by Jane Lebak
Grumbling about how of course we were going to practice, Harrison dragged his monologue right out to the living room, and I imagined the sound distorting like a train whistle blaring off into the distance.
Harrison said, “So Joey, now you can quit your day job and marry me.”
“Perfect,” I called back, “except that I’m not quitting my day job, and I’m not marrying you.”
“Glad you agree.” He cocked his head. “When will you quit?”
“When we earn enough that I won’t be kicked onto the street.”
Shreya looked up. “I thought you lived with your grandparents.”
I shrugged. “And—?”
She started. “They’d kick out their granddaughter?”
“I rent from them.” Her eyes widened, so I added, “Harrison may have jacked up our rates, but we’re not self-sustaining, even if we all move in together and share a toothbrush.”
We started with fusion mixes. After the second, Josh and Shreya discussed altering the arrangement to evoke the viola and cello voices.
While they talked, Harrison murmured, “Why’d you have breakfast with Josh?”
What was his deal? “To celebrate the article.”
His eyebrows shot up. “Celebrate?”
“Yeah, he carried me to his taxi and played the Jupiter Symphony while ravishing me in the back seat.” Find dagger, insert into ribcage. “Oh, wait, he didn’t. He made coffee and eggs.” I sighed. “I get those mixed up.”
Harrison looked pained. “I’d have made breakfast.”
How dare he? “That would be unprofessional.”
He turned away. Good.
Shreya said, “I think we’ve got it,” and wrote a prompt on my score while Josh crossed out several measures on Harrison’s.
Our dynamic had changed with the fusions, with Shreya’s violin taking the virtuosic material, in effect making Harrison the second violinist for the duration of her playing. At some point maybe we’d call her our fearless leader-ess.
Since none of us wanted a ringtone concerto, I found three more missed calls after practice. I sat again copying information from voicemail so Harrison could call them back.
I had my viola in one hand and cell phone in the other, about to leave, when the phone rang again. Unknown number. To save Harrison a callback, I answered. “Boroughs String Quartet, home of the ‘Hotel California.’”
Shreya rolled her eyes.
“Who am I speaking to?” demanded an older female voice who did not sound amused by my brilliant greeting.
Fine, I could play that tune. “Josephine Mikalos, the violist. How may I help you?”
“I’m Annette Tilton.” The woman’s voice had the sharpness of a carving tool slicing the F-holes out of a violin body. “I’m the intellectual property attorney for The Eagles, and you can consider yourself served with a cease and desist order.”
The blood drained from my head, and I stood in a vacuum.
She kept talking, but it made no sense. I registered the word lawsuit, the words “copyright infringement,” and a demand that we take down our video. She went on about her client being in a bad position and proper channels and she knew my type and we’d be in court so fast our heads would spin.
Even as Shreya rescued my viola from my limp hand, Harrison grabbed the phone from the other. “Hello? Who is this?”
Josh guided me to sit on the couch. Shreya whispered, “What’s going on?”
My voice cracked. “We’re being sued.”
Harrison had begun arguing, but I couldn’t think. She knew my type? What type? And why would she get our website suspended? What defamation of character? What had we done?
The last thing Harrison said was, “You know what? From this point, we’ll conduct all conversation through our attorney.”
He hung up, and then his shoulders slumped.
Josh said, “What the hell is going on?”
Harrison offered a weak, “The Eagles have landed?”
No one laughed.
He recapped for Shreya and Josh, and for me too, since the conversation had crumbled in my head: we were on the hook for defamation of character, and they wanted to file suit against us for copyright infringement. She wanted our video off the internet, and she demanded we cease talking about her clients in public.
Josh sat nearer to me on the couch. “Are you okay?”
“But—” I closed my eyes. “What video are they talking about?”
“I’m as clueless as you,” Harrison said. “I made sure the reporter wasn’t recording when Shreya played for him.”
Josh said, “Maybe the videographer from that first bride? But he sp-specifically told us not to, and I can’t imagine the bride did.”
“Why are we being stupid?” Shreya woke up Harrison’s computer and gave the question to Google.
We got a page full of hits, the top site being the Village Voice. The online edition had a subheader: Eagles Say No Violins.
Reading over Shreya’s shoulder, Josh breathed, “Oh shit.”
Shreya clicked over to the Village Voice page. It had a sidebar: the mean corporate attorneys and the big-money entertainment industry were standing in the way of four vibrant local artists.
Like a fairy tale, except my money was on the fire-breathing dragon.
My vision went spotty as Shreya clicked the video box.
“That’s—”
“I know.” I needed to sit. “That’s the retirement luncheon.”
On screen, a miniature Shreya played the “Hotel California” fusion, gorgeous with the long-haired wig and her eyes closed as she bowed the violin. The camera followed her, only occasionally panning over the rest of us. She was the one with the melody, the beauty, and the hypnotic motion.
Harrison said, “Damn, but you’re good. I wish I’d been alive to see that.”
I gave a nervous laugh.
Josh said, “They didn’t t-t-take down the video yet.”
“I doubt they will,” Shreya said. “They had every right to record it.”
“That’s what I get for performing while dead.” Harrison frowned. “I didn’t check for cameras.”
“You check for cameras?”
He nodded. “How else would I know where to look?”
“You’re hopeless.” I tried to sound breezy, but it failed. “Hopeless” described me better than Harrison.
Harrison’s voice was tentative. “It might work out.”
I strode right in front of him. “We’re getting sued! Didn’t you hear that? How on earth is that supposed to work out?”
“I don’t know,” Harrison said, reaching for his own phone. “That’s why I’m going to call my brother and ask.”
At times like this, it was handy to have two attorneys who took our first violinist’s calls.
Shreya lifted my grandfather’s picture from my viola case. “Which composer is this?”
I forced a smile. “Zachary Mikalos. He composed me.”
“Father? Grandfather?” She studied the picture, then studied me. “He looks like you. Same expression.” She replaced it, then tucked my viola under the blanket. Picking up Harrison’s iPod, she said, “Anyone up for the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto?”
Josh said, “Whose?”
Shreya clicked through, reading off the soloists. “Heifitz. Anne-Sophie Mutter. Hilary Hahn. Joshua Bell. Itzhak Perlman. Yehudi Menuhin.”
The clicking sound made my hair stand on end. I just wanted everyone to be quiet while Harrison found out how bad it was going to be. Instead, Josh said, “Early Yehudi Menuhin, or late?”
“Late.”
Josh looked puzzled. “He doesn’t have I-Isaac Stern?”
Oh, for pete’s sake... Why wouldn’t everyone shut up?
Shreya clicked back through up the playlists. “Sorry. I missed him.”
This was why we’d get away with Harrison’s scheme of covering things that never should have been covered by a string quartet: in classical music, every
thing is a cover. We don’t have recordings of Mozart performing Mozart’s string quartets. He copied out the notes and then (he wrote to Haydn,) “sent them out into the world.” That’s why you can have fifteen interpretations of the same score.
Still, the conversation needed to end. “Do Hilary Hahn.” Then I lay down beside the speaker, eyes closed to let the orchestra’s sound engulf me.
At the table, Harrison read his notes back to his brother, recapitulating one line at a time the venom of the nastiest woman alive. Every word felt like a burn.
The music, though, the Mendelssohn could soothe anything, and I let it.
Would have let it. Josh said to Shreya, “I sh-should know this, but where did you learn violin?”
Yeah, so much for soothing the soul with music and lawyers. Shreya had dodged that question during our interview. Josh hadn’t been our only mysterious one.
Shreya’s eyes widened, but she laughed. “Same way you guys did? Started taking lessons in someone’s living room and went from there.”
I rolled over so my chin rested on my forearms.
Josh said, “But you can pull a rock s-song out of your head and translate it to the fingerboard while you’re dancing.”
At the table, Harrison laughed at something his brother said. That was a better sign than if he hunched down whimpering, but it felt like heat up my spine.
Shreya shrugged. “I already said you can practice improv. Figure out the key, do the scale, and those notes are your likely suspects. Pick out the lowest and highest notes, and that’s your range. Practice a couple of hours with the radio.” She forced a smile. “And anyhow, didn’t Yehudi Menuhin say you have to move while you’re playing?”
Josh grinned. “Y-Yehudi MM-Menuhin in his wildest dreams didn’t move the way you do.”
Shreya’s laugh sounded forced. “Thanks. How did you start the cello?”
Josh missed her change-of-subject maneuver. Or maybe he didn’t and just wanted soothing through pointless conversation. Far be it from me to steal his novocaine. “We were in third grade when we started orchestra. She got a v-violin, and they gave me a cello I didn’t want.”
My head snapped up. “You didn’t?”
He shook his head. “I wanted a trrr-rombone. But I—”
I couldn’t tell if he’d blocked or wasn’t finishing the sentence. He didn’t look blocked.
Harrison walked to the kitchen. “So a venomous phone call is SOP?” A soda can hissed as he popped the top. Then, “Can you be that much of a jerk too? Because if yes, I’m so getting you a better Christmas gift.” More laughter.
How could he laugh when someone wanted the quartet dead? Why wasn’t he screaming?
Shreya said, “So your school didn’t have trombones?”
“By the time I was—” Here Josh did block, blinking. “—able to ask, the trombones were gone. The saxophones were gone. Cello was the only thing left.”
I stared at my hands.
Shreya sat back. “Fortunate for us, I guess. But wow. I had no idea.”
No, neither had I.
Now that he said it, though, I remembered how we’d been crammed into the band room while Mr. Mendelson demonstrated the instruments. How there had been no organization, kids raising their hands and yelling out instruments, then being brought to the storage closet to grab something.
And how when I’d looked at Josh, he’d had a wide-eyed strangled look, his ears red and his hands shaking. I’d only shot up my hand and shouted for a violin.
Harrison and his phone took a trip down the hall. “No, we did not know we’d been videoed.” Then, “No, we’re not hosting the video on our site.” And then, “Of course we didn’t lie to the newspaper. We’re not that professional!” followed by more laughter.
I never understood how Harrison could joke about life and death. Yet it didn’t sound forced to him at all, as if a lawsuit was only a game of badminton, whacking around a string quartet like a shuttlecock.
Turning back to Josh, I tried to steady my voice. “I should have done something.”
He gave me a little push. “Yeah, you should have k-k-k-kicked Mr. Mendelson in the head until he bought another trrr-rombone.”
I wove my fingers together. “Well, maybe not that.”
He gave my arm a squeeze. “It worked out fine. Usually a trrr-rombone doesn’t blend so well in a string quartet.”
Shreya added, “I could say the same for a viola.”
Josh laughed, but I must have looked murderous because he quit it.
Behind me, Harrison said, “So there’s no such thing as bad publicity?”
As if. Of course there was bad publicity. Bad publicity got you sued.
I was done at that point. Done like an overcooked hamburger—done with the small talk, done with regrets from third grade, done with Harrison laughing at the guillotine. Done, done, done. So I put my head right into the speaker and listened to Yehudi Menuhin, admired the way he did the runs and how he entered that cadenza and totally owned it, and how Mendelssohn could break your heart without knowing it but only because he didn’t know you’d be listening in two hundred years. Molto appassionato, it said for the first movement. Very impassioned. He’d written a melody that wrung you out like a wet handkerchief, and right now, with a lawyer set to wring us out too, listening physically hurt, but the music expressed the desperation.
When finally I looked up, I found Harrison on the couch, his brows an inverted V as he watched me. I pushed onto my elbows, then sat, lightheaded. Shreya paused the iPod.
For once he avoided theatrics. “We’ll be fine. It might get hairy, and we might get more phone calls, but we didn’t do anything wrong.”
“I knew that!” I scrambled to my feet. “But if we have to defend ourselves in court to prove we didn’t do anything—”
“It won’t get that far. Assuming they even file suit, we’ll get dropped and they’ll go after the paper. The paper didn’t print anything factually incorrect, so again, there’s no question of libel. We’re not making money off the video, so there’s no copyright infringement.”
I raised my voice. “And defamation of character?”
“I’m quoted as saying it’s all right that corporate denied permission. That’s not defaming anyone.”
“That’s not the point!” I strode toward the couch, and Harrison jerked up his gaze from his notes. “I’m not worried about being wrong! I’m worried about paying an attorney a hundred dollars an hour I don’t have in order to tell a judge the things you just said! Your brother can’t represent us, can he?”
“He’s not the right kind of attorney, no. Neither is my mother.” Harrison shook his head. “There’s only so much I can say. Ninety-eight percent of that phone call was bluster. The other two percent is unlikely, although possible.”
“I have a question.” Shreya sat on her heels alongside the stereo. “How likely is it that other record labels will deny permission based on what appears to be a very public hissy-fit?”
Harrison’s shoulders slumped. “I don’t know. This wasn’t my idea. We have to work forward from here, that’s all.”
“Begin as you mean to go on,” I said. “And apparently we mean to go on getting assaulted by lunatics who are overwrought about who mixes their crap with Beethoven.”
I grabbed my coat and viola, and Josh joined me. The last thing I wanted was to stand in a toll-booth taking people’s money and people’s attitudes, but after that caliber of crap had hit the fan, it seemed more necessary.
All the same, I didn’t need to hear another eruption from Mount Lawyer-Bitch. I scrawled my passcode on a piece of paper and handed it to Harrison. He, he of all people, looked glum. “I’m not taking any calls for the rest of the day. Go ahead and check my voicemail every couple of hours and listen to her threats.” I turned off my phone and shoved it into my pocket. “You talk Lawyerese to the woman, because I can’t.”
“I have your whole private life right here in my hand.” His tone didn
’t match the snark—he was really off-balance. “If Prince Charming leaves you a voicemail, I’m deleting it because you’re supposed to marry me.”
“Go ahead.” I rolled my eyes. “I get three or four of those every day.”
On the street, Josh and I in separate silences threaded our ways through the pedestrian traffic, Josh in the lead and me trailing. A subway train blew by underneath, blowing a gust of air up my legs, just like the way that lawyer had blasted in without warning. Damn it.
We turned in at Only Strings. Arvin was dealing with a would-be customer.
“Do you have any peg compound?”
“No, sir. Only Strings.” Arvin looked past him. “Josh! Joey! What can I get for you?”
Josh raised a hand, and Arvin said, “D’Addario Helicore cellos?”
The customer said, “You have a picture of a violin on the door, but you don’t have peg compound?”
“No sir,” Arvin tossed over his shoulder as he pulled open a drawer of cello strings. “Only Strings.”
I offered, “You can pick up peg dope at Marty’s Music three blocks up, on Sixth.”
The customer looked puzzled. “But this store is—”
I nodded. “Only Strings.”
He left, muttering, “Only in Manhattan.”
Arvin rang up Josh. “How’s it going?”
“The Voice screwed us over.”
Arvin looked up. “That was a nice piece. One of my customers even mentioned you because I’ve got your flyer up.”
I glanced at the bulletin board, sagging with flyers from every musician in Manhattan. “Really?”
Arvin shrugged. “Why not?”
Far be it from me to gainsay Arvin. “The newspaper guy talked about us not having the rights to ‘Hotel California,’ and now we’re getting sued.” I glared at the cash register. “I want to strangle him.”
Arvin handed me a coiled guitar string. “That’ll be six-fifty.”
I glared at him until Josh burst out laughing.
Everyone was a comedian. “Would you do the hit for me?”
“Sorry, doll. Only Strings.” He smiled. “It’s not that bad. All this publicity and maybe you’ll get the rights. The video’s online? I’ve never heard you play.”
