EntangledTrio (16 page)

“Nice tan.” Merritt sat back in his squeaky brown leather desk chair, giving David an up-and-down glance. “Looks like two months in sunny Argentina agrees with you.”

David had to move a stack of files and various other papers from the chair in front of Merritt’s desk before he could sit down. Merritt’s office was wall-to-wall paper, piled all over the credenza and the top of his desk, multiple shelves crammed full of books and three-ring binders. Framed newspaper clippings and photos of him with his clients decorated the walls.

With no other place to put it, David set his burden on the floor, then plopped down with a sigh. “It was a nonstop battle between sheer boredom and utter chaos. I spent most of the time sacked out on the chaise on my balcony when I wasn’t at the theater. When it wasn’t pouring down rain, that is.”

“So you didn’t take in the sights with some comely
señorita
in tow?”

Oh that was funny. Except David didn’t feel like laughing. “You’re kidding, right? I was too damn tired. Hit the ground running the first day of rehearsals and didn’t stop ‘til closing night. Pappano’s an amazing conductor, but he’s also one hell of a slave driver. Everybody’s ass was dragging.”

“Well, you must’ve impressed him, because I’ve got the contract for the Met engagement right here. Opening night of the season next September.”

An honor usually reserved for top-ranked stars. David should’ve been thrilled, but instead all he could do was blink. It had to be the jet lag. Another day or two, and he’d be doing handsprings. “That’s great.”

Merritt’s bushy gray eyebrow arched. “Do try not to get too excited. You might rupture something.”

“Give me a break, Merritt. I only got off the fucking plane yesterday.”

“Then why are you here, instead of at home with your face buried in a pillow?”

“To pay you back for the rent you advanced me. And pick up my mail.” Which he’d had forwarded to Merritt’s office. Not that he’d expected anything but junk mail, a couple magazines and various bills, but at least it was an excuse to get out of the house and breathe some fresh air. Well, as fresh as it ever got in grimy, polluted Manhattan. “Now I just need somebody to come clean my apartment. It’s got three months’ worth of dust caked all over everything.”

“To hell with that. You can afford a much better place now.” Merritt opened his desk, pulled out a plain white envelope and handed it to him.

Inside was a check. David’s fees for the Buenos Aires engagement, minus Merritt’s fifteen percent. Over a hundred thousand dollars. The figure blurred and swam in front of David’s eyes, making him blink again. It was too damn surreal. “I didn’t think they’d wired it to you already. Wow.”

“Not bad, eh? Still think I don’t earn my keep?”

“When did I ever say that?”

“You didn’t, but you were damn well thinking it. I told you when you signed with me it’d be a few years until all the hard work started paying off. Well, there you are. The first installment.” He grabbed a couple of files from the stack at his elbow. “San Francisco wants you back next fall, for
Carmen
with Denyce Graves. Then there’s
Trovatore
in Paris. I’ve got new offers from La Scala and Covent Garden here too. You can take your pick.”

David’s head spun. He was so used to having to fight for every engagement he’d gotten in the past. Seeing all these offers laid out before him like a banquet was pretty overwhelming. “Can we hold off a few days? I need some time to decompress first.”

“Not a problem. But while you’re here, shall we go ahead and get the Met contract squared away? We already know you want to do that one, yes?”

Merritt pushed the papers toward him, and David gave them a quick once-over. It was their standard guest artists’ contract, for six performances at twenty thousand dollars per. Even more than he’d been paid for Buenos Aires.

He scooped up the pen to sign, his hand trembling. But other than that, he couldn’t make it move. All he could think of was what’d happened last time he’d agreed to an engagement on the spur of the moment. He hovered over the page for another second or two, then set the pen down. “I-I’ll take care of this next time, all right?”

Merritt stared at him. “Is something wrong? Those are the terms we negotiated.”

“I thought it was supposed to be fifteen thousand per performance, not twenty.”

“You’re complaining about them offering you too
much
money?”

“No, just having a hard time wrapping my head around it.” He rose, knees wobbling. “You’re right, I shouldn’t have come in today. I’ll be back before the end of the week to sign this and go over the other offers, all right?”

Merritt looked a bit exasperated, but nodded anyway. “Fine. Whatever you want.”

David collected his forwarded mail from Merritt’s assistant and caught a cab home to his grungy little below-street-level studio at West 75th Street and Columbus. It was a relatively pleasant day, the sun peeking down through scattered gray clouds holding a slight promise of rain. He shivered in his heavy jacket as he paid the driver and climbed out, even though it had to be sixty-five degrees. After two months of Argentine heat and humidity, it’d be awhile until his body readjusted.

He averted his eyes as he came through his apartment door, willing the mess left over from before he’d taken off for Paris to disappear. No such luck. There were still newspapers strewn over the coffee table, along with a couple of music scores he’d borrowed from the performing arts library. God, he didn’t even want to
think
about how much he must owe in late fees. The air still smelled stale and musty, but luckily nowhere near as rank as when he’d arrived home last night, thanks to leaving the kitchen window cracked open. Faint footprints popped up on the dusty carpet everywhere he stepped, his one armchair creaking in protest when he set his box full of mail down on it. He’d lived here since his student days at Juilliard, and it showed. Every stick of thrift-store furniture was on its last pins.

He’d rolled out of his sofa bed this morning and left it unmade, not bothering to fold it back up. What was the point? He’d only be back in it in a few hours. Or maybe even a few minutes, if his droopy eyelids had their way. But first, he’d better take care of that annoying little red light flashing on his answering machine.

Five messages in all, three from Merritt, about matters they’d already discussed. One from a rather testy librarian at Lincoln Center, wondering why he’d had the scores for
Il Trovatore
and
Die Walküre
checked out for over two months. The third was from someone he only heard from on his birthday and around the holidays.

“David, this is Mom. I’ve been trying to get hold of you for almost a month, but your other phone keeps telling me your message box is full.” Her voice crackled with concern and even a touch of anger. “Please call as soon as you get this message. It’s important.”

The line clicked off.

Shit.
He knew he should’ve deleted Merritt’s dozen or so messages off his cell once he’d listened to them. Then again, it wouldn’t have mattered, since he’d just spent two months in a country where the fucking thing didn’t work anyway. And of course, he hadn’t bothered calling his mother to give her the number of the new phone he’d bought in Argentina. Not that it made a damn bit of difference. She was still going to chew him a new one, so he might as well man up and take his medicine.

He dropped onto the edge of the bed and hit his cordless land-line’s speed dial. It rang three times before she picked it up. “H’lo?”

“It’s me, Mom. Sorry it took me so long to call you back.”

“Oh my God, David! Are you all right?” She sounded tired. Tired and scared to death and relieved all at once. “I’ve been trying to get in touch with you for over a month!”

“That’s what your message said. I’ve been out of the country for the last few weeks, on an en—um, you know, working.”

“What’s the matter, don’t they have phones where you were?”

Now she sounded pissed. Didn’t take long for things to get back to normal. “Look, I’m sorry. What did you need to talk about that’s so important?”

The line went silent, then she sucked in a shaky breath. “I-I’m afraid I have some bad news. We lost your father a few weeks ago. It was a heart attack. It happened at work.”

For a few seconds, he couldn’t believe what he’d just heard. Then the impact hit him like a punch to the midsection, nearly doubling him over. He tried to speak, but nothing came out. All the awful things they’d said the last time they’d seen each other. Everything he wished he could take back. Now he’d never have the chance.

“David, are you still there?”

“Y-Yeah. G-Give me a minute.” Staggering to his feet, he went into the kitchen and filled a glass of water from the tap, then drank half of it down in one gulp. “Okay, I’m here.”

“I’m sorry to have to tell you like this. Are you all right?”

“I will be in a few minutes, just…” He sank down on the kitchen chair, rubbing a hand over his face. “I-I guess you’ve already had the funeral?”

“Yes. It was a nice service. Your uncle gave a very moving eulogy.”

Because you weren’t there to do it
went unsaid, but still hung in the air between them. “I’m sorry, Mom. I would’ve been there if I’d known.”

“I’m sure you would,” she replied acidly.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Well, you made it pretty clear there was no love lost between you when you stormed out of here at Christmas.”

She just had to go there, didn’t she? “We didn’t always get along, but that doesn’t mean I’m glad he’s gone.”

“He regained consciousness in the hospital a few minutes before he passed. He asked for you. He wanted to say goodbye.”

A fine blade of pain tore straight through his heart. God, why was she telling him all this? It’s not as if it made any difference now. “What do you want me to say, Mom? I wish I’d been there, but I wasn’t. I can’t turn back the clock and make it better. Any of it.”

“I don’t expect you to, but… You don’t know how hard it was watching you and your dad fight your entire life. Every time it looked as if you were about to find common ground, some new wrinkle would come along to screw it up. Seems like your whole relationship was nothing but a series of missed opportunities.” She sighed. “I found a letter for you in his things. I mailed it out last week. You should be getting it any day, if you haven’t already.”

He got up and padded over to the armchair to riffle through the box of mail he’d picked up at Merritt’s office. Toward the middle of the pile he found a small white envelope with his mother’s thin, spidery scrawl on it in blue ballpoint ink. “I’ve got it right here. Haven’t had a chance to read it yet.”

“I don’t know what it says. It was sealed when I found it, and I didn’t open it. But if you want to talk about it once you’ve read it, I’m here.”

“Okay.” He went over to the bed and sat back down again. “I should let you go.”

“I’m glad you called. I was worried.” She sniffled. “Next time you leave the country for weeks at a time, would you give me a call first? You’re all I’ve got now, you know.”

As if he wasn’t about to cry already. “I will, I promise.”

“All right, then. Take care.”

David sat there for several minutes staring at the envelope before he finally opened it. There were three handwritten pages inside, black ink on yellow legal-sized paper. He took a deep breath and let his eyes drift shut for a moment, then opened them again and began to read.

April evenings in New York still carried a bit of a chill. Aleks zipped up his jacket and strolled out the Met’s stage door, then around to the front of the building. Lincoln Center Plaza bustled with people tonight, leaving performances at the brightly lit Alice Tully Hall and New York State Theater. He paused by one of the Met’s tall marquees to watch the crowd and drink in some fresh air. Five minutes, then he’d head back inside.

He’d just turned to do so when his glance landed on a solitary jeans-and-leather-jacketed figure cutting purposefully across the plaza a few feet away. He’d know those strong shoulders and that wavy brown hair anywhere. “David? Is that you?”

David halted and wheeled around, breaking out in a surprised smile. “Well, you’re the last person I expected to see. What’re you doing here?”

“It’s Colette’s dress rehearsal for
Rosenkavalier
. She opens tomorrow night.”

“Oh I forgot about that. So she didn’t cancel, huh? I seem to recall her being on the fence about it.”

“She was, but I persuaded her.” They moved closer, until they stood right in front of each other. Close enough to touch. Close enough to kiss. Aleks’ gaze lingered on David’s lips a moment too long for comfort before he finally looked away. “How was Argentina?”

“Busy.” Was it Aleks’ imagination, or was that a resigned sigh?

“Not fun?”

“I didn’t have much time for that, with eight performances on the schedule.”

“Too bad. I’ve never been there myself, but I hear it’s an exciting city.”

“I prefer New York. Or Paris.” David smiled again, but it didn’t reach his eyes. In fact, his eyes had a rather glazed, tired look about them, even a bit pink around the edges. As if he’d been crying. “Maybe I’ll see you there when I come back for
Trovatore
this fall. Say hello to Colette for me.”

He’d walked out of their lives once. Aleks wasn’t about to let them make the same mistake twice—either of them. “They’re about to start the final act. Why don’t you come in and watch? Afterward you can go backstage and say hello to her yourself.”

David hesitated a second or two before turning back. “Are you sure she’d want me to?”

“Why on earth wouldn’t she?”

“Because…every day I was gone, I picked up my phone to call you. All I wanted was to tell you how sorry I was, but I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t dial the number. After about a month, I figured the two of you were still so pissed at me, you probably didn’t care if you never heard from me again.”

Dear, sweet, tenderhearted man. No wonder he and Colette had fallen so quickly and deeply under his spell. “David, I was never angry with you. And whatever anger Colette felt faded a long time ago. But she will definitely be piqued with both of us if I let this opportunity pass by. So come along. I refuse to take no for an answer.”

This time when David smiled, it not only reached his eyes but lit up his entire face. Ah thank God. Aleks hadn’t realized he’d been holding his breath until it rushed out of his lungs. Relief had never looked—or felt—so good.