The Ann Ireland Library. Ann Ireland
he looks around at his staff members, who quickly avert their eyes; Chairman Luke has got them thoroughly spooked.
Slurp of cereal. Kettle whistles. Toilet flushes from down the hall. Someone farts. Elaborate humming. Please, not that song from The Titanic … is it possible to hear too well?
Toby, lying on the narrow dorm bed, tosses an arm over, but Jasper isn’t there, and his bare hand slaps against drywall.
Laugher from the other side of the door: his roommates are bustling into the day. He feels a rush of panic, but it quickly subsides as he recalls that this lot plays in the preliminary round today and he’s not up until tomorrow.
That must be Hiro keeping his door open a crack so they can all hear as he charges through the allegro at breakneck pace. An old trick. Kid wants to scare them, make them question their interpretations: will the judges be impressed by such a transparent display of technique?
Sure they will.
But Toby won’t be swayed. A more nuanced approach is also effective. There is no finish line, no stopwatch.
Except there is.
At twenty minutes they cut you off, a guillotine chop midway through your soul-baring adagio. Not for the first time, Toby thinks — why the hell am I doing this? Hiro lets out a cowboy whoop when he reaches the end of the piece and gives his soundboard a smack — giddy up. Toby rises from the bed, clad only in his underwear, and stumbles into the hallway, rubbing his eyes.
Each man gets a Spartan bedroom with a cot, a single shelf, and a desk. The shared kitchen doubles as living area. Toby grabs a thin but clean towel off the pile and pads down the hall toward the communal bathroom.
When he returns, his roommates have disappeared into their cells, starting to rip through arpeggio and scale patterns. Still undressed, Toby draws his guitar onto his lap and starts to tune.
Back home, Jasper insists on a morning routine of tea, fruit, and whole grain cereal, the proper balance of nutrients and electrolytes. Today Toby will grab a sugary cinnamon bun from the cafeteria and a double espresso. Meanwhile, Guitar Choir is meeting at the church to run through the Thanksgiving program, and no doubt Pamela and Matthew will duke it out for conducting duties. He twists the tuning pegs, easing a set of new high-tension strings into flexibility. By tomorrow’s performance they’ll be perfect. Glance out the window to the courtyard where the Hungarian guitarist is pacing the flagstones, hands clasped behind his back. He’s due to play in twenty-five minutes.
Howl of anguish inside the pod: Larry.
“Fucking Montreal humidity!”
Toby holds his guitar tightly to his chest: too damn easy to get pulled into the drama of others.
“What is the difficulty?” Armand calls back.
Excitement drills through Toby: another man’s calamity might protect him from his own.
“My soundboard split!” Larry cries. “And I’m booked to perform in an hour.”
“Let Uncle Armand take a look.” There is the sound of footsteps, and a door pushes open, followed by a series of taps as Armand inspects the damage.
“I believe I can fix this small but unfortunate problem,” he says. “We use temporary adhesion.”
“Yes?” Larry frets. “How?”
“I will press sides together —” A grunt of effort is followed by a click, then tense silence.
Toby leans forward in his seat.
“Better now, yes?” Armand says.
“Maybe,” Larry says, hardly daring to hope.
“And because I am organized German, I will obtain a tube of glue from my suitcase.”
A friendship is being sealed along with the busted soundboard. Toby lays down a chromatic scale with crisp articulation. He won’t allow a hint of longing or loneliness to enter the room.
Eleven
It’s been years since Lucy travelled anywhere on her own. Faced with her departure to Montreal, the twins buried their faces in her shoulder and pretended to sob, then pleaded, “Don’t go, Ma. We’ll be good.”
Despite the clowning, she knew they sort of meant it.
“I’ve made a buddy,” Lucy speaks into the phone. “A sweet fellow with small hands.”
“Small hands?” Charlie echoes. “Why are you checking out this guy’s hands?”
“Because he’s the competition,” Mike reminds him.
Phone pressed to her ear, Lucy perches on one of the concrete benches in the courtyard that separates the two dormitory wings. “I’m the oldest person here.” A pair of reservists wearing berets and baggy uniforms strides across the yard, shoulders rolled back, spines erect. They can’t be much older than the twins, her two wan boys on the other end of the phone. “And I haven’t a hope in hell of making it past the first round. All I care is I don’t make a fool of myself.”
“Whoah, Mum,” says Mike. “Sounds like you’ve already quit.”
“Sure does,” says Charlie. By his distracted tone, his mother guesses he’s texting one of his juvie pals.
Where’s Mark? Does he have a clue what’s going on in the house?
“Don’t be so down on yourself,” Mike says in a surprisingly mature voice.
“Ditto,” says Charlie. “Crush the opposition.”
“I’m sure you’re better than most of those crumbs,” Mike adds. He’s been watching old gangster movies lately.
“Thanks, guys,” she says. Then she adds, “Where’s your father?”
The boys confer.
“Down cellar,” one says.
“Something to do with laundry,” adds the other.
“Why aren’t you boys doing that?” she says, hearing her voice squawk like the starlings overhead. “Shame on you, letting your dad wash your dirty clothes.” Lucy is on her feet now, pushing past the fountain with its murky doughnut of water.
After a brief pause, Mike says, “Don’t you have anything better to think about?”
The two judges rise from their chairs when Lucy enters the cramped studio. She bids them good afternoon, noting the glance that passes between them. Who’s the old bat? they’re wondering. She barely slept, burrowing deep into the hard cot, hearing every sound in the pod and beyond, every clatter of elevator, every siren and screech of brakes. Nina, the Mexican girl on the other side of the residence wall, spent half the night whispering to her boyfriend on her cellphone.
Quick scan of the studio, because Goran’s final piece of advice was: “Take time to settle in.” She notes the chalkboard with a harmony lesson intact and five empty Styrofoam cups. A piano has been wheeled to the corner.
“You two must be exhausted,” she says, lowering her case to the floor and snapping open the latches. She flashes the judges a concerned smile. “What a horror, listening to the same pieces over and over. I’d go mad.”
Stop, she tells herself.
Juerta looks pointedly at his watch.
Smyth, the young British judge, keeps yawning as if oxygen-deprived. They just want this to be over, scratch one more name off the list.
Crush the opposition. Charlie’s advice darts into the room. Lucy lifts the guitar out of its case, sets it on her lap, and then it happens, a supreme furnace-stoked hot flash, a jolt of hormonal heat funnelled to her extremities, lashed by her now-fiercely beating heart. Her gleaming face must be the colour of the fire alarm set high on the wall. A tremor seizes