"Hoffman-KeySignatures" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hoffman Abbie)

didn't hesitate on the threshold, but strolled in and chose a seat in the circle
of chairs set out on the institutional beige linoleum. Angus greeted her,
calling her Rita, and introduced her to a man six and a half feet tall and more
than sixty years old. "This is Bill," said Angus.

Bill was wearing a guitar, cowboy boots, jeans, and a western shirt with pearl
snaps. He had a villain's mustache, and the portable atmosphere of a cigarette
smoker. He also had flesh-colored hearing aids in each ear. He gave Zita a wide
grin. "Always like to meet a nice young lady," he said.

"Bill's our accompaniment," Angus said.

Zita switched her case to her left hand and shook Bill's right.

Other people were wandering in, setting their fiddle cases on the tables and
getting out instruments, tightening bows and tuning. Though this was the first
meeting of the class, many seemed to know each other already. Zita smiled at
Bill, then went over to set down her own case. She had practiced scraping the
bow across the fiddle strings at home, and received angry calls from people in
the upstairs apartment. She needed to find somewhere else to practice.

By the end of class she figured she had picked the wrong thing to take this
time. She took different classes in each new community, searching for something
she could belong to. Playing the fiddle was too hard; the weird position she had
to twist into to hold the fiddle to her chin and get her hand around the
fiddle's neck tired her, and she couldn't get a good sound out of the damned
thing.

The next morning she got up to go to work and noticed aches and pains she had
never had before. The next night, she practiced (her upstairs neighbors had gone
to a movie) and finally got a real note from the fiddle.

She was hooked.

At the sixth class of the ten-week term, Bill came to her and said, "You're
getting real good on that thing. You ought to come out to the grange Friday
night."

She had heard people in class talking about granges-- there was a grange dance
every Friday, rotating between four granges monthly. She had heard, but hadn't
listened. She wasn't ready to perform for anybody, even though every week in
class she had to stand up and play when her turn came. It wasn't scary in class.
Other people played along, helping her keep time and rhythm and, in the wildly
hard tunes, notes. She felt like she knew everybody in class as well as she had
known anybody in her life, and they were all friendly.

"Come on," Bill said. "Why, I'll pick you up and take you out there, bring you
home whenever you say."

Her secret life began the next night.