MARTIN

The gilded plasterwork reverberated with applause. The walls and ceiling of the New York City Center were a masterwork of elaborate reliefs, interlocking Moorish designs and Egyptian figures, brightly painted, flanking the proscenium arch. As Haze Morton and the other dancers took their bows, a chant began.

“Martin, Martin, Martin.”

When Martin Harold stepped onstage, the audience rose. In the pit, the orchestra members also stood. Behind them Martin couldn’t make out faces, but he knew the music and dance critics were there with their pencils sharpened to critique the premier performance of his first collaboration with Haze Morton. The Post. The Journal. The Times. And magazines. Life. The New Yorker. Newsweek. Time. They’d set their pencils aside to stand and clap. For him.

Not that he was a stranger to applause. It was a sound he’d been accustomed to since his childhood in England. He’d been a piano prodigy then, a serious boy accustomed to being shuttled across the continent from one concert hall to another. In between, he was tutored at home by an ancient Russian pianist whose denture odor was so revolting Martin felt like he’d spent half his childhood holding his breath. He endured the itchy suits his mother had custom tailored to fit his slender frame, suffered through strangers patting his head, hoping some of his musical genius might rub off on them.

His father, Lloyd, wasn’t a pushy parent, nor was Martin’s mother, Lydia. Both of them were somewhat dumbfounded by their son’s talent. At age two, they’d found him perched on the piano bench in the drawing room, picking out notes to God Save the Queen. By the time he was twelve he was performing Chopin’s Études.

This concert was different. He was thirty-four, used to playing to classical music crowds. Those audiences were subdued. This applause was full of a kind of energy he’d never experienced before. It was for music he’d written, not played, for the application of music to dance. He worried he’d gone too atonal. Haze had pushed him to twist the music, to tear it away from traditional forms. He’d never felt so uninhibited, or so loved.

The applause died down, the curtain dropped and the audience was ushered out. Martin and Haze sent the dancers and promoters off to the after-party in a fleet of taxis. They stepped outside into a wall of heat. It was late and the city was dark enough to walk hand in hand to the restaurant where the after-party was being held. In the shadows between the streetlights they kissed.

They’d walked halfway to the restaurant when the heat wave broke on the back of a rogue wind that came out of nowhere. The temperature plunged and it started to rain. Martin pulled Haze into a doorway. Haze dragged him out again. The rain teemed and puddled. Haze did an extravagant jeté, splashing Martin. The water was refreshing after so many days of unrelenting heat. They stood, exposed, under a streetlight and embraced, heads thrown back, mouths open, drinking in the rain.

In London, in the stately house on Belgravia Square, Martin’s mother and father waited for him to write, or call with news that he’d met someone, a lovely violinist, or a girl who played the harp, or the flute. That was, of course, what they expected. Their other children were safely married: his younger sister to a prominent, if stuffy, even by their standards, businessman; his older brother to a quiet girl with a minor title. Like their father, Martin’s brother had gone into law and had aspirations to serve in Parliament.

They all wanted to see Martin marry well. They hoped she wouldn’t be an American, or worse. So many of the up and coming young female musicians were Korean, or Japanese. They wished he’d return home and take a position with one of the symphonies. Or, if he preferred to write music, he could do that just as easily in London. Lydia had compiled a list of eligible girls. There were, in particular, the daughter of one of Lloyd’s colleagues, and the niece of a member of her Garden Club; it was reputed she sang. Martin’s father had already given him the ring: a square-cut, four-carat yellow diamond once worn by his paternal grandmother. Martin doubted he’d be able to force it over the first knuckle of Haze’s little finger.