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?"
