The orchestra performs four nights a week, beginning Wednesday. Most of the time, we’re called on Friday or Saturday nights. The programs on those nights require larger numbers. Mahler. Brahms. Big romantic symphonies. The pay is decent. One concert is enough to cover a week’s rent. I have a small amount of money left from my time as a soloist. Most of it I’d spent on books during university.
‘Did you warm up already?’ Olivia slips off her case and begins unzipping.
‘Yep.’
We play chromatic scales. G, G sharp, A, A flat. All the way to F sharp. Then down again. We pick each other apart sonically. Whoever fumbles on intonation has to buy dinner. In the last two weeks, I’ve had to pick up the bill.
Olivia thinks I’m deliberately hitting the wrong notes because I pity her. We both know I am the better player.
The first five minutes, we play flawlessly, two violins in unison. We hit each note with the calibrated precision of a sniper. During a fast-descending passage of the F harmonic minor scale, her notes scatter off-key. I blast her.
She dips her chin in defeat. ‘I can only afford Thai.’
After graduation, Olivia moved in with Noah. They’d met Theatre Sports one Tuesday afternoon when Olivia was in year ten at Barker College. Noah was in year twelve at Newington. They started fucking a few weeks later and haven’t spent a weekend apart since. They have shared iTunes playlists containing Coldplay, Maroon 5 and Drake. They once played an entire Bruno Mars album on repeat at a party. I had to leave to find another party, one with better music. Their studio is on the ground floor of an apartment block in Enmore. They tell me they don’t mind the forced physical intimacy.
Before Olivia, there was nobody else. I was one of those girls people saw coming and going, appearing too busy to socialise. I’d never known how to relax, how to ‘hang out’. I had no idea how to ‘be’. Recently, Olivia has been the one coming and going. Perhaps it’s her job teaching violin at her old primary school in the Blue Mountains. Perhaps it’s her mother, whose illness she has not yet named. Perhaps even she does not know what it is.
We finish the scales, arpeggios, bow exercises and move on to the excerpts. On my laptop, I bring up the third movement of Beethoven’s 9th. We play along.
‘Can we do it separately?’ Olivia sighs through her nose.
‘What’s wrong?’
‘You’re playing too loud.’
‘It’s supposed to be loud—fortissimo.’
‘I’m hungry.’
‘Then order.’
It’s past ten when the food arrives. A slim man stands at the door with a helmet on, holding a package at his chest. Olivia brings in the bag and I set up the plates in the kitchen. She scoops half the noodles into my bowl, the rest into hers.
‘Let’s put on some music.’
Silence makes Olivia nervous. When I first met her, she was always wearing earphones. She’d have them in even during class. One ear, usually the left. She was always distracted, in some other place.
‘Beethoven? Mozart?’
‘You pick.’
I settle on Ravel, the second movement of his Piano Concerto in G. Its sad waltz-like gentleness always soothes the bottomless need I feel to move, to do something. We eat, hum along, eat more. I look around the kitchen, stop at a small magnet in the shape of Royal Albert Hall on the fridge door. My mother had bought it when I debuted there in another life. Was I eight or nine?
Since I moved out of home, I have seen less of my mother. She was reluctant for me to leave the North Shore, but I’d grown weary of the stifling whiteness of the upper middle class. The casual wealth. The polite faces. The polished performance of adulthood. Pressed pants. Dark blazers. Straight hair. My mother didn’t like the inner city and she didn’t like my flatmates either. She thought I’d catch homosexuality.
As we’re washing up, Mike and Jacob shuffle through the front door carrying a large canvas.
‘What’s that?’ Olivia steps out to peek.
‘The exhibition,’ Jacob says.
They plant the picture against the back of the couch.
Mike’s hair is damp with sweat, fringe clamped to his forehead. He stares at the canvas, picking at a loose thread on his denim jacket. ‘Do you think it needs more, grit?’
Olivia and I look at each other, then back at the canvas. It is blank, a single shade of beige.
‘I don’t get it,’ Olivia says.
‘More grit, yes. Definitely,’ Jacob says.
Mike disappears into the kitchen and returns with the pepper shaker. ‘Let’s do it now before it dries.’
Jacob lays the canvas on the floor and leans forward, twisting the shaker. Black flakes fall—ash on white sand. He looks to Mike, who is cupping his cheek with one hand and staring at the painting as though it is a text he cannot translate. ‘Maybe.’
Olivia goes to her violin and begins packing up.
‘I better go.’
I reach for her arm. ‘We’ll do this again?’
She shrugs, noncommittal. At the door, I wrap my arms around her shoulders. My ring catches the end of her ponytail. We spend a few seconds disentangling it.
I watch her ride away.
I am settling for a good orchestra. Something permanent. But Olivia. When have I ever wanted what Olivia wants? When did I settle for playing a melody with eight other violinists? I won’t be alone in the spotlight anymore, like I used to be. Before I destroyed everything.
3
At the chemist, I am restocking on condoms. Banks calls. My teacher from another life.
‘I’ve been busy.’ He always begins by qualifying a call. ‘Can you come around? I’d like to hear your excerpts.’
‘Now?’
‘Did you see the hand physio about your wrist?’
I make vague sounds.
Last week, I’d knocked my wrist against the station turnstiles while running to catch the train. I am always bumping into things. My body knows no boundaries.
With my free hand, I press my wrist to assess the pain.
‘It’s not bad today.’
‘Your audition is only a few months away,’ he says.
‘Is that why you called? To remind me?’
‘No. The orchestra needs you to step in for a concert tomorrow at noon. The soloist missed her flight from London.’
I stop in the middle of the aisle.
‘What piece?’
‘The Beethoven.’
The last time I played Beethoven’s Violin Concerto, I was fifteen years old and standing on the stage of Carnegie Hall. I didn’t finish the performance.
‘I know it might bring up old memories,’ Banks says. ‘It’s only one performance.’
I had a therapist once who gave me an exercise to do if I ever felt a panic attack coming on. I had to weigh up advantages and disadvantages. Of saying yes: good exposure, good venue, reputable orchestra. Of saying no: too much fame is not a good thing. Of saying yes: fame can be good, if used in the right way. Of saying no.
‘Okay, I’ll do it.’
We arrange to meet in a few hours. I go back to scanning the shelves. I can’t find what I am looking for. Non-latex. Ribbed. Scented. Citrus. Large.
I find a salesperson nearby. ‘Do you have those large, non-latex condoms?’