The Judas Glass (41 page)

“Don't cry,” says Stella. “No, I don't know where he is. I swear it. My absolute word.”

She looks back at me, shaking her head, a friendly conspirator, but she frowns, puzzled. I am already leaving, already gone.

The young man runs up the steps, leaving the padlock dangling, and I am running with him, in his shadow, closing around him like a hand. Taking what I need.

“Tonight,” says the heavy man with curly hair, a short-sleeved shirt, no tie. “If you're ready.” He chews the cap of a pen, tapping a paper clip, the bright wire trapped under his forefinger. He wants to smoke; it isn't allowed.

“Of course I'm ready,” I say. This is a voice I have never used before, and I try it out a little further. “And I must say I'm delighted.” It's a nice voice, female, young, insipid enough to be pleasing.

He is pleased. “It's a little unusual for us to take on an unknown here at Arch Street. I mean, we're not EMI, but we're booked four months in advance. But I listened to the demos you sent over and I felt that I didn't have any choice.”

I laugh, a pretty sound, and say, “Maybe you didn't.”

He touches me, once, on the hand. He withdraws his hand and gives a little cough.

Down the corridor he stays one step behind me, and says, “Your work reminds me of someone else's.”

“Really?”

“I don't even like to talk about her. It's a terrible thing.”

White tile on the ceiling, carpet on the walls. A woman sits behind a pane of glass, drinking coffee from a white paper cup.

The coffee has seeped through the seam of the container, brown freckles. The voice comes from the speaker above the window, her lips moving silently, although I know only I can hear the delay, her voice looping through an amplifier before it reaches the room.

“We need a sound level,” she says.

I say nothing.

“If you want to just play a little.”

They are cool at first touch, but not cold. The black reflects my fingertips as they hesitate, barely touching the keys. I close my eyes, and follow the silence out to the limits of the room.

Just be there
, I tell him.
I need you
.

One note and the piano would fill, as a moment fills, complete. I am afraid. I keep my eyes closed and I know I can't do it.

“Take your time,” says the woman behind glass.

The day it happens we are happy, the station wagon air-conditioned, the air only half-cool, one of the vents releasing warm air, like the air outside. My father drives with both hands on the wheel listening to the radio, a baseball game, something I know he will never understand, but a tradition he honors anyway, saying approving things in his Scottish accent about the score, the players, trying to be American, and succeeding.

My mother sees it first, the car coming on sideways across the bridge, the tires not screaming, a sound like something deep in the ocean, a recording of whales. The note is so low my insides vibrate to it, lungs, private organs, all of me singing with this lowest A flat.

“Charles!” she says. She was wearing a hair clasp, a red barrette, like a girl.

Like that: as though we rehearsed it, as though this was our second time through, our second chance at living, not our first, not our only lives. And for years after that I cannot see, until that night on the boat.

I want to be there
, he says.
I feel honored
.

You'll do wonderfully
.

I open my eyes, look to my right, at the inquisitive face behind glass. I smile. I take a deep breath.

And play.

All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 1996 by Michael Cadnum

Cover design by Kat JK Lee; photograph courtesy of the author

ISBN: 978-1-5040-2366-5

Distributed in 2015 by Open Road Distribution

345 Hudson Street

New York, NY 10014

www.openroadmedia.com