The hotel lobby beckoned invitingly with its promise of warmth and lack of frozen rain attacking one’s eyelashes. Lana and Alexis hurried inside to find Robin and Melanie waiting for them.
“Supermom!” Robin pumped both fists straight in the air, before making an octopus out of her hand to squish Alexis’s head playfully.
Mel held out an insulated paper cup. “I bet you need this.”
Lana took it carefully in her still-gloved hand. Hot, spiced apple cider! She enjoyed the smell and the warm steam against her nose for a moment before taking a sip, then rested the cup against her cheek. “Wow, thanks! You’re right, that’s perfect. How did you know?”
“Robin found me at one of the sheet music booths and told me where you were. Here, take those off.” Mel took Lana’s free hand and peeled off her glove. Lana, still in her coat, flushed warmly at the first time their hands met. Mel’s fingers were gentle and guiding on hers, steering her bare hand around the cup she held in her gloved one. Intense heat from the cider caressed her palm. “Isn’t that just what your fingers need after being out there? Even in gloves it’s hard not to feel like there’s ice inside your body after being out there.”
“This is just about my favorite way to eat apples,” said Lana, unable to take her eyes away from Mel’s hospitable smile, and reveling in their impromptu hand-holding.
Mel squeezed Lana’s hand against the cup and then relinquished it to fish a business card holder out of her convention bag. “Hey, I have to go to a seminar, but call me after the afternoon rehearsal and I’ll join up with you all for dinner.” She pressed her card into Lana’s waiting hand.
“Thanks again for the apple cider,” Lana said through smiles and fluttering eyelashes.
Dinner was another group affair, even larger this time, and Mel spent most of it entertaining all the students present with unusual stories from the lives of composers. “Of course, none of that’s quite as awful as Jean-Baptiste Lully, who accidentally killed himself with his own baton.”
“You’re shitting me,” said Tyler. “Dammit!” He smacked his face.
Mel rolled her eyes and looked at him with stern affection. “Tyler, I don’t care if you curse, as long as you practice. You can swear every other word for all I care but you better nail that Saint-Saëns.”
“You got it, Ms. Feinberg!”
“What happened with the baton?” asked Blanca. “Was it on purpose?”
“Nope!” said Mel. “Back then, batons were these big heavy—” She mimed banging a pole on the ground. “He hit himself in the foot and died of gangrene.”
Robin’s eyes grew wide. “That’s so sad!”
“So nowadays, if my baton goes flying across the room and lands in the violas, I just think, hey, it’s not as bad as it could be.”
Mel’s amazing with kids, Lana observed. She wondered how Nick would take to her. Toying with her straw, she knew she was getting ahead of herself, but it was a safer train of thought than some of the others she could have followed in front of all these people. Mel looked like a dapper butch goddess in her crisp blazer, and the hot-cider-hand-holding incident made Lana want more warm touches.
She got her wish later on. The students had the night off before their big concert, and several of them had aggregated, with the moms, in one of the hotel rooms to watch a movie. The young musicians were enraptured by the turbulent love life of composer Franz Liszt; most of them had seen the movie at least once if not more, and they kept a running commentary on their favorite parts—which meant that Mel and Lana weren’t disturbing anyone by chatting quietly.
“My neck aches a little from being out in that mess out there,” said Lana. The window shade was drawn back on one side, revealing a hazy pink glow past which faint snowflakes flitted. Safe on the other side of the thick glass, they seemed misleadingly gentle.
“C’mere. I’ll see what I can do.” Mel’s fingertips and thumb sent happy ribbons of promise down Lana’s body.
“Thanks! Oh, yeah, that really does help.” Lana felt such relief at being able to enjoy moments like this, finally, after decades of silence and stifling herself. She wasn’t that religious, but a powerful gratitude rocked her soul and called for silent prayer. “I loved that song you were playing earlier this morning in the rehearsal room.”
“Oh, thanks!” said Mel. “It’s just a folk tune. It’s called ‘Si Bheag Si Mhor.’”
Lana couldn’t place the unfamiliar syllables. “Is that a Jewish thing?” she hazarded.
Mel chuckled. “No, it’s Irish. But you guessed right on Feinberg.”
“Any idea what the name means?” Lana leaned into the neck massage, savoring each moment.
“Something about two hills where two warriors were buried, and their ghosts kept on fighting.”
“Really? It sounds so gentle and sweet.”
“Old-timey names are all over the place,” said Mel. “People make jokes that the only reason we even have them is to tell the tunes apart. That’s how we wind up with stuff like ‘Cluck, Old Hen’ and ‘Tater Patch’.”
“I’m sorry I had to leave in the middle of She… of the Irish thing, but that’s when Alexis was having her little emergency,” said Lana. “I’d love to hear it again, really listen to it.”
“Yeah?” Mel looked around the room. “You think there’s enough adults in here without us, if we left for a few minutes?”
“What, you mean, now?” Besides Blanca’s mom, Lana counted two other chaperones in the room. “I think we should be able to pop out… You brought your violin to the conference?”
“Nope!”
“Then what are you gonna…”
“I’ll improvise!”
Lana blinked, but Mel seemed perpetually unafraid, and being around her energized Lana. The feeling rising in her chest reminded her of the swarm of bubbles flowing to the top of a glass of club soda. “I can’t wait to see how you’re gonna pull this off,” she said as she stood up.
“Hey, we’ll be right back, okay?” Mel told the room. “You’ll be fine for a few moments if we duck out? We’re gonna go stretch our legs.”
“Fine, fine,” said Mrs. Martinez with a smile, before going back to her animated conversation with the other two moms.
Lana followed through the hallway as Mel, who seemed like Peter Pan in a blazer with her spontaneous energy, led her to a room around the corner. She stood with her hands resting on her hips as Mel knocked. “Student’s room,” the teacher explained.
Lana smiled, but nobody answered the door. “Oh, well!” said Mel. “Next stop!”
They took an elevator to another floor and tried another room, but nobody was there, either. Back to the elevator. Mel didn’t look disappointed by their striking out—her face was lit up by the adventure.
“So, do you like Thai? There’s a new place that opened up across the street from Tulip Tree and I haven’t had anything bad there yet.”
“Sure, I’d love to try it!” said Lana as the elevator doors opened.
At the next room, somebody finally came to the door—but it was the other student in the room, not the violinist, and Mel understood completely that she didn’t want to lend out someone else’s instrument without their permission. “These aren’t all your students, are they?” Lana furrowed her brow, trying to remember what Mel said earlier about who was here representing Tulip Tree strings.
“No, some of them are from that chamber group.”
“Oh, right! I’d like to hear them play sometime.”
Mel hurried down the corridor. “Next month on the 8th, Tchaikovsky Serenade for Strings.”
Lana didn’t want to ask What if we don’t find a violin? She was afraid that would somehow break the spell.
The next room was another nobody there—“Everyone’s probably at the convention center or eating dinner,” Mel mused—but at the fifth room they struck gold.
“Sure, but you’ll bring it back in a few minutes, right?” The gangly young man at the door handed his c
ase over to Mel.
“Definitely, safe and sound.”
Mel’s room was a warm and golden place under the light of the single lamp she switched on when they entered. The effect was enhanced by the unexpected fragrance of pumpkin-spice-something. “Ooh, it smells good in here,” Lana remarked, trying to look around without being too snoopy.
“It’s my little air freshener friend,” said Mel, putting the violin case on the extra bed. She unzipped it from both directions at once. “I like to put that scent in places that become home. It’s sort of a mental health thing. Hope it’s okay?”
“Oh, yeah! That’s a great smell.” Lana caught the comment as the first mention of any vulnerability in Mel’s superwoman image, and treasured the feeling of being trusted. But then, wasn’t speaking so openly just yet another sign of Mel’s confidence and poise? “If you like it, you’ll love what happens to my house just before the band bake-sales.”
“Maybe I should come over and practice.” Mel tightened the bow, then lifted the violin to her shoulder.
Sitting on the bed with her sock-clad feet in front of her, Lana watched Mel admiringly. Once again, she began to play the lilting dance from that morning. With clever finger tricks, she made it sound what Lana started to think of as “extra Irish”. It was almost as if Mel were flirting with some of the notes instead of simply playing them.
When Mel stopped, Lana assumed she was going to adjust her bow again or maybe change tunes. Instead, she walked to the bed and nudged Lana’s thigh with her knee. “Move over.”
“Huh?”
Mel let her butt do the talking, and Lana had no choice but to scoot. She felt delightfully cozy, sidled up to Mel like this, but what was going on? Mel was still holding the violin.
—No, she wasn’t.
Lana found herself holding the slim wooden sculpture without realizing how it had happened. “I can’t—this belongs to somebody else—”
“I’ve got you covered.” Mel’s voice was a throaty, soothing caress. “I’m right here.” She pressed the bow into Lana’s right hand.
Lana drew the bow across the strings. A brilliant fifth rang out, D and A, and Lana vibrated along with them. “Oh.”
“Yes.”
“But I don’t remember anything.”
“Try what I just played.”
Lana shook her head. “I only heard it today!”
“Would it help if you had music? Do you remember?”
“I think I might… from helping Robin, at the piano.”
Mel then proceeded to blow Lana’s mind by sliding open the drawer that usually only held Gideon Bibles and suggestions for where to order pizza, if it wasn’t snowing its ass off, and retrieving a sheet of paper. “Here.”
“You wrote it out?” Lana’s eyes bugged. There it was—handwritten in neat blue pen.
“Helped me stay focused during that seminar.” Mel placed the paper delicately over Lana’s thighs. “Can you see, or do you want me to hold it?”
“I’d rather you keep spotting me,” Lana said quickly. “This still isn’t my violin.”
Mel nodded. “La la laaaa la la laaaa la la la laaaa la laaaa,” she sang, pointing. Her clear voice was a whole new pleasure. “Right here.”
Lana took a deep breath, placed her left ring finger on the A string, lifted the bow, and landed.
D, E, F#—, E, D, D—, E, D, A, B—, A, F#—…
The notes actually sounded like notes! The violin sounded like a violin! Her sound was awkward, but it only enhanced the rustic folk tune. It’s not like this was Mendelssohn or something. Her fingers felt raw and naked, pressed up against taut metal like that for the first time in decades, but it didn’t hurt.
Lana knew she didn’t sound like Mel, or even like Mel’s students, but she was making music. The song that had wrapped itself around her heart like a ribbon ever since first meeting Mel—no, before, ever since coming out and deciding to be her own brave self—was finally escaping with each breath, confined no longer.
She shot a glance at Mel, falling into those big dark eyes, that welcoming smile. Mel nodded slowly and squeezed Lana’s knee. Her head moved subtly in time with the music, and then Lana realized she was humming along—in harmony.
Too much good. Tears began to blur the music. Lana blinked them away and kept going.
After a few rounds, she put the violin down and breathed deeply.
“So, yeah,” said Mel.
They looked at each other, grinning and glowing.
Lana giggled from sheer emotion. “What else you got?”
“Fiddle tunes, or do you want me to kiss you?”
“Both. Everything.” Lana looked up at the ceiling, almost as if seeing the black sky beyond it with the snow cleared and the stars out.
“Let me move this.” Mel rescued the violin from Lana’s reverent hands, placing it carefully on the nightstand with the bow beside it. Then she turned back to Lana and brushed a lock of hair back over her shoulder. “You’re more fearless than you think you are.”
“Meeting you makes me stop feeling bad for waiting so long.” And it was Lana who moved forward first, closing her eyes and tilting her head as naturally as if this weren’t the first time she was kissing in her native language.
Their hands held each other’s gently as they kissed, the sense of peace and rightness flowing through the room along with the baking spices. Maybe it was Lana’s imagination, but she thought she heard the violin’s strings resonating in harmony.
END
ABOUT SHIRA GLASSMAN
Shira Glassman is a bi Jewish violinist from Florida. She eats, breathes, and sleeps violin, but what the hell is “snow”?
Social Media Links:
Blog: http://shiraglassman.wordpress.com
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/shiraglassman
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/shiraglassman
Other: http://shiraglassman.tumblr.com
If you liked this book, you might like:
If you want more fiction by Ms. Glassman focused on music, musicians, and love between women, A Harvest of Ripe Figs, about a stolen violin, is a full-length fantasy cozy.
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