"Kelley 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 тАФ 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 тАФ 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 тАФ

She jerked. The edge of GuarneriusтАЩs 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.

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

тАЬWeтАЩre here, for GodтАЩs 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?тАЭ

She could feel herself flush. тАЬNo,тАЭ 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.

тАЬIтАЩm very sorry, Stradivarius,тАЭ the Stage Manager said. She was a thickset
woman with a clipboard and a pinch-eyed look. She was also, Strad thought,