Chapter 11: The Audition

Lydia played for eight bars on the dock with no stand, no cards and no quartet, and I do not remember the tune.

I remember that she shut her eyes.

I remember her bow arm shaking a little on the third bar, and then not shaking.

I remember the geese, who stayed.

When she finished, the dock was silent, and I opened my mouth with nothing in it.

"Ladies," said a voice from the top of the ramp. "I hate to interrupt."

Duncan stood there in a gray suit, with a courier at his elbow holding two cream envelopes on a silver tray.

"It's an invitation," Duncan said. "Tonight, at the yacht club. A small dinner."

"We're busy," I said.

"You're standing on a dock holding a thermos," Duncan said. "Seven o'clock. Wear something that photographs."

He left, and the courier looked at the geese and left faster.

The yacht club had a dining room with thirty places.

Duncan seated us at opposite ends of the table.

Lydia was down at one end, in pale blue, between a man with a beard and a man with a larger beard.

I sat at the other, in burgundy, across from a woman who kept offering me a roll.

Nina sat in the middle in her orange jacket, within reach of the wall where the sound equipment was.

Down the whole length of white linen, Lydia and I could see each other over a hedge of candles.

She lifted one eyebrow, and I lifted both.

She mouthed something that might have been, Are you well?

I mouthed back, I hate it here.

She mouthed, Same.

For the first time that day nobody was listening to us, and I felt more married than I had at any time that week.

Duncan stood and tapped a glass, and a waiter handed him a gold microphone.

"Friends," Duncan said.

His voice boomed from speakers in the corners of the room.

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