Tonight his face looked like a flat beach, a blank cake, unfinished.
But Brit felt an old warmth at the sight of him. She had become the one looking now, always looking at him, watching for a sign, a smirk, a wink, a slight lean toward her when she felt sad, or waiting for a half-measure breath on her neck before he kissed her, some physical representation of the way he could give himself to her. But he never changed. I was watching you watch me, she should have said back. Would it have made a difference? And now, still, watching you not see me.
She drove away. She didn’t remember the warmth in the morning exactly, just the feeling that something had slipped through her hands. The lurking voice: you don’t want Daniel, you just want someone. The answer: no one wants you, not even Daniel. She woke up and practiced in the early gray morning until that feeling, too, slipped away.
JANA
Violin I
She feared they were already too old. That they’d wasted too much time getting here, to the start of their career, and that now it was too late. It had taken Jana a while to figure out, and to accept, that her path wasn’t toward a solo career, but rather this webbed, collaborative endeavor. It had taken all of them a while, she supposed. And it almost hadn’t happened.
Jana and Henry met at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, where they’d both been excellent soloists. Jana was drawn to Henry’s raw talent, and playing in a quartet with him was the closest she could get to the force of it. He’d been a bright, boundless light on campus, younger than everyone else, taller than everyone else, a better musician than everyone else, and eager to play anywhere and everywhere. He played with the confidence only prodigies had. She’d once witnessed him sight-read Stravinsky on violin while nearly blind drunk, and play it more flawlessly and beautifully than she ever could on a first go. The idea of failure had never gotten near him. He lived in a world without it. Jana loved that about him.
She’d met prodigies before, but she’d never met anyone like Henry. He always said yes. Did he want to play one more? Did he really like ensemble work? Did he want to go out after? Did he want to write music? Did he want to conduct? Did he want to try this new viola, this new restaurant, this new drink? Jana didn’t know what it was that made someone so fearless. He was enthusiastically up for anything.
Once, after they’d finished a night of playing with two other first-year players (neither as good as them) and began packing up, Henry asked Jana about her life before. He assumed their lives in music had been similar.
“I used to be really jealous of my sister, Jackie,” he said. “She didn’t play anything, ever. She didn’t even want to. The only thing I hated was all the stuff I missed out on because of practicing and lessons twice a week, like, I don’t know, intramurals? I would have been good at soccer, I think. Jackie got to do all that. Who did you study with in California?”
Jana said the name of the Russian violinist who’d taken pity on her when Catherine had arrived drunk to pick her up from lessons. He’d given her a deep discount on lesson fees, and even still she did office filing for him after school to pay the rest. A few times she had to go down to only two lessons a month, when it was all they could afford.
“When I was really little,” Henry said, “my mom wouldn’t come to my recitals. Because it would make her so nervous she would sometimes throw up. For real.”
Jana smiled and said nothing.
He went on. “But now she doesn’t care that much. She’s seen me play so many times. She doesn’t come to my performances, but not because she’s nervous. Because she already knows how I play.”
Jana couldn’t think of something similar to say. She struggled in the silence where she was supposed to respond. She finally said, “My mother’s never seen me play.”
Henry’s face changed, lost some of its brightness.
“She doesn’t really like classical music,” Jana said. “But also, she kind of only likes herself. And vodka. And I don’t know my father. So in a way, I guess it’s good. I had no one to impress in the audience but strangers. And myself.”
Henry put his viola case down. He studied her with a worried look. “Well, I heard you,” he said. “Back in first year. You were good.” And he hugged her, his long arms around her stiff body. One thing she knew for sure about Henry was that his talent was only matched by his tenderness. He hugged with his whole body, as though he wasn’t afraid she wouldn’t hug back. He hugged without needing someone to hug him back. She did hug him back, eventually.
So nothing bad had ever happened to him. That was it. That was what made someone unafraid.
Henry’s peculiar absence of fear made him very popular with women, though Jana never thought of him sexually, romantically. She had no interest in being one of the girls (always older and less talented) he fell into bed with. What she wanted, instead, was for her playing to be associated with his playing, for his playing to scorch her and change her and better her. And while Henry’s popularity at conservatory was far and wide, it hadn’t translated into real friendship for him. There were the girls and there were the players, and no one offered themselves up to him in the middle ground. No one except Jana.
While they both let the conservatory push them toward solo or orchestral careers, they privately built a friendship upon hours of playing chamber music together. The other players who rotated in and out of their groups saw it as an extracurricular activity, and always abandoned them for more promising paths. But Jana and Henry stayed a consistent pair. She knew a solo career was what you were supposed to want and what Henry had been primed for his entire life, but she also knew that both of them had always been more engaged and more creatively determined—and simply had more fun—playing in string quartets.
One night during their last year, while they were playing late in a stuffy practice room, she brought it up. “What if we formed a quartet, like a real one?” she asked.
Henry needed some convincing. How could they find one person they liked, let alone two, and where would they find them? Why couldn’t they just go on as they were, and keep playing together like this when they had time? Jana had prepared for these questions, and produced the application for the chamber music certificate at the San Francisco conservatory. It would be only two years, three at most, and they’d meet people there who wanted the same thing, she was sure of it.
“Otherwise it won’t go on like this,” she said. “I know what will happen. You’ll be traveling or living abroad and you’ll be famous and busy forever. And you’ll forget about me.”
That was when he’d decided. Jana saw it. She’d so rarely been vulnerable like that with him, with anyone. But it was the truth: she was afraid his career would eclipse their connection. And he hadn’t ever had anyone outside of his family who valued his companionship over his potential career.