"Give her an inch!"
I'm being productive, surprisingly. I should probably go eat and then sleep. Whatever. Here is the long-awaited third chapter of Crossing Lines.
Chapter 3
The next morning came early. Brad slept peacefully through the wake-up call that could have been a fire alarm from its jarring volume. I sat up and remembered the notebook that was still on the nightstand. Brad, though virtuous in so many ways, could be nosy, and I didn’t want him to misunderstand. I smoothly slid out the bottom drawer of the stand and laid it next to fair Gideon’s.
When asleep, Brad appeared so much more relaxed than in waking, so absolutely blissful. The moment his chocolate eyes registered the daylight, a permanent look of graveness and worry skirted his features. He was so vulnerable when awake, below his charming appearance, but when he slept he was so comfortable, so strong.
I shook him gently by the shoulder, until he began to thrash, and I ducked away into the shower. Hotel bathroom mirrors are large enough to reflect everything. I removed my clothing and stared at myself tentatively in the glass. I slowly turned myself around. Through my head flashed a powerful image of the Boy, without clothes, and then it was gone again. I made an audible noise of anguish that I’m sure startled my handsome flame on the other side of the door. I showered quickly, re-entering the room in my pinstriped boxers, a favorite pair of mine.
Brad merely glanced down, carrying all of his clothes into the bathroom with him. His modesty baffled me. He would never so much as take off his shirt with any other person present. His adolescent sexuality never blossomed that I could see. He was not prude though. His mind was as dirty as any of the rest of us, he just never really appeared to have any desire to love anyone else either romantically or physically. It made him all the more alluring to him. If I could somehow break down his barrier…
Valorie shoved through the door without knocking, wearing plain jeans and a ratty old t-shirt and a towel on her head. She was caressing her bow with a block of rosin. We talked as I nabbed some arbitrary outfit out of my luggage that I had never bothered to unpack and hastily put it on.
“I can’t find my music and rehearsal starts soon, can we share?” she implored.
“Of course, if I can find mine,” I said, tossing extraneous pieces of clothing across my bed. I retrieved my thoroughly and permanently bent folder of music and tossed it to Valorie. I looked up and noticed Katja’s imposing frame in the doorway. I didn’t know how long she had been watching me, but it unnerved me. Our eyes met briefly, and I experienced a sort of shockwave. Had her eyes always been so intent? So piercing? So gray? I looked down, and she sort of stumbled back into her room.
Brad emerged, fully dressed, of course, from the bathroom with wet hair and a cleanly shaven complexion that never quite ceased to be alluring. The four of us grabbed our respective cellos, and began to lug them down the staircase to a ballroom off of the lobby where we were to rehearse. Today the lobby smelled of rubbing alcohol coffee grounds.
We somehow crammed ourselves into the ballroom with the other mobs of tired and pretentious Honors Orchestra members. I sat in the midst of a field of cellos, the high school virtuosos with real chances for success. It was not until we began tuning that I realized just how much passion everyone in the room had for their particular instrument. The violinists nuzzled their violins, reaching high frequencies that did not screech so much as at home. The violists in the middle with their subtle, curving alto. The bassists, able to communicate their longing through an instrument twice as tall and notes from the depths of the soul.
And then there was me. Me and my cello. We were married the moment I touched my bow to the strings, where, slightly shifting a peg, I could produce the richest, shapeliest tenor to meld into the rest of the euphony. The room absolutely shuddered with the vibrations of hundreds of bows skating across thousands of strings, here a scale, there an arpeggio, and there someone fluttering through her part of a Mozart string quartet.
Our guest conductor sat up on a little stage with a microphone pack. He was rather unimpressive in comparison to field of wooden voices singing below. He sipped from his cardboard cup of complementary hotel room coffee, with apparently little concern for the eager students at his bidding. He wore what was probably the only set of dress attire he owned, and his white socks peeked out from underneath his rumpled black slacks. The large, thick lenses in his clunky glasses only accentuated his bald head with a few hairs flattened across it and his sagging, round body. Slowly, he set down his cup next to his stool, and grunted himself to his feet. It took probably a full five minutes for everyone to realize that he meant to begin rehearsal.
He introduced himself, some super duper professor from some super duper university and he played the violin (they all cheered) and he was excited to work with us but it would be hard work. All of the things he was supposed to say and none of us cared to know. We first did a cursory rehearsal of each of the frankly uninteresting pieces he had picked out for us to learn and perform this week. Each time we took out a different piece, he would squawk out in that condescending nasally banter “from the top now, children, from the top.” We did our best to impress him, if only to make him stop acting as though we were toddlers, but he never quite caught on. He sat hunched over like a toad, the orchestra muttering about what might happen next. We spent the next four hours of rehearsal dragging through one particular piece that could only be described as new age. Because it was selected by this blimp of a professor, it was of course nearly all played by the violin section with a rare plucked comment from the other instruments.
I took this opportunity to try and get to know the two people I was seated next to. One was a shriveling French girl with spiky black hair who apparently spoke very little English. The other was an unfortunately awkward boy, so long and gangly, who had no trouble insulting each note I played and offering his brilliant words of wisdom. So for the rest of the rehearsal I kept my mouth shut and my eyes very deliberately directed at a piece of wall behind the conductor.
This letdown of a first rehearsal mercifully ended in time for the lunch I was so looking forward to. After several minutes of twisting, pushing, and slithering through all the others I located Valorie.
“Where do you want to go for lunch?”
“I don’t really care.”
“I’m starving.”
“Yeah, me too, I’d eat pretty much anything.”
“There’s a sandwich place across the street.”
“All right.”
Somehow, Valorie was entirely and utterly infatuated with our conductor. She went on about him as we crossed the street, went into the small shop, bell ringing, waited in line, and ordered our respective meals. When I finally had the opportunity to get a word in edgewise I revealed to her how little I could stand him. We never agreed on anything in life.
The foundation of our relationship was essentially argument. I remember once I was riding the bus over to her house, and somehow politics came up. She mentioned how she wouldn’t really want to vote once she was old enough. I flipped out. I could not understand how anyone could stand living in the United States with our government in shambles as it is and not want to have any input to help create change. After years of knowing her and never quite seeing eye-to-eye on anything, such topics rarely came up anymore. And we usually just let them go.
So when we shared our very different opinions on the conductor of the Honors Orchestra, I hoped we could let it go.
Somehow, Valorie was adamant. She raved more about his brilliance. His subtle conducting patterns and the artistry of his doughy hands. She tried to convince me of the drastic changes her playing had undergone due to his instruction in just a couple hours. How she appreciated her cello that much more. How Victor simply paled (she always talked a little bit like an old fashioned Brit; it was beautiful) in comparison to the decadent and delicious Dr. Marlow (that was his name) and how she aspired to achieve the same level of excellence as him. I had nearly finished my little sandwich by the time she was done--I was watching people pass by the window while she obsessed.
We did agree on one thing. His years of musical training and teaching drained all the boyish good looks he most likely never had. He was just a fat old shell.
Valorie took her first bite of sandwich.
“Anyway, I’m so glad we don’t have to be in school right now,” she mumbled through a mouthful. That was something else we agreed on.
I mostly talked for the rest of the time we spent at the restaurant while Valorie ate, occasionally looking up at me between snatching up little pieces of fallen lettuce.
“ Yesterday I had two dreams. I mean, I had one on the bus ride over and another last night. But that’s not the point. They were connected. Like, they had the same character in them. Very obviously the same person. It was this guy with powerful eyes, and he was naked and anyway. What do you think it would mean if I had two dreams with the same character in them in the same day? Do you think it’s important? I mean, do you believe that dreams mean anything?”
“Yes.”
“It’s all very Freudian I guess. Something about sex I’m sure. Or maybe it was just the weed.” I gave a little half-hearted giggle that sounded more like a giant “HA.”
I described the dreams to her as best as I recalled, trying to mimic the way I had written them in my little gilded diary. Valorie still munched away. I finished with a little bit of an ashamed half-smile and a slightly pinkish face. She was unfazed by the whole ordeal.
“I don’t interpret dreams,” she pointed out, “I just think they might mean something more than random thoughts spewed out of the imagination. That’s what I want to believe, anyway.”
I guess she understood how confused and troubled I was. I guess she didn’t have a remedy. But telling her was relieving. Maybe it wasn’t so important as I had made it.
On the way back into the ballroom for rehearsal my eyes met Katja again in passing. Her eyes no longer bothered me as they had earlier. No, they were green, not gray, what was I thinking?
I hardly paid attention during the rest of rehearsal, playing when I was supposed to, resting when I was not supposed to play. Writing in the obligatory dynamic or bow direction here and there, still determined to avoid my neighbors to either side who I could simply not relate to. The practice was draining somehow, swelling up in my own revolving thoughts, and I realized I had been incredibly tense throughout the rehearsal when I finally relaxed when Dr. Marlow quacked, “Okay, children, you may now be dismissed to your evening meal and after dinner activities.”
We dined as a school, clustered at a table with the select people from home and Victor eyeing us all smoothly and maliciously. Like cookies or some delectable dessert. I was unnerved, but he always gave me that sort of vibe. I was not sure whether he or the professor irked me more.
The moment the repast was finished I retired to my room. Brad walked into the room moments later, not quite saying anything but giving me that edible smile that was maybe only for me. He grabbed his little satchel and left again, pausing slightly, as though he’d forgotten to bring me along, and then left to go find his other friends, and probably smoke up again with them.
I clicked on the television to see if anything was on. Some infomercials, dated sit-coms and poorly reviewed movies. I had one on, a borderline porno with a loose thread of plot to keep it artistic, when I fell asleep, lights, clothes, and television all still on.
I am on a yacht near the picturesque shoreline. Christmas lights twinkle around the deck and the whiteness of the boat is bold against the night. I don’t see any stars when I look up. I realize the boat is still tied to the dock. I step off the boat, only to spot The Boy standing so stoically in the shallow water. He glows ever so slightly in his physical perfection. This time I do not waver under his grey-eyed stare that is so overwhelming.
I so gracefully begin to walk along the dock toward shore, as though the salty sea air is restraining my legs. It is in my airy procession that I discover that I, too, am in the nude. I am chilled but I do not shiver.
The sand of the shore is red, resounding so colorfully despite the dark and the dim crescent moon hung somewhere in the sky. I search for my dream figure, spotting him slithering through the shallows parallel to the shore. I step into the water that I know is the Sea of Lust and Loss. The water is warm. Not so wet. There is no bottom to the sea, and I slip under, so slowly. I cannot see or breathe.
The light and television were still on when I awoke. Brad still wasn’t back in the room. I felt slightly nauseous as I rubbed my eyes, which would not focus on anything. I checked the clock. Only ten minutes until the wake up call. Damn.
Chapter 3
The next morning came early. Brad slept peacefully through the wake-up call that could have been a fire alarm from its jarring volume. I sat up and remembered the notebook that was still on the nightstand. Brad, though virtuous in so many ways, could be nosy, and I didn’t want him to misunderstand. I smoothly slid out the bottom drawer of the stand and laid it next to fair Gideon’s.
When asleep, Brad appeared so much more relaxed than in waking, so absolutely blissful. The moment his chocolate eyes registered the daylight, a permanent look of graveness and worry skirted his features. He was so vulnerable when awake, below his charming appearance, but when he slept he was so comfortable, so strong.
I shook him gently by the shoulder, until he began to thrash, and I ducked away into the shower. Hotel bathroom mirrors are large enough to reflect everything. I removed my clothing and stared at myself tentatively in the glass. I slowly turned myself around. Through my head flashed a powerful image of the Boy, without clothes, and then it was gone again. I made an audible noise of anguish that I’m sure startled my handsome flame on the other side of the door. I showered quickly, re-entering the room in my pinstriped boxers, a favorite pair of mine.
Brad merely glanced down, carrying all of his clothes into the bathroom with him. His modesty baffled me. He would never so much as take off his shirt with any other person present. His adolescent sexuality never blossomed that I could see. He was not prude though. His mind was as dirty as any of the rest of us, he just never really appeared to have any desire to love anyone else either romantically or physically. It made him all the more alluring to him. If I could somehow break down his barrier…
Valorie shoved through the door without knocking, wearing plain jeans and a ratty old t-shirt and a towel on her head. She was caressing her bow with a block of rosin. We talked as I nabbed some arbitrary outfit out of my luggage that I had never bothered to unpack and hastily put it on.
“I can’t find my music and rehearsal starts soon, can we share?” she implored.
“Of course, if I can find mine,” I said, tossing extraneous pieces of clothing across my bed. I retrieved my thoroughly and permanently bent folder of music and tossed it to Valorie. I looked up and noticed Katja’s imposing frame in the doorway. I didn’t know how long she had been watching me, but it unnerved me. Our eyes met briefly, and I experienced a sort of shockwave. Had her eyes always been so intent? So piercing? So gray? I looked down, and she sort of stumbled back into her room.
Brad emerged, fully dressed, of course, from the bathroom with wet hair and a cleanly shaven complexion that never quite ceased to be alluring. The four of us grabbed our respective cellos, and began to lug them down the staircase to a ballroom off of the lobby where we were to rehearse. Today the lobby smelled of rubbing alcohol coffee grounds.
We somehow crammed ourselves into the ballroom with the other mobs of tired and pretentious Honors Orchestra members. I sat in the midst of a field of cellos, the high school virtuosos with real chances for success. It was not until we began tuning that I realized just how much passion everyone in the room had for their particular instrument. The violinists nuzzled their violins, reaching high frequencies that did not screech so much as at home. The violists in the middle with their subtle, curving alto. The bassists, able to communicate their longing through an instrument twice as tall and notes from the depths of the soul.
And then there was me. Me and my cello. We were married the moment I touched my bow to the strings, where, slightly shifting a peg, I could produce the richest, shapeliest tenor to meld into the rest of the euphony. The room absolutely shuddered with the vibrations of hundreds of bows skating across thousands of strings, here a scale, there an arpeggio, and there someone fluttering through her part of a Mozart string quartet.
Our guest conductor sat up on a little stage with a microphone pack. He was rather unimpressive in comparison to field of wooden voices singing below. He sipped from his cardboard cup of complementary hotel room coffee, with apparently little concern for the eager students at his bidding. He wore what was probably the only set of dress attire he owned, and his white socks peeked out from underneath his rumpled black slacks. The large, thick lenses in his clunky glasses only accentuated his bald head with a few hairs flattened across it and his sagging, round body. Slowly, he set down his cup next to his stool, and grunted himself to his feet. It took probably a full five minutes for everyone to realize that he meant to begin rehearsal.
He introduced himself, some super duper professor from some super duper university and he played the violin (they all cheered) and he was excited to work with us but it would be hard work. All of the things he was supposed to say and none of us cared to know. We first did a cursory rehearsal of each of the frankly uninteresting pieces he had picked out for us to learn and perform this week. Each time we took out a different piece, he would squawk out in that condescending nasally banter “from the top now, children, from the top.” We did our best to impress him, if only to make him stop acting as though we were toddlers, but he never quite caught on. He sat hunched over like a toad, the orchestra muttering about what might happen next. We spent the next four hours of rehearsal dragging through one particular piece that could only be described as new age. Because it was selected by this blimp of a professor, it was of course nearly all played by the violin section with a rare plucked comment from the other instruments.
I took this opportunity to try and get to know the two people I was seated next to. One was a shriveling French girl with spiky black hair who apparently spoke very little English. The other was an unfortunately awkward boy, so long and gangly, who had no trouble insulting each note I played and offering his brilliant words of wisdom. So for the rest of the rehearsal I kept my mouth shut and my eyes very deliberately directed at a piece of wall behind the conductor.
This letdown of a first rehearsal mercifully ended in time for the lunch I was so looking forward to. After several minutes of twisting, pushing, and slithering through all the others I located Valorie.
“Where do you want to go for lunch?”
“I don’t really care.”
“I’m starving.”
“Yeah, me too, I’d eat pretty much anything.”
“There’s a sandwich place across the street.”
“All right.”
Somehow, Valorie was entirely and utterly infatuated with our conductor. She went on about him as we crossed the street, went into the small shop, bell ringing, waited in line, and ordered our respective meals. When I finally had the opportunity to get a word in edgewise I revealed to her how little I could stand him. We never agreed on anything in life.
The foundation of our relationship was essentially argument. I remember once I was riding the bus over to her house, and somehow politics came up. She mentioned how she wouldn’t really want to vote once she was old enough. I flipped out. I could not understand how anyone could stand living in the United States with our government in shambles as it is and not want to have any input to help create change. After years of knowing her and never quite seeing eye-to-eye on anything, such topics rarely came up anymore. And we usually just let them go.
So when we shared our very different opinions on the conductor of the Honors Orchestra, I hoped we could let it go.
Somehow, Valorie was adamant. She raved more about his brilliance. His subtle conducting patterns and the artistry of his doughy hands. She tried to convince me of the drastic changes her playing had undergone due to his instruction in just a couple hours. How she appreciated her cello that much more. How Victor simply paled (she always talked a little bit like an old fashioned Brit; it was beautiful) in comparison to the decadent and delicious Dr. Marlow (that was his name) and how she aspired to achieve the same level of excellence as him. I had nearly finished my little sandwich by the time she was done--I was watching people pass by the window while she obsessed.
We did agree on one thing. His years of musical training and teaching drained all the boyish good looks he most likely never had. He was just a fat old shell.
Valorie took her first bite of sandwich.
“Anyway, I’m so glad we don’t have to be in school right now,” she mumbled through a mouthful. That was something else we agreed on.
I mostly talked for the rest of the time we spent at the restaurant while Valorie ate, occasionally looking up at me between snatching up little pieces of fallen lettuce.
“ Yesterday I had two dreams. I mean, I had one on the bus ride over and another last night. But that’s not the point. They were connected. Like, they had the same character in them. Very obviously the same person. It was this guy with powerful eyes, and he was naked and anyway. What do you think it would mean if I had two dreams with the same character in them in the same day? Do you think it’s important? I mean, do you believe that dreams mean anything?”
“Yes.”
“It’s all very Freudian I guess. Something about sex I’m sure. Or maybe it was just the weed.” I gave a little half-hearted giggle that sounded more like a giant “HA.”
I described the dreams to her as best as I recalled, trying to mimic the way I had written them in my little gilded diary. Valorie still munched away. I finished with a little bit of an ashamed half-smile and a slightly pinkish face. She was unfazed by the whole ordeal.
“I don’t interpret dreams,” she pointed out, “I just think they might mean something more than random thoughts spewed out of the imagination. That’s what I want to believe, anyway.”
I guess she understood how confused and troubled I was. I guess she didn’t have a remedy. But telling her was relieving. Maybe it wasn’t so important as I had made it.
On the way back into the ballroom for rehearsal my eyes met Katja again in passing. Her eyes no longer bothered me as they had earlier. No, they were green, not gray, what was I thinking?
I hardly paid attention during the rest of rehearsal, playing when I was supposed to, resting when I was not supposed to play. Writing in the obligatory dynamic or bow direction here and there, still determined to avoid my neighbors to either side who I could simply not relate to. The practice was draining somehow, swelling up in my own revolving thoughts, and I realized I had been incredibly tense throughout the rehearsal when I finally relaxed when Dr. Marlow quacked, “Okay, children, you may now be dismissed to your evening meal and after dinner activities.”
We dined as a school, clustered at a table with the select people from home and Victor eyeing us all smoothly and maliciously. Like cookies or some delectable dessert. I was unnerved, but he always gave me that sort of vibe. I was not sure whether he or the professor irked me more.
The moment the repast was finished I retired to my room. Brad walked into the room moments later, not quite saying anything but giving me that edible smile that was maybe only for me. He grabbed his little satchel and left again, pausing slightly, as though he’d forgotten to bring me along, and then left to go find his other friends, and probably smoke up again with them.
I clicked on the television to see if anything was on. Some infomercials, dated sit-coms and poorly reviewed movies. I had one on, a borderline porno with a loose thread of plot to keep it artistic, when I fell asleep, lights, clothes, and television all still on.
I am on a yacht near the picturesque shoreline. Christmas lights twinkle around the deck and the whiteness of the boat is bold against the night. I don’t see any stars when I look up. I realize the boat is still tied to the dock. I step off the boat, only to spot The Boy standing so stoically in the shallow water. He glows ever so slightly in his physical perfection. This time I do not waver under his grey-eyed stare that is so overwhelming.
I so gracefully begin to walk along the dock toward shore, as though the salty sea air is restraining my legs. It is in my airy procession that I discover that I, too, am in the nude. I am chilled but I do not shiver.
The sand of the shore is red, resounding so colorfully despite the dark and the dim crescent moon hung somewhere in the sky. I search for my dream figure, spotting him slithering through the shallows parallel to the shore. I step into the water that I know is the Sea of Lust and Loss. The water is warm. Not so wet. There is no bottom to the sea, and I slip under, so slowly. I cannot see or breathe.
The light and television were still on when I awoke. Brad still wasn’t back in the room. I felt slightly nauseous as I rubbed my eyes, which would not focus on anything. I checked the clock. Only ten minutes until the wake up call. Damn.