Nocturne

by Andrea Randall

  He winked at me in response, and I felt a small thrill. But seconds later, Nathan’s grin disappeared and he sat up, a clouded expression on his face. Tim raised an eyebrow.

  I twisted around in my seat. Of course, that explained the sudden transition from laughter to sobriety. Mr. Personal Rain Cloud himself had walked into the room, trailing Joseph McIntosh, our conductor. For a change, Gregory wore light grey pants instead of black. How original, he seemed to be branching out. I had to force myself to not roll my eyes.

  Tim stood up just as Joseph and Gregory reached him.

  “Hey guys,” Tim said.

  Joseph spoke for the dour pair. “Tim, listen, we’ve got an interesting opportunity … and a strange one. The Tonight Show is looking to do a segment on the tour.”

  I raised an eyebrow. That was a surprise.

  The tour was intended to raise interest across the country in symphony music. In simpler terms, it was an attempt to pull the collective asses of classical musicians out of the fire. In the wake of economic recession and war, symphonies were seeing subscription drops all over the country. Some had closed; others were laying off musicians and shortening their seasons, not to mention cutting pensions for those who’d been members longer than I’d been alive. This tour was an attempt to generate real interest in our music and included a lot of unusual venues: town centers in cities with no symphony, television shows, and malls.

  “What can I do to help?” Tim asked.

  “We need a duet. I went over a number of possible pieces with the producers and they want Assobio a Jato. Gregory knows it well, but we need a partner for him. Savannah, I understand you’ve played it with Gregory before?”

  I took a deep breath. Joseph didn’t see it, but I did: Gregory scowled, fiercely. Asshole. Of course he wouldn’t want me involved in this.

  “Maybe Tim?” I said, my voice trailing off.

  Tim shook his head. “Difficult piece, and I’ve never played it. How much time do we have to prepare?”

  “None,” Joseph said. “You’ll be playing live, tonight.”

  Tim shook his head. “Not possible. Savannah, I think it’s going to have to be you if you know it. Is that okay?”

  I spoke up again. “Perhaps a different piece …”

  Joseph said, “No, this is the one they wanted. I need you to pull this one through, Savannah. It’s important for the tour.”

  I could do this. Gregory might be a reclusive ass, but it was only a few hours anyway. I met Joseph’s eyes. “I’d be happy to.”

  Gregory began to sputter, so I smiled at him, and in the sweetest tone of voice I could summon, I said, “Although if it’s too difficult for you to do this one on such short notice, Gregory, I’m sure one of the other cellists could substitute.”

  I could feel the tension from him, so intense that his face just beside his right eye started to twitch.

  My anger withdrew, leaving me deflated. He’d been visibly tense, angry, frustrated about something since the tour started. I’d carefully avoided him outside of practice and performances, so I had no idea what was wrong, but suddenly I didn’t want to irritate him any more. I wanted to soothe whatever was bothering him.

  It seemed I was too late. Red-faced, he said to me in a cold tone, “I’m certain we’ll get through this somehow, Miss Marshall.”

  Joseph looked back and forth between us, concern on his face. He didn’t verbalize the tension. Neither did Nathan, who rose to his feet.

  Joseph shrugged. “Pack your bags then. We’ll have a car brought around to take you to the airport.”

  Forty minutes later I was back in the lobby of the hotel. An uncomfortable looking Gregory stood at the door waiting. As I approached him, Lyn, one of the production assistants, caught up with us.

  “Gregory? Savannah? Okay … you’re on United Airlines, arriving in Los Angeles at three p.m. A car from the network will pick you up and get you to the hotel, and then pick you up again at seven p.m. to take you to the studio. Your flight tomorrow morning is to Lincoln, Nebraska; you’ll meet us there. Those tickets are in the package as well.”

  I thanked Lyn as she pressed the folder with the airline tickets into my hand.

  She handed another folder to Gregory. “You have an extra seat for your cello, of course,” she said.

  He mumbled his thanks to her in a barely civilized tone, and I whispered, “We’d better go before you accidentally say something polite.”

  Then I turned and walked outside to the waiting black Lincoln Town Car, praying that it was our car. Otherwise I’d be left standing there; dramatically making an idiot of myself after my not-so-grand exit.

  It was the right car. A few moments later, his cello safely positioned in the trunk, Gregory got in the back seat beside me and slammed the door.

  I pointedly looked out the window. The driver got in the front seat and the car pulled out in near silence. Buildings and traffic whisked by us as we pulled out onto the highway.

  I snuck a glance.

  Gregory was staring out the window, his elbow on the edge, and his chin resting on a clenched fist. At that moment, he bore more expression on his face than I’d ever seen. And it wasn’t nice. His eyes wore a look of pain as he stared out the window. Desperation. Loneliness.

  I stared at him in shock, one question repeatedly running through my mind.

  What happened to him?

  Gregory

  Sitting in the makeup chair next to Savannah, I was annoyed. The flight was quiet, with only a soft “excuse me” from her lips when she slid past me to use the restroom. We’d spent the past couple of weeks skillfully avoiding each other. Well, I was avoiding her, and it sure seemed she was avoiding me. She would look down whenever I scanned the orchestra, or would turn her back to me as I approached someone standing next to her. I couldn’t worry about that right now, though, as I was still being punished by bi-hourly texts from Karin. I assured her this time apart would give us both a chance to breathe and assess our goals. Hers hadn’t, and I knew wouldn’t, change.

  She wants a baby.

  “What are you doing?” Savannah snapped to one of the stylists in front of her, pulling me from my silent battle with someone who wasn’t here.

  Looking at her in the mirror, I saw the stylist messing with the neckline of Savannah’s dress. It was a gorgeous knee-length green dress that highlighted her bronzed skin. Similar in color to the gown she wore to her mother’s performance five years ago, it tied around her neck. While I knew the night I met her mother that I’d never forget how Savannah looked in that dress, I cursed myself for the thought anyway.

  Focusing on trying to figure out what Savannah was upset about, I followed the stylist’s hands and saw them pulling the neckline down, exposing more cleavage than I’d ever seen from Savannah. Even more than that red dress she wore dancing. Twice.

  “Honey,” the young stylist sassed, annoyed, “the point of this tour of yours is to increase interest in classical music, is it not? To make centuries-old music accessible to people like us?”

  “If I walk out there like this,” Savannah slapped her hand away, “it will suggest there’s far more about me that’s accessible than my music.”

  She slid off the chair and walked skillfully in ridiculously high heels over to the full-length mirror, where she repositioned her dress and wiped the excessive color from her lips.

  “Why did you do that?” the stylist shrieked.

  With an eye roll, Savannah replied, “I’m not going to get this crap all over my ten thousand dollar flute. Thanks, though.”

  I was mid-way through a chuckle, impressed by her grace amidst surely feeling frustrated, when I felt someone’s hands on my head.

  “Damn it!” I ducked out of their reach. I lack grace when frustrated. “What?”

  With a long sigh, a second stylist groaned, “We’re stylists, I’m styling your hair.”

  “It looks cute, Gregory,” Savannah teased from across the room.

  “Oooooh,�
�� a producer exaggerated, walking into the room with an oversized headset on her undersized head. “So, it’s true then. The whole student-teacher thing from a few years back?”

  That was the last straw.

  Between things at home with Karin, the cold shoulder I’d been giving Savannah, which was growing physically painful for me to maintain as the days wore on, I tore the brush from Dwayne’s hand and chucked it across the room, where it, thankfully, only hit the wall before hitting the ground with a clunk. In the brief second before I put my head in my hands, I caught Savannah’s eyes studying me in the mirror, wide-eyed but calm.

  She cleared her throat and addressed the people in the room. “Can we have a few minutes, please? I’m aware we’re on in seven minutes. I can see the clock.” She spoke quickly and with authority.

  The pair of stylists and the pissed off producer obliged and left in a hurry, mumbling something about self entitlement as Savannah shut and locked the door behind them. As the sound of her heels against the tile got closer, I had to say something.

  “Sorry about that …” I trailed off, having little else to offer.

  Savannah swallowed hard as she turned my chair toward her. I was eye level with her chest, but it wasn’t her breasts that interested me in that moment. It was her eyes, laced with concern, and the sliver of vulnerability her eyes always carried. She shook her head and picked up a comb, not saying a word.

  “I can do it—” I started, leaning forward in my chair.

  “Just sit,” she whispered.

  Gently lifting my chin with a nudge from her index finger, I could tell she was biting the inside of her cheek as she brought the comb to my hair, attempting to fix whatever it was Dwayne had done. After a few passes, she set the brush down and ran her fingers slowly down the sides of my head. Her touch ignited me, and I had to carefully measure my breathing to keep from giving myself away as thoughts of everything going wrong at home slipped away.

  She slowly moved her fingers to the back of my head, leaning over me slightly, so her breasts were mere inches from my face. I closed my eyes, breathing in the fresh scent of lilies that seemed to come from every part of her body. Goosebumps sprang across my neck as her fingers grazed the skin just below my hairline. I prayed she couldn’t feel them.

  “There,” she said after several seconds, taking a step back.

  Looking in the mirror I saw that my hair was exactly how it always was. Every day.

  Widening my eyes, I looked between myself in the mirror, and her. “How did you—?”

  With a soft chuckle, she met my eyes in the mirror. “And you thought I never paid attention in class. Come on, we have three minutes before we’re on.” She squeezed my shoulder once before exiting the room, leaving me in conflicted silence.

  “Shit,” I sighed as I exited the room, following the scent of lilies down the hallway.

  Her eyes closed and her lips pursed correctly as I reached the second measure of the intro. Savannah took a quick breath, her shoulders falling back, her breasts just slightly rising as she inhaled, and then she was playing. Just like it was five years ago.

  Her eyes met mine as we played. Boring into me, as if she were asking years’ worth of questions. Why was I so angry? Why had I given up so easily five years ago? Why? Why didn’t I fight for her?

  I could feel the tension in the audience as she played the runs, rapid arpeggios scaling upwards. Aggressive, angry. This was a lighthearted piece. Or it was intended as such. With intense energy, with a shift in tone here and a difference in breath there, she had transformed it, to an emotional, oppressive piece of music.

  I followed her lead, making the necessary changes to not only keep up, but to complement what she was doing. No one in the audience knew what was happening. Those few who knew this music well would likely assume we’d simply modified it, played a slightly different arrangement.

  Not one of them would believe that we were improvising, that right there on that stage she was telling a story of hurt and anger and betrayal. That she was telling me just how much I’d hurt her.

  Hearing her pain through the notes broke my heart.

  And I could hear it. I could see it in the shifts of her posture, and in her eyes as they drifted toward me. I responded the only way I knew how, by adjusting my own music—attempting to play my apology, my longing, my love. My failure.

  Finally, we brought the song to a close, and as the audience stood, applauding, cheering, she peered up at me as she continued to breathe in and out, her eyes glassy with threatening tears.

  After taking a bow, being whisked off stage, and packing up our instruments, we got in the town car and made our way back to the hotel.

  “You played beautifully tonight, Savannah,” I started, five minutes into our drive.

  “Thank you.” She smiled and bit her lip in a way that made me want to lean across the car and kiss it. “Thanks for playing along, so to speak.” She laughed and looked out the window.

  “Of course.” I shrugged, not knowing what else to say about her acknowledgement that she’d meant to take the piece in the direction she did.

  She stared out the window for a few more minutes. Lights from each passing car showed me her distant eyes for the briefest of seconds, before returning my view to that of her silent silhouette. A second later she tossed her hair over her shoulder and turned so she was facing me.

  “Gregory …” Savannah looked down for a moment, taking a deep breath before finding my eyes again.

  “Yes?” My heart raced, my chest rising and falling more rapidly with each second that passed. Each second of her silence increased my anxiety over what she was about to say.

  As she opened her mouth to speak, her phone rang loudly, causing her to jump.

  “Shit,” she mumbled, glancing at the screen. I saw that it said Nathan.

  “Go ahead.” I rolled my eyes and looked out the window.

  “Hey Nathan, were you watch—” Savannah clipped her sentence, starting again in a much more aggravated tone. “What? What the hell are you talking about?”

  Looking over at her, I watched her run a hand through her hair, leaving it perched on the back of her neck as she pressed the side of her head into the window.

  “Not this shit again, Nathan. Seriously. Yes … I remember. Don’t talk to me like I’m an idiot. It was nothing.” Savannah’s cheeks reddened in an instant as she looked at me out of the corner of her eye. “Get a grip. Even if there was, it’s not a shred of your business. I’ll see you tomorrow. Bye.” In a huff, she ended the call and shoved her phone into her purse.

  “Everything okay?” I asked, uninterested in what Nathan had to say apart from how it seemed to make her feel.

  She waved her hand at me and grinned. “Just Nathan …”

  Apparently that was supposed to communicate something.

  Before I could respond, my phone buzzed in my pocket.

  Karin.

  “Excuse me,” I mumbled to Savannah, as if I could step away to take the call. I wish I could have. Really, I wish I didn’t have to answer it at all. “Hello?” I answered, clearing my throat.

  “What the hell was that?” Karin’s voice was just a peg below hysterical.

  “What was what?”

  “On the show just now.”

  “I—”

  Karin cut me off. “You conveniently left out that you’d be playing with Savannah Marshall.”

  “I’m failing to see what difference it makes who I played with …” I trailed off, having forgotten for a second that I was sitting right next to Savannah in the car. I glanced over at her and she quickly looked to the floor.

  “If it makes no difference, why didn’t you tell me? You knew it would make a difference to me. You didn’t even tell me she was part of the damn tour!” Karin sniffed and her tears on the other side of the country brewed fresh anxiety in me.

  I hadn’t told her. It was intentional and unconscious at the same time to leave Savannah’s name out of the co
nversation. I knew it would cause another argument with Karin, and given all we were fighting about anyway, I didn’t need to give her new material. But I grew agitated at the fact that being dishonest about Savannah said more about my feelings for her than my avoidance of a cross-country argument with my angry wife.

  My wife.

  “Karin, darling … ” Unconsciously I looked at Savannah as I spoke those words. I caught her swallowing hard before she looked out the window. It speared through my emotions, and I couldn’t piece together why. Until tonight we’d been anything but cordial to each other. Yet, here, in the car on the phone with my wife, I couldn’t help but care more about the woman sitting next to me than the one I’d pledged eternity to three thousand miles away.

  “What, Gregory? What? Are you about to apologize for basically making out with another woman on television?”

  “Excuse me?” I snapped, catching Savannah jump out of the corner of my eye.

  “It was all over your faces on that stage, Gregory. Don’t lie to me about what’s going on between you two on the road.”

  There it was. The accusation of an affair I’d tried to avoid since I first spotted Savannah one row back on our first day of rehearsal. The reason I’d been so cold to her for the last few weeks. I’d attempted to keep my distance from Savannah Marshall once, and it ended horribly for both of us. On this tour I knew I couldn’t keep my physical distance, so I built an emotional wall to keep out someone who was mattering to me more each day.

  Someone who could ruin things for me. For my life.

  Again.

  Thankfully, the car pulled up to the hotel and our driver opened my door.

  “Listen, Karin. My car just got back to the hotel. Once I get settled into the room I’ll call you back. I want to talk—”

  “Don’t bother, Gregory.” With that, Karin ended the call, and I slammed my fist against the doorframe with a growl.

  After mumbling an apology to our driver, and handing him twenty dollars, I rushed through the hotel doors, ignoring Savannah, trying to maneuver through the revolving door with my cello case in hand.