“Yup. This time next week, we’ll be eating lingonberry jam by the spoon.”
Marigold visibly recoils. “Speak for yourself. That sounds disgusting.”
“Been a dream of mine ever since my first trip to Ikea. Microwaved meatballs and berry puree in actual Sweden.”
“Do Swedish people even eat that stuff?”
“I dunno. Probably. Or maybe they subsist off reindeer and smoked penguin. How should I know?”
Marigold gives me a look that reminds me, unpleasantly, of my seventh-grade teacher. “You should at least know that penguins live in Antarctica. And that you don’t eat them.”
“Why? Why is that something I need to know? Is there an oral exam component at Stockholm? Are they gonna quiz me on the appropriate habitat for avian would-be delicacies? I bet penguins are delicious. They look…meaty.”
“Do you enjoy being this gross?”
“Hey,” I say. “I am very charming.”
She elbows me in the side, and I elbow her back, and the closeness between us isn’t tentative now; the interlacing of our fingers feels solid, real.
Rehearsal is only just getting started when we finally arrive at Lincoln Center. The pianist’s running through the standard warm-up exercises, a series of Liszt and Chopin études. We sneak down to the middle of the orchestra section and claim our seats. Marigold’s somehow acquired two copies of the program that’ll be used at the actual performance, and she passes one over. I flip past all the ads for music lessons and fine jewelry to examine the set list.
“Chopin,” Marigold murmurs. “Why is it always Chopin?”
“I wouldn’t brag about disliking Chopin too loudly. I’d hate for people to realize I’m with someone who has such shitty taste.”
The pianist stops her warm-up mid-étude, which snaps both ofus out of our programs to look upstage. The lighting guy is already on his shit, dimming audience lights until the orchestra alone is wreathed in an amber glow. The pianist lifts her hands over the keyboard, and I find myself holding my breath on reflex, a diver hovering at the edge of the block. And then the music begins.
The soloist is Nadeszda Cessyak, a Croatian newcomer who won the Ferruccio Busoni International Piano Competition a couple of years back. Watching her career light up in the wake of that win had only fueled my obsession with Stockholm. It had felt like a lens into one possible future, where a musician from some rural town nobody had ever heard of could rise from obscurity to fame with just a few perfectly played nocturnes.
I wasn’t at Busoni—I hadn’t qualified, and I wouldn’t have been able to afford tickets anyway—but I’d watched the videos online. She plays as beautifully now as she did then: like the piano is an extension of her form, the music as easy a translation of feeling as if she were to cry, or laugh, or dance.
I pull out my phone and swipe over to my recording app, hit “start,” then pull out my notebook, ready to scribble down anything I notice that might help me claim just some shadow of the magic Cessyak has—but then Marigold reaches over and shuts the notebook in my hand, pressing her palm down atop mine. She does it without even looking; her gaze is still fixed straight ahead, watching Nadeszda Cessyak play.
Maybe this is the difference between us. We both hear beautiful music. I want to analyze it, deconstruct it so I can steal the power for myself. Marigold just listens with a small, desperate smile on her lips, her eyes glittering with unshed tears as she falls headfirst into the universe Chopin made just for her.
I wonder if I used to look like that, too.
The entire set takes around three hours to run through when you factor in the times that Cessyak’s instructor stops to givefeedback or to make her run through a few bars again. But for the most part, it plays just the way it would onstage in an actual performance. I feel like I could close my eyes and be transported to the evening show, surrounded by men in dark suits and women with long, glittering gowns—a kind of fantastical symphony where everyone and everything is beautiful.
“That was marvelous,” Marigold says when it’s all over, still misty-eyed as she gazes up at the stage, where Cessyak and her instructor are deep in murmured conversation about technique and performance.
“It’ll be you one day,” I say. “Literally.”
“I still can’t believe it.” She shakes her head slowly. “No way can I live up to that. Nadeszda is a once-in-a-lifetime kind of talent.”
“So’s Marigold Gensler.”
I live for the way she blushes when I say things like that. I wonder what the Jamie of last year would say if he could see me now. Old Jamie must have been some kind of sociopath.
“Come on,” she says, visibly fighting to keep her expression in check. “Let’s see if someone can introduce us.”
And they can, of course, because Marigold seems to know everyone in the industry, and the first guy she walks up to is more than happy to take up the task. Nadeszda Cessyak herself is polite and gracious, but I have the feeling she’d rather be doing just about anything besides talking to two moony Parker students twenty years her junior. At some point, Marigold and I get separated, drawn off into different conversations. I stand by the piano and slide my fingertips along the sleek jet Blüthner’s case. It’s cool to the touch, like a river stone.
“Nadeszda usually prefers Faziolis,” Cessyak’s instructor says, catching me off guard as he joins me, a small smile lingering about his lips. “But apparently she tried this one and fell in love, so it’s earned a starring role this season.”
“It’s beautiful.”
“If you come by this weekend, in the morning sometime, I’m sure they’d let you play it. I don’t know if it’s the same for you, but I can never resist putting my hands on a nice piano.”
