Downbeat (Biting Love) (2 page)

To my left, Peter Obois wet his oboe reed by dunking it in a shot glass. “Middle-school band director turned symphony wannabe?”

“We might get lucky and get high school.” I scooted my chair toward Peter—a b-foot flute is twenty-eight inches of metal pipe brandished like a baseball bat, and I didn’t want to whack the flute player next to me. “We’re a community orchestra, we get community people. That’s what happens when you’re semi-professional.”

“Emphasis on semi,” Peter agreed.

“Not a local,” Doreen said. “A
name
.”

Peter sniffed. “I’d be more impressed if it were a recording contract.”

“I’d be more impressed if it wasn’t gossip.” I stowed my case under my chair, my eyeglasses sliding to the tip of my nose. I straightened, poked the glasses up with one finger, then set out my music. “I doubt there’s any truth to it. Why would Hugo give up the podium?”

“Because he’s a hundred plus? He should have retired years ago,” Doreen said.

“Please,” Peter said. “The only way he’ll put down the baton is when it drops from his cold, dead hand.”

“He’ll try to conduct, even then.”

“His baton technique won’t look any different.”

“Be nice.” I elbowed Peter in the ribs. “The String King commands our attention.”

Dr. Walter Vilyn, our concertmaster, mounted the podium as if it were a royal dais, regal in a Prince Philip tweed complete with gold pocket watch. The String King certainly ran the string section like his personal fiefdom. But I had it from several string players that he bowed everything wrong. He pointed imperiously at Peter, ordering the tuning note. Peter took a breath to play.

The door slammed open. Kevin Hutt, the orchestra’s part-time manager, dashed in. Or, since he slings pizzas for a living and lives on the pizzas he slings, he lumbered. “Wait! I have an important announcement!”

Peter let out his breath on a sigh.

The String King reluctantly relinquished his throne. Huffing, Kevin struggled up. It had to be important for Kevin to interrupt His Stringy Highness. Walter’s revenge was more creative than his solos. Which, considering he played everything like Prokofiev wasn’t saying much, but still.

Kevin was already red-faced; sixty sets of eyes on him turned him purple. I mentally reviewed my CPR while he fumbled in his pockets, getting more and more flustered.

He managed to find the folded paper before he keeled over, a sheet once ivory bond but now stained as if it had been mauled by a sweaty bear. He unfolded it and cleared his throat. “As you all know, music director Hugo Banger is our regular conductor.” He panted as he read from the paper. “I’m happy to report Hugo had a stroke—” At the collective gasp, he flushed beet red and scanned the note. “No! I’m
sorry
to say Hugo had a stroke. I’m
happy
to report it was mild and that we’ve found a replacement for the period of his recuperation.”

“Doreen was right,” Peter whispered. “I shudder to think who they got.” His thin face puckered as if he was sucking straight lemon.

Because as everyone knows, guest conductors sleep in coffins and use meat cleavers as batons. “Hopefully not Walter,” I whispered back. “He conducts like a wet seagull flapping his wings.”

“He leads the section that way too.”

From behind, Doreen said, “I think it’s somebody from The Symphony.” Both Peter and I turned and gaped at her. There was only one symphony for us. Chicago.

Then Peter rolled his eyes. “Are you kidding? Not even the third assistant student conductor from The Symphony would guest conduct us. Compared to the big league, we’re a plastic whistle. A baby’s toy piano versus a Steinway.”

“Come on, now,” I said. “We’re semi-professional. We’re at least an accordion.”

On the podium, Kevin was crinkling his note. “Our guest conductor is well-known, having led orchestras all over the country.”

“Meaning he does grade school clinics,” Peter whispered.

More note crinkling. “Excuse me.” Kevin shot a glance at the doorway, his blue shirt bleeding indigo under his arms. “He leads orchestras all over the world.”

“Meaning the high school strings toured Luxemburg one year,” Doreen said.

“He’s recorded with the Berlin Phil and the London Symphony, as well as New York and Chicago.”

That shut us up.

“He’s a name you know well, and I’m sure we’ll be in very good hands while Hugo recovers. Please join me in welcoming Dragan Zajicek.” He pronounced it “Zah-jeh-seck”, turned purple and immediately stuttered, “I mean Dragan Zy-check!”

“Sweet fuck,” Peter breathed.

“
The
Dragan Zajicek?” Doreen said.

I felt faint. “Is there more than one?”

“Can’t be
the
Zajicek. The man is bigger than Karijan. Bigger than Ozawa. What the hell would he be doing conducting us?”

My heart rattled my ribs in agreement. Since junior high, I’d followed Dragan Zajicek’s career. Brilliant didn’t begin to describe him. A musical genius, world-renowned in classical circles even as a youngster in the sixties, he’d only gotten more popular, an international celebrity for the last two decades.

I had a stupidly huge bucket crush on him. In high school, when other girls had posters of Backstreet Boys and ’N Sync lining their lockers, I’d had one of Zajicek. And I’d been envied for it.

Why would an international superstar even be in the same room with the Community Symphony of Unaffiliated Chicago Suburbs? CSUCS (affectionately known as See-Sucks) was okay, but hardly in the same league as Juilliard, much less Dragan Zajicek.

Then the man himself entered. All eyes swung to him, instantly, helplessly—and I realized See-Sucks wasn’t even in the same universe.

Six foot five inches tall, sheer muscular elegance in black-on-black, Dragan Zajicek gathered our eyes like an event horizon sucked up galaxies. Glossy ebony hair with one dramatic river of silver flowed past his collar. Jet brows slashed over brilliant black eyes. Strong cheekbones and a sharp jaw combined with a blade of a nose and sculpted lips into a face that was classically handsome, almost beautiful.

In pictures, Zajicek was so good looking he made my eye teeth hurt. In person he made my chest hurt, because I’d stopped breathing.

I knocked a fist into my breastbone and sucked in air.

Then he moved across the room. His elegance was sharpened by a fierce energy, like an apex predator. He was so outrageously sensual, so irresistibly compelling, that if it was the only way to make him touch me, I’d have done the puddle and coat thing with my body.

After a moment’s stunned silence, we applauded like madmen. In that instant if Zajicek wanted us we’d have been his forever, despite Hugo Banger’s hundred years.

Zajicek vaulted onto the podium with athletic grace, displacing Kevin with sheer presence. His dark eyes swept over the orchestra like a rapier. He held up one long-fingered hand. There was instant silence, so quiet I could hear my heart hammer.

“Greetings. We have much work to do. We’ll start with ‘Appalachian Spring’ after tuning. Mr. Obois?”

Peter gave the A and the woodwinds started to tune. As we matched our As to Peter’s, Zajicek’s head tilted slightly and his dark eyes sharpened, as if he could hear each individual player and was judging their sound, tone and technical ability just from that A.

I barely kept myself from freaking. Hugo hardly heard the melody. I was used to getting away with a few wrong notes in the general cacophony. Not Zajicek. It was almost intimate, how closely the man listened.

But he didn’t comment. Nothing, not even a wince when the brass joined the tuning a quarter step flat, the musical equivalent of merging into traffic in clown cars. He simply tilted his elegant dark head and listened.

After we had all tuned (more or less), Zajicek took up his baton, the white stick as slender and graceful as the man himself.

But before he raised it, he paused. His dark eyes pierced the air over my left shoulder. I glanced back. Bertram Bosun, our principal bassoon, was fumbling through his folder. Reading Bertie like a score, Zajicek said, “Can’t find your part, Mr. Bosun?”

“Um.” Bertie clutched his bassoon and turned red. “Yes. I mean…no.”

Zajicek’s head swiveled to Lila Urtext, fourth-chair cello and also our librarian. Zajicek’s features in profile were even more compelling, acid-etched marble, his black gaze sharp as a bayonet. I hoped like hell that gaze never skewered me. “Ms. Urtext. Find another part for Mr. Bosun, if you would.”

Lila jumped out of her chair so fast her cello went diving. Fortunately her stand partner was Mr. Miyagi, martial arts teacher in nearby Meiers Corners—and yes, he’s a double for Pat Morita (my small town rocked coincidence like Cabot Cove drew murders). He had the reflexes of a cat and snagged the cello before it smashed into pricey kindling.

Wow. When Hugo asked for music, Lila cracked her gum and told him all the parts had been handed out, and if some people lost theirs it wasn’t her problem. For Zajicek I got the feeling Lila would copy out another part by hand if she had to. Using her own blood as ink. She found the bassoon part and waved it at Zajicek, her face lit with a brilliant smile like a good little girl who’d eaten all her peas and expected a treat. Zajicek inclined his head and Lila’s smile dazzled, as if she’d gotten the best treat in the world.

When Bertie and Lila were both settled, Zajicek lifted his baton. An all-embracing sweep of his black gaze gathered our eyes up to him. We waited, our breath and very hearts in his fine hands, ready to leap to our deaths if he bid it.

He gave the downbeat.

Normally we crank out the first note of a rehearsal like a car grumbling to life on a sub-zero morning. We putter along well enough once we get going, melody recognizable, harmonies not so much.

But with Zajicek, the violas and second violins sang that first note perfectly together. When Doreen joined them, she twined in like a lover. In successive miracles, every entrance was clean and beautifully balanced.

Zajicek
pulled
music from us. We played better than ever before, better than we knew we could, swept along in a tide of almost perfect music.

Magic. That’s the only word that comes close. From our dross he spun emotional gold using only his fine hands. We responded with everything we had, everything we were.

By break time, I was emotionally and physically exhausted. I stumbled out to the drinking fountain. Peter stumbled out after me. We rehearsed in the basement of a church, in the fellowship hall under the nave. The fountain and restrooms were in a back hallway under the chancel—nave and chancel being church-speak for auditorium and stage.

I took a small drink, then stepped back to let the rest of the inevitable line have their sip.

There was only Peter.

I peeked through the doorway at the rehearsal room. All the chairs were empty.

The orchestra, and I mean the entire orchestra, had swarmed Zajicek. The only reason I knew he was at the center of that brightly chattering horde was because he was so incredibly tall. His dark head with that distinctive silver lock floated well above the multicolored sea.

Peter peeked in beside me. “Quite a mob. Zajicek must have a magnetic personality.”

“Well, blood has iron.”

“Not what I meant.” Peter returned to the water fountain with the shot glass he used to keep his reeds wet and dumped the old water out. “Why aren’t you among the admiring flock?”

“With my timid personality? I’d be trampled before I could even get close.” I turned the fountain on for him.

He stuck his shot glass under the stream. “You’re fearless enough when you play.”

“Sure, because it’s my job. All principal flutes must have labia of steel and clank when they walk. But you know me. In real life I’m so much a wallflower I have wallpaper paste on my behind and light switches for teeth.”

A bubble popped out of the boiling mob—Doreen. Her hair was mussed, her face flushed, and her sweater’s neckline was pulled oddly out of shape. She made a beeline for the drinking fountain and gulped greedily for a full minute before coming up for air. “Damn. That man makes my undies vibrate.”

“Did you get to talk with him?” Peter asked with almost puppy-like eagerness.

Doreen snorted. “I wish. No, the Wicked Witch got there first.”

The Wicked Witch was Wendy Wagner, our associate concertmaster, or to the rest of the world, second chair violin. She claimed to be a descendant of
the
Wagner—Richard Wagner of the four-opera
Ring
cycle fame, fifteen hours of screeching sopranos straining to be heard over heavy brass—and boasted she’d inherited his talent. Hopefully she meant his musical talent, since he also had a knack for womanizing and being in debt. Wendy made no secret of the fact that she thought she should be first chair, going so far as to soap Dr. Vilyn’s bow—with Lava.

“I wanted to get Zajicek’s autograph.” Doreen held up a felt-tip pen. “But the Wicked Witch zipped in on her broom, followed by every other first-circle string. They coated him like plastic wrap. Then the second stands double-locked him. We poor wind players didn’t stand a chance.”

“Where’s your paper?” I took off my eyeglasses and polished them on my shirt tail.