Heart and Soul

by Sally Mandel

  I knew David’s assistant had reserved side-by-side rooms at the Utica hotel. I’d decided we’d do the concert in the evening, have a late romantic dinner and there, far away from our everyday lives, we’d fulfill our destiny. Yuh.

  First of all, it was getting real tough to keep the hordes in the dark about David’s and my appearances. The media was making a game out of trying to outsmart us, and was beginning to win a few. Somebody attending a church-basement performance just after Christmas called her brother-in-law, who was a reporter for Star Interview magazine. He came running and caught our encores. The guy didn’t have a clue about music (he got Beethoven mixed up with Ravel, which is kind of like confusing Marilyn Manson with Barry Manilow), but he found out my name and snapped a photo that showed up on the first page of the arts section. Bess Stallone, sister of you-know-who, the caption said, except they put it right out there.

  So even though we were up in the boonies, the word leaked out that we were performing and some local newspaper reporters showed up along with TV people. This was the biggest gig for us so far—a pretty major museum with paintings by people even I had heard of. You’d think I’d have been a total wreck, but all I could think about was those adjoining rooms in the hotel. I had so much sexual energy pounding through me during the concert that my performance was totally electrifying. David kept throwing looks at me like he couldn’t believe what was coming out of my piano and I was shooting them right back in a way that I hoped was irresistibly sensual. When it was over and we stood up for applause, I was so turned on that I didn’t even remember that this was my last chance to pass out.

  I held on to David’s hand, bowing and scraping and all the time imagining the candles I’d brought strategically planted around the hotel room so they’d shed a flattering golden glow on my naked skin. Uh huh.

  Then this absolutely stunning woman stepped out of the crowd and stood there smiling at David. She didn’t say a word, but if you looked like her, you would never have to learn to talk. Sleek black hair pulled back in a knot, olive skin, five foot eleven, legs that started at her neck. I wanted to tug on that expensive cashmere sweater that cost at least ten years’ rent and whisper, No chance you’d go away and never come back? Then David saw her and his face lit up to match the neon art hanging from the ceiling.

  “Francesca!”

  “Caro,” she answered.

  What I wanted to know was, what the hell was somebody like that doing in Utica, New York? David kissed her on the mouth. On the mouth! Then he asked her a question in Italian which I presumed was, “What the fuck are you doing in this jerkwater town in the middle of January?” and she answered something that had the word Montreal in it. I didn’t think Montreal was exactly around the corner, but David just nodded like it made all the sense in the world. He took Francesca’s arm and started to walk off with her when he happened to remember that his partner was still standing there like Little Orphan Annie.

  “Oh, Bess. Bess Stallone, this is Francesca Mello. Francesca, meet my new partner. My lucky miracle.”

  I stuck out my hand. “Hi,” I said. I hate you, bitch, and the horse you rode in on, I thought, as all those nice sexy juices dried up and flew away.

  “You were marvelous,” Francesca said with that gorgeous accent that made her lips look like she’d give the world’s greatest blow job.

  “Thanks,” I said, as they started jabbering away in Italian. Finally David turned to me. “Francesca and I are going to grab a bite and catch up. Why don’t you come along?”

  How many reasons do you want, sweetness? I mean, it didn’t take a genius to hear the unspoken request: I’ll give you a dollar if you make yourself scarce.

  “Oh, that’s okay,” I said. “I’m pretty tired. I think I’ll just go back to the room and get some sleep.” And sob until my eyeballs wash right out of their sockets.

  “All right,” David said, “but be sure to ask the driver to stop off and pick up something for you to eat.” Francesca didn’t even try to look disappointed.

  As they were making their way through the well-wishers, I suddenly realized I hadn’t passed out before, during, or even after the performance. Uh, excuse me, but wasn’t this the goal David and I had been chasing all these weeks? And not so much as a job-well-done pat on the butt from Monsieur. For a second I thought of yelling after him: “Yo, Dave-baby! What’s wrong with this picture?” But I stifled it and shook hands with the mayor instead. Then I went straight back to my hotel room. I mean ASAP, with no stopping at Taco Bell, since I was still too busy trying to digest the sight of David and his Italian babe strolling off into the sunset to leave room for any damn burrito. I was stuck alone with nothing but a dozen candles to keep me company, and believe me, they’re no stand-in for the real thing no matter what you try to do with them.

  The next morning, there were flowers outside my door. I don’t know where the hell he found them in the middle of the night in a town like Utica, but they were beautiful, and the card said, “Bess, you are the partner of my best dreams. I am so proud of you! Love, D.” I knew he meant the fainting, and now I didn’t care about anything else except that he had noticed and that he had signed the card with the word “love,” even if it meant the kind you feel for your favorite goldfish.

  It was the middle of January, which meant there was only a month to go before the big night. Our concert had been billed as “To Be Announced” for so long that a few people on the inside of the Carnegie organization had begun to figure out exactly what was going on. You can’t keep something like that a secret. In fact, it was almost ridiculous that we’d pulled it off for such a long time. People started finagling tickets for the Valentine’s night concert, so what was supposed to be a small, by-invitation-only audience got totally out of hand. At that point, I wasn’t sleeping anyway so it hardly mattered if it was half a hall or the full two hundred and sixty-eight.

  I had invited my parents, Angie, Jake, Pauline, and the guys from the firehouse. I hadn’t seen my father since Christmas, which had been a pitiful event. Even though according to the doctors Dutch was actually improving, he seemed to be disappearing into a shriveled-up version of himself.

  “He looks freeze-dried,” I’d said to Angie that first shocking night after six weeks away from Rocky Beach.

  “Stir,” she said.

  I knew she’d left out the “Just add water” part and I appreciated the black humor. But it was unnerving. Plenty of times, I’d wished him dead, especially if I could have had a hand in it, but this guy seemed more like some beaten dog my mother had rescued from the street. Anyway, the bizarre thing was, he wrote me a note saying he was sorry he couldn’t come. He’d never given me so much as a birthday card my whole life and suddenly I got this good-luck wish signed “Your father Dutch.” I still have it. It’s one of the great curiosities of the western world and ought to go in Ripley’s. But anyway, I knew Mumma would be there with Angie and Jake and also some of the guys. I got them house seats where they wouldn’t be in my line of vision.

  The big question was what to wear. I wanted to shop with Angie but David wouldn’t hear of it. I’d sort of thought a classic black gown would be chic, but that wasn’t what he had in mind at all. He trotted me up to Bergdorf’s, where I had never set foot in my life and where just to breathe the air costs five bucks a second. Next thing I knew, he had me trying on all these bright colors—aubergine and celadon and persimmon. I mean, back then I wouldn’t have known a persimmon if it bit me in the ass. We got a changing room that was twice the size of my apartment and our own personal shopping assistant, who looked like Gwyneth Paltrow. What I really liked about her was that she wasn’t frothing at the mouth over David. To tell the truth, I think she was much more interested in me. We went out to show David how fab I looked in foxglove.

  “David, caro,” I said with a thick accent. I liked to give him grief about women like Francesca, since if I wasn’t going to get him for myself, I sure as hell was going to take th
e piss out of the women who did. “You theenk pear-haps zeez iss a leetle too, you know, zexy for moi? I mean, how zay will show off zee boobies in a not so nice way?” I gave him a sample bow to demonstrate, and maybe to show off the cleavage. “I still like the black one.”

  His eyes checked it out but more like he was inspecting a steak for the optimum percentage of fat. “I don’t think the color flatters your skin,” he said. “Stop being such a pain in the butt and try on that pink one.”

  “Language, dude,” I warned him. “You’ve been hanging out with the wrong crowd.”

  He bought me a pale melon satin dress that I have to say did look fairly amazing with my coloring. I tried not to imagine how it would hold up when it crumpled into a ball under my fainting body. Negative thinking. I turned the channel in my brain to a section of the Ravel and let the chords drown out the nasty stuff. The tailor showed up with a man whose very presence made the sales help jerk to attention like he had them all hung on short strings. Turned out he was the Main Man, and if you’ve ever wondered what a garden looked like walking, this was it. Manicured from head to toe. David knew him well, it seemed, and introduced me.

  “How’re you doing?” I said.

  “Whatever was wrong with my day was just rectified by seeing you in that sumptuous dress,” he said, kissing my hand. And all this time, he was looking at me like I was the queen of trailer trash. “Of course, Ms. Stallone will be trimming her hair.” He actually reached out like he was about to touch it. I thought David was going to deck him.

  “No, she will not,” David said in a tone that would refreeze the polar cap. The guy flinched like he’d been zapped with a cattle prod.

  “Oh, of course, but I just thought perhaps to enhance the dress …” he said. “I’m very sorry. Lovely hair, of course.”

  For a Nassau County mutt, that is. I wondered if this was what it was going to be like, everybody thinking I was David’s little ho. But what the hell, wasn’t it the music that was the point here, the end of the rainbow I’d been chasing all these years? I could feel myself standing at the very edge of my dream—of playing the world’s most beautiful compositions with an outstanding musical partner. I could even now allow myself the fantasy of performing with an orchestra. What bliss that would be. Inside my head, I played an old game Angie and I used to entertain ourselves with, presenting one another with impossible choices. If you were going to die in a month and they gave you the option of a trip around the world or a voyage to the moon, which would you choose? So Bess, I asked myself as the tailor adjusted the hem in my dress that had the price tag of a midsize SUV, if you had a choice of sleeping with David or playing the Poulenc Two-Piano Concerto with the Montreal Symphony Orchestra, which would you choose? I glanced over at David leaning against the wall with his arms folded, watching every move of the tailor while the Main Man bent his ear about how musicians usually have vile taste in clothes and what a delight it was to serve David, who was such an exception to the rule, blah blah-di-blah. David’s eyes slid over to meet mine and one lid closed in a wink. Oh Bess, don’t kid yourself, you’d choose this man’s bed over top billing with the Philharmonic of the Heavenly Host, God Herself conducting. What a traitor to my sex.

  The next afternoon, there were bits in the Post and the Times and an item on the E! channel. They were all worded pretty much the same, like:

  The rumor goes that David Montagnier will introduce his new partner at the concert slated for Valentine’s night at the Weill Recital Hall. What the music world wants to know is how will she measure up to Terese Dumont? The young pianist, who was apparently plucked from obscurity, has some tough act to follow.

  That’s what I like. No pressure. I was a little suspicious that our management (David’s manager had become mine, I guess by proxy) had planted this stuff. More tickets, more money. But fortunately there were only a couple of days to go, which I spent not sleeping, eating M&M’s, and swimming because David was always nagging me to go. I hated it. Pools smelled bad and made me miss the ocean. But it was true that I felt more relaxed on the rare occasions that I knuckled under and did some laps.

  The morning of the big day, which was a Saturday, I woke up at four A.M., swung my legs over the side of the bed, remembered what day it was, and passed out. Well, why not? Might as well get it over with right off the bat. I couldn’t even tell you what I did between the time I picked myself up off the floor and seven P.M. I was probably wandering around town like one of those typical Manhattan citizens who yells at the alien invaders who’re monitoring our brain waves. But when David arrived to pick me up, I have to say I looked better than I ever have in my entire life, which is not so hard to accomplish if you spend several million dollars on one outfit. David still hadn’t let anybody mess with my hair, which I found very touching. He had never come to my apartment before, and it amused me to watch him walking around my one small room picking things up and putting them down again, even testing the faucet in the sink. It pleased me that he took an especially long time staring at the picture of me and Jake that Angie took down by the beach. I was in a bikini and Jake was in his trunks and we both looked extremely buff. Jake called it our Baywatch picture. Anyhow, David handed me a box I hadn’t even noticed he’d brought with him. I untied the ribbon, took off the top, and saw a perfect orchid nestled inside.

  “An orchid. Oh, an orchid.” I knew I sounded like a moron, but when I went to the prom at Rocky Beach High all I got was a bigger version of the carnation my date wore in his button-hole. Marlene Webster’s date gave her an orchid. So expensive, so exotic. It was the most gorgeous thing I’d ever seen.

  “It made me think of you, Bess,” David said. “And you ought to have something for luck.” He leaned down and kissed me then, a soft one on the lips. Not sexy but not exactly brotherly either.

  “I want to keep it here,” I said. “Is that all right?” I didn’t want to explain that if the evening turned out to be a disaster, at least I’d have something beautiful to come home to.

  “Yes. Now come. Phillip’s outside waiting for us.”

  “He’s waiting,” I echoed, thinking about that stage situated within the hallowed walls of Carnegie Hall, the crowd, the two pianos nestled together. I grabbed David’s arm and the world slipped away as I went down.

  He caught me before I did damage to the dress but I was pretty shaky. We stood in the doorway for a minute while David kept me upright with an arm around my waist. “All right now?” he asked.

  “Um, yuh,” I lied. My fingers felt like hummingbirds. I didn’t imagine they’d be too effective at the keyboard.

  “Tonight is no different than Utica,” he said.

  “Oh, fuck you,” I said. Even in Utica they’d know better than that.

  He just laughed. “All right, then, what can I do to help?”

  I leaned against him, which was useful against the wobbly knees. Then I had an inspiration. “Kiss me,” I said.

  “Absolument,” he said, and gave me a nice little peck on the cheek.

  “Oh, no, Dave, not that kind.” I lifted my face and looked into his eyes. He got the point and slowly lowered his mouth onto mine, staying there for a slow, soft merging. My mouth relaxed and opened a little and pretty soon our tongues were touching and exploring and my knees began to do a different kind of quaking. I pulled away.

  “Did it help?” David asked.

  I just nodded because I didn’t want to break the spell. I took his arm and walked down the crumbled stoop to the limo.

  You enter Weill on 57th Street a couple of doors down from the main entrance to Carnegie Hall. I glanced at the people waiting outside, remembering how that used to be me. Thanks to David, I was a different person now, musically. I told myself that if this was the end of the road, it had been worth the ride just getting this far.

  We’d spent plenty of time backstage so it wouldn’t unnerve me on the big night. Weill’s got these scary women they like to call ushers but they’re pr
obably guards from some maximum-security prison making a few extra bucks. David knew nobody was going to get past them, not even Angie, not even Professor Stein, which suited David just fine. He understood that being with him alone calmed me and made me feel centered in the music. We just sat there in the hanging-out area by the freight elevator talking about anything but the program—religion, I think. After a while, a technician showed up to tell us that it was time. David lifted me to my feet. I could hear a rumble from the audience. Even without looking, I sensed that the place was packed. Prickles began behind my eyes. I felt woozy. David turned me to him and held my face in his hands.

  “Think of Rachmaninoff tonight, Bess,” he said. “And Ravel and Mozart and the others. We’re going to make wonderful music for them.” He gave me another kiss on the mouth, a light one this time. “Are you ready?” he asked me.

  “Oh, what the hell,” I said, and we walked out onto the stage together.

  What we had figured would be a small group bunched up in the first ten rows turned out to be a mob crammed into every square inch, standing room all along the walls and against the back and in the balcony. I didn’t look for familiar faces because it would be even harder to focus. The applause was loud and long, which gave me time to adjust to the strange light. With all those bodies in there soaking up the sound and the wattage, the place seemed almost foreign. But so far, there were no fireworks in my head. David’s hand was strong around mine, warming my fingers. He looked at me with a smile, waiting until I was ready. Lucky girl, I thought. Think about how lucky you are. When I nodded my head, we separated and went to our pianos. The applause dwindled away into a hush. Thoughts marched weirdly through my head in largo tempo. Professor Stein telling me that concerts are like paintings. You prepare the canvas but you must be ready for surprises. Making art is unpredictable, which is why it’s so wonderful. A quote from Van Cliburn, who said that the stage is the loneliest place in the world. But not for me. Not anymore as I looked across and there was David, waiting quietly, no hurry. I knew if I passed out, he’d just pick me up and set me back on the seat. I was okay. I raised my hands, nodded again, and we were off.