Wildalone (14 page)

The restaurant was a small wooden house somewhere on the New Jersey shore. An old sign by the door had just one word:
LOUISA
'
S
. There were four tables, all of them empty, and a woman at the counter (probably Louisa herself) grinned at him before flipping the Open sign to Closed, so that no one would disturb her special visitor.

“Have Barnaby play for us,” he told her quietly on the way to our table.

A few moments later, she placed two dishes in front of us while Rhys poured the wine.

“Sorry, I forgot to ask. Do you like seafood?”

“Yes.”

“It's their specialty. But that's not the reason I brought you here. Look—”

An old man had appeared through a side door and was heading to a table with all kinds of glasses on it. He poured water into all of them, then his wet fingers touched the rims. Hushed, delicate sounds filled the room with a haunting fragility I had never heard in music. Each tone drifted up and died in the air almost instantly, leaving behind a silence that made one's heart fold in on itself with aching.

“I knew you'd love this.” His voice had turned soft again, the way he had spoken to me by the Greek vases. “Have you listened to water harp before?”

“No. It reminds me of Chopin.”

“The melancholy Pole? Are you sure that's a good thing?”

Something about his tone bothered me, but before I could figure it out he had moved his chair closer to mine and was asking the man to play another piece.

By the time he finally dropped me off at Forbes, it was almost midnight.

“When can I see you tomorrow?” Quick and straightforward, like all his questions that day.

“I have class all morning, then I'm free until five.”

“Meet me at one. Same place as today.”

He drove off without letting me say anything else. As the car muted its roar into the distance, I realized that his beautiful, strange name was still the only thing I knew about him.

T
HE NEWS HAD
hit Wylie's in-box first thing Friday morning, and he had e-mailed me right away:
Come by ASAP! Forget about school!

But by the time I was done with class and saw his message, it was already noon. When I finally made it to his office, the itch to tell me had flushed his entire face.

“Where have you been? You've just won the lottery!”

Propped up on the floor next to him, an electric guitar made a ticking sound. It turned out to be a clock: quarter past twelve. Unless he kept our meeting short, I was going to be late for my date with Rhys at one.

“What lottery have I won?”

“The ultimate jackpot.” He dragged the mystery out for a few extra seconds. “Carnegie.”

A glossy booklet flew across his desk and I managed to catch it just in time. The cover had a picture of the most famous concert hall in America.

“Subscriber's guide to the current season. Page six. Bottom left.”

I followed his instructions, too shocked to think. Page six had a calendar. One of its boxes was circled in red.

“November 23. You think you can swing it?”

“What exactly am I supposed to swing?”

Donnelly had warned me: Wylie loved to see his students succeed and was now pulling strings to get me into New York. But Carnegie, of all places?! She had called it “far from a sure thing.” Apparently, when this man played puppeteer, things became sure in a matter of days.

“It's the annual ‘Twenty Under Twenty' concert. Twenty students, all in their tragic teens—you get the idea. It used to be just Juilliard, but lately they've started to break the mold. This year the list includes two kids from Columbia, one from Stanford, and you.”

And me.
Once again, it had been decided—whether I felt up to it or not.

“What will I be playing?”

“On this I've got bad news and bad news. Which do you want first?”

It was a joke to him. I said nothing, just waited.

“The first bad news is, you don't get to choose this time. The concert is part of their European series, so the program has been set for months.”

I looked at the circled box and the heading in it:

Tribute to Modern Europe: The Pulse of Spain

“And the other bad news?”

“Right. The other bad news is that the piece will kill you. Skinned, roasted, and eaten alive.”

He handed me a few sheets of music. Dense clusters of notes raced down the front page.

“Have you played Albéniz?”

“No. I've heard of him, but I'm not too familiar with his music.”

“Think of him as Chopin, born a Spaniard: took folk themes and turned them into salon music. Not my type of show. Still a genius, though, hands-down.”

The title was a Spanish word,
Asturias
, and seemed to be part of something called
Suite Española
.

“Actually, it was your Chopin that sealed the deal.”

“What does Chopin have to do with it?”

“One of the big kahunas came to your concert. Was absolutely blown away, especially by the études. Kept referring to you as ‘The Maelstrom.' You know what that means?”

“A whirlpool?”

“Yes, but on steroids. A vortex so powerful it destroys everything in its way. Now this guy is convinced you're the only one who can manage the Albéniz. If it can be managed.”

If.

For once, Wylie wasn't joking. He walked over to a stereo, pressed a button—and the music swept the room. Frightening. A flurry of sound. Faster than anything I might have imagined.

“All yours.” He pulled the CD out and handed it to me. “Listen to it until it makes you sick. Drink it, eat it, breathe it—I don't care. But nail it!”

“What if it can't be nailed?”

“Then the failure would be mine as much as yours. And I don't fail.” A quick pause, to make sure I understood. “Now let's agree on a strategy.”

“Agree” simply meant that he laid it out for me while I listened:

I had to practice every day, from now until the concert. By midterm exams, I was expected to know the entire piece by heart because, as he put it, “all sheet music would fly out the window.” Donnelly was going to be my first checkpoint, Wylie—my last. And for the next two months, starting immediately, I could forget about having a life.

By the time he let me go, I could also forget about meeting Rhys. The guitar-shaped clock was already striking the hour with a few deftly chosen chords, Wylie style: “One” by U2.

I RAN OUT OF THE
music building, caught the next campus shuttle, and, miraculously, arrived at the Graduate College only ten minutes late. He was there but didn't kiss me. Didn't even smile. My apology for being late barely registered on his face.

“I thought you were blowing me off. Glad I was wrong.”

“Why would I blow you off?”

“I don't know, that's the problem. You keep your distance and I still can't figure out why.”

“Rhys, I've been looking forward to this all morning. But one of my professors held me up after class, and another one wants to meet at five.”

“I'll have you back by then.”

We started walking—first on Springdale, then left on Mercer where large houses lined the road. Farther down, a cluster of trees threw a thick shade over the sidewalk and he finally took my hand:

“Let's cut through here.”

“Are we supposed to?”

“Are we . . . what?” He sounded distracted, preoccupied with something. “It's fine. Come.”

I pulled my hand out of his but he continued walking.

“Thea, come on.”

One of the first things I had learned at Princeton was that there were no fences, not even around private houses, yet this didn't mean you could pass through. Only two days earlier, while looking for Procter Hall on my way to work, I had mistakenly walked into the garden of Wyman House, the home used by the acting dean and his family. A woman had asked me sternly not to trespass and I had no intention of being scolded again.

“Are you coming or should I carry you?”

He smiled as he said this, waiting for me in the middle of a lawn surrounded by trees on all sides. All except one—the one across from us, where an enormous stone mansion dwarfed everything in sight. When I didn't answer, he headed back in my direction.

“What's wrong?”

“This is someone's house.”

“So?”

“So . . . why can't we just take the road?”

My worry fascinated him, and the bad mood began to lift from his face. “It's fine, I promise. Just come with me. We're almost there.”

I looked at the mansion: no signs of life. “Almost where?”

“Do I scare you this much?”

What could I say? I wasn't scared of him anymore. But maybe I should have been.

“How can I make you trust me?” He backed me up against the closest tree and leaned his hands on it, trapping me in between. “We don't have to go anywhere. In fact, the plan just changed—you win.”

Winning against him was impossible. His lips were already down my neck and the words didn't matter.

“Rhys, wait . . .”

“Are you sure you want me to wait? I don't think you are.” His hands left the bark and slipped under my clothes, over my bare skin—back, stomach, chest. “I don't want to wait either. I imagined you the entire night!”

I couldn't believe what I was doing. We were in someone's backyard, in plain daylight, a few feet from the sidewalk and all the cars passing on the road—but I didn't care.

When he began to unbutton my shirt, it sobered me up instantly. I pushed him away.

“What's the matter?”

“We can't do this here.”

“Who cares where we are?”

“I do.”

“No, you don't. We weren't here yesterday and you still acted this way. Why?”

“Because . . . you don't even know me.”

“I don't need to know you.” His stunning eyes were ruthless. “I need to
have
you.”

He pressed me back against the tree with an insistence that he was unable—or unwilling—to control.

I doubted that my arguments would last much longer. “Then because I don't know you.”

“You don't need to know me either. All you need to do is
let
me.”

The words spilled over the madly pulsating artery on my neck. He pinned my arms up against the tree and slipped his hand into my jeans, without even bothering with the zipper.

“Rhys, stop.” I said it with the last bit of voice left in my throat.

He froze while he still held me. I heard him take a breath. Then his body detached itself from mine and, without touching me or even looking in my direction, he walked away and disappeared through the trees.

WITH TWO WHOLE HOURS BEFORE
my meeting with Giles, I went to the art library and tried to read. But the longer I stared at the book, the more upset I felt over what had just happened: the miserable walk back from Mercer Street, the anger at being left under that tree.

I don't need to know you.

And why would he? Getting to know every girl whose clothes he wanted to take off? A full-time job, for sure. Shortcuts, on the other hand, were exactly what sex was supposed to be: Casual. Anonymous. Easy. He was probably used to getting girls naked just by smiling at them, let alone inviting them on fancy car rides or picnics in the forest. So if I wasn't willing to reciprocate the extra effort, why waste any more time on me?

I left the library and went into the art museum for one last look at the vase in case Giles decided to bring it up again. Or at least so I told myself, while in fact part of me still missed Rhys. Not him exactly—the fantasy of him. Of our few moments by the Greek vases, when he had spoken to me in riddles about love.

The place turned out to be the opposite of what I remembered: no magic, no ghosts, just an unremarkable room with a few cluttered cabinets. Inside, each piece had a brief description. The entry next to the Orpheus vase read:
Psykter, Athens, cir. 500
B
.
C
. [Acq. 1995]
.

It took me a beat to process what I had just read—the brackets, the abbreviated word inside them—and to realize that the only trace of Elza I had discovered so far wasn't a trace at all. Giles was wrong. She couldn't possibly have written about the same vase. Either his age or the long stream of
students had caught up with him, mixing up his recollections to produce the incoherent story he had thrown my way.

Princeton had acquired the vase in 1995. And by then, my sister was already dead.

“MISS SLAVIN, IF MEMORY SERVES
me right, there is a creature similar to the maenad in the legends of your country?”

The question flew out at me as soon as I walked into Giles's office, before I had a chance to sit down.