Читать книгу The Ann Ireland Library - Ann Ireland - Страница 17

Manuel guesses that this corner bar with its pressed tin ceiling and ceramic floor tiles is considered chic. He hesitates inside the entrance, watching the gangly Jon Smyth perch on a bar stool, his long neck pink from the barber’s razor. A man dressed in black with a white cloth slung over one shoulder greets Manuel, “Ça va?” to which Manuel replies with a dismissive wave. He’ll make his own way, merci, which he manages, grabbing the stool next to Jon’s at the mahogany bar.

“What are you drinking?” Manuel peers at the glass of red liquid.

“Bloody Mary, minus the blood and minus Mary,” Jon says. “The liver’s become a conscientious objector.”

Manuel straddles the padded stool, but only the tips of his toes reach the floor. This country is full of such small humiliations. Electronic music pulses in the background, a computer mimicking oboe and strings, even brass. The barkeep brings him a pint of ale.

“That last girl …” Jon winces.

“Nina,” Manuel says, remembering the fine-boned Mexican girl, pride of the University of Veracruz, who fell apart during her recent performance in the studio. She played the first piece like an angel, but during the modern work she lost her way yet insisted on ploughing on, a shambles, until to their horror she began to weep. She kept playing while tears splashed onto the soundboard, and Manuel hadn’t dared order her to stop, any more than he would have jumped in front of a runaway train. The episode left both men feeling mean and ill.

“Remind me never to sign on for this job again,” Jon says. “We should be like Portia, swanning in to judge only advanced rounds.”

They chink glasses as Jon stares gloomily into the mirror at his own hunched form. Manuel remembers the teenage Jon wearing an oversized jersey from his beloved Manchester United, playing Granados under a tree in that hillside town in southern Italy where a festival convenes each summer. Smyth had been the star that season, performing with obvious joy. Today his face looks haggard, his eyelids heavy, that fine hair beginning to thin on top. When young people start to grow old, it is particularly sad.

“Does sweating through a competition make you a better musician?” Jon asks. Without waiting for a reply he barges on. “It’s about building a fucking career.”

“As you did,” Manuel points out. “And so you have this excellent position at the university —”

“A position, right,” Jon cuts him off. “Seventy percent tedium and politics.” Their eyes meet in the mirror. “Even my most gifted students crave safety. They talk about landing jobs at colleges and universities with pensions and health plans. That’s what this generation desires, Manuel. They’re not willing to knock around the world, playing recitals in gymnasiums, carving a reputation from pure gut and talent, not like you, Manuel. You’re a dying breed, my friend.”

“They are sensible,” Manuel says.

“Sensible,” Jon agrees. “‘What must I do to get a job like yours?’” they ask. “‘What are the most important competitions?’”

“Another round?” The bartender flicks his towel over the counter, and the men nod a synchronized “yes.”

No matter how much Manuel drinks, he is still thirsty.

Smyth draws a crumpled sheet of paper from his pocket. “Whom are we going to sprinkle with fairy dust today?”

Manuel digs out his own list, knowing there will be arguments about the contenders. He reads off several names, and when he reaches Lucy Shaker, the other man snorts.

“Are you joking? We’re in the business of launching careers, not rewarding middle-aged hobbyists.”

“There was something interesting in her playing,” Manuel protests.

“Really?”

“She wasn’t mimicking a performance.” That isn’t quite what Manuel means.

“Ah.” Jon lifts one long leg to cross the other and smoothes the material of his khakis. “But is that enough?”

“I only know what I hear.”

Jon clears his throat. “Of course, I trust you implicitly. If anyone’s got sharp ears, it’s Manuel Juerta.”

Manuel acknowledges this flattery with a nod. Jon isn’t the least bit convinced, of course, and so the deal-making begins.

An hour and a half later they’ve whittled the list down to twelve, and the two weary judges have polished off another round along with a platter of tourtière, the tasty minced beef pie native to the province. The bar has filled with office workers: women in short skirts and high heels, men sheathed in skinny pants with open-collared shirts.

Smyth chips away at the last of the meat pie. “We’ll get you down to my college to teach a master class. Interested?”

“Certainly,” Manuel says.

“The dean will spring for a modest recital fee, but we can lay on extra for expenses and teaching a master class. What do you say, amigo?”

“I say yes.”

Jon slaps him on the shoulder. “Consider yourself booked.”

They are silent for several minutes, the letdown after strenuous negotiations.

Manuel got through to Lucia late last night. She’d gone to visit Eric at the detention centre, taking him sandwiches and fruit. “He was so pale,” she said over the crackly phone line. “Papa promises he’ll be out by the end of the week, but I don’t know. Papa isn’t so powerful now.”

Listening to this plaintive description, Manuel sat cross-legged on his bed on the seventh floor of the boutique hotel, eyeing a room service trolley that held two steaming platters covered with metal lids.

“Where is your college?” he asks Jon.

Jon names a state in the Southwest.

“Maybe you can create a permanent position for me at this college,” Manuel says.

Smyth peers at a handful of Canadian bills before selecting one and placing it under his glass. “Tell me you’re not serious.”

“I am always serious.”

“You don’t want to even think of such a thing, not at your stage of the game. It would absolutely mutilate your soul.”

“My soul is already mutilated.”

They walk out together into the early evening, sunlight careening off the flank of the high-rise across the street.

Jon looks around in all directions, his small head bobbing. “I’d love to have you join us. What a dream.” His long nose makes him seem like an elegant mammal, perhaps an antelope. “Your technique is brilliant, but —” He pauses to whistle in admiration as a yellow sports car roars past. “Fucking brilliant, but not precisely what we teach in our academy.” He grabs Manuel’s elbow, and they dart through two lanes of traffic to the opposite sidewalk where Jon stands, barely winded, and Manuel feels his chest tighten and wheeze.

“If we teach opposite forms, the poor creatures will be even more confused than they are now,” Jon says, waiting for Manuel to agree. When this doesn’t happen, he continues. “It’s a bloody bore being chair of the department. All these accommodations and decisions. One is more politician than musician. But you’ll come to visit us next term, yes?” He dives into his pocket to retrieve his phone and scrutinizes the tiny screen. “Interdepartmental meeting postponed,” he reads aloud. Then he adds, “One is cancelled, but another appears. Such is my life.”

“Names are posted!” Larry races past Toby’s door like the white rabbit, leaving his scarred guitar lying across his bed. The others pop out of their cells: will they be invited to join the semifinal round, or will they return home, stricken with shame and excuses?

Toby pulls out his ear buds, rolls off the bed where he was napping, and slowly buttons his shirt. So this is it. This is why he came. That sharp metallic taste in his mouth appears again. He skips the elevator, which is going crazy jumping between floors to pick up contestants, and lopes down the fire stairs.

Sixty-five members of the guitar congress mash around the bulletin board in the foyer of the Fine Arts Building. Only twelve names are posted, twelve names printed off a sheet of white paper. Urgent castings for glitches in alphabetical order are fruitless — there are no such errors.

Toby doesn’t stampede to the front. Instead he holds back a dignified distance and runs over the way he played in the preliminary round, and for the life of him, can’t imagine anyone did better.

“Dumb fucks,” someone moans. A fist slams the wall. It belongs to Marcus, a young man from London. With his cropped hair and spotty face, he looks like a soccer hooligan, not one of England’s finest young interpreters of the pre-Baroque repertoire. He didn’t make the cut. Even the best can have a bad day.

Trace appears at Toby’s side, reeking of bubble gum. “Hausner, right?”

Toby nods.

“I saw your name up there.” She waits for his response, but Toby betrays nothing, though inside the beast stirs. “You don’t look exactly thrilled.”

Trace doesn’t understand that he’s been measuring out the scene in spoonfuls. “Give me time,” he says.

She pops a bubble. The tough girl exterior can’t hide an orthodontist’s pricey work.

“What about you?” Toby remembers to ask.

“Ditto.”

He stares at her. “Ditto you made it?”

She shrugs. “I thought it would be way harder.”

The crowd begins to thin as the lucky ones head for the exit to practise like demons for round two while everyone else makes for the pub to drown their disappointment in beer.

“Fifty-three people tanked,” Trace proclaims in awe.

Toby cringes: does she have no pity for the poor devils slinking off? Many will roll back to the dorm at two or three in the morning, making plenty of racket — a tiny but satisfying revenge on the successful. He inhales the whole sweeping drama, and only when the foyer is nearly clear does he walk over and read his name in bold type. It’s like breathing snow, and he feels the back of his throat tingle.

“And now you must go fishing.”

Toby spins to face Manuel Juerta, who stands before him holding his upturned Panama hat full of bits of folded paper. Juerta gives the hat a shake, and Toby plucks a number. He’s never seen the task done in such an improvisatory way. The draw will determine playing order for round two.

Unfolding the bit of paper, Toby makes a face. “One,” he reads aloud.

Juerta makes a cooing noise, possibly sympathetic.

So he will play first. He’s barely finished the opening round and now he must dash back to the dorm to prepare for the second program, a different set of pieces. In fourteen hours he’ll be onstage again. It’s all happening so fast. After years of waiting, it’s full steam ahead.

Trace steals up, sandwich in hand, and Juerta jiggles the hat near her nose. “Determine your fate, young lady.”

She dips her greasy fingers into the hat, lifts a chit and unfolds it. Six. “Is this good?” she asks.

“Ideal,” Toby reassures her. “Centre of the pack.” He watches her face soften.

“A guy your age must be pretty relaxed about all this,” she says.

A guy my age, thinks Toby, can go days without sleep when necessary, can live off hardtack and water, can bathe his sorry fingers in saline solution.

Back in the dorm he plunges into a run-through of the new program before supper, setting the alarm to remind himself to eat.

Later, Toby joins the thinned-out crowd in the cafeteria for supper, selecting a protein-rich soup with no drowsy-making carbs. When he sets his tray down at the communal table, everyone applauds. It’s a nice moment.

Armand hasn’t made the cut. “They do not like my style — too romantic,” he says, sighing. “Also, maybe I have a small problem with the repeat.” He’s donned a Greek fisherman’s cap and looks pale.

“What was your free choice?” Toby asks.

“Third cello suite, first two movements.”

Bach is dicey, especially the cello suites. Every student plays them, and there are so many transcriptions, all contentious.

“I was sure I would convince them with my interpretation,” Armand says, but he sounds discouraged.

The statement cranks everyone into an animated discussion of different versions of the suites. Do you listen to cellists? If so, which bowings do you prefer? No one wants to deal directly with Armand’s disappointment. He is thirty-five years old and has never made it to a competition final. Does he have a family back home? No point in checking for a wedding ring, for his fingers are bare. Think of swimmers with shaved heads, no extra weight, no drag.

“Bach is supreme king!” Hiro cries and everyone agrees with this indisputable fact. Having made the cut, Hiro is regarded with new interest.

It turns out that Javier has also made the cut. He’s the silent Argentine who sits at the end of the cluster of tables. Since day one, he’s held himself apart from competition fever and gossip. And there have been rumours about another guy, possibly from Winnipeg, who hides in his room, practising and sleeping, only stealing out after dark for food.

Texas Larry bites down on a vegetable burger, glancing neither to the left nor the right. Was his name posted? Toby can’t remember.

“I still can’t believe it.” Lucy pulls her chair next to Toby’s, and he gets a whiff of tea-rose fragrance.

“Believe what?” he obliges.

“I’m so amazed and honoured.” She touches his wrist. “Am I shaking? Have I entered a state of delusion? If so, please give me a sharp kick. I need to know.”

Her head tilts against his shoulder, and he feels the heat of her, the pulsing flank of a small, nervous dog.

“You made the semis?” he asks.

She seems hurt: he should know this. “Unless there was a typo.”

Armand reaches into his pocket and removes a pewter flask. “Next I will enter the Barcelona competition,” he advises the group. “World-class judges, huge audience, such aficionados you can’t believe.” He drinks quickly and wipes his lips. “If you make it in Barcelona, you establish an instant career. You know Stanley Blake?”

Everyone nods. Of course, they know Stanley, or rather, they know of him.

“Barcelona, grand prize, 2003.” Armand smiles, point proven, and takes another pull of whisky.

“Larry ran aground,” Lucy whispers in Toby’s ear.

Toby swings to face her. “What happened?”

“He was playing during some breakdown with the ventilation system, and Smyth actually jumped up in the middle of the Loesser first movement to fiddle with the thermostat. So Larry stopped playing, thinking he was meant to — and they wouldn’t let him start over.”

Toby glances at the Texan, who is peeling the label of a bottle of mineral water.

“Remember the year Christophe Poulin walked off with the Miami prize?” Armand is getting excited. “In 2001 I was in exactly the same competition.”

“Who’s Poulin?” Hiro asks. He sits on the edge of his seat, wearing a flaming orange singlet.

“Nobody! The guy played like shit, but his teacher was related to one of the judges, ja?”

Toby nods. He is perhaps the only one here who remembers the scandal.

“At the gala the jury didn’t arrive for two hours,” Armand goes on, becoming even more animated. “Because they were hauled on the rug by the organizers for total incompetence. Everyone knew the best players didn’t make it past round two.”

Hiro scrambles to his feet and excuses himself. “I run,” he says, and escapes into the night, trotting into the crowded sidewalks in his shorts and singlet.

The institute is driving Jasper stark raving mad. Toby pretends to listen to the phone rant, but Jasper feels his lover’s patience wear thin.

“Okay, not mad,” he corrects himself, for it isn’t a word one should toss about. “The institute is a thing of beauty, but Luke must go.”

“Of course,” Toby agrees with a yawn.

“He’s brought back an ex-officio president, and the two of them are attempting to hijack the place.” Toby still doesn’t get it: not only is Jasper’s job on the line but the future of the institute. “They’re plotting to get rid of me. It’s a strategic ouster.”

This snaps Toby to attention. “Can they do that?”

“Luke is omnipotent.”

Toby doesn’t believe a word of this, for it is Jasper who is omnipotent.

With his free hand Jasper throws the boy’s dirty socks into the laundry hamper. Before tossing his jeans into the same pile, he slides an empty box of Smarties from the rear pocket. Not quite empty: a solo red bead sticks to the bottom. When Toby arrived at the halfway house all those years ago in the middle of winter, he pulled his guitar out of its battered case and launched into the mournful Sarabande while snow melted in his hair. Jasper stood in the doorway holding the discharge file while residents trickled in and out of the room, oblivious to the divine sound that had entered their realm. The boy was achingly thin after his hospital stay, a frail bird waiting for Jasper to rescue him.

“How do your colleagues sound?” Jasper asks.

“I avoid listening.”

“You don’t want to be influenced?”

“I don’t want to be scared.” Toby gives a crackly laugh.

“Are you eating well?” Jasper probes.

“Like a field hand.”

Jasper feels the boy holding back information. This is not a good sign: his secrets are such a burden to him.

“I’m perfectly all right,” Mrs. Ivy Cronin assures Jasper. “It was just a nasty bout of the flu.”

Jasper nods in an encouraging way but says nothing.

“Monkey flu,” she says. “It jumped species. Don’t you find that interesting?” She stops for a moment to marvel. “I was on a ventilator for ten days, but you know all that.”

“You’ve had a rough time.”

“And look at me now,” she says, spreading her arms wide.

What Jasper sees is a handsome but gaunt woman with coifed hair whose voice, still hoarse from the ventilator tube, is bravely chipper.

“Let’s start with a few questions,” he says, pen poised over the clipboard. They’re sitting in the lounge area of the institute overlooking the boulevard many floors below.

Mrs. Cronin hasn’t touched her coffee or the bowl of nuts, but then neither has Jasper. It strikes him that she might have difficulty swallowing, and he makes a mental note to offer yogourt from the staff fridge. Choking disorders aren’t uncommon in these cases. New Age, vaguely Indonesian music, a mistake to his mind, wafts from overhead speakers. Luke cites research on its tranquilizing properties.

“Ivy, do you know what day of the week it is?”

His client smiles evenly. “Do I care?”

Jasper presses on, used to such evasion. “Let’s just say that I do.”

“Is this a trap?”

“By no means.”

“Because I’m not going back to that place. Wild horses can’t drag me.”

“Don’t worry,” Jasper assures her. “You’ve graduated with flying colours.” This is true. Ivy was a woman fighting for her life and mind less than a month ago.

“So ask me something interesting.” Ivy leans forward in her chair. “Given the fact that I’ve stared death in the face.” Her eyes are milky with medication. She left hospital fifteen days ago, her departure a media event, cameras recording each movement as she was helped from a wheelchair into a waiting car.

“All right, where were you born?”

She lets out a barking laugh, a sound that causes the intern, Rachel, to poke her head around the doorway.

“I’ve been reborn,” Ivy proclaims. “From the chrysalis of pain to my present state.”

“Why do you think you’re here?”

For a moment Jasper fears she isn’t going to answer, but she releases a long breath and says, “Because I’ve forgotten nearly everything. I can hardly dress myself in the morning, and they won’t let me near the kitchen.”

“I can help,” Jasper says, “if you’ll agree to work with me.”

Ivy looks dismayed. “You have no idea, do you?”

“We’ve found notable improvements in such cases.”

“What I really long to remember,” Ivy says, “is being sick.” She hesitates, then offers with a burst of intensity, “Where was I then?”

The panicked stare is chillingly familiar; Ashok, the Emergency Room physician, gazes at Jasper the same way. The illness takes them on an arduous journey to another country, and when they return, they’ve forgotten how things are done here. Mrs. Cronin, according to her file, ran a garden nursery before getting ambushed by the virus.

“How can I possibly return,” she says, “if I don’t know where I’ve been?”

When Jasper suggests they develop a recovery plan, she gives him a pained look.

“We might start with a short routine you can easily follow,” he says.

That look again. Some might call it blank, but Jasper knows better. Ashok says he lost his limbs and was just a floating head during his illness, surrounded by string instead of air. Another time he was an aquatic creature nosing at his own inert body. No one came to see him for months, years.

“Is there something in particular you’d like to learn to do?” Jasper asks.

Ivy brightens. “I’ve never been able to remember a joke and tell it right.”

Toby practises his bows in front of the dormitory mirror, bobbing up and down like a manservant. Ten points will be awarded for presentation, and bowing is a minefield of potential indignity. You don’t want to look like a fool before you begin to play. He grabs the guitar by the scruff of the neck, then bends deeply beside it, demonstrating the dead-chicken bow. Next, as practised by the dazzling Romero brothers, he stuffs the instrument under one arm like a surfboard and strides across the floor, smiling and nodding at an imaginary audience.

Bad idea. The mirror reflects a taut, crazed expression that would spook anyone. He circles the common room, edging past the weathered tables and scuffed chairs, then returns to the ad hoc stage, this time mimicking Scottish virtuoso David Russell. He holds the guitar horizontally in front of him like a magician about to perform a levitation caper, then rotates the instrument so the sound hole faces outward and — here’s the tricky bit — he bows behind it.

Way too complex. You don’t want to use yourself up before the first note sounds.

Armand stomps in, wet hair with towel flung around his neck. “That’s not how you do it, esteemed colleague. You’ll fall on your face. Permit me. I have perfected the ultimate stage bow.” He reaches for Toby’s guitar. When Toby doesn’t deliver it immediately, Armand’s smile grows rigid. “I may not be such a genius as you who have achieved the semifinals, but I do know how to bow.”

Toby relents. “Show me.”

Armand seizes the instrument, lifts the sound hole to his nose, and peers inside to examine the maker’s name. “Who is this guy?” he asks.

“Luthier from Quebec,” Toby says.

This was his standby instrument, until he lost his main performance guitar. Yes — lost.

Armand clutches the guitar mid-neck to his side and bows evenly, the instrument following the tilt of his body, and hovers there for two beats before rising at the same leisurely pace.

“You see?” he says. “No rush. This is a very elegant gesture.”

“Work of art,” Toby agrees, taking the instrument back, then retreats to his room, feeling a tingle of irritation. It’s so easy to get lost in curtains of detail.

Across the hall, Hiro stumbles over the tremolo passage in the compulsory piece and swears loudly in Japanese. If you can’t manage a whirlwind tremolo in the privacy of your room, what hope do you have when nerves bite down? The technique relies on a form of fraught relaxation, achieved after years of practising slowly, then working up to hummingbird speed.

Toby shuts the door, then rolls a towel along the bottom to mute his playing noise and that of others. The single chair faces the porthole window overlooking the courtyard. He switches the chair around so it now faces the door, then kicks the footstool over to its new position: this rearrangement is a trick to keep him from getting comfortable in one spot. Toby has to be able to mount any stage and posses the new space within seconds.

He practises until midnight, then falls into bed, lying there visualizing the way his left hand slides up the fretboard, fingers planting. Toby knows this passage as if it were imprinted on his eyelids, but something is wrong. He jackknifes up in the bed, body licked with heat: it’s the wrong damn piece! All he can see is the music he played in the first round, but that’s over, finished. He strains to pull his mind to the next morning’s program, mere hours away, reciting the name of each work in sequence, what key it’s in, and how the first bars sound. Yet the moment he sinks back into the pillow it’s the freaking Fandanguillo and Sarabande that appear in photographic detail.

In that week of madness leading up to the Paris trip, he’d practised in his rented room ten hours without a break until day bled into night. Fingers grew numb, calluses shredded, and his wrists seized up, deep down the carpal tunnel. Red stop signs must have flashed, but he refused to see them. A spirit state is where it took him, lips cracked, dropping pounds by the day. He was pure mind and ringing tone, a lean mystic of the guitar, death a heartbeat away.

Well, it always is, isn’t it?

No time to shop for food and no desire to break the spell. That’s what no one understands: the so-called black hole was anything but. Nothing could interrupt him, no phone or doorbell, just brother Felix who found him lying on his cot with saliva caked to the corners of his mouth — dehydrated, for starters. It was Felix who lifted him onto the back of his Harley and roared downtown to Emergency. How long was he in the hospital? Four days? Discharge to the halfway house where a man called Jasper greeted him at the door. Lucky to get in such a place, everyone assured him. They’ll soon get you on your feet again.

“What would you do if I hadn’t entered your life?” Jasper likes to ask.

Toby answers the question with a mysterious smile, convinced that once Jasper is sure about him, sure that he’s healed, those sharp eyes will move on.

The first time they became lovers he felt Jazz pucker like a snowflake under his touch, and for more than a year the guitar stayed locked in its case, a pet they weren’t sure about.

It’s almost 3:00 a.m. and Toby’s mind is doing cartwheels. Frantic, he pops a sleeping pill, one of four he sneaked out of Jasper’s toilet bag before leaving home. Jasper will notice, of course. He will have counted the tablets.

At last Toby feels his limbs grow heavy on the mattress as the little blue pill folds him into its tent.

Poor Nina, the Mexican girl. Lucy finds her hiding in the dorm bathroom, one foot propped on the sink, painting her toenails. The cellphone lies next to her naked foot.

“You headed home soon?” Lucy asks in a carefully neutral voice, waiting before darting into a cubicle. Everyone knows how Nina wept through her performance.

The girl glances up, brown eyes pooling water. “I am so sad,” she says, sighing tragically. “My boyfriend is angry. He pays for my flight, for food, for everything.” She goes back to dabbing her nails with the tiny brush.

Lucy places her hand on the girl’s shoulder. “I’m sure he’ll forgive you.” She hopes that’s true.

The girl finishes off one nail and proceeds to the next. “His mother and father are professors, very intellectual family,” she says. “I thought if I do well here, maybe —” she turns to look Lucy in the eye “— they will respect me.”

Lucy feels sorry for the girl, but this is quickly overtaken by a lick of euphoria, for what really stirs her is her own success. She enters the cubicle and dangles her purse from the hook, feeling her heart kick. It’s all she can manage to calm down enough to practise for the next round, fending off a crazy fantasy where she’s wearing a sparkly top and a long drapey skirt, peering out from behind the curtain as the concert hall fills with admirers. It’s the finals, and Goran has flown in to witness the historic occasion.

“Do you believe you will win?” the girl calls from the other side of the door.

“Of course not,” Lucy assures her.

Later Lucy perches naked on the rim of a steaming pool while women of all shapes and sizes tiptoe across the tiled floor. The spa smells hygienically clean. Nearby an ancient Korean woman crouches on a low bench and, using a pail, sluices water over her mottled shoulders.

Lucy starts to slip into the bath, but the old woman waves at her urgently.

“You help me,” she orders, thrusting the empty pail toward Lucy. This is followed by a crusty loofah sponge.

“What do I do?” Lucy asks, lifting her legs out of the skin-puckering water.

The woman points at the empty pail and the sponge, then makes scrubbing motions. On the other side of the pillar another much younger woman is scrubbing a girl’s back with a rough sponge. A film of steam covers flesh and hair, blurring the edges. Mimicking what she sees, Lucy scoops up a load of water and coasts the wiry loofah across the old woman’s back in small, tentative strokes. The crepey skin seems translucent, as if it might easily shred.

The woman cries, “No good! Harder!” and shakes her shoulders in obvious frustration. The loose flesh of her back sinks to broad hips and a soft flat bottom, pleating like drapery.

Lucy obeys as soapy water flows down the gutter into the drain.

A young woman wearing a sparkling white bra and underpants appears on the pool deck and calls Lucy’s name: it is time for her massage.

This luxury was Mark’s idea. “Treat yourself,” he said, hearing the clang of nerves in her voice. He was racing off to work where he was in charge of security for the Treasures of the Silk Route exhibit.

A naked Lucy follows the girl into a windowless room where she hoists herself onto the table, fitting her chin into the pocket. Scented oil squirts onto her back and is worked into her skin by small, firm hands.

“Shoulders very tense,” the Korean girl informs her.

“Yes,” Lucy murmurs, feeling a pair of sturdy thumbs burrow toward her brain stem.

Uncle Philip trots down the noisy street toward a back road lined with shops offering sweets and knick-knacks. He leaps over a ditch, gracefully landing on the other side. He’s become a sort of dragonfly, and everyone smiles at him, this old white guy wearing neat shorts and a polo shirt. At the edge of this colony a pair of brothers lives, ages thirteen and fourteen, with excellent teeth. Uncle Philip understands this indicates superior heath. His step is light, his heart a reliable drum.

Lucy moans.

“Too hard?” the girl asks, but doesn’t let up the pressure.

A silver disc rises inside her head.

Uncle Philip hears the whistle and stops in front of a small wooden house. A girl is selling cigarettes in the doorway, and behind her a portly woman beckons him in. Suddenly, he’s swept past a beaded curtain and experiences a flash of panic: is this how it’s going to end? Fear jazzes him up, and he notices everything, the jars of unknown substances laid neatly on a shelf, pots and pans nailed to a slab of plywood, and a peeling poster of the Backstreet Boys.

The woman speaks quickly, holding out her hand. Uncle Philip digs into the pocket of his shorts and finds his wallet. He can hardly breathe.

Lucy touches her forearm with the tip of a finger and shivers with pleasure. Basted with fragrant oils, she could almost taste herself.