The Brahms Deception

By Louise Marley

In her highly intriguing new novel, Louise Marley masterfully intertwines the past and present with a mystery surrounding one of the world's greatest composers. . .

The Brahms Deception

Music scholar Frederica Bannister is thrilled when she beats her bitter rival, Kristian North, for the chance to be transferred back to 1861 Tuscany to observe firsthand the brilliant Johannes Brahms. Frederica will not only get to see Brahms in his prime; she'll also try to solve a mystery that has baffled music experts for years.

But once in Tuscany, Frederica's grip on reality quickly unravels. She instantly falls under Brahms' spell-and finds herself envious of his secret paramour, the beautiful, celebrated concert pianist Clara Schumann. In a single move, Frederica makes a bold and shocking decision that changes everything. . .

When Frederica fails to return home, it is Kristian North who is sent back in time to Tuscany to find her. There, Kristian discovers that Frederica indeed holds the key to unraveling Brahms' greatest secret. But now, Frederica has a dark secret of her own-one that puts everyone around her in devastating peril. . .

Praise for Mozart's Blood

"Eerie, beautiful. . .has a poetic, haunting sense of time and place." -Stephanie Cowell, author of Marrying Mozart

"Riveting, original. . .filled with the emotional power and intricate twists and turns of a Mozart opera." -Teresa Grant, author of Vienna Waltz

• Language: English
• Publisher: Kensington Books
• Release date: Jan 28, 2011
• ISBN: 9780758272546

Louise Marley

Louise Marley is a former opera singer with the Seattle Opera and the Seattle Symphony, among her many credits. Her fantasy novels have garnered her critical acclaim, and she has twice won the Endeavour Award and has been shortlisted for the Nebula, the Campbell, and the Tiptree awards. She is in demand as a teacher of writing workshops for adults and young adults. She lives in the Seattle area with her family.

Book preview

professional.

1

Roses spilled over the garden wall surrounding Casa Agosto, blooms of scarlet and pink and white blazing against the pale stone under impossibly bright Italian sunshine. Below the village of Castagno, forests and fields glittered faintly, as if washed in gold. Here and there, grapevines stretched and twisted in long, straight columns. In the valley beyond, a brown ribbon of road meandered along the blue line of a narrow stream. The Italian hills looked like bolts of dark green velvet, rolling gently from the ancient hilltop where twelve houses, each named for a month of the year, clustered along cramped streets. The houses were tall and narrow, trimmed with window boxes and surrounded by small gardens. Saints’ niches pierced the outer walls, their tiny statues nestled amid offerings of tiny nosegays or bunches of herbs. In the garden of Casa Agosto, the branches of an ancient olive tree drooped to the grass, heavy with unripe fruit. A wooden bench, painted with a rustic scene of wooly lambs in a green field, nestled in its shade.

It was all real, Frederica reminded herself. Everything was real. Except for her.

She floated through the garden gate, smiling to think she could have gone right through the wall if she chose, could move anywhere and in any way she wished. It was like being in a dream journey. If she wanted to move to the left, she did. If she wanted to rise into the air, to look down on the garden and the olive tree, it happened without any effort beyond her thought.

She only had to remember not to go too far. They had told her she would know, that she would feel dizzy, perhaps a bit nauseous, if she got too close to the perimeter of the transfer zone. She would find herself instantly back in her own time.

But that wouldn’t happen. She would take every care. Frederica had no intention of leaving Casa Agosto until she had to.

She settled to the ground, letting her virtual feet sink among the blades of grass. She drifted around the house, admiring the terra-cotta walls, the embroidered curtains at the windows. She paused outside a set of French doors that led into a small, sun-filled room. Her memory served up the word for this room, salotto . A little salon, and in this case, a music room. The tall doors were half-open, fitted with long, gauzy curtains that belled in the light breeze. Inside, she saw the short keyboard and bulky body of a square fortepiano, old-fashioned even in 1861. Its ivory keys—real ivory, no plastic substitutes—glowed a muted white. Its bench was covered in green brocade. It stood on six legs carved with flowers and vines, and it dominated the room, though there was also a stuffed wing chair with a gas lamp beside it and a little writing table piled with books.

They had told her the transfer would be like watching television, that she would see the sights and hear the sounds but enjoy no other sensations. Now that she was here, she found the television analogy imperfect. Her perceptions were more acute than those of a mere observer. It was possible, she supposed, that she was providing the intensity with her own eager imagination. She could almost, but not quite, smell the perfume of the tangled roses. It seemed if she tipped her head up, she could almost feel the sweetness of the May sunshine on her cheeks, or taste the clear air, as yet uncontaminated by the effluvia of industry or the exhaust of combustion engines. She breathed deeply, longing for the real experience. Her hands yearned to feel the cool surfaces of the fortepiano keys beneath her fingers.

If she was right—if that single, long-hidden letter spoke the truth—he had touched those keys. He might even place his hands on them this very day, the date of the letter buried for so long in a forgotten vault in Hamburg. The thought filled her with ecstatic anticipation.

Did her fingers twitch beneath the tangle of tubes on the cot in the transfer clinic? Did her nostrils flare, her eyelids flicker, as she took in the marvel of it all?

No one really understood how much of her was present in 1861. Those who had gone before—to fourteenth-century France, to eighteenth-century Philadelphia, to the Middle Ages—were uncertain how strong the connection was between their virtual presence and their physical one. They had difficulty describing it, and Frederica could see why. They used different similes, suggested different metaphors. They agreed on only one point: that the experience was more vivid, more intense, than they had expected. That it felt real.

It was why they walked here and there, and why they hid behind doors and curtains and furniture while they were observing. The researchers felt so present in their target periods that mere words could not describe the sensation.

A movement inside the house caught Frederica’s eye. Someone was coming.

Instinctively, though it wasn’t necessary, she stepped to the side, to hide herself behind the branches of the olive tree. She hovered behind its rough-barked trunk, and gazed into the music room with the fervency of one besotted.

Besotted was a good word for the way she felt. She had been in love with Brahms—dead a hundred years before she was born—since she had first taken up his famous Lullaby and tried to play it with her baby fingers. She knew everything about him that a historian could know. He had been lonely, as lonely perhaps as she was herself, pining for love denied him. He had been sickly and awkward as a youth. He had been a boy who never fit in. His family had loved him, but they had not understood him. For all these reasons, as much as for the sake of his music, she had devoted herself to the study of Brahms.

She knew where he had lived, whom he had known, where he traveled, what he read. She knew his portraits, and she knew his music. She was the equal, despite her youth, of any Brahms scholar in any university, but it was not enough. Her doctoral dissertation depended on her finding out one more detail, one new fact. When she had that, she would be the envy of every musicologist in the world. She would be the premiere Brahms scholar. She nourished a faint hope that the aching misery that was her life would not matter so much in comparison with this achievement.

Frederica knew she had come perilously close to losing this chance. She had studied the photograph of her competition, the young man from Boston. Kristian North. She gazed at his handsome face, his blond hair and ice blue eyes, and she could see he had everything she lacked. It was not only his good looks, or the easy charm in his smile. He had a Juilliard concert fellowship. His master’s thesis was impressive. Men like Kristian North always won through in the end, and he would survive the loss of this transfer opportunity. She needed it far more than he did!

She refused to feel guilty. That was an indulgence she couldn’t afford. She had done what she had to do. This was her moment, and she would allow nothing to spoil it for her.

He was coming. Now, oh, God, he was coming now!

From the stairwell just off the music room—there was a foot, clad in a heavy black shoe. A leg followed, encased in some sort of brown fabric, and then a hand on the banister, rather wide, with spatulate fingers—it was all coming too fast; she wasn’t ready—

Her heart seemed to hesitate, to suspend its beat for an instant as she beheld his face for the first time. His real face. Not a painting, not a portrait, not a sepia photograph. His face.

It was beardless, the chin both strong and delicate, with a slight cleft. His fair hair was combed straight back, to fall past his collar. His eyes were a deep blue, the blue of violets. Even at this distance they shone with intelligence. His lower lip was fuller than the upper one, and this conformation of his mouth made something twist in Frederica’s stomach, something hungry and wanting. He was tall and lean, and he walked with the sure step of one who knows his surroundings well.

Frederica held her breath. Her hand went to her throat, or it felt as if it did. Her lips parted, dry with excitement. Oh, to actually see him! It was beyond even what she had anticipated, to be so close, to see details no photograph could ever reveal. His skin was so clear, his lips so smooth. His hair shone jewel bright in the sunlight. Oh, if only she could touch him, just once, know the feel of his skin, the warmth of his hand!

She abandoned the olive tree, and crept forward. He looked rested and happy, though she knew the year just past had been hard for him. It was no wonder he had slipped away from the bustle of Hamburg and the pressure of his concert schedule. He had learned as a youth how restorative country air could be. That was what the letter said, the letter so long hidden and only recently recovered. He had written it to a friend, a note never meant for the eyes of strangers, and now so precious to those who loved his music:

My dear Joachim,

I know I promised you a draft of the A-Major Quartet, but I was so distracted in Hamburg that I found it hard to work. I have gone away for a little time in hopes of some restful solitude, and I hope to bring back a completed manuscript. I enclose my temporary address herewith, but I pray you will not share it with anyone. This is a private holiday, and I prefer not to have it known, either by my friends or by the administration of the Philharmonic. I trust my delivery of the manuscript will not be too delayed, and that you will be understanding of this brief but much-needed absence.

Yours faithfully,

JB

Brahms scholars had rejoiced at this new tidbit of his life and times, and speculated endlessly about what it had all meant. Everyone believed him never to have been in Italy, despite having planned several trips. None of them, as far as posterity knew, had ever come to pass. But at the bottom of that letter, he had scrawled this address. Casa Agosto, Castagno di San Felice, Italy. And here he was, just as the letter said he would be, in this tiny village, secreted away from both public and private acquaintances.

Frederica gazed at him, enraptured. He had come so far from Hamburg, just for this bit of time alone. It was an amazing thing, this young man who was already so revered among musicians of his time, to have left the bustle of society and the clamor of his concerts, the demands of a career that would dominate the century. The pressures of such a life must be—

Her thoughts broke off. There was someone else in the house.

A woman descended the stairs behind Brahms and swept gracefully into the music room with a step so light it was as if she were no more substantial than Frederica. She sank onto the brocade bench of the fortepiano and reached up to arrange the foolscap sheets waiting on the music stand. She was lovely, slight of bosom, with a slender waist. Her dress was black, and very simple, what was called a morning dress. A lacy scarf was tucked in around the neckline. The waist was tied with a ribbon and draped over a simple charcoal underskirt. Her hair, swept back in thick wings and held with tortoiseshell combs, was as dark as it had always been, as dark as in the portraits of her as a young girl. Indeed, she looked nearly as youthful as Brahms, but Frederica Bannister knew well that this lady was fourteen years his senior.

Frederica gazed at her in openmouthed astonishment. No one had known this. There had been nothing in the letter to Joachim, but there could be no mistake. She would know that face anywhere. Her photograph was in every Brahms biography. In fact, the name of Clara Wieck Schumann was sprinkled throughout every account of the life of Johannes Brahms.

Clara. Brahms’s friend, the widow of his mentor. Clara, who had seven children, and her own schedule of concerts to maintain in order to support them. Clara, the brilliant pianist, the beauty who never remarried. She was a famous diarist, but she had concealed this event from posterity. She and Brahms had been the subject of speculation for a century and a half. He had loved her openly, hopelessly, but she had refused him. She had devoted herself to her children, to her career, and to the memory of her husband.

Yet she was here, in Castagno. She was here with Brahms.

She began to play the first movement of the A-Major Quartet. Brahms sat down beside her, his thigh pressed against hers. He reached past her shoulder to turn a page of the music. Clara played on, easily, smoothly, as if she often played with him sitting so close.

Frederica forgot to hide herself, forgot what she had come for, forgot everything. She gazed at Johannes Brahms sitting shoulder to shoulder with Clara Schumann as she played from a composition so recently written the ink was barely dry. Frederica stared at them, and was rocked by a wave of heart-stopping envy.

Frederica Bannister had realized, at the painful age of thirteen, that she was never going to look like her mother.

They were in Bloomingdale’s, in the 900 Shops Mall. Bronwyn Bannister was giddy with excitement over her daughter’s belated interest in clothes and cosmetics. She had hugged Frederica, saying, Oh, sweetie, we’ll have a real girls’ day! We’ll do it all—hair, makeup, shoes—such fun!

For once, Frederica had tolerated the hug without wriggling away, and even borne the lipsticky kiss Bronwyn had pressed on her cheek. She nodded agreement as her mother made effusive plans for the day, listing shops, suggesting magazines to look at, choosing a hairstylist. Frederica’s father had watched all of this with a look of indulgent bemusement, and she had avoided his eye. He knew better than anyone that she would rather be at the piano than in a department store. She hadn’t told him why she had asked her mother for help with her clothes.

She didn’t have girlfriends to tell, either. The girls at school were so different from her, creatures of mystery, of baffling confidence, with their smooth, shining hair, their lip gloss and mascara, their golf and tennis and boating parties. They giggled together and passed notes in class and wore earbuds with trailing plastic wires, bobbing their heads to music only they could hear. Frederica disdained their music, naturally. The rest of it—cosmetics, gossip, sports, fashion—bewildered her.

But today, as her mother so gaily declared, was a new start. A girls’ day, to effect the metamorphosis of the misfit duckling into a fledgling swan. In Bloomingdale’s Bronwyn gathered armloads of dresses, sorting through racks of them with a practiced hand. She held them up to Frederica to try colors, silhouettes, lengths, materials, chattering happily about fabrics and designers and trends. She didn’t seem daunted by the lack of response from her daughter. Frederica tended to silence, and Bronwyn was accustomed to it. What surprised her, on this day, was that her daughter was listening. Nodding, touching a dress here, a sweater there. Daring a glance into one of the glass-fronted pillars, she who habitually avoided mirrors. All of this delighted Bronwyn, and startled her.

Frederica, trailing behind her mother toward the dressing rooms, thought her mother would be even more startled if she knew what had wrought this change in her daughter. The Frederica she knew cared only about books and music, and would rather attend a symphony concert than go to a movie. Frederica had scorned her mother’s designer suits and three-inch heels, and flatly refused to learn to play bridge or try her hand at tennis. She had, until now, disdained shopping trips and fashion shows. Bronwyn had, Frederica suspected, been ready to give up on her.

But something had changed in Frederica’s life. It was something as unexpected, to her, as it was profound. It was uncomfortable, and it was thrilling, and it was as compelling as music.

It wore jeans and high-top sneakers. It sported tee shirts emblazoned with band names. It swaggered through the school corridors, joking, laughing, leering. It leaned against lockers, talking to the pretty girls, ignoring the rest of them.

There was no particular one of these creatures who attracted Frederica. They all did. Each single one seemed to be part of an amorphous whole, the opposite sex, brazen, casual, strutting, boastful. And oh, so very male.

Frederica was utterly, crushingly invisible to every one of them. As she wriggled out of her skirt and blouse in the dressing room, her hands passed over the faint mounds beginning to swell on her chest. Not a moment too soon, she thought. It hardly seemed fair that the libido that had come on with such devastating suddenness should develop before her breasts did.

As she dropped her old clothes in one corner and reached for the first dress Bronwyn held out, she hardly breathed for excitement. This was the moment. This was the time when she would put on the perfect dress, become a sparkling Cinderella, magically transformed by the touch of a wand. Bronwyn’s wand.

Her mother understood the magic. She wielded it every day. Bronwyn was tall, slender, and almost beautiful with her long arms and thin legs, her sharp features deftly softened by moisturizer and foundation, lipstick and eye shadow. She smiled now as Frederica accepted the first of the dresses to try on, and Frederica was touched, briefly, by the faith her mother placed in this ceremony, by the joy she was taking in it.

Frederica pulled the dress over her head and turned to the mirror.

Oh, darling, that color just isn’t right for you, Bronwyn said hastily.

Frederica stared at her reflection, and her spirit quailed. Where was the magic?

Her mother hurriedly lifted the skirt of the dress, a coral cotton with white piping around the neckline. She pulled it back over Frederica’s head, stuck the hanger back in it, and hung it to one side. Try this one, she said.

It was green, with a dropped waist and a wide circular collar. Frederica stepped into it, and her mother fastened the back.

It was no better. The dropped waist seemed to exaggerate Frederica’s hips. The collar drooped over her narrow shoulders, so she looked like an inverted cone, pointed at the top, broadening at the bottom. Her ankles, she thought, must be twice the size of Bronwyn’s, and they looked even worse because her legs were short. I look hideous, Mother.

No, no, of course you don’t, Freddie! Bronwyn undid the green dress and banished it to the side with the coral. Come now, this takes time! You spend all those hours at the piano; just give this a chance, won’t you? She smiled into the mirror, above Frederica’s head.

Frederica was too stunned by disappointment even to object to being called Freddie. She gazed at her awkward figure in the mirror, her flat chest and stubby legs contrasting painfully with her mother’s elegant ones. She wished she had never set foot in Bloomingdale’s.

Dutifully, feeling she owed it to her mother, she went through with it. She tried on the rest of the clothes, but the shock of that first real look at herself didn’t wear off. It only grew, as she realized that no color could change the awkward shape of her hips, that no neckline could stop her chin from receding, and that no fabric could disguise her graceless legs. They tried designer jeans, but those were even worse. The mirror mocked Frederica, exposing her flaws, dashing her hopes. There was no wand, no sparkle. There was no magic at all.

The day that had begun so well became an ordeal. The heat that had prompted this effort turned cold. Frederica’s optimism collapsed into despair. She was too smart to deceive herself. She understood that she was that cruelest of all things: an ugly girl.

Bronwyn decreed, after what felt like hours to Frederica, that the sheath was coming back, and that an empire waistline was just the thing for a young girl. They settled on the two least offensive dresses and a pair of wool crepe slacks, all of which Bronwyn said, with faltering assurance, would be perfect for all the parties and dances Frederica would soon be attending.

Frederica put on her old skirt and blouse, trying to avoid her reflection as well as the hangers full of rejects that had seemed so full of promise on their racks. She couldn’t bear to look at herself even one more time. She refused the trip to the cosmetics counter, and she begged her mother to cancel the hair appointment.

It seemed even Bronwyn was daunted. In full retreat, she gave in without an argument.

There would be other, sporadic attempts to beautify Frederica, but there were no more girls’ days. Frederica wore the clothes a few times, mostly to concerts. The promised parties and dances never materialized. She threw herself, to her father’s satisfaction, into her music and her studies. Instead of dreaming of the boys she met, whose glances assessed and dismissed her in a single moment, Frederica focused her passion on a man who was everything she dreamed of.

She concentrated, with all the unspent fervor of a lonely girl, on Johannes Brahms. He had been solitary, like she was. He was misunderstood. He had never married. He lived only for his music. He was the ultimate romantic figure, lonely and magnificent.

He had also been dead for a very long time. He could not, at this remove, reject her.

In Casa Agosto in 1861, watching Johannes Brahms sharing the bench of the fortepiano with Clara Schumann, Frederica burned at the unfairness of it all. Clara had beauty and talent and fame. She had already had a great love in her life in the person of another famous musician, her husband, Robert. Why should she also have Brahms?

Frederica hovered just outside the French doors, with the long curtains fluttering past her. From here she could see every detail of the room. It was small, but crowded with ornaments. The floor was plain wood, overlaid with rough wool carpet. The wing chair rested before a fireplace, with wood and kindling laid ready. A marble bust of some goddess or other rested on a wooden pedestal. An assortment of porcelain shepherdesses ranged across the mantelpiece, and a tall clock with a brass pendulum ticked away the time in one corner.

The pendulum swung, catching the sunlight on its polished brass disc, measuring seconds and minutes, divisions as exact as the divisions of whole notes into halves, quarters, and eighths. Frederica had no interest in science, but she understood that the transfer process measured time in relative terms, coordinates of time and space and gravity. Her consciousness, mapped and measured, synchronized with the coordinates of 1861 Castagno, slipped her into the continuum as neatly as a hand fitting into a glove. She could see and hear everything, but she could affect nothing. She was a spectator. The protesters who shrilled alarms about changing the past, destroying the world, were as ignorant of the transfer process as were the man and woman before her now.

She moved in through the open windows as Brahms brought out a new score and opened it. Clara murmured something, pointed. Brahms answered, and nodded his head.

Frederica couldn’t quite grasp all their words. They spoke, of course, the German of another century. She needed time to hear the differences in pronunciation. She had been allotted eight hours, but she wished she could stay forever.

There was a pen and inkstand on the table. Brahms rose to retrieve it, to scratch something out in the score and write something else in. Frederica saw, with a little shiver of appreciation, that his fingers were stained with ink, that he had been composing, creating. Clara smiled at his change, and struck the chord with her slim fingers, tilting her head as if to measure the effect.

Frederica could not deny that Clara was beautiful. Her skin was as smooth and white as the porcelain of one of the shepherdesses. Her profile was faultless, her mouth small and full, her neck long and slender. Her dress was only moderately wide, without the layers of crinolines the pictures so often showed. Her skirts pooled about her ankles as she stretched out one small foot to the damper pedal of the fortepiano.

Frederica could see the score now. It was the first piano trio, in B major, a composition that had always troubled Brahms, and which he often returned to. Clara began to play the Scherzo. Frederica listened, and her resentment grew. She herself would never play it so well, so affectingly. Despite her years of practice, of dedication to Brahms’s music—even in this, Clara Schumann triumphed. Even on this old-fashioned instrument, with its oddly mismatched registers, the slightly reedy treble, the darker sound of the low strings—even on this, the piece was art itself in Clara’s hands.

Clara broke off playing at the sound of a woman’s voice coming from a room beyond the little foyer. Buon giorno, signora, signore, someone called. Son io!

Brahms said, "Ah. Mittag essen."

And Clara, with a playful push at his arm, "Pranzo, Hannes."

Brahms had never mastered Italian, though he had tried. He laughed, and dropped a kiss on Clara’s smooth brow that made Frederica’s breath catch. Together they rose. He put his hand on Clara’s back, escorting her out of the music room. Frederica followed them into a long, low-ceilinged kitchen.

Light from three small windows flooded the kitchen, sunshine that glistened on glass and pottery jars filled with rice and pasta and red beans. It glowed on the tile floor, and on the smiling, slightly whiskery face of the plump gray-haired cook rolling out ravioli at one end of the big wooden table. She had already started a fire in the woodstove. Clara spoke to her in Italian, and went to a sideboard to reach down bowls and glasses and spoons. Brahms disappeared through a small door at the back of the room, bending to keep from bumping his head. He came back a moment later with a bottle of wine in his hand, and set about pulling the cork and decanting it.

Frederica circled the table, taking it all in. The cook simmered the ravioli, spooned them out into a wide pottery bowl, and sprinkled some sort of chopped herb over them. Clara brought a heavy green bottle of olive oil to the table, and swirled it over the pasta. Brahms poured wine, and he and Clara sat down opposite each other. The cook went back to her chopping board to begin a salad of greens and deep red tomatoes.

Frederica could have wept with longing to taste the ravioli, to smell the fragrance of the olive oil, to feel the roughness of the unpainted wood table. Brahms ate with the gusto of a young man, and Clara with refinement. They spoke German with each other, and Clara spoke Italian with the cook. They laughed often, and when wine spilled down Brahms’s chin Clara leaned forward to wipe it off with her own napkin, an intimate gesture that made Frederica’s belly quiver with jealousy.

When the meal was over, the two of them repaired to the fortepiano once again. Brahms laid aside the score of the piano trio, and brought out a sheaf of manuscript paper. He arranged the pages on the stand, and Clara riffled through them, her expression intent and serious. Their German was already easier for Frederica to understand, and she thought, with just a little more time, she could be perfectly conversant with their accents. She needed more time!

Clara began the opening bars of the simplest of songs, the Wiegenlied. Frederica placed herself right behind the Master, eager to see this early version of the score in his own hand, with its hasty markings and scribbled chords. It would not be published, or even shared with anyone, until 1868. Everyone thought he wrote it in that year, but here was a foretaste, a hint of what would become his famous Lullaby.

The text was barely legible beneath the staff, written in a spidery hand:

Guten Abend, gute Nacht, mit Rosen bedacht . . .

Oh, to see it in manuscript, the very first version! To hear Brahms humming the melody, to see Clara’s sensitive hands, so graceful on the keys . . .

Now Frederica hovered behind Clara, so near she could have encircled her with her arms. She was so close she felt she could count the beats of Clara’s heart, could smell the fragrance of her skin. She imagined the cool touch of the keys beneath her fingers, and the warmth of Brahms beside her. His hand, when he lifted it to turn the page, was thick and strong and masculine, with delicate black hairs along the back.

Frederica wanted to feel him. To touch him. She wanted to be in Castagno of 1861, not merely observe it. She craved it with all her soul. Her desire was so powerful she was sure her temperature must be rising on the cot in the transfer room.

When Brahms pressed his cheek to Clara’s smooth sweep of hair, Frederica had to look away for fear she would choke with sheer frustration.

2

The neon sign outside Angel’s Bar sputtered in the wet Boston fog, its unsteady light glowing pink and orange on the keys of the piano. Kristian North, seated at the battered baby grand, squinted up through the window. Hey, Rosie, he called to the bartender. Is Angel ever going to fix that damned sign?

She leaned around one of her customers, and shook her dyed curls. Nope. He says it works fine.

Kristian groaned, and let his fingers turn to It Had to Be You. One of his regulars was at the far end of the bar. She looked up from her drink and gave him a bleary smile. I love that song, she called.

I know you do, he said, grinning. Me too. He was telling her the truth. He did like the old song, even if the lyrics cut a little close to the bone these days. Of course, his patron wouldn’t know that. He wondered if the words meant something special to her, made her yearn for lost love. He hoped not. It was a clever rhyme, but who could really be glad to be sad?

It was nearly eleven, and the place was beginning to quiet down. Angel’s customers were older, and generally tuckered out and headed to their beds by midnight, even on Fridays.

Kristian finished the song, and the regular came to tuck five dollars into the snifter he kept on the piano. Kristian nodded his thanks. Hey, Winnie. You need a newer song.

Winnie gave him a tipsy smile. I like that one.

It must be seventy-five years old.

She ran a veined hand over her iron gray hair. So am I, she said, and laughed.

What about this one? Kristian modulated, and began For Once in My Life, humming the tune under his breath. Winnie gave him a vague smile, and teetered off toward the foyer, where the flickering neon turned her silver hair pink. Kristian watched her go, automatically playing through the verse, then modulating again, letting his fingers wander off into snatches of other songs. He looked around the bar, where no more than six or eight customers still sat. Rosie caught his eye from behind her spigots and glasses, and shrugged.

Kristian grinned at her. Eleven o’clock. No one was paying much attention to him.

He brought his random chord progression to a reasonable cadence, and lifted his hands from the keyboard for a minute. He sipped from the glass of water beside him, shook his fingers, then poised them above the keys, thinking.

No Schumann, not tonight. Or Brahms. He hadn’t played either one in six months. It hurt too much.

He wanted something big, something noisy and energetic. He waited for a moment, listening to the buzz of conversation, the percussive tinkle of ice cubes, the occasional staccato laugh, and then he struck the opening notes of the Fifth Symphony of Beethoven. He played the descending thirds with both hands, double parallel octaves, the piano reduction he had learned in high school. A few heads turned his way, newcomers to Angel’s. Rosie laughed behind the bar. The regulars lifted their glasses, acknowledging the moment. They were used to him. They expected it of him.

The movement was Allegro con brio, and he played it very brio indeed, as fast and as loud as he could make the tired old piano sound. He blasted through the movement, ignoring the piano markings, playing forte and fortissimo. When he reached the end, someone said into the sudden silence, What the hell was that?

Someone else answered, That’s our maestro. Studied at Juilliard so he could come back and play at Angel’s! There was general laughter. Kristian saluted, two fingers to the shock of hair that fell over his forehead, then turned back to the piano. His snifter was full of money, which was good, because he was done with pop songs for the night.

He launched into a sprightly Mozart sonatina, enjoying the way the notes sparkled from his fingers. He followed that with a toccata of Khachaturian, muscular and fast, then indulged himself with two Puccini arias. By the time he had played to the end of O mio babbino caro, Angel’s was nearly empty and Rosie was wiping down the bar for the last time. Kristian finished with a roll of the A-flat arpeggio, and shut the piano cover with a bang. There was no one left to applaud, but he didn’t care about that. The last hour was all for him.

I love Puccini, Rosie said.

He winked at her. I know you do, Rosie. That was for you.

Thanks, honey.

He took his glass over to Rosie and handed it to her. See you tomorrow.

Okay, Kris. Listen, honey, you look a little tense. Hang loose, will you?

He gave her a rueful shrug. I’m trying. He had worked here since his college days, hardly missing a weekend except for his eighteen months in New York. Rosie had been here longer than that, and she knew everything there was to know about him.

Give it time, honey.

Yeah. I will. I am.

She pointed a long red fingernail at the piano. And don’t forget your tips.

Oh, right. He went back to the piano, and turned the snifter over to pour out the bills. It had been a good night. Most of the bills were ones and fives, but there were a few tens. Negligently, he stuffed them in his pocket to count later. It would all go to Juilliard, anyway. Losing his fellowship had been seriously expensive.

He collected his ancient leather jacket from the office and zipped it up to his chin as he walked to the door. The fog had turned to drizzle, and the unsteady neon made a garish curtain of the falling rain. Kristian debated using some