The Blue Guitar Read online

  “So you think you want to stay with some old Cuban guy?” he asks.

  She looks into his puffy eyes and wonders how old he is — forty? Fifty? She always knew her life would never be ordinary.

  “Answer me,” he says.

  She says nothing.

  He disappears into the marbled bathroom, and soon she hears the faucets drill water against the tub, then a clank as his belt hits the floor.

  She picks up the TV remote and waves it at the screen. It’s that crappy movie where Jennifer Lopez pretends she’s a maid. She turns the sound way down so that she’ll hear when the faucets stop running. New York City must be great, she decides, watching JLo waltz along a Central Park trail in midsummer. If she wins the competition, she’ll make sure they book her into a New York recital hall, one of those fancy places with chandeliers. People will flock to hear a kid from a Canadian island. Well, they might. Her teacher, Trig, will fly down for the event even if she has to pay his fare. She’ll keep her head shaved and won’t slink onstage in some diva gown. She’ll stay authentic to herself.

  When the bathroom door creaks open, Trace waits for the Maestro to stride out naked. She tells herself she won’t blink or act surprised, but the truth is she hasn’t exactly done this before.

  She snaps off the remote and the movie dies.

  He’s hairy, she notes, with stocky legs that he’s crouching to towel dry.

  “Now we go to bed,” he says, very matter-of-fact, then reaches over to switch off the light. As he does this, she sneaks a look. Somehow she thought it would all be more pink.

  The mattress heaves as Manuel rolls in beside her. “Take this off.” He tugs at her shirt sleeve.

  Maybe she was supposed to have done it already, while he was in the shower, and she obeys, turning away. Suddenly, she’s not feeling so great. Perhaps she shouldn’t be here. Not too late to escape. Street light begins to seep through the curtains, and she feels him watching. Off with the shirt. She unhitches her bra, which is a little grotty on day four, then pulls at the hemp pants, lifting her bum so she can slither out without rising from the bed. Underpants, she decides, can stay on for now.

  God, it’s actually happening, the mighty deed.

  “You headed for breakfast?” It’s Larry the Texan making for the cafeteria, sticking his hands deep in the front pockets of his jeans.

  “Not yet,” Trace says. She hardly knows where she is, what day, what month, what year. Her face must be flaming, and her feet coast over the pavement, light as feathers.

  Larry squints, trying to stare her down to where he can see her plain. It’s the lobby of the dorm building. She found her way here after sharing a cab with Manuel, after saying goodbye at the iron gates. Her teeth are crud, tongue coated with last night’s meal. Tex has no idea. But he cocks his head and asks with obvious curiosity, “You just coming home?”

  Let them think what they think.

  Manuel’s chubby leg dropped over hers, a dead weight, and for a minute she thought he’d nodded off. But soon he lifted his head and peered into her face; he smelled of soap and toothpaste.

  “I apologize, my young friend,” he said.

  For what?

  “I think you have not done this before.”

  She was quiet, then said, “Not exactly.”

  That was when he rolled off and lay staring at the ceiling in the dark hotel room.

  “I have,” she said quickly, “but not very often.”

  He ran a hand over her bare belly, the calluses on his fingertips pebbling her flesh, making her gasp.

  “This is not the scene I compose for you,” he said. “It would be a disappointment.”

  Round cheeks, snub nose, curly reddish hair, not what you’d call handsome, but his eyes were beautiful, fringed by long lashes.

  “I have a better idea,” he said, looking at her with what might have been amusement. “Play for me.”

  “Now?” She sucked in a breath.

  “Certainly now. Tomorrow we might all be dead.”

  “But I didn’t bring my instrument.”

  “So you must use mine.”

  She slipped out of bed and pulled on her shirt, not her pants, and unsnapped the locks on his case. The guitar was heavier than hers and beat-up after twenty years on the road. Sweat marks stained the fingerboard, and there was an obvious repair on the back. This was a guitar that had seen the world, had played in every concert hall she’d imagined and more. She stroked it as if it were a cat, a creature with a beating heart.

  Manuel propped himself on the pillows, then clasped his hands behind his head. “It won’t bite. Please begin.”

  Scooping up a chair, she started to play.

  “Ah,” he sighed as she swung into the opening bars. “The partita. So beautiful.”

  Later, as she lay beside him while he slept on the bed, he slipped a hand between her legs. He’s dreaming I’m his wife, Lucia, Trace thought.

  Entering her monk’s cell this morning, Trace plucks her guitar from its case and perches on the edge of her cot, feeling cool wood press against her thigh and forearm. The instrument smells of abandonment. Without her it’s a dead thing, pieces of wood glued together, but the moment she touches the fingerboard and rolls her thumb across the strings, the beast stirs back to life.

  Eighteen

  Toby’s semi-drunk when a knock on the door rouses him. Peek at the clock: just midnight, but it feels as if he’s been awake for hours, cursing the greasy pub food and beer. Since everyone else in the dorm is dead to the world, he rises groggily, wraps a sheet around his midsection, and heads out of his room to investigate.

  Lucy looks as if she hasn’t slept, either. She’s wearing the same clothes she wore at the bar and waves him into the foyer with an urgent gesture.

  “What?” Toby rubs his mouth. His breath must be Middle Earth.

  “They posted names.”

  He feels a shudder of anticipation. “The finalists?”

  She nods. “I don’t dare look on my own.”

  Toby tugs at his hastily assembled toga. “Let me change.”

  “You’ll be fine. Let’s go.”

  They ride the creaky elevator to the ground floor, then step into the deserted foyer, Toby clutching the improvised garment to his chest.

  Lucy points to the daily board where someone has pinned a sheet of white paper containing a daunting short list. “I don’t know if I’m more scared to be left off or to make the cut,” she says in a pinched voice.

  Toby approaches the board, chin high. With each step the print grows larger until he can read the eighteen-point caps at the top: finalists.

  Rise of sour puke to the throat — blame nachos and the second round of Guinness.

  “Seems like you’re one of the chosen few,” Lucy says. She’s crept up beside him.

  He stares at his name. Cascading euphoria, a wild sensation that roars through his body, and he has to close his eyes for a moment, then just as suddenly, joy’s boxcar arrives — doubt.

  There’s been a mistake. He’s some lunatic who thinks he’s the pope or Napoleon.

  “Congratulations,” Lucy says. “Well deserved. I thought you played beautifully.”

  “Thank you.” His voice echoes inside his head.

  “Might as well head back to my room and sleep,” she says, and he hears footsteps disappear behind him, the elevator door swing shut.

  Four names appear in clear type.

  His own.

  Trace.

  Javier the Argentine.

  And Hiro.

  Salvatore, Mr. Bel Canto, has been dropped.

  No sign of Lucy. He looks around, but she’s gone.

  She may sleep, but he will work.

  Toby soaked his battered fingers in a bowl of salt water. This took place in the room he’d rented, first home away from the childhood home. Eighteen years old, practically a genius, people were saying. Yes, the word was used. He was training full-time for the Paris competition. He’d been play
ing so long without a break that his calluses cracked, hence the blood and stinging saltwater bath. In the early hours of a marathon session, he was on edge, too much energy; his nervous system was his enemy. He’d discovered the solution: subdue the animal via repeated exercises while watching himself in the mirror. As time crept by, he seemed to enter a state of bliss where the rest of the world fell away. He’d been reading documents by certain Christian and Eastern mystics, so the sensation was not unexpected.

  What did it feel like and how exactly did it come upon him? This is what he’s been trying to remember all these years. Was he playing better back then, more poetically — not a word he would normally use — or did it just seem like that?

  How could he ever know for sure, since nothing was recorded and all he knew then was that he wanted to stay divine, so he removed his bloodied hands from the water and went back to work.

  Brief pauses to sip cold tea and eat biscuits until both ran out. Did he sleep? He had no memory of it.

  The next stage slunk in like a troll, bringing a drenching fatigue. His mind seized up and was unable to look upon itself, to reflect. Sleep was death; food was death; water was liquid kryptonite.

  This lasted how long? He wasn’t sure, because he continued to play, hardly knowing what he was doing, until one evening the fatigue lifted and he found himself performing the most difficult piece of the looming Paris competition flawlessly, not a hint of tension in his body.

  If this was ecstasy, then he wanted more of it.

  Rapture and genius were twinned, though this was no place to linger, more like a hot stove touched and escaped from.

  Jasper’s opinion was that he’d been deceiving himself in a hypoglycemic trance.

  Brother Felix found him slumped over a chair, passed out, and hauled him down to Emergency. The object was to re-hydrate, re-salinate, orchestrate potassium, electrolytes, and urine production. He’d lost his way, everyone seemed to agree, because he’d forgotten the basics: eat, drink, sleep. It came from being a young man living alone.

  Ten days later Toby clambered aboard the airplane to Paris — wild horses couldn’t stop him. The so-called breakdown, he figured, was a minor setback. He barely glanced at the City of Light as he set to work, and very soon the judges were scared and excited by him.

  On that June evening of the final recital, he crossed the stage in front of six hundred people, sat down on the quilted stool, lowered his right wrist, still scarred from the IV, and began the variations.

  Then the horror started. A composition that he could, and did, play in his sleep unravelled, then vanished without a trace. He improvised in a quasi-classical mode until a voice called out, “Thank you, Mr. Hausner. That will be plenty for tonight.”

  Valium injected in the left buttock brought him back to the recognizable world, while Klaus flew over the Atlantic to fetch him home.

  “Was that you I saw sneaking into the university this morning?” Portia fixes Manuel with her eyes. She wears a military cap today along with some sort of sailor getup, complete with bell-bottom trousers.

  They stand holding takeout coffees on the sidewalk below the entrance to Jean-Paul’s brownstone. The judges and a select group of federation members have been invited for a breakfast meeting.

  “Excuse me?” Manuel says.

  “With our youngest competitor in tow, both of you looking worse for the wear?”

  “Excuse me?” Manuel crafts an indignant tone, but he is hoarse, his throat not yet lubricated by coffee.

  “You should know better,” she adds before edging past him and mounting the iron staircase.

  The front door is already open, and Jean-Paul greets her with a kiss, then waits for Manuel, who ducks the kiss but receives a comradely embrace.

  “I hope that you have slept well,” Jean-Paul says.

  “I can only speak for myself.” Portia raises her crescent eyebrows, then sails past both men into the high-ceilinged room where she pirouettes, taking it all in. She strokes the dining table that is set up as a buffet, then runs her hand over an accompanying chair and notes, “Hans Wegner wishbone chair, very nice.” Without a trace of self-consciousness, she lifts one of the asymmetrical plates. “Vintage Russell Wright. Jean-Paul, you suffer from impeccable taste.”

  “Blame my wife.” Jean-Paul stands in his collared shirt and pressed black pants, looking embarrassed.

  “And where is this celestial being?”

  Before Jean-Paul can answer, the doorbell rings and he hastens to greet the newcomers — the judges Visnya Brocovic and Jon Smyth, both looking achingly chipper.

  As greetings are exchanged, Manuel rubs his eyes with his fists, grinding the optical orbits until he sees flashes of light. The front door continues to swing open and shut as federation members arrive. His head throbs — nothing to do with last night’s romantic fiasco.

  “Do not come home,” Lucia ordered during his morning phone call to the weary homeland. “There is nothing here — zero.” Then she pleaded, “Stay, Manuel, and send money.”

  “Pastry?” Jean-Paul offers a tray of delicacies.

  Portia makes a little gasp of pleasure and coasts her hand above each item on the platter until her fingers seize a miniature brioche.

  The guests draw file folders from a stack and sit on folding chairs that have been set up around the perimeter of the spacious room. The walls, Manuel notes, are decorated by abstract paintings, the artist’s palette knife yielding layers of colour and unusual dumpling shapes.

  Seeing his interest, Jean-Paul says, “My wife is the artist.”

  He looks proud, so Manuel quickly mutters words of praise.

  “I hiked up Mount Royal as the sun was rising,” Portia announces to the gathering as she brushes pastry crumbs off the flap of her nautical shirt. “From which vantage point I watched the city spring to life.”

  Visnya appears cross. She finds Portia’s athletic feats undignified in a woman of her age.

  “Time to call the meeting to order,” Jean-Paul says, clinking a spoon against his water glass.

  Twenty-two musicians and teachers have gathered this morning to attend to the important question: who will succeed old Gregorio as president?

  Portia teeters at the edge of her chair, face bright and expectant, folder set on her lap. Gregorio himself is not present. A reoccurrence of an unpleasant disease keeps him home in Milan under the devoted care of his wife and widowed daughter.

  “Who’s running for election besides Portia?” Jon Smyth asks.

  “I see three names on our list,” Jean-Paul says, directing him to the material they are supposed to have read and carefully considered.

  “I’d just like to add,” Portia says, clearing her throat, “that I feel confident that any one of the nominees would do a fine job, and I will happily bow to whomever gains your favour.”

  Still, she can’t restrain herself. “As we are well aware,” she continues after a tiny pause, “the organization has become an old boys’ club and technologically backward. I aim to change this.”

  There are mutters of agreement and even a trickle of applause. Then Jean-Paul taps his glass again. “May I remind you that elections are the final item on our agenda. I draw your attention to the first point of business — how shall we thank Gregorio for his decade and a half of careful stewardship?”

  There is a short, troubled silence. Everyone has a Gregorio story, often involving some small humiliation or misunderstanding.

  “Lifetime honorary membership,” someone suggests.

  “Scholarship in his name?”

  “We commission a guitar-shaped pin.”

  “Cufflinks.”

  Someone snickers, then cufflinks versus tie pin occupies ten minutes of heated discussion before Jean-Paul cracks the tabletop. “How many in favour of a scholarship?”

  A few hands shoot up.

  Meanwhile, Portia is mouthing something in Manuel’s direction; an instruction is being issued. An ominous feeling creeps into Manuel
’s already churning gut, for Portia remembers things with hideous clarity. She will have recalled, for instance, that episode in Mexico City, not his finest hour, and now this new slanderous accusation caws into his morning brain: Was that you I saw sneaking back this morning with our youngest competitor in tow?

  What right has she to monitor his actions?

  He nods back, very curt, inviting no further communication. The voting continues, and Portia slips out of her chair to perch on the arm of Manuel’s modernist settee. She whispers in his ear, “Can I count on you?” and places an icy hand on his shoulder.

  He stares straight ahead, pretending to be intent on the business of the meeting. Cufflinks are surely more useful than a tie pin. Gold is too expensive and would deplete the coffers of the federation.

  “For the proposed virtual conservatory?” The hand sinks farther into his flesh.

  Jean-Paul glares at the pair of them as he tots up numbers of raised hands.

  “I need you,” she breathes.

  “Why?” Manuel can’t bear women who drag him into their personal dramas.

  “No private cabals during the meeting,” Jean-Paul says, staring at them with a fixed smile.

  Portia glances up. “Carry on, love. We’ll be done in a flash.” She presses her magenta lips to Manuel’s ear again and confides, “Without you onboard the idea will be DOA.”

  After this pronouncement, she pulls away and returns to her chair, bowing apologetically to Jean-Paul. Everyone notes the way she dangles one long leg over the other, sailor on shore leave.

  Manuel steams: why should he lend his name to her enterprise? He won’t agree to be her hand-picked director of the Internet conservatory, an unpaid position. Yet if he doesn’t, he understands, last night’s girl will be brought into the picture. A disaster for Trace, as his vote would be cast off as tainted. There could be a nasty scandal, one he can ill afford. So unfair. After all, he tried to persuade the girl to go back to her dormitorio.

  Perhaps not hard enough.