23. Ofelia
Ofelia
“There’s no need for the entire family to come, Papa.
” Two days later I pinch my forehead to relieve what is rapidly turning into a monster headache.
“Mickey will be here, and Benny and Lourdes called to say they’re coming too.
Honestly, it’s one solo amid a selection of varied pieces, and I’m filling in at the last minute. My name won’t even be on the program.”
And I’d really prefer you don’t come to my house and ask about the secure room that I spend most of every day in.
“A solo performance at the Alhambra palaces is a huge deal, Ofelia.”
“The Patio de los Arrayanes is a small venue, Papa, not the main stage in the Generalife. It’s a minor part of the program. And Albéniz’s “La Vega” is a tough piece. Believe me, the last thing I want is a cheer squad.”
Or your laser eyes and endless questions.
When it comes to my father, security trumps privacy, every time. There’s no chance he’s coming to visit without looking over my house himself. The secure room might do a good job of resembling a sound studio. But that won’t stop Papa from asking awkward questions, and he’s a hard man to lie to.
I don’t like the secrets and deception any more than my brother does.
But I like the idea of my father and Alexei putting bullets through each other even less. And I don’t need Mickey to tell me that’s exactly what will happen if this gets revealed the wrong way.
Don’t ask me what the right way is. I have no fucking idea.
“Well, Sergei is here with me,” Papa says. “He says he would very much like to come, if that isn’t too much family for you?”
I sigh inwardly. “Fine.” Then, feeling instantly guilty, I adjust my tone. “I would love to see Deda Sergei.”
“Good,” he says briskly. “And tell your brother to call us. He’s barely sent a text since he came for dinner.”
I open my mouth to say I thought Mickey was with him on business, then quickly close it again.
My brother’s affairs are his own business—and I’m hardly about to betray his secrets when I’m relying on him to keep my own. And I seriously owe him for setting up the secure room, which has rapidly become my haven.
The truth is that since that first phone call, Alexei and I have spent almost every minute with the secure line open.
I practice while he codes on his laptop, working on some project he and Lars are designing together.
Sometimes I look up from my piano and find him just watching me with an expression that makes my entire being glow with happiness.
We don’t talk about what the future holds or when we’re going to see one another again. Sometimes we spend hours in silence, just coexisting in cyberspace.
And knowing that Alexei can see me has given my afternoon sunbaking sessions a whole new, incredibly hot dimension.
I find myself playing to his gaze in ways I never could have dreamed I would before I met him.
Usually, by the time I make it back into the secure room, he’s waiting for me, cock hard and eye blazing in the way that makes me shiver deep inside.
Phone sex might be a poor substitute for the real thing, but after only days, just the sound of Alexei’s lowered voice has me close to orgasm.
Despite my assurances to my father, I’m as nervous as I’ve ever been as I stand in the shadows waiting to take the stage.
Practicing La Vega over and over beneath Alexei’s caressing eye has taken my playing to new heights. But I’m still not sure how that will translate to a public performance.
Despite having gone over each note time and again, I feel like I understand the piece no better than when I played it for the first time.
Isaac Albéniz’s “La Vega” is a poignant piece dedicated to the beautiful plains around Granada.
Playing it before a critical audience of Granadinos, who consider the composer one of their own, is daunting at best—and utterly terrifying at worst.
I can sense the emotion within the piece. I can play the tricky passages without difficulty.
But I can’t feel it.
And for me, that’s where the gap lies—between giving an audience a performance versus creating an unforgettable experience.
Whether I’m playing on a high school stage or in the Alhambra, the joy for me comes from finding the soul of a piece. And right up to my last practice session this afternoon, that indefinable magic was still eluding me.
I wish Alexei were here.
If I could just see his face in the audience, sense his dusky scent nearby, I know I’d play with the same nuance I found on the yacht.
But the truth is that the moment I leave his gaze, he feels impossibly absent, our time together instantly fading into a golden bubble of fantasy that exists in a world separate from my own.
Especially now.
The marble floor of the Patio de Arrayanes is framed by a seven-arched Moorish portico, beyond which the audience is seated on either side of a long, still pool, hedged by the myrtle trees for which the patio is named.
If I wasn’t already terrified, the space is so intimate that I can literally hear the audience breathing.
The ensemble preceding me finish and take their bows.
The presenter takes the stage to announce me. Unfortunately, she doesn’t bother to explain that I’m filling in for someone else, resulting in a rustle of paper as the audience check their programs in confusion.
I walk out to a smattering of desultory applause and muttered asides. One of Granada’s more richly dressed matrons is fanning herself indignantly with the program in the front row. She eyes me as I pass, clearly skeptical about the last-minute substitution.
You and me both, lady. I try not to tremble as the lights dim and I take my seat.
Then, just beyond the low ground lights, I see a tall, rangy figure, upright and strong in the middle of the front row, and for a brief, heart-stopping moment, I think it is Alexei.
Barely a split second later I recognize instead Deda Sergei’s austere, dignified features, his gnarled hands clasped in his lap.
He inclines his head very slightly as our eyes meet.
It’s the most subtle of gestures, and yet so poignantly like Alexei’s silent, still attention that they could be the same person.
Glaza boyatsya, a ruki delayut. Alexei’s voice is as clear as if he were right here: The eyes are afraid, but the hands do.
I am standing at the river, I realize in a stark moment of clarity. With no choice but to cross it.
I raise my hands over the keys.
As the first delicate chords trickle into the silence, I realize I’ve found the magic after all.
The music swells, and I feel like I’m rising above the still pool and the reflection of the arches within it.
Like I’m floating in space, looking back at something profoundly beautiful that has been lost.
As the music takes me, my surroundings disappear completely, and instead I can see the Quantum Drift as if from above, a tiny island adrift on the vast ocean. I see Alexei and me down a distant tunnel of time, golden and laughing beneath the Mediterranean sun.
The piece moves on, and like the sun falling behind the sea, I play the bittersweet realization that those perfect days have passed, never to be lived again.
The music flows from my hands into the old stone, echoing from the marble and rippling through the gardens, until I’m no longer playing the piece but lost inside it. It’s only when the final note trembles to stillness on the pool surface that I finally come back to myself.
For a terrible moment, there is utter silence, and I’m hit with a lurch of fear.
Then the stillness is broken by a woman’s hushed voice giving a soft, drawn-out sigh: “Alé . . .”
I realize the speaker is the same matron who glared at me as I took the stage. Her typically Granadino exclamation is echoed by the rest of the audience, who amplify it into the more traditional Spanish cry of “?Olé!”
I turn to take my bow, slightly taken aback when the audience stands with me, their applause continuing as I take another bow, then another.
I search the faces in the crowd, but it isn’t Benny’s wide grin I settle on, nor Lourdes’s shining eyes.
It’s the sight of twin tears glistening on Deda Sergei’s cheeks, tracing lines on his face so deep the ancient sorrow of the piece itself might have carved them.
“Umnyashka.” Deda Sergei takes my hands in his worn, smooth ones as the audience mills about on the patio, accepting glasses of post-performance champagne. “Ty byla potryasayushchey.”
Smart girl, you were amazing.
“Spasibo.” I kiss him on both cheeks, then stand back, looking into the still-strong blue eyes, so similar to Alexei’s they make my heart ache.
“It was your words I heard just before I played.” My voice isn’t quite steady.
“Glaza boyatsya, a ruki delayut. I thought of you by that river with Aleksander, and suddenly, my hands knew just what to do.”
His eyes narrow, flaring with a fierce, penetrating blue that momentarily makes him a much younger man, a pakhan feared as much as his son is now. It fades just as suddenly, but the traces of emotion remain on his face.
“V’uchen’ka.” His voice is slightly rough.
“I would cross that river a thousand times to hear you play.” His smile carries the weight of years, of pain I know I can never truly understand.
“Aleksander would have been so proud to hear his granddaughter create such magic. I am glad I can be his ears.”
He looks over my shoulder and smiles benevolently. “But there will be time for us to talk later, perhaps. For now, the star must accept her bouquets, nyet?” Squeezing my hands a final time, he moves aside, right before Lourdes and Benny almost knock me over with their joint hug.
“Oh my God—”
“I’ve never heard you play like that—”
“You were fucking amazing, bitch!”
“Totally what he said! Mickey!” Lourdes turns to glance over her shoulder. “Tell your sister how amazing she was,” she says, her eyes shining.