"Eskridge-Strings" - читать интересную книгу автора (Eskridge Kelly)

She was tense and tired the next morning as she packed her music and violin and
clothes. Her next guest solo was with an orchestra in a city she had not visited
for several years. A Conservatory limo picked her up at the airport along with
the current Guarnerius, who handed his cello into the backseat as if it were an
aging grande dame rather than hardwood and almost half his weight. He was
assigned to the same orchestra, but for only two weeks. She was glad she would
have a week alone with the musicians after he left. She did not like him.

He chattered at her all the way to the hotel mistaking her silence for
attention. She tried to listen, to allow him to bore her or anger her, to
distract her. But she could not hook her attention onto him: it slid away like
the rain down the windshield of the car, dropped into the steady beat of the
tires on the wet road, thud-DUH thud-DUH, the rhythm so familiar and comforting
that she relaxed into it unguardedly and was caught and jerked into the welter
of other sound that was also the car and the road and the journey: thwump thwump
of the wipers, the alto ringing of the engine, the coloratura squeak of the seat
springs as Guamerius leaned forward to make an earnest point, the counterpoint
of the wheels of the cars around them, thudduh thudduh THUMP thump-thump
THUD-duh -- and no matter how hard she tried, she could not make it something
she recognized; she had no music for it. No Bach, no Paganini, no Mozart or Lalo
or Vivaldi would fit around the texture of the throbbing in her bones -- and she
was suddenly sure that if her heart were not pounding so loud, she would hear
that distant wailing music in her head; it would wind around her like a woman
dancing. sinuous, sweating lightly swaying wrapping her up --

She jerked. The edge of Guarnerius's briefcase pressed against her arm. She
remembered G did not like to touch other people or be touched by them. She
wondered if he chose to play the cello so he would never have to sit next to
another passenger on an airplane. She wondered if he had ever heard phantom
music.

.". . . waiting, Strad." The cold rim of the briefcase pushed at her arm. She
blinked, looked up at him.

"We're here, for God's sake. The whole orchestra is probably on pins and
needles, poor idiots, waiting in there for the Strad and Guarnerius to arrive,
and here you sit gaping off into the middle distance. Or were you planning to
ask them to rehearse in the car?"

She could feel herself flush. "No," she said shortly, definitely, as if it would
answer everything, and stepped out.

She never made friends easily. There were a thousand reasons: she was too shy;
she was the Strad, and other people were shy of her; she was busy. Sometimes she
thought she was too lonely to make friends, as if the solitude and separateness
were so much a part of her that she did not know how to replace them with
anything else. So it was simply another sign of how upside down things were that
she found a heart-friend in the first two days of rehearsals with the new
orchestra. They might have been friends the first day, if he had been there.