Nocturne(19)

Savannah


I squinted again and took my pen out of my mouth. The top of it was thoroughly chewed. Bad habit, I knew, but sometimes when I was really concentrating I tended to chew on whatever was at hand.

I’d been sitting in the coffee shop for two hours, working on a composition. This wasn’t an assignment, though it had been inspired by one. Just before spring break, I’d completed a paper in music theory on Claude Debussy’s music and life. That led to some speculation on variations that might be possible with the Debussy’s Claire de Lune. So I’d taken the original composition and begun to rework the beginning, which was all piano, into a cello and flute duet. For hours I’d worked on it, closing my eyes. Imagining the layers of notes, the point and counterpoint.

But now I was stuck. My legs were cramped, my tea was cold, and I needed a break.

So I shook my head, took my earbuds out, and stood. I hadn’t actually been listening to music with the earbuds. But keeping them in served two purposes. First, it helped shut out some of the noise. Second, it deterred would-be conversationalists. I walked up to the counter and ordered another chai latte, then waited. And then it hit me.

I closed my eyes. And then I imagined ... the Claire de Lune, but transposed with Debussy’s Nocturnes. It would take a lot of adjustment in both pieces, but the end would be … a magnificent and beautiful contradiction. Haunting.

Someone tapped my arm, and my eyes jerked open. The barista stood there looking puzzled and tapping a foot in impatience. “Are you all right?” she asked.

“Yeah ...” I was a little breathless. “Thank you.”

I turned to hurry back to my seat and get to work, then came to a halt.

Gregory Fitzgerald sat at the counter diagonally opposite where I’d been sitting the last two hours.

He had a frown on his face as he paged through a stack of papers. Assignments, from the look of it. Sitting like that, his head bent over the papers, he looked younger than I usually thought of him. Less intimidating. More ... approachable, perhaps because his frown merely represented concentration rather than his usual scowl.

I found myself walking back toward my seat along a path that would take me by him. I came to a stop, pausing only long enough to take a breath and reconsider, before sliding into the seat next to him.

He continued to study the paper he was reading, his blue eyes scanning through the lines of text. He paused, circled something with a red pen, and then continued on, his concentration so intense he didn’t notice me staring at him, studying him.

I’d never been this close to him for more than a few seconds. This close, I could see that his right eyebrow rose slightly higher than the left, just by a fraction of a centimeter. He had a profound focus on his work, to the exclusion of everything else in the room. If I set fire to the place, would he even notice?

Then he reached out and touched his empty teacup and lifted it to his lips. His eyes shifted from the paper to the empty cup, breaking his concentration. He set the cup down, looked up and met my eyes, and I felt a sudden jagged thrill of fear.

“Hello.” My voice wasn’t exactly shaky, but I felt an edge to this entire encounter.

His eyes widened, and his lips curved up into the slightest smile. “Miss Marshall. A pleasant surprise.”

“Savannah,” I replied. “I’m on spring break.”

“Gregory, then.”

I shifted in my seat and licked my lips before speaking again. “Term papers?”

“This? No. I’m actually reviewing a list of instructors who might be willing to take on a disabled student. Blind.” He struggled with his words, which I found unsettling.

“Differently abled.” I chuckled.

“What?” He scrunched his eyebrows together, genuinely baffled by my statement.

I shook my head. “Never mind. How old is …”

“Oh, twelve. Him. He’s twelve.” Gregory sank down a little in his seat and rubbed the back of his neck.

“What instrument does he play?”

Gregory’s eyes shifted away from me and toward the window. “Cello.”

“Why aren’t you doing it? You teach.” I shrugged and rested my elbow on the table, facing him as I propped my cheek up on my hand.

Gregory took a deep breath and closed his eyes for a minute. When he opened them, he finally faced me. “I’m not … I just don’t think I’m qualified to handle such a task.”

“Certainly not, if you are referring to the student as a task. Seriously though,” I continued when it looked like he was going to cut in, “you could totally teach him. Marcia Taylor is my roommate and she says you’re a genius.”

He chuckled a little. “As much as I appreciate the observation—”

“I’m serious,” I cut in again, sitting straight in my chair. “I was nine when I grew tired of racing up and down the rows of chairs in an empty opera house during line rehearsals. I wanted to do something. I wanted to play something. The woodwind coordinator for the orchestra was a flute teacher, and my mother paid her to start teaching me. She resisted at first because she’d never taught a child.”

“I can relate.” Gregory nodded and crossed his arms in front of him, leaning back until he was resting against the window.

I did an unattractive half-laugh, half-moan at the memory. “She was awful. Seriously. She would teach me notes and would start out by doing the standard circle diagram of the flute keys, filling in the ones where my fingers needed to go. But, then,” I reached forward and took hold of Gregory’s hand, ignoring the shocked look on his face, “she’d take my fingers and manipulate them to solidify her point. I’d be holding the damn flute with her bossy hands all over me, as if it were appropriate for a nine-year-old to be playing an open-hole flute to begin with.”