“So, what did you do after you found the cake?”
“I ate it during my shift.”
“I mean, what did you do about Mom! Did you call her?”
“Better. I sent her flowers at work.”
“Not bad. Romantic, even.”
“No, not romantic. Vengeful and calculating. Sending them to her office was a refined way of getting her back. Can you imagine what her colleagues must have said when the bouquet showed up?”
“Why calculating?”
“Because I knew those same colleagues would try all week to get information out of her about the man who had sent the flowers. There was no way she could forget me, even if she wanted to! My ployworked. We saw each other again soon, and after that first date, we were inseparable.”
“Up until the summer you met Camille, you mean,” Thomas corrected him.
“Fifteen years later. And I don’t regret a single day I spent with your mother.”
Thomas turned toward his father and noticed he was staring strangely at him.
“What is it?” he asked.
“Look behind me,” said Raymond.
When Thomas did, he noticed the facade of San Francisco’s Davies Symphony Hall, one of the most beautiful concert halls in the world.
“Why do you think I’ve dragged myself all over the city telling you my life story? If I’d told you where I was taking you, you would have said no. Come on, let’s go in.”
“It’s a lovely gesture, but a person can’t just walk into a place like that.”
“How do you know? Whenever I traveled, I loved visiting hospitals and seeing where my colleagues worked. Your lack of curiosity worries me, son.”
Thomas walked over to read the poster hanging on one of the columns: “Daniel Harding, Mikhail Pletnev conducting the Russian National Orchestra, Anne-Sophie Mutter, Jean-Yves Thibaudet ...” The list of concerts scheduled for the next several weeks made him imagine himself performing there one day.
He pushed through the door.
The lobby was empty, except for a single employee at the ticket counter.
“I really must teach you to be stealthier,” his father said under his breath. “Ask him if you can visit the auditorium. Introduce yourself. A renowned French musician visiting San Francisco. I’m sure he’ll let you go in.”
“I’m just a pianist, and hardly a renowned one,” Thomas protested.
“Not yet you aren’t. Now, come on. Make your old man proud.”
The employee asked Thomas to wait a moment and then picked up the phone. Within minutes, the public relations manager came down. Just as Raymond had predicted, he was delighted to give Thomas a tour.
As they walked, the man asked Thomas about his career—an elegant way to make sure he wasn’t a fake. Thomas spoke about his most recent concerts, and to his great surprise, the PR manager told him he’d heard great things about Thomas’s interpretation of Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 23 at the performance he’d given in Stockholm in December, which the queen had attended.
“I can’t tell you how nervous I was when I learned that Queen Silvia would be there,” Thomas told him humbly.
The man took him through the backstage area to the main stage, which looked out over twenty-seven hundred seats. He proudly explained that the concave panels hanging from the ceiling were modular sound reflectors that could change the acoustics of the auditorium to suit the composition, the orchestra, and even the audience. Thomas couldn’t help but think that Marcel would find it all extraordinary.
“The wall hangings on either side can also be removed,” the PR manager added. “We can even modify the reverb. I would have loved to let you try out all these marvels of modern technology, but the engineers are already hard at work on tonight’s concert. Now come with me. I have one last thing to show you.”
Thomas followed the man, and his father trailed behind him with an admiring look on his face. They left the stage via a door on the opposite side and headed down a hallway to an adjacent building.
“We have two auditoriums for rehearsals, which are also worth seeing,” the PR manager explained as he stopped in front of a light oak door.
