No One Knows Us Here(58)

I didn’t know what he was talking about, but I said I was. I was ready for anything.



Leo wanted me to make him dinner. “Let’s go out,” I said. “I’ve been cooped up for the last four days.”

“I’ve already bought the ingredients,” he told me. “Follow the recipe.” He said something in Spanish to Consuela, and a recipe—handwritten in cursive on a vintage recipe card labeled FROM THE KITCHEN OF Christine—appeared on the mirror over his stove.

After I breaded and fried slices of eggplant, after I layered them in the baking dish with sauce and cheese, after we sat down at Leo’s table and ate everything I’d made, everything I’d made while Leo sat on a stool and watched, after we’d finished our glasses of wine and little dishes of gelato for dessert, Leo said he had a surprise for me. He disappeared into his room and emerged a few moments later in a charcoal-gray suit.

His hand slipped into the suit jacket and came out with the Mirror. On the screen, a barcode. “Surprise,” he said.

I shook my head. “What is it?”

“Symphony tickets.”

“Symphony tickets.” To my credit, my voice didn’t catch on the words.

“Taking it to the next level,” Leo said. “That’s what we agreed on, right?”

“Right.”

I kept my arm threaded through his and matched his pace as we crossed the street. Hard, dirty patches of snow remained on the grass of the Park Blocks. The concert hall blinked before us. The whole building twinkled with lights, beckoning us. “What are they playing tonight?” I asked in a steady voice.

“Brahms. The Academic Festival Overture.”

“Brahms,” I repeated in a whimsical way, as if to imply a greater connection to the music than I actually had, as if the very idea of a night listening to Brahms enchanted me.

The walk to the concert hall took all of a minute, maybe two. In those two minutes, my mind clicked through all the possibilities, starting with the worst-case scenario. Worst-case scenario, he knew about me and Sam, and he was taking me to the symphony to taunt me, to taunt us. He planned to disgrace us both.

But, I reasoned with myself, I’d ended things with Sam months ago. If Leo knew, wouldn’t he have tested me back then?

Second-worst scenario: He wasn’t sure about me and Sam, but he wanted to take me to the symphony as some sort of test. He wanted to see how much I’d reveal, or what secrets I’d keep close to my chest.

Best-case scenario: We were going to the symphony because it struck him as a fine idea. Something fun to do on a night out. A real date. That was what he wanted—just to go out like a regular couple. Well, that was exactly what we were doing.

We had excellent seats, right in the front row of the mezzanine. Flipping through the program, I made a decision. I started back at the beginning of the program, this time turning the pages slowly, as if I were studying each one. Near the end were the bios. Strings first. There were a lot of violin players. Violas would be next. Sure enough, there was the principal viola chair. Then two other guys. Then a woman. Then Sam.

In his picture, he was staring intently at the camera. His hair looked shorter and neater than I was used to seeing it, as if he’d had it styled for this photo shoot. He was wearing a tuxedo and holding the viola, the neck just visible in the bottom of the frame.

It both did and didn’t look like Sam. I could stay silent. If Leo mentioned it later—insisted that he knew something, that he knew everything—I would have plausible deniability.

Or I could get ahead of him. “That’s my neighbor.” I pointed at Sam’s picture and smiled over at Leo. We looked up on the stage, where the musicians were sitting, tuning their instruments, and I pointed him out to Leo. “There he is.”

Leo frowned and took the program from my hands. “He studied under Magdalene Heiss. She’s a big deal.”

I searched his face for any hint that he knew something, or that he was testing me. I couldn’t find one.

“He was in this band called Ferguson.” This information was straight from the program. “Do you know them?”

“I might have heard them on NPR or something.”

“Wendy is a big fan, actually.”

Again I studied Leo’s face. He looked . . . mildly interested. That was it. I started to relax in my chair. Maybe this was all a coincidence. Nothing more. Going to the symphony was a perfectly ordinary activity, especially when you lived right across the street from the concert hall. Leo probably went all the time. He probably had season tickets.

Leo snaked his arm around my shoulders and kissed my temple. “Here we go,” he whispered as the lights dimmed and a spotlight appeared in the center of the stage. A bald man in a tuxedo made some announcements about special events going on over the summer, about musicians already on the docket for next year’s program. Behind him, a lowercase letter g appeared on a screen I hadn’t realized was there, and then the man was saying, “As you may already know, these endeavors are made possible thanks to our partnership with Lookinglass. Lookinglass’s CEO, Leo Glass, has long been a generous sponsor to the symphony. Tonight marks the first night of what we hope quickly becomes a global phenomenon.”

I turned to Leo, who squeezed my shoulder. The bald man in the tuxedo was going on about how the entire concert hall was now crawling with Glasseyes, little cameras perched on every rafter, catching the action onstage from every possible angle. Through Lookinglass, watchers all over the world would be able to tune in to every performance. What a wonderful way for the “less fortunate” to participate in the arts, to immerse themselves in the world of music. The bald guy was really patting himself on the back there, bragging how as an organization, they were pioneers of this cutting-edge innovation, music for the people, and Lookinglass was instrumental in that—excuse the pun.