Maestro (10 page)

She clutched her temples in her palms. What had happened with Matt in the timeline from which she'd just returned? Hadn't Maestro reconciled with Elena after she, Annasophia, had gone? She must have already messed things up, just by coming here in the first place. How on earth could she get back to her real timeline, the one that held her memories of two decades with Maestro as his student, so that she could ensure Matt's existence and be with elder Maestro as he passed away?

Perhaps now it was her responsibility to bring that timeline into being, so that she could return to it. How she would do that, she had no clue.

“You did say there's a reason you had to go back, yet you wound up back here,” Maestro said as he gently rubbed her back, then pulled a lock of her hair to his lips and kissed it. “Just say yes or no, sweet
Schätzchen
. Do you still have that reason to go back?”

“Yes.”
Two reasons
, she thought.
Matt, and saying goodbye to you, my Maestro, when you're sick and old.

“Can you tell me what the reason is?”

“No.” She couldn't possibly tell him he had to fall in love with another woman for his child to exist. That would be exactly the way to ensure that Matt would never exist at all.

“Is it another man?” he asked.

How to answer that? In a way, the answer was
yes
, since Matt was, technically, another man. Matt wasn't, however
another man
in the sense Maestro meant. “No,” she said.

“Yet the reason was important enough to take you from me just now?”

“Yes,” she said reluctantly.

Tears filled his eyes. “Am I going to lose you again, this time for good?”

She had to tell him the truth. “I don't know.”

He paused, kissed her forehead. “Will I have you with me for a little while at least?”

Unable to speak, she nodded.

Though it would still have to be goodbye here and goodbye in the other timeline, at least this timeline's goodbye wasn't looming nearly as close as she'd thought it was. She had made a mistake by trying to go back too soon, and she had to take some time to figure out when to try again. Questions crowded her mind, but for now, she would beat back her anxiety and enjoy Maestro's company.

Perhaps she should try, while she was here, to shift their feelings away from the red hot romantic end of the spectrum and a little closer to the
just friends
end. It would be hard. She knew how she felt; she knew how he felt. He knew how he felt. But she had an advantage: he couldn't be sure how she felt. After all, she'd just tried to leave, and he knew that at some point, she'd have to do so again. No matter what he claimed to understand, that would have to stir up some kind of doubt. As much as she would hate doing it, she might have to play that card to lessen his interest in her so that his feelings could, ultimately, flow back toward Elena.

There had to be some unfinished business between the two of them, after all. Otherwise, Matt – who would be born next year – couldn't possibly have existed.

She gently disengaged from his embrace and wiped non-existent dust off the piano keys.

He took her hands in his. “I'd like to make the most of what time we have, Miss Anna.”

“Me, too,” she whispered, her mind whirling in a cyclone filled with stardust.

###

What to do, what to do?
Annasophia thought. If they went back up to Maestro's suite, they'd make love. She knew it. And she didn't want to mess things up for Matt. Just because Elena had said she would come to Maestro's hotel didn't mean that tonight would be the night Matt was conceived. But Annasophia thought she and Maestro should stay in the lobby as long as they could, to make sure. If Elena showed up, Annasophia would make a discreet exit. Of some sort. She wouldn't play the piano again, lest she wind up in that other weird – and wrong – timeline. She had to find a chance, despite whatever Elena and Maestro might get into, to talk to Maestro, to give him more information to let events, as she knew them, properly unfold.

Then she would take her leave back to 2010.

For now, there was nothing to do but wait.

And – she supposed – play the piano. Music had always been her preferred means of communication, anyhow.

Though she didn't want to make things harder on either her or Maestro, she supposed there wouldn't be anything wrong with sharing a couple of her original songs. She wanted him to see – to hear – how much he had helped her native talent to blossom, how much he had inspired her, and how, as a result of his mentorship, she had grown in a positive direction. Unlike in that nightmare timeline she had just left. The details mostly eluded her, but she recalled this much: it had been sadly bereft of music, as she experienced it now.

Annasophia played the opening notes to “Ancient One,” a song she had written for Maestro. He had laughed when she told him its title, saying it certainly fit, since he was an old guy. When she had played and sung it for him, though, she had glanced his way and seen that his eyes had welled up with tears. She had been surprised by how much the song had moved him, though now, as she started singing, “I see you in my dreams; I hear you call to me,” she heard him let out a long breath. Perhaps when she'd played the song for him when he'd been her mentor, her teacher, he had been remembering now, this very moment when he heard her play it for the first time.

Her mind spun with the intricacy of it all, but she kept playing and singing. “I feel you near; I feel you here.” Yes, she had always felt him. He'd been with her practically all her life, but she had always felt him as greater than his physical presence, though she had never been able to figure out why. Now, she spied more and more of a deeper, transcendent truth: somehow, in some way, she had always known this man.

When she finished “Ancient One,” Maestro had tears in his eyes, just as he had as an older man in her time line. “Did you write that song?”

She nodded. “I wrote it for you...”
Wait, that didn't sound right.
“I will write it for you in 2006.”

He smiled, though tears still glimmered in his eyes. “It's amazing, Miss Anna. Have you written many songs?”

She smiled. “I should say so. That's what I do. I'm a singer-songwriter, and I perform on weekends and many weeknights, as well. I don't have a recording contract. Let's just say things change a whole lot from the seventies to my time. But I do put together CDs and MP3s of my songs and sell them online.”

He shook his head. “I'm sorry, but you have lost me.”

Of course. In 1973, CDs and MP3s didn't exist. And
online
would have no meaning for Maestro at all. “Technology,” she said. “In my time, we have a worldwide computer network called the Internet. People can communicate instantaneously with each other no matter where they're located, and they have access to all kinds of information, like news or weather and all kinds of facts and opinions or, really, anything a person might want. Artists of all kinds can use it to share and distribute their music, books, or whatever else they love to do, in digital form. I pretty much grew up with the Internet, since it really started taking off then I was ten years old.”

Maestro put his hand on top of hers, and she thought he looked sad. “What do I think about this... Internet in your time?” he asked.

“Oh, you like it fine, at least as far as what I do with it. You don't do much with it yourself. But you're a wonderfully supportive friend. Both you and...”
Shit
. She'd almost said
Matt
.

His face became a question mark, but she couldn't tell him about Matt. To Maestro, Matt would be an abstraction, along with any other theoretical children he might or might not have. To Annasophia, though, Matt wasn't an abstraction, and she had to make sure that remained the case.
Forestall his questions
, she told herself.
Quick. Play something else.

She began “Teacher,” another Maestro-inspired song. Unlike “Ancient One,” which sounded rather winsome in its minor key, “Teacher” was a full-fledged celebration of the joy that Maestro had brought to her life. “Teacher, my teacher, humble thou art,” she sang. “Thy art be humble, when spun from the heart.” As she played, she felt him lightly put his arm around her shoulders, allowing her movement while letting her know he was there. His touch electrified her skin, and she closed her eyes for a moment, marveling at the miracle of getting to know Maestro as a young man, aching at the thought that despite the fact that they were falling in love, she would have to leave soon, and she hoped she would know when the time was right for her exit.

When she finished “Teacher,” Maestro brushed his lips against her cheek. “Beautiful,” he said. “Exquisite.”

“I wrote that one for you, too,” she whispered. With everything in her, she ached to kiss him back, and not just on the cheek, either. On his lips. She pictured them kissing deeply, then riding the elevator up to his suite, where they would–

No.
She glanced at her watch. Two o'clock in the morning was still early in the city that never slept. Elena might still show up. They had to stay put, here in the lobby. She didn't want to play any more of her songs, though. And she just couldn't kiss him back.

Annasophia got up from the bench. “Okay, Maestro. Wow me with your Jerry Lee Lewis impression.”

Still sitting on the bench, he glanced up at her, surprised, then he chuckled. “Well, if you insist. Just remember, the last time I did this, I was under the influence.” He cast a glance at the bartender, a middle-aged man who grinned at him and flashed a thumbs-up.

Oh, crap. She hadn't thought about the Long Island Iced Teas. Yes, it had been funny when he had told her about it, but being around people who were drinking made Annasophia acutely uncomfortable. Mom still drank, for the most part. She had brief periods of sobriety, lasting at most four or five months before she'd go back to the bottle again. Annasophia never knew which Mom she'd encounter when she went to visit, but that dynamic was no different from what she'd grown up with. Softly, she sighed. She didn't want to tell Maestro what to do, but damn it, she didn't want him to drink. If she smelled alcohol, she thought she might get sick.

As though he'd read her mind, Maestro said, “No Long Island Iced Teas this time, Miss Anna.”

She couldn't help wonder if their current experience could have played a role in Maestro's decision to become a teetotaler. Throughout the twenty years she'd known him in her timeline, he'd never drunk so much as a beer. She'd thought it was just him, and found him a refreshing antidote to her mother's addiction problems. Perhaps, though – just perhaps – Maestro had decided to swear off any kind of drinking before coming into her life. Could she have impacted him that much?

A world-renowned concert pianist, settling in East Tennessee to teach at a state university. Yes, she supposed she had.

And a world-renowned concert pianist, playing juke joint honky tonk. She couldn't wait to hear it. “Lay it on me, Maestro.”

The bartender was watching, a big grin on his face. Obviously, Maestro had put on quite a show last night. Maestro pushed the bench away and started “Great Balls of Fire,” and to Annasophia's surprise, he started it just like Jerry Lee Lewis would: the introductory chords with the singing.

She'd had no idea Maestro could sing. He had a gift for imitation, too. If she closed her eyes, she would think Jerry Lee, not Maestro, was standing at the piano. Well, Jerry Lee faking a German accent, of course. That made Maestro's performance even funnier somehow. She didn't want to close her eyes. Maestro was adorable. He sang well, and he would wear the title “Killer” of the piano just as well as Jerry Lee, with his fierce chops and wild
glissandos
. She walked over to watch him from the side. As he played, he moved his hips in a powerfully suggestive way – oh, yeah! – and she wished that she, not the piano, were in front of him. As he sang, “Kiss me baby,” he shot her a smoldering look. Her heart skipped a beat. Dimly, she became aware she was grinning like a fool. Playing and singing, Maestro firmly held her gaze with the power of his own, and she couldn't have broken it even if she had wanted to.

The bartender heartily clapped, and Maestro segued with hardly a break into “Whole Lot of Shaking Going On.” Annasophia began to sing along with him, and she moved closer to accompany him on the lower register of the piano. She swung her hips in synchronicity with his and pictured this kind of synchronicity happening in a much more private place than this.

At the end of the song, Annasophia said, “I had no idea you could sing.”

“Well, I don't sing very much. Mostly in the shower.” As Maestro said the word
shower
, he gave her another long, burning look. Sweat was beaded on his brow, and Annasophia longed to kiss it off. “Want to hear one more?” he asked.

Oh yeah, he was worked up. If not for her worries about Matt, she'd be happy to work Maestro up a lot more. At the thought, she let out a long breath, but she smiled and nodded, happy, also, to listen to him play all night, whether covers of Jerry Lee Lewis or pieces by Rachmaninoff, Beethoven, Bach, or Mozart. Or his own music. Had he ever composed his own?

Before she could ask, Maestro started playing another Jerry Lee tune, “Wild One.” He played the piano intro and began to sing, but a woman's voice rang out, smooth, cultured, and insistent. “I'm sorry I'm late... oh, Will. Why must you make a spectacle of yourself in public?”

Snooty thing
, Annasophia thought. What did she mean,
spectacle
? Jerry Lee rocked, and Maestro's covers of Jerry Lee's songs rocked, too. Out of the corner of her eye, Annasophia got an impression of frothy blond hair and sapphire-colored silk, and she picked up a whiff of jasmine. She glanced over. Elena strode toward them, stopped beside the piano, and fixed Maestro with a half-lidded, studied look. Maestro gradually stopped playing, drew himself up to his full height, and glanced over his shoulder at Annasophia. She avoided his gaze.
Time to make my exit
.