived and started shining lights in Dan’s eyes and asking him to follow fingers. I half-listened to what the cop was asking Jasmine.
“So you were walking together when it happened?”
“I was sort of leading the way. He was checking his wallet, to see if he had enough money. I think that’s why he got jumped,” Jasmine told him.
The cop looked at Dan. “And I’m right in thinking he’s not your husband or boyfriend?”
I saw Jasmine smirk at that idea. “That’s right.”
“Okay. So the two of you were just about to, ah….”
Jasmine looked blank.
The cop tried again. “You were—you know—just about to….”
Jasmine frowned, bemused. I realized what was going on in the cop’s head, but I was too late to stop him.
The cop sighed. “He was jumped as the two of you were about to complete your business?”
There was total silence for a second.
“WHAT?!” asked Jasmine, horrified.
The cop didn’t flinch. “It’s okay, miss—you’re not my concern tonight. Some other night, I might have to run you in, but right now I’m just trying to establish what happened.”
Jasmine’s outrage made her voice go nearly ultrasonic. “I AM NOT A HOOKER! Why would you think—” I saw her look down at her ultra-tiny dress and the long fur coat. “I’m an actress!”
“Uh-huh,” said the cop.
I finally found my voice. “Um, she actually is an actress,” I said, stepping forward.
The young cop turned and looked at me—he really was very good-looking, I realized. He looked at Natasha and Clarissa. “And I suppose they’re actresses, too?”
“Oh no,” I told him. “They’re ballerinas.”
The cop ran his hand over his face, as if this was going to be a very long shift.
The paramedics finished with Dan and walked him past us. “He’ll live,” they told us. “The cut on his head looks worse than it is. Looks like there’s no concussion.”
We all took a long breath. Everything was going to be okay. I felt almost giggly with relief. Jasmine, meanwhile, looked like she was trying to melt the cop’s brain with her glare. I stepped forward to intervene, before she killed him or he arrested her.
Then I saw that the paramedics were helping Dan into the ambulance. “I thought you said he was okay?” I asked.
The paramedic beamed. “He is. Don’t worry, his head’s fine. I just want someone to look at his arm.”
“His arm?” I asked. My giggles evaporated. “What’s wrong with his arm?”
Chapter 3
Jasmine and I went with Dan in the ambulance. Natasha and Clarissa followed in a cab, but they needn’t have hurried. An hour after we arrived, we were still sitting in plastic chairs in ER admissions, gradually sobering up under the harsh fluorescent lights while Jasmine told us about colorful fates she’d like to befall the cop.
We all told Dan it was going to be fine. The arm was probably just bruised, or it was a light sprain. But his right elbow swelled and stiffened, and he said he couldn’t move it at all.
When the doctors eventually x-rayed it, they told us the detailed version of what we’d already guessed. When he’d slammed into the wall, Dan had put his arm out to stop himself—probably saving him from a concussion. But the impact had shattered his elbow, and broken his ulna.
“How long?” asked Dan, and the doctor couldn’t understand why he’d gone so white.
The doctor shrugged. “Eight weeks in a cast. Full mobility: three months?”
Dan just blinked, his mouth open.
“You’ll be alright,” the doctor said, thinking we didn’t understand. “It’s only your arm.”
I pulled Dan into a hug.
***
By morning, Dan was home and resting in bed, sporting a cast already covered in names and doodles. I promised to stop by with a care package later in the day, then went home to bed.
And found I couldn’t sleep, the conversation I’d had with Dan going round and round in my head.
I’d been through the situation with him, and it wasn’t quite as bad as it first appeared. He’d pretty much cleared his schedule for the next few months anyway to focus on the recital, so that was the only thing he’d miss. And his grades were high enough that, even though he’d miss the recital completely, he’d still graduate.
Once we’d been through that, though, we had to talk about me.
Since Dan now couldn’t play the Brahms with me, I’d have to find something to play solo. Solo pieces weren’t normally allowed in the recitals, since part of the aim was to teach you teamwork, but in this case I was sure they’d make an exception. All the work I’d spent on the Brahms so far was wasted. I’d have to find a piece I could play solo and practice it like crazy, hoping I could impress the New York Phil scout on my own.
There was one tiny silver lining. At least with only myself to worry about, I could practice day and night, however long it took. It was going to be a brutal few months, but maybe, if I found the right piece, I could still pull it off.
***
I’d emailed Professor Harman in the early hours to tell him I needed to see him urgently. On my way in to Fenbrook, I stopped off at a Starbucks and picked him up a latte. Not a bribe;
a gift. I figured I could use all the help I could get.
I’d never been in his office before. In keeping with his position as the head of music, it was intimidatingly large and the desk was so shiny I felt like I shouldn’t put coffee on it, so I stashed the drinks down by my feet instead.
Professor Harman was in his sixties, with a close-cropped white beard and little round glasses. He nodded soberly as I told him about the mugging, and took the time to check that everyone was okay.
Dan, he confirmed, would graduate just fine without his recital. His grades were strong across all his courses and the loss of the recital would only drop his degree one level.
Then the conversation turned to me.
“I know that the deadline for choosing pieces is tomorrow,” I told him. “Obviously I’m going to need to change now I’m solo. I was wondering if I could have an extra day or two to decide on the new piece. I want to make sure—”
He was shaking his head.
“You can’t let me have an extra day?” I asked.
“I can’t let you play solo,” he said.
“What? But—my partner’s injured! That’s not my fault!” It was so outrageous, so unexpected, that I didn’t have time to be scared.
“Indeed it isn’t. But recitals have to be performed by a group of two or more. Managing your rehearsals, working as a team…that’s all part of your training here. If you were allowed to play solo, it would give you an unfair advantage over the others.”
I sat there open mouthed for a moment. The fear was starting to kick in now, serpents of panic coiling and twisting in my belly. “Okay…I’ll find a duet and ask them to change to a trio,” I said desperately. “We can pick a new piece and start rehearsing—” I saw him press his lips together. “What?”
“I can’t let you disrupt an existing group. Even if they agreed, if the three of you were to get anything less than top marks, they could complain that they were treated unfairly by having to start over. You’d have to form a duo with someone who hasn’t chosen their piece yet.”
In Harmony Page 4
