Harmony Ch. 01

Why had she agreed to go to this concert, this date that neither of them called a date? She was trying to remain good, trying not to think of Calvin as anything more than a collaborator. He was making music out of her poetry, he was teaching her about music, it was in her interest to see him perform.

The truth was, she'd agreed for the same reason that she'd agreed to work with him in the first place. He'd crept up on her. He was infuriatingly persuasive, stubborn and convinced that he ought to get his way, but he tempered it with the enthusiasm of a big, friendly dog. He had pestered her just enough to get her to listen to the song he'd composed, and the song was so good she'd felt like she had to agree to work with him, and then she was writing this song cycle, meeting with him two or three times a week, sending him work and then trekking to the music building to meet him in musty, dilapidated basement practice rooms.

It wasn't as if he was conventionally handsome. Although he was tall, with broad shoulders, he looked perpetually unkempt--his sandy hair messy and needing a trim, a few days' stubble on his chin, his glasses slipping down his nose. Sometimes his socks didn't match. He was a little awkward, a little goofy, but endearing; she hadn't initially thought of him as dangerous, so she hadn't been on her guard.

She was fascinated by him, though; by the quality of his mind and how quickly it leaped. As she spent more time with him she realized that his mind was always moving, always carrying a dozen thoughts and observations and ideas. There was no room for remembering to shave. Watching him work, she was amazed at his focus, his precision. He sat ramrod-straight at the piano, and his hands--big hands, with long fingers, hands that looked too large to be so deft--moved over the keys with an assurance and an agility that astounded her. When he was writing or playing, he gazed at the music intently, as if there were nothing else in the world.

Maybe it was that look that did it. One wet September evening they were considering the word "branch." It was a strange word to sing, apparently, but she didn't want to change it, so he began to fool around on the piano, retreating into his head. She watched him looking at her words so intensely that it was as if she wasn't even there. She imagined, for a moment, what it would be like to have him look at her like that. The thought sent a shiver down her body. Then he'd looked up--he had the answer, he'd figured it out--and she tried to let the thought go, let it fly away from her. She was very good at cutting off such feelings in their tracks. She simply didn't allow herself to think of him that way, didn't allow herself to entertain the idea. It was just a momentary lapse, but it opened the door just a crack, because after that he began appearing in the one part of herself she couldn't control--her dreams.

They were not overtly sexual at first. She would dream of them touching--her body curled into his. His large hands on her own. She would wake up appalled at the state of her panties, knowing that she could relieve herself but refusing to do it because she was afraid she would think of him.

And as the days and the weeks passed she was finding it harder to maintain her control. At their meetings, her eyes would wander to the back of his neck. Her fingers ached to run through his hair. Every night he was in her head.

And so yesterday evening they had been talking about Stravinsky. They were arguing, actually; Ginny thought the libretto was brilliant and Calvin thought the music was subpar (for Stravinsky; Calvin thought the man had peaked around 1913), when he said, "You know, I'm doing the Septet tomorrow, before the fall break starts."

"You're performing?"

"Yeah. I'm in the chamber ensemble that does only twentieth century music. You should come."

A very Calvin thing to do, she thought, not to invite her, but to tell her to come, as if he knew she would do it, and of course that was true. As much as she'd seen him play piano, she hadn't seen him perform.

So here she was now, standing in the university's concert hall, which she had never been inside before, scanning the program for Calvin's name even as she berated herself for doing it.

Backstage, waiting to go on, Calvin wondered if Ginny would really come. He didn't usually get nervous anymore before performances, but the thought of her watching him sent a rill of excitement through him.

He had been wanting her since the moment he met her. He wasn't the type to ease into things; the attraction had been there from the moment he saw her long red hair, the faint freckles dotting her face. And the interest had been there since he saw her poem in the university's literary magazine.

But he had not dared to do anything about it. He'd never had a girlfriend, never been truly successful with any woman he'd been attracted to, and he had no indication that Ginny felt that way about him. And his priority had to be the song cycle; the last thing he wanted to do was make her uncomfortable. He wanted them to have a long collaboration; there would be time.

At first he had been able to put it from his mind when he was with her. But as the weeks went by that became more and more difficult. She came by the library sometimes, and if the shift was quiet they would listen to pieces together, he with the score and she with the text, and he would be distracted by the way she would bite her lower lip when studying something, the way she screwed up her nose if she was puzzled, the way her hair curled over her shoulders. In the practice rooms, when she would stand behind him to look at what he was doing, he was conscious of the proximity of her body to his, of her scent--something cool and fruity she wore, lotion, or maybe her shampoo. If he wasn't thinking about music, he was thinking about her. Things he could teach her, things he was learning from her. And in his idle moments--for Calvin, the idle moments were only when he was trying to fall asleep--he would think of her and think of her until he had to relieve himself, stroking his cock, imagining burying his tongue between her legs, and as he came he thought of her still.

He became certain there was something between them last week, another rainy day, when they were leaving the basement of the music building and she slipped on the stairs, wet from the passage of dozens of rain boots. He had reached out to steady her, and when he touched her, he felt something, something like an electric kick that seemed to reverberate in the space around them, right along with the slick metal sound her hand made grabbing the railing. She had gasped. He stammered something and she pulled away, but the sensation was so strong he knew she must have felt it, too.

Now he felt like he was going a bit mad. Which was not exactly the mindset one wanted to be in only a few moments before heading onstage.

She saw Calvin come on stage and suppressed a noise of surprise; he was in a tuxedo, looking far more put-together than usual, his hair neatly combed. From the moment he sat down she was transfixed. He was perfectly straight and his face was intense, resolutely focused, glancing from the page to the other performers every few seconds; but his arms were loose, and his hands. Those large hands were agile beyond anything she'd seen in those basement practice rooms. The sounds that he coaxed and demanded from the piano amazed her; lilting, playful, gentle, fevered, dark, brooding, powerful; beautiful, all of it. He could launch into rollicking passages in which his hands moved too fast for her to comprehend, pound chords with the wide span of his fingers that commanded the hall. She understood for the first time that he was the real thing, a musician; it took her breath away. She was absurdly jealous of his page turner, a pretty slip of a girl, who stood so close to him, leaning above him, watching his face for the curt nods that signaled her.

When the piece was over, she saw him relax again, become the Calvin she knew, comfortable in his own skin. During intermission he emerged from backstage, his jacket slung over his shoulder, his bowtie hanging loose around his neck, his sleeves unbuttoned and rolled to the elbows. She saw him stop to exchange a few words with another performer, a young woman with a violin case, and Ginny felt a wave of envious nerves. What if she was wrong? What if he didn't feel the same way? What if she'd been projecting her desire onto him? Then she saw him scan the audience, looking for her; and when his eyes found her, he hurried over, smiling.

"You came," he said, clearly pleased.

"I did."

"What did you think?"

"It didn't sound like Rake's Progress." She paused. "But it didn't sound like Les Noces either."

He laughed and she felt a thrill of pleasure. He'd put that on once in the library, and the wailing had reminded her of cats in heat.

"Stay for the second half," he said. "The Messiaen is really worth hearing."

She looked again at the program. Quartet pour les fin du temps. "The end of time," she murmured.

"He wrote it in a concentration camp. It's a hell of a piece."

"All right."

During the second half of the concert he was painfully aware of how close they were. How near her arm was to touching his, how near her knee. He tried not to look at her, but he couldn't help himself; he loved to watch people discovering music for the first time, and Ginny, he had learned, was particularly compelling; she looked enraptured, she would smile, sometimes she would close her eyes. When he glanced over just before the end of the piece, he saw that she was crying, and it took a good deal of self-control not to cup her cheek in his hand and wipe them away.

The quartet received a standing ovation, but Ginny remained in her seat for a long moment after everyone else, including Calvin, had risen. She stood slowly, applauding between wipes of her eyes.

"Are you okay?"

She nodded. When the applause died down she wiped her eyes again and said, "I feel ridiculous. You must think I'm insane."

"I think you really listened to it. Tell me what you thought."

"I've never heard anything like it before. And it does seem timeless. If that's the right word. Not in the everlasting sense, but...as if it's a piece without time."

"It doesn't follow the rules."

"No. How did he write it?" She gathered her things. They walked out, Calvin telling her about Messiaen and that piece's internal logic, until they were out on the street in the bracingly cold air. He stopped.

"Can I walk you home?"

"You don't have to," she said; but then added, "But I wouldn't mind the company."

They crossed the street and began walking down St. Mary's. Ginny paused on the bridge over the turnpike, looking up at the lights of downtown Boston. The tip of the old Hancock building glowed red. The air smelled like snow.

"I think sometimes," she said slowly, "of all the people out there. In the cars, zooming by, and in the buildings, working late, the ones down on the streets, eating and drinking and shopping, and the ones at their homes, sleeping and laughing and fucking, and it's just--all those little individual dramas, all that suffering, all that life..."

Calvin waited.

"And it's just one city, in one state, in one country. Do you ever just think about the magnitude of the world? The richness?"

"Not like that," he said. "It makes my head hurt. That's why you're a writer, and I'm not."

The wind coming off the bridge was cold, and it blew her hair around her face. He saw her shiver; she was only wearing a light jacket. Calvin took off his old coat and wrapped it around her shoulders before she could protest. As he pulled it tightly around her he saw her curl into the warmth of it, like a cat, and he was overcome; his hands still clutching the lapels, he pulled her gently into him and kissed her.

Calvin had been kissed before, but not like this. This was warm and soft and wet, and went on much longer; her tongue brushing against his lips and then her mouth opening to him, her body pressed against his, her hair still blowing around both their faces in the wind. He kissed her and kissed her, feeling like something in him was singing out to her, and there was a rising heat between them that rendered him almost breathless. He never wanted to stop.

But then he felt her stiffen and he forced himself to stop.

"I'm sorry," she gasped.

"You don't have to be sorry."

"Oh, Cal," she said, shaking her head.

"What's wrong?"

She started taking off his coat, struggling to pull her arms out of the large sleeves. "I can't. I just can't."

"Can't what?"

"I'm really sorry." She handed him the coat and turned away.

"Wait." His head was reeling. He moved to follow her.

"Please don't," she said, still moving, putting up her hand. He stopped, stunned, watching in disbelief as she walked down the bridge. She was moving so quickly she was almost jogging, and before he could even begin to organize his thoughts, she was gone.

She was so rattled she struggled to find her keys. She made herself take deep breaths as she headed up the stairs to her apartment, quietly opened the front door, and slipped into her bedroom. She threw herself down onto her bed, tears again falling down her face. No matter which way she turned it, she hated herself; hated herself for hurting him, for wanting him, for being too weak to say no and being unable to simply give in. Her body ached for him.

She hardly slept at all that night. Her head flipped constantly back and forth between two different memories, impossible to hold together in one moment: Calvin leaning in to kiss her and her father weeping one night when she was a teenager and hadn't known she was watching him.

She knew what she had to do, but it took her more than a day to gather up the courage to do it.

Calvin heard nothing from her on Sunday, nothing on Monday; he worried, went over and over it in his mind. What had he done wrong? He was desperate to talk to her, was terrified that he had ruined everything somehow and that he would never see her again. Then, halfway through his Monday night shift at the library, when he was buried deep in a book, she came to the desk. When he saw her, words left him; he couldn't speak.

She could. "I'm so sorry about the other night."

"What exactly...I mean, which part are you sorry for?"

"All of it."

"Should I be sorry?"

"No, please don't. It's my fault. I shouldn't have come to the concert, I shouldn't--I didn't want to lead you on."

"Ginny." He leaned forward over the countertop. "It's not like that. You know it's not like that. You didn't do anything to lead me on."

She sucked in her lips. "I'm not your girlfriend, Cal."

"You're more than my librettist."

"I can't be."

"Why not?"

"I need to take a break," she said. "I think I've given you enough to work on for awhile."

"No, Ginny. Look, if you don't want to--if you don't want me, I can live with that, but we're doing great work. We can't just stop."

"Just for a week or two."

"Please," he said. "I'm sorry if I made you uncomfortable. It won't happen again. I swear it."

She studied him for a long moment, looking pained. "All right," she said. "All right. I'll call you."

"Okay," he said. He was so relieved that he didn't realize he had just damned himself until she was long gone.

During the next two weeks, they were exceedingly careful with each other. She still met with him once a week to go over the progress, they still argued about word choice, but something was different between them and they both knew it. The easiness was gone, replaced with a stiff, almost formal distance. They were careful never to touch.

They were both miserably short-tempered, throwing themselves into anything that might distract them. For Calvin it was hours at the piano, playing until his wrists ached. For her it was alcohol. A glass of wine or two in the evenings, to help her fall asleep. The drinking dulled the pain of the longing, and dulled the guilt, which was the worst part. She felt like she was torturing him and he didn't deserve it. He didn't deserve anything she was putting him through. He didn't deserve her. He was so honest, so open, so frank; he was incapable, it seemed to her, of any kind of deception. He was an open book, which was perhaps why he fascinated her. She was a labyrinth of confusing thoughts and competing desires and dark, unpalatable secrets.

Finally there came a Friday night when she could not bear to be alone. She put on an almost-too-short green dress with a low, loose neckline, strappy sandals, lots of eyeliner. She would go to one of the bars on Brighton Avenue, places filled with bodies and sweat and music that rattled the walls. She would nurse a drink and look for a boy.

She had it down to a science: picking the ones who were good-looking but cavalier, the kind she could tell were not in it for anything resembling attachment. She wanted the ones playing the same game as she was. She would approach him, she would flirt, and they would end up back at his apartment, where they'd fuck, the rougher the better; and then she would leave. She never spent the night, never saw any of them twice. She made them use condoms, always, and was meticulous about her birth control just in case. She wanted nothing that would last longer than an evening.

She hadn't done this since meeting Calvin, but she felt like she was going to jump out of her skin. She went to the closest bar, where some mediocre band was playing. She drank a Jack and Coke and then a second one, surveying the men around her, looking for a likely candidate. Then a guy approached her. He was tall (but not quite as tall as Calvin, the voice in her head registered), and stocky, with thick brown hair moussed into a ducktail.

"You look lonely," he said.

"Buy me another drink and I won't be."

He winked; yes, they were speaking the same language. "Whatcha got?"

"Jack and Coke."

He ordered it for her, held up his beer, and they clinked glasses. "I like your hair."

"Thanks."

"Are you into indie rock, or what?"

Oh, God, she thought, but before she could even think of how to answer that, he asked, "You wanna dance?"

"Sure."

She tossed back her drink and went out into the crowd with him. She'd hardly stepped into it when he grabbed her, pulling her hips toward his, and started grinding. I don't even know his name, she thought. His hands crept down to her ass. Normally this would be exactly what she wanted, and certainly the alcohol was doing its work, making her soft and blurry around the edges, but she felt less ready to fold her body over another's. The guy circled his hips, pressed into her, whispered in her ear, "You're gorgeous." She smelled the beer on his breath and for a moment felt dizzy. She wanted to get the hell out of the bar.

"Can we get out of here?" she asked abruptly.

"Sure," he said, laughing a little, then steering her out the door onto the street. The blast of cool air felt wonderful. He led her down the block, towards Harvard Avenue. "I like girls like you," he said. "You know what you want."

Oh, she thought, but what I want is not what I have. Calvin lived right here at this T stop; she had his address. How ironic if this guy lived in the same building. But they kept walking. She fought the urge to turn back.

"Hey, let's stop here. I want to buy something," the guy said. He had stopped in front of a little convenience store. Dazed and a little drunk, she followed him in. The fluoresecent lights made her wince a little. He went right to the counter and said, "Hey, can I get a pack of Trojans? The purple ones?" He winked at the clerk.

Everything in Ginny suddenly crystalized into one ringing thought: I'm a fool.