Page 15 of Crescendo

“Ah… it’s good. There’s this girl—”

“Oh, god. Don’t tell me you got to London and started hitting on people.”

I snorted. “Calm down, Melinda. I’m not hitting on her. I wouldn’t date someone here, I’m in LA and I’m not about to uproot my whole life for a London girl. No… my roommate, Ella Hendrickson.”

“You paid out the ass, and you have roommates?”

“It’s kind of the point. It’s very… community-oriented. She’s got the same liaison and everything.”

“Like college days all over again… so what’s up with Ella? A bastard to live with?”

“Categorically, I’m the bastard to live with. No, she seems fine. Just… I can’t read her,” I said.

She sighed. “Why am I totally not surprised you’ve taken it upon yourself to figure her out? You’ve probably turned her into a personal class project while you’re at it.”

I laughed. “More or less. She’s brand-new to composition. Played a little bit of clarinet in school, but she doesn’t seem to want to play the clarinet now—some kind of mental block. Doesn’t know how to play the piano. I asked her what key she’d written her application piece in—you know I like to see when people goit’s in F# Minor but it uses heavy Dorian borrowing and chromatic extensions into the Locrian modeand when people go,oh, you know, G Major.Ella… she said it was inthe key of music.She didn’t know what a key was.”

She whistled low. “Damn. Did you listen to the piece?”

“Of course I did. Turns out it was in D Major. Typical for a clarinetist. Emphasis on the minor chords, so she thought it was in a minor key.”

“Was it good?”

“It was… not… very,” I said. “Impressive for how little time she’s spent learning—makes sense she’s a quick study, she is a doctor by trade—but it’s deeply uninspired. Chords with no subtlety, the sections are completely stagnant, no sense of motif or musical progression, a meandering lead melody played flatly on the violin throughout.”

Melinda laughed. “So I guess the reason you’re allI can’t read heris related to why you sound so interested in her despite this.”

“She’s not very good. I tried to show her some basic music theory on the piano and she backed out after about ten minutes. I assume she’s good at the clarinet, but she can’t evenbring herself to touch the thing. So I don’t know why she’s so… compelling,” I said.

“Is she hot?” Melinda said flatly, and I scoffed.

“That’s not related.”

“That’s a yes.”

“Yes, she’s attractive. I’ve been around attractive women who aren’t good at music before. Are you kidding? I live in LA, and you think I’ve never met someone hot and dumb?”

“Okay, touché.”

“It’s somethingabouther,” I said, my voice a quiet longing tone. “She looks at the musical instruments like they’re the greatest things she’s ever seen. She talks about music in these hushed, reverent tones. Someone played one of my most lackluster scores just to make a point to me—don’t worry about it, I have a rival, apparently, turns out—”

“What?”

“I said don’t worry about it. My rival played my worst piece just to make a point. Ella looked like she was having a religious experience listening to it, like she could feel every pizzicato pluck deep in her heart.”

She hummed quietly. “Guess it makes sense,” she said after a second. “You’re the best of the best, but you’ve lost your passion. She’s not, but…”

“But she has what I don’t,” I said, finishing the thought for her as I rolled onto my back, looking through the thin curtains out at the other side of the London street, beautifully ornate townhouses lined up in a row. “She’s got dreams. She doesn’t just have dreams, she’s gotthedream. She’s got that—that fire that burns in your belly. Shewantsthis. So much she’s scared of it.”

“I think she’s probably just scared of you, dude.”

“Whatever happened to put her off the clarinet, it’sthere. I can see it in her face, like it’s running through her veins. Youcan tell she wants, so badly, to do this, but it’s making her afraid to actually take the music into her own hands. And I… I want to get to the bottom of it. Want to figure out what makes her tick. Dammit, Melinda, she’s gotpotential,I can justsmellit, if she’ll get out of her own way.”

She gave me that dramatic groan she did where she acted like I was the most unreasonable person alive, which seemed like an exaggeration. I was probably in the top ten, sure, but single most unreasonable person alive? That was a tough spot. “Dude, tend to your own studies instead of trying to do hers for her, okay? You always make things worse when you get nosy. It sounds like she’s got some serious stuff she’s working through, and if you poke around in it, you’re probably going to poke a bruise. And you don’t want to spend two months living with someone you’ve offended and made hate you.”

“I’d rather that than go forever not knowing if maybe I could have done something more, could have… could have seen where she’d end up. I’m not going to pry… yet. I just want to help her believe she’s a musician.”

“I’m telling you this now so that once it goes badly, I can say I told you so. But forget Ella. How’s everything else? You wanna tell me about that mortal enemy of yours now?”

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