The following evening, the conductor makes his debut to a full house. He does not look at me once.
Afterwards, I ask Olivia if Noah is picking us up as he usually does on weeknights. She’s loosening her bow and staring vacantly at the wall in front of her. She shakes her head.
‘Everything okay?’ I ask, pausing between sips of water from my water bottle.
‘Yeah, I just told him not to. Let’s get a drink.’
We head to the Australian Hotel in The Rocks to avoid the musicians at the Opera Bar. Inside, a young couple are seated at a table, a larger group near the back. A few suits in a booth, their table scattered with empty glasses and bottles, their faces smeared by an oblivious joviality. We sit on wooden stools drinking beers and crunching pistachio shells. As she talks, I stare at her face, which is always bare, no make-up.
We talk about the conductor and his forceful style. I make wild, flamboyant gestures and imitate his heavy breathing, the exaggerated movements of his torso. She laughs until she’s bent over.
We try to decide whether he’s gay or straight or something in between. We hear from other players that he has a reputation for trying to get young players into bed. It was rumoured that after last year’s White Cocktails to which he’d been invited as an international guest, he took home two players from the woodwinds. The rumour is hazy on the gender of the players. The White Cocktails is a wank, we agree. An annual Sydney Symphony event held at Bennelong Restaurant in the Opera House to introduce new players to the orchestra’s patrons and board members.
‘You’d know all about it,’ Olivia says. ‘You’ve been in that world since you were a kid.’
I shake my head. ‘I was a soloist. I hardly mixed with the orchestra. They were the lowly farm animals and I was the star lion.’
She drains her beer. ‘Jesus.’
‘It is a bore, come on. We know that, right?’
‘Well I’ve never been, obviously, since they only invite permanent players, but apparently it’s a pretty big deal. Monica said she spent over two thousand dollars on her gown last year. You need to really make an impression.’
I swirl my finger inside the bowl of pistachio shells and wait for her to look back at me.
‘I bet the men don’t have to buy an expensive suit.’
‘They probably do.’
We switch from beer to wine, ordering from a bartender who looks like the bass player. They all look the same. Thick trimmed beard. John Mayer eyes. White T-shirt. Broad smile. I shift my gaze to the suits in the booth.
‘You checking them out?’ Olivia asks.
‘Those guys?’ I shake my head. ‘Losers.’
‘Losers who’ll make more money this month than we will in our entire lives.’
‘But do they have good sex?’
Olivia stares into her glass. ‘Noah is withholding sex from me.’
I slap my hand on the table. ‘What?’
‘I’ve been spending more time with my mum lately, and he thinks I’m overcompensating.’
‘Overcompensating for what?’
She lifts the wineglass to her lips and sighs into the pool of liquid. ‘I don’t know.’
As we get up to leave, one of the suits walks over.
‘You girls interested in a game of chess back at my place?’ Olivia pushes past him. ‘No thanks.’
He turns to me. ‘You?’
Outside, the suit hails a taxi. He raises one arm in the air like he’s asking a question.
In the taxi, he places a hand on my thigh, squeezing it as though testing the ripeness of an avocado. I ask him where he works and he mutters the name of a bank. Hyde Park whirs by in a blur of black and red, broken by strings of lampposts. The aircon blows straight into my eyes.
I’m curious to know what kind of bed this man owns. The colour of his sheets. If he has paintings on the wall, or just cheap pretend art for a pretend life. I’m not sure what compels me. An insatiable thirst for thrills? Danger? All I know is that I am desired in this one, particular way, this one, particular, familiar way, and it has nothing to do with what I can do on the violin. I don’t want it to go to waste.
When the taxi pulls into a driveway, I peer out the window. Large birch tree. Bush out the front. Low metal gate, locked. Built-in letterbox in the wall. At the front door, he plants a kiss on my mouth. Dry, no tongue. I keep my eyes open. He moves a white piece of plastic in front of a black keypad. The door clicks open.
‘No key!’ he beams.
The light turns on slowly. Marble dining table. Bamboo lampshades hanging low above the sink. Large pot plants in each corner. The floors, grey pebble mosaics. A real estate agent’s office.
I walk towards the huge windows.
Before I reach the view, I feel a tug on my leg. I look down to see a white rope around my calves. The rope tightens. I’m yanked off my feet. I fall and land on my bad wrist. I hear a small crack. The slap of flesh on tiles. It’s violent, and then painful, and then—my hands are being tied behind me.
‘Wait!’ I scream, and he pauses, stepping back.
‘What?’
‘I just—I need to pee.’
He thinks for a moment, then releases my hands. ‘On your right.’
As I step past him, I reach for my bag and bolt for the door. I don’t stop running until I reach a main road. I stand under a streetlight and raise my arm, waiting for a taxi.
10
A postcard of a Barnett Newman painting is stuck on the fridge door as inspiration for Mike and Jacob’s latest works. Concord was painted in 1949, during the artist’s most prolific year. Sometimes, I’d get milk from the fridge, close the door and stand there staring at the image; its pair of golden bars like handles of a door into a fancy New York City loft. The colour always reminds me of the ocean. Mike and Jacob have spent months working on a show inspired by the American mid-century abstract expressionist. The pepper-dotted canvas that spent weeks on the floor of our lounge room will now be on display. Sometimes, as I’m practising modern pieces by Copland, Stravinsky or Glass, I think about Newman’s paintings. The colours. The lines. The shadows. The suit from the other night had something like this on the wall. A single piece. Minimalist.
The opening of their exhibition falls on a Friday night, usually a concert evening, but the program is baroque so they don’t need a full orchestra. It will be Mike and Jacob’s first exhibition as a couple. I help them set up at the gallery in Redfern, a suburb that has been colonised by young white couples who work in design or law. Mike and Jacob are expecting more than a hundred people. Old college friends. Folks from the National Art School who come for the free craft beer and spend their Centrelink payment on tattoos and Status Anxiety tote bags. Mike and Jacob both graduated from there several years ago and tell me each opening is an excuse to bitch about other artists and find new people to fuck.
Four large canvases hang in the front room of the gallery—black, with a white vertical brushstroke. The line is marked at different points on each canvas. The idea is for the four paintings to be acquired together as a set and displayed in a small room facing each other.
In the second room, Mike hands me gaffer tape and scissors. ‘Make sure the corners are flat against the wall.’
I’m sticking cardboard cut-out signs onto the walls. I stop every now and then and tug at the sleeves of my denim jacket to cover my wrists. Nobody knows about the other night. How close I came to starring in a white man’s midweek fantasy.