So he knew there was only a very small chance she would be playing, but then again, he’d always been lucky. He was a very lucky person. Some people had the luck, some people did not, but he had the luck, he’d always had the luck (except of course for what happened at the barbeque, but that was just a deviation in the path of his lucky life). But the other night he’d been lucky, because there she was, right there on the stage, wearing a long black dress, chatting with the musician sitting next to her, as calm as if they were waiting for a bus, with that beautiful, gleaming instrument leaning back against her shoulder the same way a small tired child does.
When he found his seat, he got into a conversation with the man sitting next to him, who was Croatian, his name was Ezra, and he was there with his wife and they were both ‘subscribers’. (Vid was now a subscriber too.) Vid told him he’d never been to the symphony before but he loved classical music, and he knew that cellist, sitting right there, and so he was going to be clapping very loudly for her, and Ezra told him that the audience didn’t normally clap in between movements, so maybe to wait until other people clapped first, and Ezra’s wife, Ursula, leaned forward and said, ‘You clap when you want to clap.’ (Vid was going to have Ezra and Ursula over for dinner as soon as he could arrange it. He had Ezra’s number in his phone. Good people. Very good people.)
He’d assumed the symphony would be like a show or a movie, where all the lights went out, but the lights stayed on; so he could see Clementine the whole time. At one point he even thought she’d looked right at him, but he couldn’t be sure.
She was clearly the best player in the whole orchestra. Any fool could see that. He was transfixed by the way her hand quivered rapidly on the neck of the cello, by the way her bow moved in tandem with the other musicians’ bows, by the way she tilted back her head, exposing her neck.
He was transfixed by the whole experience really.
(Ezra was right, nobody clapped when Vid thought they should clap. They coughed. Every time the orchestra stopped playing there was a little symphony of coughing and throat-clearing. It reminded Vid of church.)
He had to leave at the interval because Tiffany was expecting him but Ezra and Ursula said that the first half was always the best half anyway.
As he drove home from the city he could still feel the music, as if he’d taken some hallucinogenic drug. He had so much feeling trapped within his chest he had to take shallow breaths while he waited for it to subside.
He wanted to call her, to tell her that she was the best player on that stage, by a long shot, but then he kept remembering her face the last time he’d seen her in his backyard, and he understood that she didn’t want to be reminded of that day. He didn’t want to be reminded of it either, but still he longed, not for her exactly, he didn’t want Clementine, not really, not in a sexual way, but he longed for something and it felt like she was the only one who could give it to him.
*
A police car was pulling into Harry’s driveway as Vid, Tiffany and Dakota left for the Information Morning.
‘Maybe we should stop,’ said Tiffany. Face the music. I let my young daughter read The Hunger Games, Officer. I didn’t notice my neighbour was dead. I may have behaved in despicable ways.
Vid put his foot on the accelerator. ‘What? No.’ The Lexus purred forward obediently onto the street. ‘You’ve already spoken to the police. You’ve told them everything you know. There’s nothing more to say. They’re just finishing their report, you know, wasting taxpayers’ money.’
‘I should have taken Harry meals,’ fretted Tiffany. ‘That’s what a good neighbour would have done. Why didn’t I ever take him a meal?’
‘Is that what you think the police want to ask you? “Why didn’t you take him meals, you lousy neighbour?” You could say, “Well, Officer, I’ll tell you why! Because he would have thrown those meals in my face, you know! Like a cream pie!” ’
‘You shouldn’t only be nice to nice people,’ said Tiffany, observing the large homes they were passing, nice comfy double-brick homes with well-maintained lawns beneath towering canopies of trees. Had she become one of those entitled types? A little pleased with herself? Too busy to care?
‘Of course you should only be nice to nice people!’ Vid looked at Dakota in the rear-vision mirror. ‘You hear that, Dakota? Don’t waste your time on people who are not nice!’
Tiffany looked over her shoulder at Dakota, who sat upright and pale in her current school uniform (they’d be dropping her off at school afterwards), her body pressed right up against the side of the car, as if she were making room for other passengers. Why did you rip up that book, Dakota?
‘Once Mum took Harry over a quiche,’ said Dakota without looking at her mother. ‘I remember. It was a mushroom quiche.’
‘Did I? Wait, I did, didn’t I?’ said Tiffany, thrilled by the memory. It had been after a Christmas party they’d had catered. ‘He said he hated mushrooms.’
Vid chuckled. ‘There you go.’
‘It wasn’t his fault he didn’t like mushrooms!’ she said. ‘I should have tried again.’
‘He was rude about it, though, right?’ said Vid.
Harry had been rude about the quiche. He had slammed the door so fast she’d had to jump back to make sure her fingers weren’t jammed. Still, she knew that his wife and child had died years ago. He was a sad and lonely old man. She should have tried harder.