Candela was an easy roommate. She didn’t snore, she didn’t boss or intrude. We spent so little time in the rooms anyway, it hardly seemed to matter that I was sharing hers. Home had become something intangible, foggy and uncertain.
In the mornings, Candela got breakfast while I washed in the basin of water after she did. I used her dirty water; I ate half of her meal. We sneaked out early, before Ofelia was up. We trudged up the hill to the coffee shop. In the afternoons, when we returned, I hid in the alleyway until Candela said it was clear, and then I sneaked into her room. This was our plan, and it worked. For a while.
The city was colder than the forest had been. I didn’t know why this would be, as the forest grew on the side of a mountain, but here there was nothing to hold the warmth close and hug it in tightly—no trees, no bushes, no hills. The cement, stone and brick buildings held as much warmth as icicles.
Candela did caricatures. I played the violin. The mornings were cold, but the afternoons warmed up as the sun tried to beat its way through the haze of the city. I had enough rent money for another month, but I couldn’t pay Celso on top of that, and I would not resort to begging. I would play my violin until it fell from my frozen fingers.
A few days after the incident at Randall and Burns, while I crouched on the ground and played my third set of songs, Candela nudged me with her foot. Two police officers had parked their car across the street and were walking toward us.
My hands became sweaty, and even though I tried to keep playing, my fingers slipped on the bow and the violin slipped from beneath my chin.
“Run,” Candela whispered to me.
My heart began to beat in my left temple.
“Run!”
I didn’t bother with the violin case but stood, tucked the instrument and bow under my arm and ran.
“Hey,” someone shouted behind me.
My feet slapped against the cement and warmth crept into me, starting in my legs and working up into my chest. As I ran, I heard a strange whistling in my ears. This was the time of year when the earaches started, and I could feel one nesting inside my head like the pinchers of a crayfish. I turned left, then right, then left until I was disoriented.
The footsteps that had chased me down the street seemed to have quieted, although my ears rang so loudly that I wasn’t sure. If I had been in the woods, I could have slipped between the trees, crouched in the bushes and camouflaged myself in the vines. I could have disappeared in seconds, but here it felt like hours and I was still pounding down the sidewalks, away from those two police officers.
When I finally slowed down, I was outside the park with the willow tree. I ran to it and crawled underneath its sweeping arms. I placed my back against the tree, pulled my legs up to my chest, balanced my violin on the tops of my knees and tried to slow my breathing. They could find me here—they would—and then what would I do?
The deep breaths started to work, and my gasping slowed. That’s when I heard the crashing footsteps that had followed me all the way to this place.
I tried to become part of the tree. I hugged my knees tighter, placed my chin on top of the violin and stopped breathing. Whoever had been chasing me breathed like Celso’s mule, ragged fish gasps through his mouth and nose. I didn’t dare peek around the tree to see who was there.
The tree shuddered when the pursuer leaned heavily against it. I closed my eyes and tensed my body, ready to leap and begin the chase all over again.
“Whoa…girl…” panted a voice from behind the tree, “you…are…going…to…kill…this…old…man.”
I couldn’t remember if the police officers had looked old or not. Had one been an old man?
I heard the man slide down the tree and sit heavily on the ground. It was time to run—this was my chance, but I didn’t know where to go from here. They would find me no matter where I went. I sat, my muscles taut, and waited.
“Ahhh.” His breathing was not quite as fast, not quite as labored. “Whew.”
My breath eased out of me slowly, evenly. I was quiet as a bat, still as a butterfly, stealthy as a fox.
“Okay,” said the voice. “Maybe I won’t have a heart attack. If I’d known you were coming here, I wouldn’t have run so hard. There are about ten different ways I could have come to this park, all of them shorter.”
Slow as a silent snake in dried leaves, I peeked around the side of the tree as far as my neck would allow. All I saw were feet and ankles. The ankles were clothed in tight black socks, and on the feet were brown shoes. And that’s when Rosa’s words came back to me.
Just wait. You’ ll do the same thing I did. They’ ll start following you…there’s no turning back.
I knew what this man wanted, and I would not give it to him. I leaned forward, put my weight on my feet and tucked the violin under my arm. I was about to leap, about to run through the streets again, when he spoke.
“When you listened to us that day under this very same willow tree, I had no idea how well you could play. But when I heard you repeat Bruch’s Concerto no. 1 in G Minor while you sat in front of the coffee shop, I knew that you were more gifted than all of my other students combined.”
He panted for a moment and took a few deep breaths. I was squeezing the violin so tightly, the bridge dug into the underside of my arm.
“I believe that you only heard the piece once. Once! And then repeated it perfectly. Is this true?”
A face appeared around the side of the tree. It was friendly enough, with a fuzzy gray mustache and heavy gray eyebrows, but I knew what he wanted from me and I doubted that it had anything to do with my musical abilities. I stood up and backed away from him.
“Is it true?” he repeated.
I shook my head. I took another step backward while watching him. He didn’t get up to follow.
“So you had heard the piece before?” He raised his eyebrows and waited. “Please don’t make me run again.”
“I don’t understand,” I whispered.
“Well,” he said, “who does? I don’t understand where musical gifts like that come from, and yet, here you are. Did you write the other songs yourself?”
I peered through the hanging arms of the tree and nodded. He clapped his hands together. Great creases appeared in his cheeks, creases that had graduated from dimples into caverns and rifts.
“Stupendous,” he said. “Marvelous. We must talk more. Come with me to a café and have a bite to eat. I’m tired from the run, and I’m too old to sit on this hard ground.”
I took three quick steps away from him. He would grab my arm as tightly as teeth and drag me away. I could not go anywhere with this man. The branches of the willow tree fell around my shoulders like welcome camouflage.
“Right,” he said. “Shouldn’t talk to strangers, eh?”
My eyes were beginning to hurt, but I was too scared to blink. The throbbing in my right ear reminded me that I needed oil, warm oil, to relieve the ache.
“Okay, then, let’s head back to the café where your friend is. She can be our chaperone, eh?” His laugh was deep, melodic. It made me think of waterfalls and swimming holes.
He groaned and pushed himself off the ground. His hands, in fur-lined black gloves, brushed the debris from his pants and coat. When he stood, he was tall, much taller than me, much taller than Nathanael or Jeremia, and heavier, but he leaned away from me and had such a welcoming smile that I didn’t step back.
“Now then,” he said, holding out his gloved hand. “I am Solomon.”
He didn’t lower his hand, even though I waited half a minute. I stepped from the branches of the willow tree and touched his fingers with the tips of mine.
“Whisper,” I said.
“Wonderful to speak with you at last. I told the police officers that you are my student and that I would speak with you, so I followed you here. They have agreed not to harass you at the café. I can’t guarantee that they won’t harass you at your place of residence, since they believe you assaulted someone, but the café is safe for now. I’ll lead the way. A much shorter way.”
With a sweeping arm, Solomon pushed aside the branches of the willow tree and turned his brown shoes back toward the café.
I didn’t know what to do. If I followed him and he really did want more than to talk about music, I might become like Rosa. And yet he had seen my face time and again at the coffee shop and he hadn’t said anything about being interested in my body. Besides, he had known about me listening to the music under the willow tree.
I watched him until he was halfway across the park. Then I followed, stealthily, silently, as a wolf hunts its prey. I placed a hand over my aching ear.
Never once did he look back.
I followed Solomon all the way to the café. What had seemed like miles when I ran to the park was merely blocks. Candela watched my return, her eyebrows lowered, her mouth a tight, thin line.
Solomon walked into the café, sat at a table near the front window and ordered from the woman who approached his table. I stood with my hand on the door, one push away from entering. Never had the workers or owners asked me to come inside—my place was on the cement, sitting where people walked. I had no right to go in. I had had no right to go into Randall and Burns. I was no longer allowed in room 13 at Purgatory Palace. Who was I to think that I could walk into this café?
Two steaming mugs of cocoa were placed in front of Solomon. Two bowls of piping-hot soup twisted their heat into the air above the table. Solomon saw me standing in the doorway and motioned for me to enter. Would I owe him for the lunch, and if so, what kind of payment would he want?
I thought of Rosa and her beautiful baby. I thought of the money I owed Ofelia, Celso and now, possibly, Solomon. How would I satisfy all these debts?
I stepped into the café.
Keeping my head lowered and my eyes on the floor, I shuffled my way to where Solomon sat. He stood up when I neared the table and pulled my chair back so I could slide in. Somewhere between the police officers arriving and my sitting at this café table, I had become human.
“No coat, no gloves—you’ll ruin your hands. Hold them over the soup.”
I held my hands palms down over the soup and looked at my fingers, as red and rough as though I had been scrubbing laundry in a filthy river. I turned my hands over and looked at my palms. The steam from the soup warmed even the insides of my fingers, and the smell triggered memories of Nathanael, Jeremia, Eva and me heating up stew over the open fire pit, filling the pot with chunks of potatoes, beets and carrots and throwing in the meat from a rabbit or maybe something bigger if the hunting had been successful.
The server placed a basket of bread on the table in front of us. Solomon unfolded the towel draped over the bread and tore off a piece. The smell of warm dough rose, and I breathed it in, remembering my mother and times when I had felt loved.
I took a sip of the soup. The flavor was even better than the smell. I broke off a piece of the bread and dipped it into the soup. Curling my shoulders, arching my back over the table, I tried to relax, but at any moment this bowl of soup would be taken away from me, the steaming cup of cocoa would be tossed out, and I would be asked to leave or thrown out the door. I hoped he was not watching me eat, watching my careful placement of the food well into my mouth.
When I reached the bottom of the bowl, Solomon slid his bowl in front of me. His generosity increased my hunger—if he would be exacting a price from me, I had better eat as much as I could.
I held my spoon over the bowl, waiting, watching Solomon.
“You said you were hungry,” I said.
“I changed my mind.”
When I finished the second bowl and felt the weight of warmth and comfort in my stomach, I looked out the window for Candela. She was gone. It was too early for her to be done working. I knew what this meant—she believed I had joined Rosa and now would be working the night shift. She believed I wouldn’t need her help anymore. My legs twitched beneath me. I’d had my soup, I was warmed, and now I should leave, save myself, apologize to Candela. But that would be stealing.
I sipped the cup of rich cocoa. My hands wrapped around the cup, and I breathed in the aroma. I could have sat there all day.
“Now,” said Solomon, and I jumped in my chair, choking on the cocoa. The drink dribbled out the slits between my nose and mouth and erupted from the holes that were an extension of my nostrils. The towel from the now empty bread basket was close at hand, and I dabbed at my face. My cheeks burned, my chest felt hot, my neck throbbed.
“I’m sorry,” he said to me. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”
I looked down into the cocoa. Solomon’s voice was low, soft and careful, as if he were talking to a rabbit, trying to coax it out from beneath a bush.
“I’ve been listening to your music for weeks. You are astonishing. I don’t know where you live, or how you have lived until this point, but I want to offer you a proposition.”
My hands started to shake.
“I would like you to be my student. In return, I will find you a room at the university; I will find you a scholarship, and your tuition and housing will be paid for. All I ask is that you allow me to teach you.”
I wanted to stare down into my cocoa again, but my eyes betrayed me, showing my vulnerability, and I looked at him. He was watching me, his heavy brows pulled low over his eyes.
“I have gotten ahead of myself. I am Solomon Woodson. I am a professor of stringed instruments at the university, and I would be honored if you would agree to be my pupil.”
I looked closely at his face, searching for the truth in this inconceivable offer. Did he really think I would believe this?
“That’s not a proposition,” I said. “That’s a gift.”
“The university offers tuition remission to deserving musicians. You are such a pupil.”
His smile was so broad that I stared at his teeth. They were straight, white, big. No brown roots, yellow stains, gaping holes. This man had never lived in the forest with other rejects. He didn’t know what my life was like. He couldn’t possibly be offering me something that only those with unblemished faces received.
“Would I have to…” I paused, licked my lips and glanced around the café. Still no one had come to take away my cup of cocoa. Solomon’s brows were no longer down but had jumped up like fuzzy caterpillars, making him appear to be listening intently.
“Would I have to…” I swallowed. “…work the night shift?”
“What does that mean, dear? What does one do when she works the night shift?”
“Give you sex,” I said, so low that he leaned forward in his chair to hear me. I instinctively leaned back in mine.
“Come again?” he said.
“Would I have to give you—or someone else—sex?”
He shook his head and then leaned away, his eyes hooded and dark. With one finger, he touched the back of my hand. I pulled my hand away and put it under the table.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I don’t know what your life is like, nor do I know what you have been through, but you will never, ever have to work the night shift at the university. You will be given your own room with a lock on the door. You may come and go as you wish. No police officers will chase you down or force you to run away. I am offering you a legitimate proposal and will write it up as such. You owe me nothing but some hard work as my student.”
Could this possibly be true? If it was, what would Belen think if I disappeared? What would Celso do when the money he wanted was not there? What would Candela believe? Would Rosa think I’d become like her?
And then I didn’t care. I wanted to play the violin—I wanted to live the life he was offering.
“What about this?” I waved my hand in front of my face. Solomon’s eyelids fluttered as he glanced at my face, and he quickly looked away.
“I don’t care about that, but others might. The first day in the park, you wore something over your head, something light, mysterious.” He leaned forward again. This time I didn’t back away. “Wear that again. Disguise yourself. Let them guess at the mystery that is Whisper. You are wonderful, a fabulous musician, a great talent. Wow them with your skills so they fall in love with you. Then, who cares?”
His chair creaked and groaned beneath him.
“So what do you say?” he asked.
I considered my options: hiding in Candela’s room, going to jail, living on the streets. I didn’t have to think long.
“I would like that,” I whispered.
“So would I,” he said.
And then I allowed myself a small smile—a twitch of the corners of my mouth—and rather than screaming in terror and running away from me, he smiled in return.