If You Only Knew(117)

Leo looks just as helpless.

I turn to the judges. “Can we have five minutes?” I ask firmly. “I’m sorry. Is that possible?”

“Sure,” says White Beard. “I have to make a phone call anyway.”

I take Evander by the hand and lead him back into the hall, because standing on one of the most prestigious concert stages in the world isn’t going to calm anyone down. I feel sick myself, and I’m just a bystander.

“Is there a practice room here?” I ask Leo.

“Good idea,” he says, loping down the hall. “Come on, this way.”

I lead Evander after him. His hand is sweaty, and tears are dripping down his cheeks. “You look really handsome,” I tell him.

“Leo bought me a suit,” he whispers.

Of course he did. He’d probably buy this kid a house.

Leo tries a door. It’s locked. He tries the next one; that one’s open, and he holds the door for us. Praise be, there’s a piano inside.

“Okay, bud,” Leo says, “just sit down and let it flow, and then we’ll go back into the concert hall—”

“I can’t,” Evander says. “There’s nothing inside me. The music is gone.”

Leo bites a fingernail. “Well, I understand, but this isn’t the time to—”

“Leo, play something,” I order.

“What?”

“Play us something.”

His eyes flicker to mine. “I—”

“Evander needs to be filled up with music. Fill him up.”

The boy’s face looks suddenly hopeful.

“Right,” Leo says. “Um...right.”

He hesitates a second. “We have five minutes,” I say, fixing him with the look I reserve for nasty bridesmaids. The “shut up and smile” look.

It works. Leo takes a deep breath. “Got it.”

Five minutes to calm this kid down, who, if he’s as good as Leo thinks, could have a future the likes of which one in a million people gets to dream about. One in ten million, even. I sit down on the floor—there are no chairs—and pull Evander down with me.

Leo goes to the piano, takes off his jacket and sits down. “Any requests?” he says, and his voice is shaking a little.

“‘Piano Man,’” I suggest.

“Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody Number Two,” Evander says.

“You’re both evil,” Leo mutters.

He puts his hands over the keyboard—they’re shaking, too—and then, with a glance back at Evander and me, the famous notes thunder out. Even a troglodyte like me recognizes the Hungarian Rhapsody. Thank you, Tom and Jerry cartoons.

Leo’s posture is stiff and proper. But then he leans in a little...then a little more. He’s being hypnotized, almost, his entire being becoming involved with the piano.

After the first few bars of music, his hands don’t just play the notes...they ripple and flow, sometimes almost bouncing off the keys. His focus becomes so singular, as if the music has reached out and grabbed him, and he’s just channeling it now. It looks like he’s seducing the music out of the piano, and though I know nothing about piano performance, I can see that to be great, a pianist has to do just that...seduce the instrument, win it over, become part of the great, beautiful piano and the music itself.

And Leo is great.

His hands move so fast that his fingers blur, and his expression changes with the music. His lips move, as if he’s talking to the piano. The melody goes from grandiose and somber, climbing faster and faster to something different, and just as Leo himself can go from dark to light, from tragic to gleeful.

Evander chose well.

Leo’s hands move up the keyboard, and the notes become lighter and faster and faster, and then Leo smiles.

And when he smiles, I swear the earth stops rotating.

Finally, finally, I see him in his true self, melded to the piano, to the golden, dancing notes that leap and swirl and fill the room with their bright light.

I don’t realize I’m crying till Evander puts his arm around me. The boy gazes at Leo, a faraway look on his face.

The door behind us opens. I glance back and see the judges. All four of them. “Is that Leo Killian?” the woman asks.

“It is,” says the man with the white beard.

Great, golden chords crash from the piano. Leo hasn’t noticed his audience has grown. I’m fairly sure we could all spontaneously combust, and he wouldn’t notice. His hands are crossed over the keyboard—really, why on earth is he not playing at Carnegie Hall and La Scala? Surely this isn’t average, even at Juilliard. Surely this is godlike playing.

Finally, in a clatter of utterly joyous noise and rippling hands, Leo finishes. His hands fly up, and he almost leaps back from the piano as if he’s been electrocuted, and stands there, a little stunned, sweat darkening his shirt. He’s breathing hard.

“Imagine what you could do if you practiced,” one of the judges says drily.

“I heard four mistakes,” another says, and honest to God, really? I suppose it’s their business to know, but really?

Leo doesn’t answer. He goes to Evander and kneels in front of him—in front of both of us, really, but he only has eyes for the boy. “Ready?” he says.

Evander nods. He’s smiling.