Chapter 7: The Screen

The booth behind the Grand Theatre's stage curtain was the size of a wardrobe.

It held a stage piano, a stool, a small lamp and a monitor with a grey picture of the empty hall.

Zhe sat in it for three hours on the fifth of November and played the same four minutes forty times.

Out on the stage, under the work lights, Jiang Yu sat at the Steinway grand with its hammers locked.

His job was to move his hands on the silent keys, in time with the sound that came out of the house speakers.

He was bad at it.

He lifted his wrists too high and lagged behind the notes by half a beat.

Every time, a technician in a black shirt sighed into his headset.

"Again," Hanjing said from the third row.

Zhe played it again.

The first piece was Clair de lune, the second was the lantern song, and Yu watched his own hands through all of it with a fixed, dazzling smile.

At the break Hanjing's phone rang, and he went up the aisle with it pressed to his ear.

The curtain at the booth door moved.

It was Yu, with his coat over his arm and the smile gone.

He stood just outside the gap and looked in at Zhe's back.

"You've got a nice touch," he said. "Han will think it's mine, and by Christmas he'll think it always was."

Zhe kept his eyes on the keys.

"I'm only here until the thirtieth."

"I know. I've been keeping track too." Yu leaned on the frame. "You can stay behind the curtain, Xiao Zhe. That's where you're good."

"Yes."

"Don't call him Hanjing in the lobby. He doesn't like it from staff."

"I never do."

Yu studied the back of his neck for a moment.

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