She turns to me, takes a breath, releases it, and looks in my eyes.
“This is hell, I get it.” She hands me her phone, which is a million times nicer than mine. “But you owe me for filming your portfolio videos, and this is my turf.”
“You chose this venue?”
“Hey.” She shrugs, pops a clarinet reed in her mouth. “Business travelers are loose with their change. Also, hello, the lighting.”
We slip past the staircase, where a lone upright piano stands. Its pale wood is cracked, and I imagine the tuning can’t be great, but the fact they have a piano amid the chaos is nothing short of amazing.
“Okay, I need five minutes of good footage.” She smiles. “Think you can handle it?”
I pat her right cheek and wink. “Can you? Five minutes is a long time.”
“Just remember, you and your dumb kazoo are next.”
She takes a breath and sits on the piano bench, facing out toward me, toward the thousands of others. She pauses longer than I expect her to. She zones out a bit, her eyes focused well past me.
“Soph?” I ask. “You ready?”
She nods. “Ready.”
I start the camera. Point it at her.
“Aria for Clarinet and Piano,” she says. “Sans piano, that is. Eugene Bozza.”
With half a breath, she’s off. It’s a slow piece, but the emotion is there. It’s one you might be able to learn the fingerings for in high school, but you’d never be able to pull off the emotion, the clear tone. Between passages, her breaths are hushed. She builds, a crescendo over eight, ten measures. Even more.
And it falls.
A smile is on my face. I feel it tug at my cheeks before I register how happy it makes me. To hear music. Yes, I’m still very aware of the people around me, but being anxious and happy is marginally better than just being anxious.
“That was great,” I say, once she finishes the piece.
She laughs. “It’s no prodigious oboe and guitar duet, but it’ll do.”
“Please. He’s the prodigy. I’m here because I was the only one who could handle the oboe headaches.”
“Those aren’t real, are they?”
“Yeah, they are. You’re blowing out a lot of air, but the oboe reed only allows a teeny bit through, so the rest goes into your brain.” I roll my eyes. “Or your sinuses. I’m not a doctor. It’s probably not healthy, but it got me here.”
She takes her phone back, then picks up my oboe case. “Here.” She puts it to my chest. “You should play here.”
“No way.” The hell is she getting at? “Let’s go to Marble Arch.”
“Marty, that isn’t any different. Except it’s brighter here. People still ignore you.”
I take a seat on the bench. “You don’t understand. There are certain quirks I have. I’ll try to explain it in a normal way. If you’re okay with me being honest.”
“Obviously. Go on?”
“These crowds here are more erratic. You don’t know where they’re going, they don’t either, so it’s a lot of crisscrossing and bumping into people. That’s bad.” I sigh, realizing how crazy I must sound. “In Marble Arch, people only go two directions. It’s crowded, but there’s a flow. It’s not chaotic like here, or like Big Ben.”
“You think it would mess up your playing?” she asks.
I nod. “There are some stressors I don’t want to deal with. The worst part is that this wasn’t part of my plan. When things get changed last second, it stresses me out.”
It’s the type of speech I’d prepared to tell Megan a hundred times, but could never get out the words. “We planned to go to Marble Arch after this. It’s not like it’s a safer, calmer experience there, but it’s expected.”
She nods. Her face is half-confused, half-processing. After I stand, I shift my weight from leg to leg. It’s a bit awkward.
“Two things,” she says. “One, you’re in for a rough ride. You know that, right? You can’t ever have a plan with this career in this city, oh god, especially if you start dating a guy like Pierce. And two, thankfully you have a friend like me who’s willing to walk all over town to make you chill out. Let’s go to Marble Arch.”
But when we get there, twenty minutes and two trains later, there’s an empty feeling in my chest. And again my mind compares my best friends, old and new. Megan would’ve shoved me out of my comfort zone. Yeah, maybe I’d have been fine with it, but I’d have been upset too. I