I didn’t have a clue how to respond to that, so I didn’t. They weren’t my changes, and we hadn’t practiced.
“Anyway,” he said, “we’re adding your duet to the show for the rest of the tour. You two will replace the first act after the intermission.”
“Joseph, I don’t know if that’s a good idea ...”
“No false modesty, Gregory. It doesn’t suit you. You’re doing the duet.”
I was speechless. I looked ahead through the traffic but still couldn’t see her.
She was gone.
“Fine, Joseph,” I said. “Whatever you say.”
What I wanted to say was fuck off, Joseph. But that wouldn’t have gone over very well.
Instead, I hung up the phone and collapsed back into my seat.
Savannah
The shoulder strap of my bag caught on the door handle as I tore into the hotel room. I growled my frustration and yanked the strap free from around the handle and sailed the bag across the room.
In the next second I was thankful that my roommate wasn’t there. She must have been at dinner. Lizzy played the French horn and was extremely nice, but I didn’t know her well enough to explain my outburst.
“Shit,” I grumbled, collapsing onto my bed.
What the hell did I want from him? It’s not like we made love and he told me by the way, I’m married. I knew. But he also knew, and he did it anyway.
He made me feel like I was his.
I wasn’t.
Despite the sweltering, long walk I took from the cab to the hotel, I still wasn’t able to coax my thoughts back from the edge. I picked up my phone, thumbing through to the only number that made any sense at the moment.
“Hey, babe, what’s up? That was a hell of a performance the other night.” Marcia’s playful voice brought tears to my eyes.
“Hey.” I barely squeaked out the word before tears tightened my vocal chords.
Marcia responded in a quick, urgent voice. “Savannah? Sweetie, what’s wrong?”
“I … it …” I didn’t know where to start. How could I express that my heart was breaking over the man I loved, because I couldn’t say no to him. Neither of us stopped long enough to ask or think about what we were doing.
There was no question that what happened last night was the single most powerful experience in my life. And the most devastating.
Just as I was about to attempt an answer, my phone beeped. It was my mother.
I’d been avoiding her calls since our aborted lunch in Boston several weeks ago. Even my dad softly scolded me about it via text fymessage. I couldn’t put her off any longer.
“Shit, Marcia, it’s my fucking mother. I … shit, I have to go.”
“You call me back tonight, okay?”
I nodded in the empty room. “I will.”
One long sigh later, I steadied my voice and pressed to accept her call.
“Hey, Mom.”
“Savannah.” If we were face to face she would have nodded as she spoke, raising a too-thin eyebrow. “Are you okay, darling?”
“I’m fine. What’s up?” I sniffed as I made my way to the bathroom. When I flicked on the light, I still couldn’t bear the broken eyes that stared back at me, so I darkened the room again and sat on the edge of the tub. I was covered in dust and sweat from the walk to the hotel. It was all so appropriate.
“You did a fine job on the show last night, Savannah. I’m proud of you.”
Proud of you.
Vita Carulli never doled out fluffy praise. In theory, this would have been the point that I would have hung up the phone, not wanting to hear whatever came next. To hear what she was priming me for with the verbal approval. This time, however, I was willing to let anything invade the space in my brain that was searching for escape from the emotions of last night.
“Thank you. Apparently we’re going to do it at every show now.”
Joseph’s insistence on the addition of our duet to the regular program was aggravating at best.
“Don’t sound so put upon, dear. It’s a fabulous opportunity. You should think twice before squandering it.”
Just like that she was back.
I sighed my response.
“Anyway,” she continued, “that’s not the reason I called.”
“I suspected as much.” I made my way to the minibar in my room, cracking open a tiny bottle of vodka that would probably cost me twenty dollars.
“You remember Malcolm Carroll,” my mother stated, her voice turning a notch over his name.
“Mmm-hmm,” I mumbled through the tiny plastic bottle dispensing the mid-shelf vodka into my mouth.
Malcolm was the conductor for the Boston Ballet Orchestra, and longtime friend of the family. My mother had tried to arrange an audition with them for me during my senior year of college. When I turned it down, she’d implied that my admission to the conservatory had less to do with my own skill at the audition and more to do with her influence, and it would be foolish of me to ignore the opportunity she was providing.
“He’s leaving the Boston Ballet.”
She seemed to choose her words carefully, but that didn’t stop the vodka from burning my sinuses as it shot through my nose. “What?”
One doesn’t simply leave a position like that unless they’re headed to something better. I instantly searched my mental list of all the conductors of the major orchestras I knew, and couldn’t come up with a single name of anyone leaving their current posts.
“He’s accepted the conductor position for the Boston Lyric Opera.”
“Okay, I’m not really sure what that has to do with m—”
“Where I’ve just earned lead role in A Midsummer’s Night Dream.”
I sat up. “You’re performing again?” I can’t say that I was surprised. After she left my dad and moved to Boston, I assumed it was only a matter of time.
Ten months on the nose, it turns out.
“Well, at least just for the run of this show. I’ll see how things go afterward.”
“That’s great that you and Malcolm will get to work together again. What are the odds?”
My mother cleared her throat. “Yes, it was quite fortuitous, but it complicates matters.”
Once again I found myself shaking my head in my still empty hotel room, a nonverbal indication that the vodka in my hand was much stronger than the bottle promised, or maybe that my mother was speaking another language.