Wanting to defuse this, Jules said, “Maybe she did. There’s nothing wrong with that. You’ve heard her play?”
Delphine nodded. “You can’t help but be jealous.”
“Then go get her.” He expected an odd-looking, awkward, and unattractive girl, and decided, charitably, to protect her from the others.
They set up. The drafted engineer, who wore distinctive rectangular black glasses he’d bought in New York, went through his checks. The students studied the music and tuned their instruments. Jules loved the promising, not-quite random sounds that come before a concert, like animal sounds in the jungle, which startle you and then disappear.
“It looks nice,” one of the violists said, “very nice, simple, and hypnotic.”
“Telephone hold music,” Jules stated. “A job. And thank you for your help, all of you.”
They waited. Some studied their parts, some actually played them briefly, ending abruptly so as not to trespass on the prerogative of the composer to decide how the piece would be conducted. Jules wanted to get started and had begun impatiently to tap his left foot. Then élodi walked in. His expectations had been wrong. She was extraordinarily attractive, captivating, and graceful. One could tell that despite her striking and unorthodox beauty she was, and might always be, alone. Only part of it may have been that she was so radiant as to be unapproachable.
Here was not only great complexity, but mystery. Jules felt that she had no interest in making a connection with anyone beyond what was minimally necessary, perhaps, to make a living – if indeed she had to, given that she possessed the air of someone who does not. Not a few women are so wounded that they seem similarly ethereal and detached, but she seemed not at all wounded. In fact, she radiated confidence bordering on contempt, but without demonstration of either. She was tall and slim, with a long, straight back and an almost military posture. A mane of sandy blonde hair combed back from her high forehead fell in a wave below her shoulders. Her features were even, her cheekbones high, her nose fine and assertive: that is, like her posture, there was an exciting thrust to it. Most distinctive were her eyes, which to Jules seemed illuminated by the kind of storm light that slips in under a tight layer of cloud. This may have occurred to him because, steady and guarded, her expression was almost like that of a sailor peering into the wind.
She was wearing a navy suit jacket with simple white trim, a plunging but narrow neckline, no blouse beneath, and heels that made her tower over everyone else, to whom she gave not even a glance. Her perfume was fresh. Although she seemed unhappy, it was impossible to tell if either happiness or unhappiness were pertinent to her. She found a seat, un-cased her cello, took the music handed to her by another student, and looked at it intently, seeming to take it in both deftly and expertly.
“Do you have to tune your instrument?” Jules asked after she failed to do so.
With a slight smile of either conceit or otherworldly detachment, she said, “I was playing it moments ago.”
She didn’t deign to glance at him. Everyone else looked to him for direction, but she stared down or ahead as if no one but she were in the room. He understood – Jules knew himself – how, suddenly, he could desire her as strongly as he had desired or loved any woman at first glance. And yet he felt no sexual attraction. Perhaps after its absence or secret containment it would surface explosively, but not now. Now all he wanted was proximity. The greatest pleasure he could imagine would be to face her a hand’s breadth away, merely to be close, actually to look in her eyes or, even if not, to look at them, to watch her, the pulses in her neck, her blink, her smile. He would have been content with just that. To kiss her would either have broken the spell or been unimaginably transcendent. He tried not to stare or give himself away, but he was breathing more deeply than he should have been.
How could he have fallen in love so quickly, beyond his control, and stupidly? Although she looked much older, she was probably twenty-five, certainly no older than thirty. It was impossible and undesirable. Even were it possible it would have been impossible. He had had, of course, like any man frequently in the presence of young women, many temporary infatuations, but never like this. Had he touched her, just shaken hands, he would have been gone forever. But he had always put an end to such things and come back to Jacqueline, his infatuations calmed.
“Okay,” he said. “Thank you for your time. This is what the Americans call a demo. It’s a theme to be used in commercials and for telephone hold music.” Because he was smiling when he said it, they laughed. élodi looked at him sharply, as if she understood that something, perhaps his dignity, or more than his dignity, was in play. “I’ve recently dealt with some very rich, strange, crazy, and perhaps dangerous people. They commissioned this and I agreed to it. They probably won’t be happy, but let’s get on with it.”
Everyone positioned themselves. That is, everyone but élodi, who didn’t move a centimeter. When they were settled in, the engineer gave a thumbs up, Jules nodded out the count to three, and all the bows began to move simultaneously. Very quickly, the students were taken up by the music, lifted out of themselves and into the better world that was the reason they had become or were becoming musicians, a world into which they were given entry with just a few strokes of a bow. It was so easy and yet so wonderful that it left them as if among angels. When after a day at work they would go home, they would float above the sidewalk, the sky would come alight, everything that moved would dance, and the faces of people in the Métro would be like the faces in Renaissance paintings.
Now they were gliding along the rhythmic ascending and descending waves, locked in the repetitions, and moved by the violins’ commentary – a loving but sad validation – upon the more active cellos and violas. The entire cycle lasted only a minute, and they went through it four times, five times, six, and seven. The engineer kept on giving the cut signal, but they were entranced. Their expressions were elevated and alive with optimism. They were happy, but with the regretful underlayment that makes happiness real.