Ben and I talked about everything. I told him, "I know that one day my violin playing's got to turn into a job, but I wish it didn't have to. I wish I could keep going to school forever."
He said, "I thought you wanted to be a concert soloist."
"I'd like to play well enough to be one, but to actually have that kind of career ... It's scary to even think about. Although I suppose I'll have to try. Mom brought me to New York so I'll have a chance."
"You're here for your mom?"
"I didn't say that. Anyway, what about you?" I asked. "What do you want?"
"Too much," Ben answered, with a quick shake of his head. "I came here for my cello, but since I started studying composing, I've begun thinking that's the direction I want to go. I feel bad about it, because of all that my folks have sacrificed to help me become a cellist."
"I did the last time I was home. They're worried about me getting into such an uncertain field, but they accept that it's a decision I have to make for myself."
I gave him a wry smile. "Mom and I aren't there yet," I said. "Actually, I doubt if she ever will be."
COME SPRING, Ben and I began taking an occasional afternoon off from school. We weren't supposed to, of course, but it was as close as we could get to going out.
None of my friends dated. We didn't have time.
Anyway, sometimes Ben would catch me in the hall at our academic school—or I'd go find him. Then whoever it was would ask, "You got anything you can't miss this afternoon?" That was our code for "You want to cut classes?" We only did it once in a while. Any more and our teachers would have asked for notes confirming the special music practices that we gave as our excuses to be absent.
The most difficult thing about those afternoons off was deciding where to go. New York held so much that choosing one thing meant not choosing a hundred others.
The first time we took off we caught a bus to Times Square and hung around there. We spent another afternoon riding the subways, getting off to explore Greenwich Village and Tribeca. Ben tried to write that day into a piece of music he called "Cityscape," using weird instruments and jangling, thumping rhythms to represent shops and street vendors and noisy, rushing crowds. He got a B on it and the instructor wrote, "Interesting effort but a bit hard on the ears."
One time we went to the top of the Empire State Building, and on another day we walked across the Brooklyn Bridge and back.
"I never want to leave this city," I told him.
"Don't you ever miss Montana?"
"If I think about it, I do. But there's not much here to remind me of it." I gestured toward a plywood wall shielding a construction site on one side of the street and then at a glass-fronted skyscraper opposite. "Ben, when was the last time you touched a tree?"
"Touched a tree? You mean like hug-a-tree environmental?"
"No! I mean like felt bark. Smelled leaves."
Forty-five minutes later we sat in Central Park, our backs against a maple, and I tried to describe a mountain forest that stretched as far as a person could see. I told Ben about how a forest viewed from a distance might look all the same, but when you got in it, you'd find more kinds of trees and flowers and grasses than you could imagine, and more kinds of shrubs and brambles. You'd walk among Douglas firs and larches, spruces and ponderosa pines, and each species would have a different kind of bark.
"It sounds to me like you're missing Montana right now," he said.
"A little. I'd like you to see it."
The only thing wrong with that afternoon was the letdown I felt when we said good-bye and caught our separate buses home.