Okay, you asked for it:
Sub-rating: PG.
Warnings: Food talk. Blatant music talk. (The 'ski: she
loves her music.) Even-more-blatant squee. (No, really, that's
SQUEE with a capital "skwuh." If squee makes you squeamish,
STOP READING RIGHT NOW. I mean it. You know who you are.
)
The rest of you: tuck in your napkins, kids. It's time for the deleted scene known as
DINNERThey were to meet for dinner and a concert. Corazon’s younger brother Lee and his wife were jump-flighting in. He had started as a wayward-- or sporadically commissioned-- graphic artist of middling talent who, to his family’s relief, had eventually happened in to an editorial position with a publishing firm. His parents and Corazon’s were relieved; Corazon herself found the new steadiness of his employment less reassuring. He had a habit of forgetting things, Lee did. It wasn’t pathological-- he wasn’t ill: he was simply prone to an inadvertent setting-aside of events and appointments. At work, of course, he had digital assistants and calendars and reminders. In his private life, however--
At their appointed reservation time, at Theo’s, at the city’s center, she and Kaneda sat at a table on the restaurant’s second level at a table for four, and a waitress in crisp black trousers and a white shirt brought them c[o]cktails that stood largely untouched while five minutes passed, then ten, and then fifteen. She and he spoke politely to each other across the linen tablecloth and the shining flatware and the bread plates. The room itself, quiet despite its solid population of diners, was comfortably dusky; a white candle cast flickering light from a frosted glass holder on the table’s inner edge. They looked down at the city’s early evening traffic through the restaurant’s tall windows while quiet drifted in between them.
From her purse, Corazon’s phone chimed softly. Kaneda kept his eyes on the fading light and the parade of head- and taillamps outside while she answered.
The message, as she paraphrased it for him-- and even just realized it for herself a moment later-- was this: “They’re not coming. He was at the convention in Chicago in the morning, and then he forgot about tonight, and by the time he remembered it was too late for them to catch the jump-flight.”
She stopped talking while she packed away her phone. Her fingers as they re-clasped her purse were shaking slightly.
“I’m sorry,” Kaneda offered.
Corazon nodded. She didn’t meet his eyes. “I thought he knew how much this meant,” she said. “The orchestra here will be performing Mahler's Second in June, but by then we’ll be on our way. It’s just so hard for us to find a mutually feasible meeting time.”
“You’ll see him again.”
She found herself trying not to cry. It was ridiculous-- really it was. “I know.”
“Before we leave. I promise you.”
Corazon looked at him. Typically, Kaneda had spoken quietly, and he was smiling gently. But she could see flashes of flinty light, civil but implacable, in his dark eyes. This he would and could do for her.
“Thank you,” she said.
His eyes warmed. “Then, now, I see no reason why we can’t enjoy a meal together.”
A most reasonable suggestion. Still, she was upset. “I’m sorry to have inconvenienced you. I should have known he would do this.”
“There’s no inconvenience. Really. You’ll feel better once you eat something.”
This time he waited for her to smile back at him. Then he looked to his menu.
*****
She did feel better. It would have been impossible not to. A carpacchio of red beets, whipped goat cheese, and fresh greens for an appetizer; for dinner, for her, a ragout having among its ingredients artichoke, baby bok choi, and grapes; for him, a grilled hanger steak sharing its plate with a ragout of onions, tomatoes, and olives. A wine list of length and depth. They had time even for a cheese course before they needed to leave for the concert; the venue was, in fact, just across the street east of the restaurant and down half a block, past a sunken square courtyard where in milder weather the state’s orchestra would play outdoor concerts.
Between the food and the dinner wine and the wine they were drinking now, a sweet Harslevelu muscatel that glowed like gold in their glasses, she could feel warmth spreading through her. Not intoxication. Contentment. And a happiness of a certain type: a mild sense of elevation.
She smiled when she identified it. “You know-- I didn’t mean this to be so much like--”
Then implication collided with elevation. She stopped speaking.
Kaneda’s eyebrows flicked toward one another. “Like what?”
“Like a date.”
He went quiet, too. His fingers absently brushed the stem of his glass.
“Now I’ve embarrassed you,” Corazon said, after a mutual moment of silence.
Kaneda smiled as though he could see her in the wine. “No. Not at all. Though I am tempted to ask how being in the company of such a charming and beautiful woman could be embarrassing.”
Corazon cleared her throat and reached for her glass.
He looked through it to the blush she was trying to hide. “A reversal?” he asked wryly.
She sipped her wine, set down her glass, smiled. “Very nicely done.”
He chuckled; she joined him. Then he looked at her directly, over their glasses, the candlelight glowing on his face. “I meant what I said.”
Somehow it didn’t seem inappropriate. Not tonight. “I know,” she said.
*****
New Orchestra Hall, home of the state’s largest group of classical instrumentalists, was multi-leveled and very open, glowingly paneled and richly carpeted, warm despite its walls of windows looking out at the increasingly bitter climate that the locals regarded, in their can-do Midwestern sturdiness, as little more than an extension of their ridiculously harsh winters. The orchestra itself seemed to have absorbed something of its no-nonsense surroundings: its sound was rich and big, confident, muscular even. It was as if, one critic had noted, someone had taken a football squad and taught them the ways of brass and cellos and bassoons and percussion and those football players were proud of their new ways. Their conductor, in fact, was an affable but passionate Swedish bear of a man who wouldn’t have looked at all out of place facing off with a referee over a botched call.
Tonight, he and his team, as part of a season focused around the works of Gustav Mahler, had found themselves a pair of vocal soloists and were having a go at “The Song of the Earth.”
Just minutes to go before the concert began, and Corazon, from her chair in one of the first-tier boxes, glanced at Kaneda, who was lingering over an article on Mahler in the concert program.
“Are you familiar with his work?” she asked.
“No.” He closed the program and smiled at her. “But I know I’ll enjoy this.”
*****
Little of the crushing lows and transcendent highs of Mahler’s great symphonies, few passages in fact that unleashed the orchestra at full strength, but the six movements of “Das Lied von der Erde” were vibrant and flowing, bold and bright and tender and dark by turns. Corazon enjoyed it immensely; she could sense Kaneda beside her, focused and attentive; she caught slight changes in him, in the angle of his shoulders and head, that matched the emotions sounding from the stage, and that increased her enjoyment all the more.
But then came the sixth and final movement. “Der Abschied.”
Farewell.It struck her suddenly. She knew the piece well, and yet she’d forgotten. As the movement began, and the oboes and flutes wove arabesques against the deep grounding pulse of the contrabassoon, her throat tightened.
The dear earth everywhere....She thought of Lee, absentminded, irresponsible.
Everywhere and forever, forever....She thought of him not being there. She thought of never seeing him again.
Blue lights the horizon, forever....Her eyes filled with tears. There in the dark of the concert hall a sob escaped her-- a quiet sob, really, a small one, and it only got half away-- but a sob nonetheless. She closed her eyes while the tears made for her cheeks.
Kaneda touched her hand. Something soft brushed her fingers. She took the handkerchief from him gratefully and wiped her cheeks.
*****
All in all, though, it was beautiful. Slightly wrenching, slightly crushing-- music like that had a right to be-- but beautiful. Uplifting, too.
“I should like to hear more,” Kaneda said, as they walked the skyways to the parking ramp.
“I’d be happy to lend you the chips.”
“We could listen to them together.”
She smiled at the walkway ahead, the few people in coats sharing the post-Mahler daze. His music always seemed to her like a glimpse at some other perfectly entire world, a soundtrack for a film visible yet nonexistent. “If you like.”
They were on the top level of the ramp. It was cold and clear. Stars above in the blue-black sky, casting their twinkling against the glow rising from the city. They were the only concertgoers to ride the elevator to this level, and their microvan was one of only a scattered handful of vehicles.
The concrete was dry; she was secure in her footing. But as they neared the van, Kaneda took her gently by the arm, as though to steady her. Unnecessary, but she didn’t mind. Then his hand drifted down her forearm, over the fabric of her coat, and lingered at the exposed skin of her wrist, and his fingers entwined with hers. She turned to him, and they kissed in the liquid-cold air. A shared breath passed as mist between them. They broke, wordlessly and completely, but it was as though they were still touching. He opened her door for her.
They sat for a moment after he started the engine. “Should I take you home?” he asked quietly.
“Ask me again in an hour,” she replied.
*****
An hour. An hour’s drive, to be exact. The highway was clear, snow- and wildlife-free: they made good, fast time on their way back to the campus. And after that hour, the answer was “No.”
*****
He opened the door for her. The entry light came up, softly; the rest of the apartment stayed dark but for bluish moonlight. Corazon unfastened her coat. Her heart was making itself known in her chest, beating hard but not unpleasantly.
Kaneda said: “I could make us coffee.”
He took his coat and hers and hung them in a closet just inside the door. He didn’t call for extra lighting, though, in the kitchen or anywhere else. Corazon didn’t mind. Her eyes adjusted quickly; the moonlight was fine. “That would be nice.”
She could feel her heartbeat in the syllables. Kaneda turned from the closet. He hesitated, looking slightly sheepish.
“I make terrible coffee,” he confessed.
A line between them, invisible. Corazon reached across it. “Might I suggest something else, then?”
She touched his hand, felt him shiver. Kaneda brushed the edge of his thumb along the line of her jaw. Then he backed her against the wall, there in the bluish shadows, carefully shifted the strap at the shoulder of her dress, and kissed the skin newly exposed. Corazon’s breath caught. She eased his suit jacket off of his shoulders; Kaneda, kissing her shoulder, her neck, shrugged free of it--
-- and it beeped when it dropped to the floor. Four quick sharp beeps.
“What--?” she asked breathlessly.
“D
mn,” Kaneda muttered. He reluctantly stepped away from her, picked up the jacket, rummaged in the breast pocket. A beeper card. He activated it, frowned at its screen; he said to her: “My apologies.”
Lights on; Kaneda slotted the beeper into a countertop comm unit. Corazon kept to the side, out of the way of the unit’s camera.
She could see the screen, though. It was Mace. He looked pale and messed up; he flinched when he realized Kaneda was looking back at him.
“Sir,” he said, “we’re in trouble.” His voice was shaky, a little slurred.
*****
END CALL
Kaneda stood for a moment looking at the words on the screen. The four of them-- Mace, Harvey, Trey, and Searle-- had managed, of all things, to get in a fight at a bowling alley. And Searle-- here the details seemed muddled, Mace being intoxicated or hurt or both-- had in some way badly injured a local man who'd been one of the combatants.
“I have to go and get them,” Kaneda said. He looked at her, anger and apology and regret quietly battling themselves on his face. “It could take some time.”
Corazon kept her own face calm for him. “I’ll come with you.”
He smiled slightly; he helped her on with her coat. Then they left his apartment and went back out into the liquid-cold night.
THE END