Suzanne wants to tell her it’s none of her business, but it seems easier to answer, and she’s no longer sure what belongs to whom, whose business is whose. She looks directly at Olivia and says, “I guess you could say that she is to me what I am to you.”
For once Olivia looks confused instead of like the person in charge. Suzanne walks away at a pace Olivia would have trouble matching without obvious effort, without denting her armor of composure.
In her room Suzanne pulls open the thick curtains and sits in the gauzy light permitted by the thin inner curtain. She rests her feet on the ottoman and closes her eyes. Even as she is thinking how nice it is to be alone — to have no one looking to her or even at her — the impulse to call Petra tugs. She can imagine them sitting cross-legged on her bed, her telling Petra what Olivia is doing to her and Petra reassuring her that Olivia is indeed diabolical but won’t eat her alive. Even the imagining gives Suzanne a sliver of relief, but as soon as she feels it she closes herself to the idea. Everything that has happened is too huge to be treated as though it were small, too difficult to make easy.
Instead she rouses herself to wash her face, change clothes, primp as though she cares how she looks when she goes down to the lobby to be ferried with the others, in small groups, to the Greek restaurant where they will dine.
An hour later she is sitting, in a dark blue dress and silver jewelry, at a large table as a waiter and waitress who could be brother and sister bring bottles of retsina, baskets of bread, olives, sauces in small white bowls. They splash skillets of kasseri cheese with ouzo, set them on fire with disposable lighters, and douse the flames with lemon juice. It is the same start to a meal Suzanne shared with Alex in Detroit. He’d made an excuse to come hear her play in a university auditorium, and after her recital the two of them braved streets so empty that deer mingled on the yellow center lines, searching for what the pianist had told her was the only decent restaurant in walking distance. Now she watches Alex’s wife as she feels Alex soak into her with every sip of the resin-flavored wine, every bite of the lemony cheese, the warm bread, the salty olives, the garlicky tzatziki.
Fuck Olivia, she thinks yet again, and then she is pierced by the thought of Petra, alone in her large room, maybe thinking the same thing about her.
The young composers talk business at first, debating the pros and cons of university sinecures, wishing aloud that there were more organizations like the Minnesota Commissioning Club — the group of ordinary people who pool their money to commission contemporary music.
Red wine follows the retsina, and they toast Minnesota as heavy plates of food arrive. The talk begins to bridge business and music.
“I’m just not sure what the future of the orchestra is,” says Lisa-Natasha. “Find me one where half the audience doesn’t have gray hair and a walker and I’ll say we have a fighting chance.”
The quietest of the group, Paul, now speaks, his accent so strong that he seems to be speaking in a second language, although he is English. “Of concern to me is the future of the orchestra in the compositional landscape. In a world where composing is more and more private, and more and more about recording and not performance, why should we bother arranging for seventy parts?”
Bruce smiles at Suzanne. They know the thrill of being one of those seventy.
The others’ responses are equally predictable according to each person’s stance toward music and place in the world. Suzanne thinks back to Curtis, when these conversations excited them to stay up late, drinking and arguing. She wishes she was still capable of that. But she is hardly paying attention until she hears Alex’s name. It comes from Greg.
His voice is beautiful, with a complex texture to the tone, the sound of beads being pulled across a stiff fabric. “How was he trained?”
Olivia fields his questions, and those of the others, about Alex’s early days on the piano, his first job as a conductor, his rise. But mostly she shares his stories of musicians, particularly of the difficult or downright insane. She tells the story about the principal flutist who chose to be demoted rather than sit next to her ex-boyfriend, the orchestra’s second flutist; the soloist who demanded all red candies; the famous pianist who played with tobacco tucked into his lip; the pubescent violin prodigy with a drinking problem; another who would eat only organic food; a beautiful cellist who always slept with someone seated on the first row of the balcony. “Never mind if she got a more attractive offer. Had to be someone from the first row of the balcony.”
They are stories Suzanne has heard before, told better. It seems that it is now Olivia’s turn to be the one who has drunk too much, whose composure has frazzled.
Her mouth moving like a hinge, the shape of her skull evident under her skin, Olivia asks, “You played under him, didn’t you, Suzanne? I don’t recall him having any stories about you. I guess you were easy.” She smiles. “To work with, I mean.”
Greg looks at Suzanne, a gaze she interprets as sympathy. Lisa-Natasha stares at her, forgetting to either eat or put down her fork.
“You know me,” Suzanne says, “always aiming to please the conductor and the composer. May we be so lucky tomorrow.” She raises her glass to the table, hoping this is enough to turn the attention away from her, away from Alex, to move the conversation along to something else.
“Here’s one for you,” Olivia says. “A conductor and a violist are standing in the middle of the road. Which one do you run over first?”
This is not one of Petra’s jokes, and Suzanne does not know the punch line. No one else answers, either.
“The conductor,” Olivia says, her voice now low and controlled.
“Okay,” Bruce says. “Why the conductor?”
Olivia’s smile widens greedily. “Easy. The conductor first because you always take care of business before pleasure.”
Eric laughs hard, and Bruce laughs politely. Greg stares at Olivia. Lisa-Natasha stares at Suzanne, who looks over her shoulder. She’s not looking for any concrete reason, but it catches the waiter’s attention. Suzanne realizes that she is still thirty minutes and a piece of baklava away from escape, and then she realizes that there’s no safe ground to hide from anything that’s happening. Her eyes follow the jumpy light of the twin candles at the center of their table, and she wishes she could will herself out of time altogether.
Thirty
Olivia is late to the fourth day’s rehearsals, which are held in the orchestra’s broad, spare, absolutely beautiful performance auditorium. Despite the cavernous ceiling spaces and open wings, the hall is made warm with color and the textures of wood, concrete, fabric. The effect is not emptiness but simplicity. Suzanne loves it immediately and wishes Alex could have conducted here instead of in the dilapidated glory of Chicago’s red-and-white auditorium, suggesting a heyday decades gone.
Despite her jitters, despite everything, Suzanne feels strong, or at least at ease in her own body, with her own face. Today is the first time the full orchestra will work through each of the six compositions, and Suzanne is glad to be free of Olivia for now. Established composers and other guest faculty listen in, give broad impressions, occasionally make specific suggestions. There won’t be much time to fix anything beyond the most horrible wrong moments — the public performance is one night away — but still this is meant to be an educational experience.
“Not ideal circumstances, but not unique,” the conductor tells them. His Finnish accent, all but untraceable on the institute’s first day, comes heavier now. Fatigue, Suzanne assumes, based on her experience with Alex and with Petra, though she hears Lisa-Natasha whisper “Faker” to Eric.